YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

RECOLLECTIONS

RECOLLECTIONS

BY
WASHINGTON GLADDEN

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
(Cbe fiitosi&e press CambtiOoe
1909

COPYRIGHT, I9O9, BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October, iqot)

fa?
Z8

£45

CONTENTS
I. Vestiges of Infancy  1
II. Farm Life and School Life .... 17
III. VniLAGE Life and Apprenticeship . . 40
IV. The Choice of a Calling  55
V. College Days  67
VI. Putting on the Harness  85
VII. The Bursting of the Storm .... 99
VIII. Dark Days  118
IX. The End of the War  136
X. Among the Hills  158
XI. The Foolishness of Reconstruction . 176
XII. From Study to Sanctum  182
XIII. The Tweed Ring  197
XIV. The Greeley Campaign and the Credit
Mobilier  209
XV. The Swing Trial  223
XVI. Newspaper Ethics  232>
XVII. Back to New England  239
XVIII. Heresy Hunting  259
XIX. Postmeridian  282

vi CONTENTS
XX. The Industrial Revolution .... 294
XXI. A Widening Vocation  316
XXII. The Municipal Problem  328
XXIII. Bouquets and Brickbats  353
XXIV. The Negro Problem  366
XXV. A Political Retrospect  377
XXVI. Partnership with Plunderers . . . 398
XXVII. October Sunshine  410
XXVIII. Looking Backward and Forward . . 422
Index  435
Note. — The frontispiece portrait is from a photograph by the
Baker Art Gallery, Columbus, Ohio.

RECOLLECTIONS

RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER I
VESTIGES OF INFANCY
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive ! William Wordsworth.
The story which I have undertaken to tell is that of an
average American. It holds no such wonders of achieve
ment as that of Booker Washington ; it follows no such
romantic paths as those in which Jacob Riis has led us ;
it climbs to no such altitudes of dignity and power as
those to which we have rejoiced to follow Carl Schurz.
It will take us along country roads, and through the
busy thoroughfares of cities ; it will observe, and try to
interpret, the life of all sorts and conditions of Ameri
can men and women. Its interest, if it has any, will not
be found in any exploits of the narrator, but in whatever
power he has possessed of looking sympathetically at
the things he has seen and of accurately reporting them.
My life began in the little hamlet of Pottsgrove, in
central Pennsylvania, in the angle made by the two
branches of the Susquehanna River, and not far from
their junction at Northumberland. My father, whose
name was Solomon, was the teacher of the country

2 RECOLLECTIONS
school in this district. He was a native of Southampton,.
Massachusetts, the second of a family of twelve children.
His father, Thomas Gladden, was a shoemaker by trade,
though he found occasional employment in the harvest
season in working upon the neighboring farms. That
kind of work was most congenial to him, for he was a
stalwart man, and the toil of the field was more welcome
than the confinement of the shop.
My father's boyhood had, therefore, been spent in the
lowliest conditions. It would not be true to say that he
sprang from the proletariat, for in those days there was
no such thing. My grandfather lived in his own house,
had his own small garden in which he raised a large part
of the food for his family, worked at his trade in the
winter and on the farms in the summer, was never iu
want or in debt, and no sooner than any other sovereign
would have taken a tip or accepted charity. His father,
Azariah, had been a soldier of the Revolution. He en
listed from New Britain, Connecticut, in the summer of
1777, and was, I suppose, in the army of Washington at
Valley Forge during that bitter winter. It is the family
tradition, which I know no reason to dispute, that he
was one of Washington's body-guard ; a big brass button
has descended to me, which has stamped upon it the
legend that it once adorned a military coat worn by the
great commander. My father heard from his grandfather
many stirring tales of the days when he was with Wash
ington, which helps to explain the name I bear.
My great-grandfather's name was Gladding. By what
process it became changed, in the next generation, from
a present participle to an active transitive verb I do not

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 3
know. I suppose that my great-grandfather, who was
born at Norwich, Connecticut, was a descendant of John
Gladding, who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in
1640, and afterwards settled in Bristol, Rhode Island,
but of this I have no definite proof. The Gladdings
of that vicinage are descendants of John, and I have
assumed that I belong among them.
Most of the boys and girls of my grandfather's family
found employment on the farms and in the farmhouses
of the vicinage. It was a plain countryside, lying west
of Mount Tom and not far from its base — the quiet
est and most decorous neighborhood, I suppose, in all
the world, and so they called it Bedlam. I remember,
very well, my father's talk about his old home, — his
glowing pictures of Mount Tom, over whose brow the
sun rose every morning, and whose rocky slopes were
infested with rattlesnakes.
My father's health, in his youth, was frail ; he was un
able to do the rough work of the farms, and the family
seems to have determined to make a scholar of him.
There was an academy of some note at Southampton,
and thither he was sent ; he worked for his board in the
family of a good physician, who took special interest in
him, and thus gained his equipment for the work of
a teacher. Before he was of age he began teaching in
the country towns of Hampshire County ; when I lived
in the Connecticut valley, in later days, I used to meet
men, now and then, who had been his pupils, and who
carried his name in grateful memory.
What started him on his way westward I never knew ;
but some time in the early thirties he turned his face

4 RECOLLECTIONS
toward the setting sun, and found his first halting-place
in southern central New York, in the town of Owego,
on the Susquehanna River, where he taught a country
district school for one winter only. Thence he moved
southward, following, perhaps, the Susquehanna, and
landed in the neighborhood where the rest of his life was
to be spent. Pennsylvania was just then getting ready
to establish a free-school system, which went into effect
in 1834; probably he thought that a market would thus
be created for the wares of the schoolmaster. I sus
pect that he must have gone down the river on one of
the lumber rafts which carried the white-pine lumber
of the Owego forests, on the spring floods, down to the
Pennsylvania farms.
The transition from the rocky ridges and sandy plains
of western Massachusetts to the rich and fertile fields
of the lower Susquehanna valley, and from the staid
severities of New England Puritanism to the free and
unconventional manners of the Pennsylvania Dutch,
must have been to my father an interesting experience.
Northumberland County, in Pennsylvania, was farther
then from Hampshire County, in Massachusetts, than
the heart of Africa now is from the middle of the conti
nent. Measured by the standards of the postal service,
it was five times as far away ; for a five-cent stamp will
carry a letter from Columbus to Congo, to-day, while the
letter from which I am about to quote, sent from Potts-
grove to Southampton, in 1832, cost the receiver twenty-
five cents. The civilization which my father encountered
in his new home was full of novelties for him. "What
first attracts the attention of a New England man" 

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 5
thus he writes to his brother at home — "is the wagons
of enormous bulk, to which six horses are frequently
attached, and generally as many as four. The driver
always mounts one of the horses to guide the others.
The management of the farms is also different from the
New England method. No oxen are used. The hoeing
of the corn is accomplished by the plow and harrow.
The women are accustomed to work in the fields in many
places, and generally in the time of haymaking and har
vesting. On public days or times when the militia or
the volunteers meet, the parade-ground swarms with
women peddlers. Perhaps the women are not possessed
of quite as much modesty as your Yankee ladies." And
then he proceeds to animadvert on certain social cus
toms 'which, to his severe morality, verged on the scan
dalous. He doubts whether he shall be content to find
a permanent home among such people.
But there is quick demand for such trained faculty
as he possesses, and he is soon at work ; within a few days
after his arrival he is installed as master of the district
school in the little hamlet of Pottsgrove. Six months
later he writes to his brother : —
I have a small school, no more than thirty scholars at
present ; but if I continue to teach here through fall and
winter, the number will be much greater. I shall be urged
to continue longer than this quarter, but it is uncertain
that I shall. The honest Dutchmen prefer the Little
Yankee to the drunken Englishman who taught here last
winter, or to the dissipated and profane characters who
have generally taught here.
You wished me to give you all the interesting informa-

6 RECOLLECTIONS
tion of this section of the country. But that which is in
teresting news to me would be uninteresting to you. If I
should tell you that Judge Harper fell from his horse and
broke his thigh last week, or that Dr. James Dougal con
tinues to drink wine to excess, it could not be gratify
ing at all to you. And news of a public character — the
desolation occasioned by cholera or the savage barbar
ities of the Blaekhawks upon the frontiers of Illinois —
you receive by the public papers.
These bits of my father's letters give some hint of his
intellectual habit. I have but a few of them, but his
clear round handwriting, not unlike that of Abraham
Lincoln, is a fitting vehicle for the accurate and felicitous
English in which his thought finds expression. There is
a touch of humor now and then, but the prevailing mood
is one of deep seriousness. To his younger brother he
gives a great deal of fatherly advice. He fears lest his
brother may be corrupted by the vices of the country
side, whose contamination he has watched with solici
tude, and he urges as a wise prophylactic the occupation
of the mind by higher interests. "Treatises of natural
history," he says, "are well calculated to produce plea
sure in reading and a desire to improve the intellectual
powers. . Nor should the study of the sciences be neg
lected by any individual who does not wish to exclude
himself from human society." The high valuation here
placed on scientific study was not common in those days.
Yet most of my father's books which have come down to
me are of this character — astronomy, chemistry, and
natural history evidently had a fascination for him ; and
while he had no occasion to teach these subjects in the

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 7
schools of Pennsylvania, he was pushing his explora
tions in this field.
One of my father's pupils in the Owego school was a
country girl by the name of Amanda Daniels. It would
appear that she also, having graduated from the district
school, had found employment as a teacher in her own
neighborhood. Correspondence followed: I have the
sacred fragments of the letter in which my father told
my mother his love and besought her to share his life.
He brought her to Pottsgrove in the summer of 1833,
and they at once began to teach in adjoining districts*
setting up their home in a house which stood midway
between the two schoolhouses.
My mother's father was also a shoemaker, who stuck
to his last in the winter, and wielded the scythe and the
hoe in the summer, on a little farm of his own. One of
John G. Saxe's poems contains a stanza which I have not
found it difficult to remember : —
Depend upon it, my snobbish friend,
Your family thread you can't ascend
Without great reason to apprehend
"X ou may find it waxed at the other end,
By some plebeian vocation.
Both strands of my "family thread" were undeniably
treated after this manner at a period quite within my
own remembrance, which fact makes it superfluous for
me to claim identification with the working-classes. It
has never been possible for me to forget the fact, and
I am not conscious of having tried to do so. I have
never found it necessary to cultivate sympathy with
the people who work with their hands. My mother was

8 RECOLLECTIONS
also one of twelve brothers and sisters; race suicide
was not in those days an imminent peril.
After two or three terms of teaching in separate
schools my parents found one schoolhouse enough for
the family, and my mother was fain to content herself
with the care of one small pupil at home. It was on the
11th of February, 1836, that this charge was laid upon
her. The records of the next few years are meagre. My
mother, who was, I believe, an accurate chronicler, told
me in after years that my education began at a very
early day ; that when I was two years and a half old I
was able to read, in turn with the others, my verse in the
Bible at family prayers. Of learning to read and to write
and to perform the rudimentary operations of arithme
tic, I have no recollection. I faintly recall committing
certain spelling lessons against the return of my father
from school, and memorizing the etymological defini
tions in Kirkham's Grammar; this must have been
before I was four years old. My father was evidently
bound that I should know how to use the English lan
guage. This process of cram, administered to the mind of a
young child, was, of course, highly unscientific and alto
gether reprehensible ; the only advantage to me was that
it gave me a firm hold on my father's memory. He died
before I was six years old, but he has always been a dis
tinct figure in my recollection. His form, his face, his
voice have always been with me ; many of the scenes
in which he appeared have returned to me continually
through all my life. He died before the days of the

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 9
daguerreotype, so that I have had no other portrait of
him than that which is stamped upon my memory.
That one could carry clear sense-impressions from such
an early age through a long life, I would not have
believed if I had not experienced it.
For the last two years of his life, after my brother was
born, I must have been my father's nearly constant
companion; I remember the larks I had with him: tod
dling to school in the winter on the crust of the deep
snow, which held me when he broke through at every
step and I laughed merrily at him; sitting on the back
of our black moolley cow, where he held me firm and
laughed at me ; walking to church in the summer time
down a long hill in Washingtonville, on the slope of
which our house stood, and hearing him tell a neighbor
who walked with us that a church which we passed was
a ChrisWan church, with the i in the first syllable long.
One memory, naturally more distinct than most others,
is that of a savage surgical operation by which the
removal of enlarged tonsils was attempted. There were
no adequate instruments in those days for the treatment
of such cases, and anaesthetics were not yet. The first
attempt was unsuccessful, and I remember my father's
effort to reassure and hearten me for the second oper
ation ; some of the words that he used in that conver
sation are distinctly in my memory to-day, and I know
that no one has ever assisted me in recalling them. All
these things happened before I was four years old. I
record them here, because they may have some psycholo
gical value, in indicating the backward reach of memory.
One very vivid memory, which dates from about this

10 RECOLLECTIONS
time, gives me the clearest impression of my father's
face. It is a scene at a religious meeting, at a country
schoolhouse, in the evening. My father had been reared
a Congregationalist, but he had not connected himself
with the church in Southampton. In Pennsylvania there
were no Congregational churches, and the stiff Calvin
ism of the Pennsylvania Presbyterians being too strong
doctrine for him, he had allied himself with the Meth
odists. I often went with him to camp-meetings and
revivals, and have never forgotten how the more boister
ous demonstrations of those services seemed to affect
him. On the night of which I speak, he was standing behind
the schoolhouse desk, taking part (for he was what they
called a local preacher) in the conduct of the service.
There was only one candle in the room ; it stood before
him on the desk and lit up his face. Some powerful
evangelist had been preaching, and the physical effects
which frequently followed such appeals were in full
view. Men and women were prostrate on the floor,
groaning and screaming frantically; some were trying
to pray; some were shouting "Glory!" the excitement
and confusion were indescribable. I sat on a low seat
near my father and looked into his face ; he stood per
fectly silent; there were tears in his eyes, but the ex
pression on his countenance was one of intense pain.
It must have been early in my fifth year that my
parents removed to the smart village of Lewisburg, on
the opposite shore of the Susquehanna, where my father
became head master of one of the village schools. I am
sure about the date, for I remember that it was in the

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 11
yard before our house in Lewisburg that another infan
tile politician and myself were shouting "Hurrah for
Harrison ! ' ' The other youthful Whig, as I distinctly re
member, could not roll his r's; they had the force of y's.
In Lewisburg my father's merits as a scholar and
teacher were speedily recognized ; in the church and in
the community he must have been held in high respect
and honor. It was more than fifty years after his death
that I first revisited Lewisburg, and it was grateful to
me to find his name held by numbers of his old pupils
in affectionate remembrance.
It was in the late summer of 1841 that my mother
took me with her on a visit to Danville, thirty or forty
miles away. We went by the canal packet, and on our
return, after an absence of a few days, as we drew near
to Lewisburg, on the opposite side of the river, my
mother noted that the curtains of our house, which
stood near the bank, were not lifted. "I fear," she said,
"that your father is sick." His haggard face, as he met
us at the door, confirmed her apprehension.
It was an acute attack of some enteric malady, and
the end came soon. How vividly it all comes back to
me: my father's broken words to me — they were his
last words, I shall never lose them if I live a thousand
lives ; the droning, dreadful days at a neighbor's while
we waited for the funeral; the solemn procession, on
foot, to the church, and the burying-ground ; the scene
at the grave; the many nights that I cried myself to
sleep. Childish sorrows are short-lived, we say ; but this
one was not. It has never let go of my heart; the pain
of it is poignant yet. This man had so wound himself

12 RECOLLECTIONS
into the life of this child that they could not be torn
apart without lasting suffering. .
After my father's death, my mother took up the work
which he had laid down, teaching, for some months, the
school of which he had been principal ; but late in the
following winter she returned, with her two boys, to her
home in Owego. That journey is another vivid memory.
My uncle had come to Pennsylvania for a load of clover-
seed, for which he found market among the farmers of
his neighborhood, and we were passengers on his heavily
freighted sleigh. The desolateness and terror of that
long winter journey through the interminable, lonely
woods, and by narrow roadways cut in the mountain
sides and overlooking abysses, kept me, for several days,
in a state of nervous tension, from which the safe landing
at my uncle's farmhouse was an unspeakable Telief.
As I recall the experience of that journey, I am
brought face to face with the amazing contrasts between
the country as my childish memories recall it, and that
in which we are living to-day. Here is an American who
refuses to be counted among the aged, and what tre
mendous changes in the physical and economic condi
tions of this nation his recollection spans !
The country of those earliest memories was primi
tive and rude and simple, almost beyond the conception
of those who are now young. In all the eastern and
eastern-central states there were many well-tilled acres
and comfortable homes, a considerable number of
thriving towns, and a few smart little cities. But a large
share of all this broad land was still primeval forest or
virgin prairie. Every mountain brook was full of trout,

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 13
and the great game, deer and bears and wolves and
panthers and foxes, roamed all over the mountains. It
was no uncommon thing, when I was living on my
uncle's farm, to see deer appear in our clearings ; bears I
never saw wild, but foxes were frequent, and catamounts
were not rare.
A few short railways, in different parts of the country,
were venturing upon the dubious experiment of steam
transportation, but I suppose that not one in ten thou
sand of all the people of the United States had seen
a railway car. Steamboats were beginning to ply upon
the inland waters, but no vessel propelled entirely by
steam had yet crossed the ocean.
When my life began there were but twenty-five states
— Missouri, the last to be admitted, having added her
star to the flag in 1821. Arkansas was admitted in 1837.
In the first geography which I studied, Michigan, Iowa,
and Wisconsin were territories. What is now Minnesota
was part of Iowa territory. In the year of my birth Iowa
had 10,500 inhabitants and Wisconsin 31,000. All these
great central states were wildernesses, and the popula
tion had not gone far beyond the Mississippi River.
New York city, by the last census before I was born, had
a population of 202,589. Chicago had been three years
incorporated as a town ; it began with 175 houses and
550 inhabitants.
These facts show how little had been done toward
the development of the resources of this great country,
seventy years ago. The population was sparse, the
apparatus of civilization was rude ; tools were primitive,
machinery had hardly begun to be used in agriculture.

14 RECOLLECTIONS
Industry was still largely domestic; the clothing of the
great majority of the people was spun and woven in their
own homes. There were few large factories of any kind.
Cotton had begun to be spun and woven to a consider
able extent, but for the most part the mechanical work
of the country was done in small establishments em
ploying but few hands. Employers generally worked
with their men in small groups, and all ate at the same
table ; there were no social distinctions between capital
ists and laborers.
There had been, before my day began, a few char
tered companies in which capital had been combined for
industrial purposes, but each of these, I think, had been
created by a special act of the legislature ; the industrial
corporation, in the form in which we now have it, had
not been invented. It was during the year 1837 that
Connecticut passed a general law empowering groups
of ^persons to combine their capital for business purposes.
Other states followed the example. Thus this mighty
engine of finance, with such vast capacities for service
and such enormous powers of spoliation and oppression,
has sprung into existence and taken possession of the
earth during a lifetime.
The decade of which I have just been speaking seems>
indeed, to have been the beginning of a new era in in
dustrial development. "This homely rural nation,"
says President Woodrow Wilson, "which in 1828 chose
Andrew Jackson to be its President, was about to pro
duce a vast and complex urban civilization. Its old
habits were about to be broken up. Its railways were to
produce a ceaseless movement of population, section

VESTIGES OF INFANCY 15
interchanging people with section — opinions, manners,
and purposes made common and alike through great
stretches of the land by reason of constant enterprise
and united effort. The laboring classes, who had hitherto
worked chiefly on their own initiative and responsibility,
were now to be drawn together in large factories, to be
directed by others, so that dangerous contrasts both of
fortune and of opportunity should presently be created
between capitalist and employee. . . . The first signs
of a day of capitalistic combinations and of monopoly
on the great scale began to be visible. . . . The aggre
gate material power of the country was to be greatly
increased, but individual opportunity was to become
unequal ; society was to exchange its simple for a com
plex structure, fruitful of new problems of life, full of
new capacities for disorder and disease." '
This was, indeed, what was to be, but nobody living
at that time could have begun to divine it ; these secular
movements of social evolution are never predictable by
any clairvoyance that we can summon. But this, for
substance, is what has been happening since that winter
ride over the Alleghanies. It almost staggers one to try
to span the experience of a single life.
I have seen the forests disappear from a large part of
the continent, sometimes in a ruthless and disastrous
slaughter ; I have seen the wild game which once roamed
everywhere driven to a few sanctuaries in the western
mountains, where they cannot long survive ; I have seen
the population spreading through the Mississippi valley
and over the plains and mountains of the great North-
1 Division and Reunion, p. 103.

16 RECOLLECTIONS
west ; I have seen a mighty empire spring to life upon
the Pacific coast, and great cities, scores of them, rise
from the heart of the forest or the sedges of the lake
or the bosom of the prairie ; I have seen the land, from
ocean to ocean, covered with a network of steam and
electric railways, whose veinings give to almost every
hamlet in the land immediate and cheap access to all the
rest of the world. All the marvels of electricity in its
application to human needs have appeared within this
time ; when I was a lad it was a curious toy. I remember
well the first telegram ; the first ocean cable was laid when
I was in college; the telephone, the electric light, the
wireless telegraph, the Roentgen rays are later prodigies.
I have seen, also, as the result of multiplying machinery
for shop and farm, the population steadily lessening on
the farming lands and massing in the cities ; and I have
watched the whole of that ominous polarization of social
classes — the organizers and employers of labor gather
ing their hoards together, and, over against them, the
men who do the work becoming banded and regimented
for a perennial struggle over the product of labor. Such
a marshaling of classes for industrial war could never
have been dreamed of in my boyhood.
Such a swift glance over the seven decades may make
it seem worth while to pass leisurely through them,
gathering up such incidents and impressions as may
throw light upon the course of events and the stream of
tendencies. For it is not in the economic realm alone
that great movements have been in progress ; in politics
and science, in education and religion, the changes have
been no less notable.

CHAPTER n
farm life and school life
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy. William Wordsworth.
For a few months after my mother's return to Owego,
I found a home in the farmhouse of my uncle, three miles
from the village. The next autumn, one of the farmers
of that neighborhood, who had emigrated from South
ampton, in Massachusetts, proposed to return to his old
home, and my mother seized the opportunity to send
me with him, for a visit to my grandfather. The jour
ney of perhaps two hundred and fifty miles was made
in a one-horse buggy of somewhat spacious dimensions,
which carried a small trunk behind the single seat
whereon sat the farmer and his wife with a babs in her
arms, and which admitted a round cheese-box next to the
dashboard, that held the provisions for the journey and
served as a seat for me. How many days we were on the
road I do not remember ; it must have been a week. What
a weariness it was ! The roads were rough, the inns prim
itive, the weather often harsh, and a small boy of seven
who sat numb and cramped through all those days of
torture might well be skeptical concerning the pleasure
of travel. But I remember, with delight, some pictur
esque miles along the headwaters of the Delaware, and a

18 RECOLLECTIONS
glorious view from the top of the Catskills; and I recall
the ferry, worked by horses in a treadmill, which carried
us across the river at Hudson, and a restful Sunday
spent at Old Stockbridge.
We had nearly reached the end of our journey before
we had seen a railway train or a railway track ; but some
where in western Massachusetts we came upon the track
of the Western Railroad, which connected Springfield
with Albany. Presently a passenger train came speeding
past us from the west. It was a sensation quite unforget
table. Our charioteer, with exorbitant faith in the speed
of his nag, spurred him into a run to keep up with the
train, but soon desisted. That was the only glimpse
we had of a railway, in all this journey of two hundred
and fifty miles, through the heart of New York and Mas
sachusetts. For nearly a year I lived with my grandfather and
grandmother in their little old house on Bedlam Street.
Mount Tom, of which my father had so often told me,
lifted up his shaggy sides toward the sunrising ; the little
Manhan River, whose name was also familiar to me,
greeted me like an old friend, and many memories of
my father endeared the place. They took me to a nook
in the woods near the house, where he had braided the
branches of pine trees into a bower for the diversion of
his sister, who was an invalid; near by was his "seat,"
where he had fitted a plank between two contiguous oak
trees and had used it as an outdoor study, to which
he was wont in the summer to resort with his books.
The seat was broken down, but bits of the plank were
there; the trees had grown about the ends of it and

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 19
held them fast. Was it strange that I should like to sit
between those old trees and listen to the whisperings
of the forest?
I have always had reason to be grateful for the im-^
pressions made upon my life by the contact which this
year in Massachusetts gave me with the Puritanism of
the New England countryside in the first half of the
nineteenth century. There was a flavor in it, easily/
enough perceptible to af boy of eigh^ altogether unlike
that of central Pennsylvania or central New York. Liv
ing in a new community is a little like learning a new
language : it gives you a new set of windows, through
which to look out on life. The Yankee way of seeing
things is distinctly unlike that of the Dutchman or the
New Yorker, and a child unconsciously adopts the men
tal attitude of the people among whom he lives.
I attended school for two terms in the Bedlam school-
house; I knew all the people in the neighborhood; I
worked in the fields of the farmers and sat at their tables,
and all their life became familiar to me. The first money
I ever earned was in a harvest field on Bedlam Street.
We were getting in the rye, and, with a larger boy, who
belonged upon the farm, I toiled hard from early morn
ing till sunset, encouraged by the promise of wages for
my work. A wiry boy of eight can heap together a good
many sheaves of rye in twelve hours, and I was made to
feel, all day long, that I was helping famously. When
the even was come, like the men in the parable, I was
called to receive my hire, and instead of getting what
the men in the parable got, "every man a penny," my
compensation was a half-cent. Such a coin was then in

20 RECOLLECTIONS
circulation. The use of it I could not quite understand,
for there was nothing in the world for which you could
exchange it. Nobody would sell you less than a cent's
worth of anything. I kept my half-cent for some time
as a souvenir, but nobody gave me another, and it
finally disappeared, leaving, perhaps, an incipient sen
sitiveness respecting the conduct of those "who oppress
the hireling in his wages."
The agricultural methods of the Connecticut valley
were still very primitive in 1844; no farm machinery
had yet appeared; the field work was all done by oxen,
and though the grain cradle was employed, the sickle
was still in use for harvesting. I have a scar on the little
finger of my left hand which is the record of my first
lesson in reaping.
Altogether my year in New England was a profitable
year of my childhood ; the schooling which one gets in
such an experience counts for much in after-life.
In October, 1844, my grandfather's brother was
returning to western New York from a visit to South
ampton, and it was arranged that I should go, in his
care, as far as Syracuse on my homeward way. My
grandfather was to take me and my few belongings over
the hills to Chester, on the Western Railroad, where I
should meet my great-uncle, and go with him by rail to
Albany. That ride of twenty miles, in my grandfather's
buggy, half of the distance before daybreak, and the
railway journey in a second-class car, which was a box
without springs, and whose seats were benches without
cushions or backs, is another leaf in my experience of
the tortures of travel. I had not slept a wink the night

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 21
before ; I had sturdily held myself awake, listening to
the clock, for fear that my grandfather might oversleep ;
and what with the loss of rest and the long drive over
the rough roads, and the din and jar and dust of this
horrible railway passage, I gained about as vivid an
impression of the Inferno as I have ever had. It is hard
to realize, to-day, that the discomforts of railway travel
ever could have been what they sometimes were in the
first half of the nineteenth century.
At Albany we were drawn by a stationary engine up
a heavy grade, and then let down by gravity to Sche
nectady, where we embarked on a canal freight-boat
for Syracuse. The journey must have taken four or
five days ; the boat made slow progress ; the passenger
packets, which often overtook us and passed by us,
probably made the journey in half the time. But it was
not a fatiguing journey ; we sat upon the deck, in the
sweet October sunshine, and had time a plenty to study
the landscape and chat with the natives on the farms
and in the villages. There was always a mild excite
ment in passing the locks, and the encounters of drivers
on the towpath sometimes lent spice to the dull stream
of conversation.
At Syracuse my great-uncle commended me to the
care of the coachman, and I set out alone on the last
stage of my journey. The first night we spent at Cort-
land, where, in the early evening, I fell in with an ardent
politician of about my own age, who was dancing about
a hickory pole just erected on the public square, with
a banner inscribed to Polk and Dallas flying from the
top of it. From this point onward my attention was

22 RECOLLECTIONS
attracted to the hickory poles and the white-pine poles,
by which partisans proclaimed their loyalties in the
political contest then so hotly waged. Now and then we
came upon an outdoor assembly listening to some fer
vid orator, arguing for "Polk and annexation," or for
"Clay and a protective tariff"; and we had glimpses
of those enormous teams of oxen by which each party,
gathering at the hustings, sought to symbolize its
strength. This was the first political campaign whose
incidents I remember, and the proposed annexation of
Texas, with the probable resulting war, gave even to a
juvenile politician some cause for solicitude.
For it was in this very year, 1844, that the first ef
fective political organization based upon opposition to
slavery made its appearance in this country. There had
¦ been, a few weeks before this date, a convention at
Buffalo which had nominated a candidate for the pre
sidency on a platform which declared "that human
brotherhood is a cardinal principle of the democracy as
Well as of pure Christianity; and neither the political
party which repudiates it, nor the political system which
is not based upon it, can be truly democratic nor perma
nent." Thus was born the " Liberty Party," the nucleus
of the Republican Party. A small boy, listening to the
talk of men on the decks of canal-boats and in the stage
coaches, was made aware that the question which was
disturbing men's minds was the question of the exten
sion of slavery ; that Texas was wanted by the people of
the South because it would give them more slave terri
tory ; and that the whole question of the rightfulness
of slavery was thus forcing itself upon the conscience

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 23
of the people. The small boy was listening to the first
notes of that "irrepressible conflict " which was to rend
the nation in twain and deluge the land in blood.
On my return from Massachusetts, my mother, who
had been married again and was living in the village of
Owego, thought it best to place me in the care of my
uncle, Ebenezer Daniels, on the farm where I had lived
after my father's death. For the next eight years that
farm was my home. It was understood that I was
adopted into my uncle's family; that he was to give
me the advantages of the common school; that I was
to work for him upon the farm until I was twenty-one,
and that I should then receive a good suit of clothes and
either a good horse or one hundred dollars in money.
Such were the ordinary terms of apprenticeship on which
boys in those days were received into farmers' families.
My uncle was then a young man, under thirty ; he had
a rather stony hill farm of forty acres — afterward in
creased to eighty — on the banks of the Little Nanti-
coke Creek, three miles east of Owego, and a mile north
of the Susquehanna. He was a sturdy figure, a little
under six feet in height, with black hair, already thin,
and blue eyes, a broad forehead, and a fine, strong,
benignant face. He had had but the most meagre'edu-
cational advantages ; he had been a pupil of my father
in the district school, and had such scant knowledge of
the three R's as boys could get in three or four winter
terms. But the first of the three R's for him should be
writ large. A Reader he was, with a capital letter ; books
were the one recreation and solace of his laborious life.
The supply of them was, indeed, limited; there were a

24 RECOLLECTIONS
few in the house that had descended from former gen
erations, but the store was soon exhausted. We had,
however, a school district library, furnished at that time
by the State of New York to each school district — a
most humane and enlightened provision. The district
elected a librarian at the annual school meetmg, and the
library was thus located in one of the farmhouses near
the centre of the district, and was accessible to all who
chose to use it. Ours was but a limited collection — per
haps less than one hundred and fifty volumes ; and there
was very little fiction in it, and no poetry at all, so far as
I can now remember ; it was made up mostly of books
of history and travel. Occasionally a few new volumes
were added. This library, to a man like my uncle, was a
godsend ; I doubt if any other family in the district used
it half as freely as ours did. Besides, we had access to
two Sunday-school libraries, in which books of value
were sometimes found; and the New York "Observer"
and the New York "Weekly Tribune" kept us somewhat
informed respecting the doings of both sides of the
greater world.
In the little farmhouse a small sitting-room adjoined
the kitchen, in which was an open fireplace ; and one of
my daily duties, from the beginning of my life on the
farm, was to fill the wood-box every winter day with
fuel for the evening fire. After the chores were done and
the supper was cleared away, the family always resorted
to this room, and there were often two hours for reading
before our early bedtime. My uncle was the reader in
the earlier years, and he always read aloud, sometimes
by the light of pine-knots, of which we usually had a

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 25
good, supply, but most often by a tallow dip which he
held cloee Jto the page. He was an admirable reader; of
the arts of -the elocutionist, happily, he knew nothing,
but, he easily caught the author's meaning, and inter
preted; it, v^ith great skill and accuracy. His voice was
meflow and musical, he was sensitive to rhetorical
beau,ty, aiid his tones grew sonorous or tremulous as the
lines jTOse, to passion or fell to pathos.
Thus we, had, in the poor little farmhouse, our own
nodes ambrosianae, with the firelight from the open
hearth making flickering shadows on the lowly walls,
and our minds traveling with Taylor up the Nile or with
Hannibal over the Alps. My memory often goes back
to those evenings with gratitude for the kind providence
that guarded me from the mental debaucheries of sensa
tional fiction, and led me so kindly into the delights of
more sober literature. Many things, indeed, I missed,
of which no boy ought to be defrauded, — the pageantry
of Scott, the romantic adventure of Cooper: these did
not come to me until my days of hero-worship were
past; in the meantime, however, I had gained something
which the average modern boy, with whole libraries of
fiction open to him, generally fails to get.
As I grew older, my uncle occasionally drafted me into
service as reader for a part of the evening, and in that
practice I learned most of what I have known of the art
of oral expression. There was very little criticism of the
performance ; all my teacher required of me was to speak
distinctly, and to know and convey the meaning of the
author. A beautiful art is this, the art of reading ; and
not as much cultivated, I fear, in these days as in the

26 RECOLLECTIONS
days of my boyhood. We have very little tJsSSMrsuch
employments ; what with our shows and our Social func
tions, and our fraternities and sororities, and all InVrest,
few families ever get a chance to spend an ev&nSfig to
gether, and such pleasures as those with wMcn/M the
plain old country farmhouse, we were fain to'sbiaWfour-
selves, are far from the thoughts of most of o&f cSmem-
poraries. Yet it might be worth while to try to recover
such a lost art as the art of reading aloud, anfl ev&i to
find or furnish occasion for it in the family life. Per
haps, one of these days, it may be the fashion to enter
tain one another in this way. Instead of installing a
talking-machine in a corner of the drawing-room, and
listening to uncanny reproductions of other people's
voices in speech or song, we may learn to find a higher
pleasure in giving fitting and natural utterance, by our
own voices, to fair fancies and kindling thoughts, pre
served for us in the great literatures. '
The life into which, on my uncle's farm, I was now
introduced, was by no means a life of ease or luxury. It
was only by the most tireless and constant labor, early
and late, in which every member of the family was
required to take part, that we were able to win from the
intractable soil the means of livelihood, and to meet the
payments which were due upon the land. My uncle was
a man of prodigious industry; long before daylight in
the winter mornings he would be away with his team
to the woods to haul saw-logs to the mill or cord- wood
to the village ; all the year round he wrought with tire
less patience, and he expected of all his household a
similar diligence. At once certain definite tasks and

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 27
responsibilities were assigned to me, in the provision
for the household fires, and in the care of the stock;
gradually these burdens were increased. Very early I
was initiated into all the manual arts then practiced by
the farmer ; I learned to use the axe and the saw, the
hoe and the spade and the rake ; the scythe and the plow
and the grain cradle came into my hands as soon as I
was strong enough to use them; before I was sixteen
years of age I had learned to do all the kinds of work
then practiced on the farm, and in most of them I was
able to do a man's part. The labor was sometimes
severe, but the outdoor life was, undoubtedly, the best
possible regimen for me. When I was twelve or thirteen
years of age a severe cold left some ominous symptoms
of pulmonary injury, but the fresh-air cure was mine,
without the formality of a prescription, and it did the
business for me.
For schooling I had the advantages of the district
school, which stodcT upon the corner of my uncle's farm,
in which my father had once been a teacher and my
mother a pupil. The building was a plain frame struc
ture, into which fifty or sixty boys and girls were
crowded during the winter term. All ages were repre
sented in it: young men and women of eighteen or
twenty and little children of five or six. In the first years
of my attendance there were no classes, except in read
ing and spelling, because there was no uniformity of
books ; each pupil brought and studied the arithmetic
or geography or grammar which had descended to him
from his forbears; the people deemed themselves too
poor to purchase new books for their children. The

28 RECOLLECTIONS
teacher came to each pupil's seat every day, and heard
him recite what he had learned, giving him his lesson for
the following day. Eager and ambitious pupils could go
as fast as they chose ; dull ones were not driven beyond
their capacity. Like every other bad system, this had
the advantages of its defects.
Our writing-books we constructed for ourselves, of
foolscap paper folded once and stitched together, a sheet
of brown paper being added for the cover. The school
master "set the copy" ; it was his handwriting that we
were all required to imitate. One of the chief accom
plishments of the "master" of the period was penman
ship. Another was skill in pen-making, for steel pens had
not appeared in that locality ; the gray goose-quill was
still the implement of letters, and the master, with his
sharp penknife, was daily called to mend the pens of the
writers. I have described what was true of the first year or two
of my pupilage in this country school ; but some time in
the late forties, my uncle, who was the school trustee,
had the great good fortune to secure a teacher who had
ideas about education, and who quickly succeeded in
revolutionizing the methods of teaching. From this time
forward this country district school offered advantages
of no mean order. After my eighth summer my help was
needed on the farm, and I was never able to attend the
summer term, which was always taught by a woman.
The winter term lasted never more than four months,
beginning with November and ending with February;
but in this limited time I was able to get, before the com
pletion of my sixteenth year, a good training in arith-

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 29
metic (completing Thomson's Higher Arithmetic), an
excellent knowledge of geography, a thorough drill in
English grammar (we used Goold Brown's Elementary
Grammar) ; a fair mastery of algebra, through quadratic
equations, with daily practice in "intellectual algebra" ;
some insight into the elements of physics, as given in
Parker's Natural Philosophy, and a delightful acquaint
ance with Mitchel's School Astronomy. Added to this
was some weekly practice in declamation and in the
writing of themes — "compositions," we called them.
Most of this was gained in the last four or five winters.
Up to my eleventh or twelfth year I had made very little
progress. It would seem that my father had forced the
season in my mental development, and the reaction
came. I wanted to read all I could lay my hands on, but
I could not apply my mind to study. But the teacher to
whom I have referred, after some discouraging failures,
succeeded in kindling my ambition. My debt to him is
greater than I could ever hope to repay. His name was
Horace Lee Andrews ; he was a medical student, teach
ing winter schools to meet the expenses of his education ;
he graduated, later, in medicine, and practiced but a
few years, dying very young. He might have been a
good physician; he would certainly have been a great
teacher. His power of arousing and inspiring students,
of appealing to all that was best in them, of making
fine ideals of conduct attractive to them, was quite
exceptional. He found me a listless and lazy pupil;
he left me with a zest for study and a firm purpose of
self-improvement. It was a clear case of conversion;
and when any one tells me that character cannot be

30 RECOLLECTIONS
changed through the operation of spiritual forces, I know
better. I am disposed to believe that this country district
school, under the leadership of Horace Andrews and of
one or two less notable successors, must have been of a
better sort than the average of those days. What I have
recorded concerning my own work before I was sixteen
(and there were several boys and girls who did substan
tially the same work) may indicate that, with all our
modern pedagogical methods, we are not getting ahead
much faster than our fathers did. The output of our
physical machinery has vastly increased production;
our intellectual machinery has made no such astound
ing advances. It is even a question whether the pro
gress of the more capable pupils is not often retarded
by our highly graded educational machinery ; whether
there is not a tendency to level down to the dullest. If
I had been compelled to travel at the gait of the mod
ern school curriculum, my early education would have
amounted to very little, and I never could have gone to
college. Life in this rural district was, for the most part, stren
uous and toilsome ; there were not many idlers, and no
paupers. Some there were who would have been ready
enough to live upon the labor of their neighbors, but
they were not allowed to do it; their true condition and
needs were too well known to permit them to impose
upon us. The "ne'er-do-wells" never stay in the coun
try ; they always move to the city. It always amuses me
to hear charitable people exhorting persons of this class
to move into the country. For the industrious poor it

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 31
may be good counsel, but not for those whose occupa
tion is looking for work. The country is the last place
in the world for them.
We had our diversions and festivities. The Little
Nanticoke, in those days, was well stocked with fish,
and sometimes a "stent" — that was what we called it
— could be worked off in time for an hour or two of
fishing in the early evening. After the harvest we had
our berrying parties, and sometimes, in the autumn,
our husking bees and apple-paring bees. Spelling-
matches between adjoining districts were not uncom
mon. I remember very well one evening when we went
over to the "river district," a mile away, for a bout with
the boys and girls of that neighborhood. I distinctly
recall the stalwart figure of the "master" of that school,
standing in the middle of the room with a spelling-book
in one hand and a tallow dip in the other, and gallantly
leading his host to ignominious defeat. " Frank" Tracy
we called him then ; he has since been Secretary of the
Navy. Once, in the last winter of my residence in this dis
trict, our school contests rose to the dignity of a debate.
It was the early winter of 1852, and the reverberations
of the great discussion in Congress over the compromise
measures of 1850 were still sounding in our ears. That
debate had made upon my own mind a deep impression.
The New York "Weekly Tribune" gave us fair reports
of it ; but some one told me that the members of Congress
would send me their speeches, and a few letters to
Washington brought from Seward and Wade and Hale
and Giddings and others copies of their speeches, which

32 RECOLLECTIONS
I read and studied with the deepest interest. The great
speeches of Clay and Webster and Benton were well
reported in the newspapers. When, therefore, a debate
on the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law was proposed
and I was asked to lead the affirmative, with the "mas
ter" as the leader on the other side, I was quite ready
for the fray. I suppose that I was as keenly alive to the
importance of that contest, in a little country school-
house, as college men have sometimes been over a 'var
sity rowing-match or a football fight. At any rate, I
went into training for it. Every morning, for three or
four weeks, I was up as early as four o'clock, digging
into the Constitution of the United States, conning the
undesirable statute, section by section, getting all the
light I could from every quarter. The fact that my side
won the debate did not signify much ; a more impor
tant fact, to me, was that I had taken a strenuous lesson
in forensics, the value of which I never forgot.
If I have left to the last the religious phases of my
life upon the farm, it is not because they were to me the
least significant portions of my experience. Indeed, I
am sure that while nobody who knew me suspected it,
the one deepest interest of my life through all that period
was religion. I was keenly alive to all the good things
of this world ; I had a boy's appetite and a boy's love
of play, and a boy's craving for companionship; but
underneath it all was an increasing craving for that
spiritual experience of which I heard others testifying,
I and which I believed to be the supreme good. My early
childhood had been bathed in an atmosphere of piety ;
every memory of my father wore the halo of sainthood;

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 33
and in my uncle's household religion was a vital ele
ment. It was never thrust upon me ; my personality
was respected, perhaps, too carefully ; but it was com
mended to me in conduct whose sincerity I never could
question. Nor was there any lack of church privilege. We lived
three miles from the village, yet I dare say that no
family connected with the Presbyterian church in
Owego was in its pew as many Sundays of the year as
ours. Rain, snow, mud, were no hindrances ; we went to
church as regularly as we went to dinner. The lumber
farm-wagon carried us for several years ; rough boards
laid across the box, and cushioned with horse-blankets,
furnished our chariot. Later, we attained to the luxury
of a spring wagon. There were two Sunday services,
separated by a recess of an hour and a half, during which
the Sunday-school held its session. This gave us a little
nooning for the luncheon which we brought from home,
and for an enlivening stroll, in the pleasant weather,
through the adjoining graveyard. I could have passed
an examination, magna cum laude, on those epitaphs.
I will not deny that those sermons were often a weari
ness of the flesh. A keen theological argument would
have been interesting, but it was largely a restatement
of platitudes ; it hardly ever touched life in the remot
est way. Now and then a preacher came along whose
enthusiasm kindled me; there was a man from Bing
ham ton, a pale and slender young preacher, by the name
of Humphrey, whose occasional appearance in our pul
pit was a refreshment ; I would have walked the three
miles, on the stormiest day, to hear him. But, as a rule,

34 RECOLLECTIONS
the tax upon the attention of a growing boy was rather
exorbitant; need enough was there of the delectable dill
and the consoling caraway, on which we were wont to
nibble, to keep ourselves awake.
There was always the possibility, too, of something
really rewarding. The choir, in that village church, was
better than the ordinary run of village choirs ; there was
one soprano voice of great beauty, and the little chorus
was intelligently led ; so that when, at the close of the
sermon, the minister sometimes said, "The choir will
close with a piece of their own selection," boys who had
been nodding began to sit up and listen. I suppose that
I shall never hear any music which will touch me quite
as deeply as some of those old anthems did: "How
Lovely is Zion!" "By the Rivers of Babylon," "When
the Worn Spirit wants Repose." I have n't the least
idea who wrote them ; I have never seen the music, but
the melodies haunt me yet.
There were other churches in the village, but they had
no more dealings with one another than the Jews had
with the Samaritans. Sectarian jealousies were fierce;
ministers of the different churches were hardly on
speaking terms ; an exchange of pulpits was a thing never
heard of. While, therefore, I had as large an experience
of church-going in my boyhood as most boys can recall,
I cannot lay my hand on my heart and say that the
church-going helped me to solve my religious problems.
In fact, it made those problems more and more tangled
and troublesome. I wanted to find my way into the
peace of God, into the assurance of his friendship, and
that I could not do. I understood that I, with all the

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 35
rest of mankind, had "by the fall lost communion with
God and was under his wrath and curse, and so made
liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and
the pains of hell forever." Of the exact truth of this
statement I had not the shadow of doubt. But I under
stood that there was a way by which I could escape from
this curse and regain this lost communion. That was
the one thing, above all others, that I wanted. I would
gladly have exchanged for it not only every sinful plea
sure, but all the pleasures that were not sinful. It will
hardly be credited to-day, but I felt that being a Chris
tian would mean, for me, giving up all my boyish sports,
— ball-playing, coasting, fishing ; and I was more than
ready to make that sacrifice. So I kept trying, for years,
to gain that assurance of the favor of God of which I
heard people talking, and which, I felt sure, some of
them must possess. I listened, in prayer meeting and
revival meetmg, to what they said about it; I noted
with the greatest care the steps that must be taken, and
I tried to do just what I was told to do. I was to "give
myself away," in a serious and complete self-dedication.
I suppose that I shall be far within the truth if I say that
I tried to do that, a thousand times. But I understood
that when I had done it, properly, I should have an
immediate knowledge of the fact that it had been
properly done ; some evidence in my consciousness that
could not be mistaken ; that a light would break in, or a
burden roll off, or that some other emotional or ecstatic
experience would supervene; and when nothing of the
kind occurred, the inevitable conclusion was that my
effort had been fruitless ; that I had failed to commend

36 RECOLLECTIONS
myself to the favor of God, and was still under his wrath
and curse. It is not a good thing for any well-meaning
soul to be left in that predicament. To feel that, in spite
of your best endeavors, you are an alien and an outcast
from the family of God is not encouraging to virtue; it
tends to carelessness and irreverence. I have often won
dered, in later years, that my faith did not give way;
that I did not become an atheist. It was the memory
of my father, and the consistent piety of my uncle, I
suppose, which made that impossible. But that little
unplastered room under the rafters in the old farmhouse,
where I lay so many nights, when the house was still,
looking out through the casement upon the unpitying
stars, has a story to tell of a soul in great perplexity
and trouble because it could not find God.
All this time I was' studying the Bible diligently. We
read the whole book through, chapter by chapter, at
family worship four or five times while I was living on
the farm, and the reading was not wearisome to me.
Once we waded through the whole list of names in the
Chronicles ; for what reason I am not clear, unless it may
have been that of a genial friend of mine who once con
fessed to me that he had read them all, because, he said,
"It occurred to me that I might meet one of those old
chaps in heaven some day, and it would be embarrassing
to have to own that I had never heard of him."
Besides the daily Bible reading, my Biblical educa
tion was well advanced by the memorizing, as Sunday-
school lessons, of all the historical portions of the New
Testament, and many of the Bible stories of the Old
Testament. And that nothing might be wanting to my

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 37
theological outfit, I committed to memory also the
whole of the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster
divines. It would be difficult to convey to most of those who
will read these pages any adequate sense of the positive-
ness with which those doctrines were held in the circle
in which my life was spent. We did not admit to our
selves the possibility of any error in their statement, and
we guarded ourselves carefully against any influences
which would tend to weaken our hold upon them. Alien
from the commonwealth of the true Israel as I believed
myself to be, I still held fast to the orthodox creed,
and regarded with keen disapprobation any one who
challenged it. A preacher of the Universalist sect made
his appearance in our neighborhood, and two or three
families became known as his followers; we tried to
keep treating them neighborly, but it went hard to do
it ; we felt that a great gulf had been fixed between us
and them. There was a funeral in one of these families,
and the young Universalist minister came to preach
the funeral sermon; we attended the funeral, but we
remained outside the house, that we might not hear the
dangerous doctrine. Shortly after this we began afresh
the reading, by course, of the New Testament at family
worship; and I followed the reading, pencil in hand,
through the entire New Testament, marking the texts
which in my judgment contradicted the Universalist
doctrine. I am careful to relate these circumstances because I
wish to make it clear that my difficulty in finding the
solution of my problem of personal religion was not due

38 RECOLLECTIONS
to any heretical tendencies. In fact, it was due partly
to the rigidity with which I held the traditional beliefs,
and partly to the misleading notion that no one could
have any assurance of the divine favor which was not
signalized by some marked and easily recognizable emo
tional experience. It was not until my eighteenth year
that a clear-headed minister lifted me out of this pit,
and made me see that it was perfectly safe to trust the j
Heavenly Father's love for me and walk straight on f
in the ways of service, waiting for no raptures, but!
doing his will as best I knew it, and confiding in his
friendship. I have told this history because it helps to illustrate
the changes which have taken place within the last sixty
years in our conceptions of what is essential in religious
experience. Such hopeless endeavors to find peace in
believing were by no means rare in my younger days.
When my ministry began I found scores of men and wo
men who were living blameless lives, and wanted to be
the friends of God, but who had given it up as an impos
sibility. They had tried, over and over, and had always
failed, and they knew that this felicity was not for them.
It has been a good part of my work as a Christian
teacher to get people out of that slough of despond ; and
those who have read the little book entitled "Being a
Christian: What it Means and How to Begin" will find
in these pages the reason why it was written. I some
times hear people desiderating the type of religious
experience which was common in former days. It was
more intense, more fervid, more self-centred ; but on the
whole, I do not think that we should wisely seek to

FARM LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE 39
restore it. It cannot be good for any human soul to be
required or permitted to maintain the attitude before
the Being whom he calls God and worships, which was
the only possible attitude for me for ten years of my
life. And one who has come to believe that religion is
summed up in the word Friendship — that it is just
being friends with the Father above and the brother
by our side — often looks back with a pang to the time
when such a conception, if it could have reached him,
would have lifted a great load from his heart and filled
the world with beauty.

CHAPTER III
village life and apprenticeship
Beneath the shadow of dawn's aerial cope,
With eyes enkindled as the sun's own sphere,
Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer
Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope
Bound the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope,
And makes for joy the very darkness dear
That gives her wide wings play ; nor dreams that fear
At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
I have explained that the farm was to have been my
home until my majority. For the fact that it was not so,
my uncle was mainly responsible. It was he who had
kindled in me other ambitions. By the time I was six
teen years of age he became convinced that my aptitudes
were leading me in other directions, and it was his own
proposition that I seek for work in which. they could
find development. My judgment welcomed his counsel,
but my heart shrank from it ; I could not easily turn
my back upon a home which, with all its hardships, had
been very dear. Nor had I any definite plans of study :
I had dreamed of the law ; and I tried to find a place in a
lawyer's office where I might support myself by copying
and have time for reading, but no such opening could be
found. Finally, one day, my uncle returned from the
village with the tidings that the editor and publisher of
the Owego "Gazette" wanted a boy, and that I could

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 41
find occupation there. I sought that place, and was soon
installed as a printer's apprentice.
It was a heavy heart that I carried away from the
farmhouse, with the little trunk that held my few be
longings, and the unpainted writing-desk which, on
rainy days, I had constructed with my own hands. The
homely picture, "Breaking Home Ties," which touched
so many hearts at the Chicago Exposition, tells a story
which has often been repeated.
My new home was to be with my employer, the editor
and owner of the local Democratic journal, and a politi
cian of considerable influence in his party. One window,
with three small panes of glass, under the eaves, fur
nished all the light for my little bedroom ; but I had the
freedom of the kitchen, and a place at the family table.
The term of my apprenticeship was to be four years,
and my compensation for the successive years, in addi
tion to my board and washing, was to be thirty, forty,
sixty, and one hundred dollars. This was to suffice for
clothing and for spending-money.
The removal from the comparative solitude of the
farm to the bustle and stir of a smart county seat, with
five or six thousand inhabitants, was an event of much
significance in my life. Owego had been known to me
for a decade, and I did not feel myself a stranger, but
there was something very stimulating to the mind of
the boy in this new contact with the life of the world.
It is easier for me than for most of my fellow citizens
to reproduce the scenes of my youth ; for this old home
of mine has changed less, during the past sixty years,
than most American towns. Owego was a beautiful vil-

42 RECOLLECTIONS
lage in my boyhood ; it is fresher and fairer now than it
was then, but it is no larger. It has kept its old features
and its old character; it is quite conscious of its loveli
ness, but it is not ambitious to become a metropolis ; it
sits there, demurely, on the banks of the most beautiful
river in the world, and rejoices in the strength of its
guarding hills and the peace of its slumbering meadows.
The clatter and rush of New York and Chicago seem very
far away, and there are few communities of equal popu
lation in which the pleasures of the simple life are more
accessible. In my boyhood Owego was sometimes shyly adver
tised as a haunt of the muses. N. P. Willis had his home
there, — Glenmary ; it was a rustic cottage embowered
in trees, just outside the village ; near his door was the
bridge over a ravine which gave title to his " Letters from
under a Bridge." One or two members of the sometime
famous artist family of Thompson also lived and painted
there ; the Susquehanna furnished them some charming
landscapes. A little coterie of young men were practicing
with their pens; sketches, poems, stories in the local
papers, and elsewhere, were much talked about; there
was quite a cult of Indian tradition. All this was highly
exciting to a youth whose fingers had begun to tingle
with the pruritus scribendi. So I took up my work in the
printing-office with something other than the handicraft
in sight. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin's gateway into
letters was the best one open to me.
It was not, however, to literature that I was now ap
prenticed, but to a manual trade which gave me plenty
of drudgery, and left in me, when the day's task was

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 43
done, small impulse to woo the muses. The last comer
in the printing-office had all the menial work to do, and
there was enough of it. We had no power press ; cards
and circulars, as well as posters and newspapers, were
all worked off on an old-fashioned Washington hand-
press ; and a large part of every day was apt to be spent
in the occupation of the roller-boy. Furnishing the fires,
sweeping the office, cleaning the forms of type, and run
ning on errands gave me exercise enough. But I was
also furnished with a "stick" and a "rule" and given a
chance to "work at the case," and this business of type
composition and distribution speedily became interest
ing to me. It was manual labor, but it was manual labor
"affected," as the jurists say, with an intellectual qual
ity, or interest, as no other work had been to which I had
set my hands. The study of language had always had a
fascination for me, and we were dealing here with the
physical framework of language, and all the technique
of the types was significant. The artistic side of the work
also attracted me; I liked to experiment with display
type, and to study pleasing effects in cards and title-
pages and advertisements.
A country printing-office, in the middle of the nine
teenth century, offered a large opportunity for the study
of human nature. The doings and the misdoings of the
community were reported in it ; it was the clearing-house
of political and social gossip ; it was the rendezvous of
local politicians; and a large share of the subscribers,
from town and country, dropped in to pay their sub
scriptions and have a chat with the editor or his assist
ant. All kinds of causes sought the advocacy of the

44 RECOLLECTIONS
paper ; all sorts of cranks demanded a hearing ; advice of
every description was sought and volunteered, and per
sonal grievances and bereavements were always knock
ing for admission to its columns. There were few phases
of life or types of character with which the country
newspaper did not come in contact. If any one wishes
to know what manner of life it was, let him read Mr.
Howells's delightful sketch of his own experience in his
father's office, in Jefferson, Ohio. The years of his ap
prenticeship were the very years when I was learning
my trade in Owego ; the two communities were much
alike, and the story, as he tells it, brought vividly home
to me all the phases of my life as a printer's boy.
It was not many months after my entrance upon this
novitiate that I ventured, one day, to leave upon the
editor's table a more or less connected melange of local
news and hits and comments, a column or more in
length. In a few minutes he brought it out to me, and
bade me put it in type. From that time onward I was
encouraged to use my pen whenever I preferred that to
ihe composing-stick, and a considerable portion of the
local work fell into my hands.
I have spoken of politics as one of the chief interests
of the newspaper office, but the politics of that period
were not of an inspiring sort. The political prejudice
which I had inherited was for the Whig Party, and when
my uncle left me in the sanctum of the Democratic
editor he said to him, "You'll never make a Democrat
of him." But there was not, in those days, in either
party much to inspire the enthusiasm of a young ideal
ist. When I entered the office the campaign of 1852 was

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 45
drawmg to its close ; and it is doubtful whether a less
vital issue has ever divided political parties in this coun
try than that over which the followers of Franklin Pierce
and General Winfield Scott were divided. The com
promise measures of 1850 were supposed to have set
tled the slavery question for all time, and both of the
old parties, eager to hold on to their southern constitu
encies, were emphasizing their loyalty to the terms of
that settlement. Both of them were exhausting their
rhetoric in their asseverations that what had been done
in that compromise could never, no never, be undone.
And both of them took pains to specify the Fugitive
Slave Law as one of the terms of that compact which
must not be disturbed.
But this was just where the shoe was pinching. It had
gone hard with many of the northern people to consent
to that provision ; not a few of the more intelligent and
enterprising slaves had escaped from their masters, and
were living inoffensive and industrious lives in northern
communities; most of their neighbors were glad that
they had got away, and were in no mood to help in send
ing them back. The agitation of the abolitionists, the
discussions provoked by the compromise measures them
selves, above all, the powerful arraignment of the sys
tem in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," had kindled in the minds
of the people of the North a strong sense of the essen
tial wrong of slavery ; and most of them revolted at the
thought of rebinding its chains on any who had broken
them. The law which commanded them to assist in this
business, and made it a crime for them to refuse, was a
law for which they could have no respect. Most of them

46 RECOLLECTIONS
felt that because it was the law of the land they must
not resist it, but obey it they would not; they would
honor it by suffering its penalty.
Certainly it was dubious policy for the slave-owners
to press the enforcement of a law like this upon the
people of the North; they would have consulted then-
own interest if they had forborne to exact the pound of
flesh which the contract awarded them. But there had
been, in many sections, aggravating and heart-rending
instances of the enforcement of this law; and the
conscience of the North was beginning to testify impa
tiently against it.
When, therefore, the two great parties, ignoring this
uprising of the moral sense of the nation, competed with
each other for the southern vote, by insisting, in their
platforms, that the Fugitive Slave Law must be en
forced, there were not a few who were ready to cry, "A
plague o' both your houses," and to demand some new
alignments of the political forces to meet the new issues.
It is interesting now to recall the growth of the anti-
slavery sentiment. The rapidity of this movement was
something phenomenal. I am sure that nobody thought
so then ; we all felt that the mills of the gods were grind
ing as slowly as is their wont ; we were often crying out,
"How long, O Lord, how long!" But we can see now,
when we look back and count the years, that opinion
was moving forward at a prodigious speed.
When the second half of the nineteenth century
began, the anti-slavery sentiment of the country was
almost a negligible quantity. It was only a year or two
before this that the young minister of our Presbyterian

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 47
church ventured, one day, to pray that we might "re
member our brethren in bonds, as bound with them."
I well recollect how the faces of some of the elders,
standing in prayer time, grew red as they listened to the
petition. It looked as though he must be an abolition
ist. Called to account, he failed to clear himself of the
imputation, and he had to go. We wanted no such in
cendiary praying as that in our pulpit. That was a fair
sample of the ruling sentiment of the most respectable
classes of the North as late as 1850. Abolitionists were
a kind of vermin. The slaves were better off where they
were. Were they not fulfilling the divine decree? How
about Canaan? Were not the negroes his descendants,
and had it not been said of him, "A servant of servants
he shall be unto his brethren"? And what would be
come of them if they were set free ? Did we want them
overrunning the North? This was the moral plane on
which the thoughts of most of us were ranging through
the second quarter of the nineteenth century. But be
fore we were aware of it, a new feeling had begun to per
vade the community. It came, as the spring comes in
the high latitudes, almost without premonition. In the
midst of this languid campaign of 1852, the conviction
was deepening that slavery had got both of the great
parties manacled and muzzled, and that the time had
come to put an end to slavery. But consider that it was
only eight years after this that Abraham Lincoln was
elected, on a platform which promised that there should
be no more slave states. Can any one estimate the dis
tance which public opmion traveled between 1852 and
1860? The psychological change in the mind of the na-

48 RECOLLECTIONS
tion is something prodigious. When one recalls the sen
timents and judgments which were finding expression
in the press and the pulpit and in private conversa
tion in the campaign of 1852, and compares them with
the utterances which had come to be habitual in the
autumn of 1860, he gets a startling impression of the
possibility of change in a democracy. One who has
lived through such a renaissance as that is prepared to
believe that while "the good can well afford to wait,"
it is not always doomed to long delay. There are days
when "the dawn comes up like thunder."
What set the car of progress spinning "down the ring
ing grooves of change" was the repeal, in 1854, of the
Missouri Compromise. It was the astute and masterful
Douglas who was responsible for that. He wanted to be
President, and it was plain that since the South was in
the saddle, his only hope of gratifying his ambition was
to make himself very serviceable to the South. The bill
admitting Missouri to the Union as a slave state had ex
pressly provided that slavery should be forever excluded
from the territory west of Missouri and north of the par
allel which constituted its southern boundary. That was
a solemn compact. Mr. Douglas's proposition to repeal
it, and permit the people of those territories to establish
slavery in them, if they chose to do so, was a most fla
grant repudiation of a pledge which ought to have been
held sacred. As President Woodrow Wilson, himself a
southern man, has testified: "The healing work of two
generations of statesmen was destroyed at a stroke.
... It was, in fact, matter of revolution."
, If, at this distance, such seems to a southern historian

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 49
to have been the nature of this transaction, it can hardly
be wondered at that the indignation of the North was
kindled by it. At any rate, the North was up in arms.
The temper of the time is well reflected in an edito
rial which appeared in the Springfield (Massachusetts)
"Republican," on February 8, 1854. The "Republi
can" had supported the Compromise of 1850, and had
sharply reproved the popular uprisings by which the
Fugitive Slave Law was set at naught. "The North,"
said this witness, "had acquiesced in these compro
mises ; it sustained them and abided by them. But the
South and its northern political allies have broken
the peace of the country. They make fresh and mon
strous demands. These demands will arouse the whole
nation ; they will widen and deepen the anti-slavery feel
ing of the country as no other conceivable proposition
could. The signs are unmistakable. No mere party or
faction will array itself against the Nebraska scheme.
The whole people are against it. The moral force of the
North, the influence, the learning, the wealth, and the
votes of the North are against it, and will make them
selves effectively heard, ere the agitation, now reopened
by the insanity of the slave-holding interest, and in
behalf of the schemes of ambitious partisans, shall have
ceased. The South and its allies have sown the wind, —
will they not reap the whirlwind ?"
We were not, even in Owego, so far from the madding
crowd that its tumult did not reach our ears. Our own
representative in Congress voted for the Nebraska Bill.
A protest was served on him, but he ignored it and fol
lowed his party leader. The popular wrath broke out

50 RECOLLECTIONS
in an indignation meeting, at which "Frank" Tracy,
erstwhile the schoolmaster of the "river district," but
now a promising young lawyer in the village, made one
of the principal speeches, urging that the time had come
for the formation of a new party^to resist the extension
of slavery. I reported that meeting for the "Gazette,"
and I fear that the report was somewhat irreverent. For
reform, in its incipient stages, is wont to bring together
a fine assortment of people with wheels in their heads,
and this assembly had its humorous aspects. But it was
a very serious purpose, after all, that found expression
in it ; the conflagration which Mr. Douglas had kindled
on the prairies of Kansas was sweeping over the land.
Political issues, however, about this time, fell into a
very complicated condition. Reform was the word of
the hour, but reform had many irons in the fire. The
temperance issue had invaded politics. Maine had
enacted her prohibitory law in 1851, and Vermont and
Massachusetts had followed her lead in 1852 ; New York
was getting ready to repeat the experiment. In the sum
mer of 1852, before I left the farm, my uncle and I came
to the village one day to hear a rousing speech by Neal
Dow on the public square. His fluent and fervid rhetoric
and his impassioned appeal made a strong impression
on my mind. No prohibition party had been organized
in New York, but the champions of prohibition were
learning to act together; they often held the balance of
power, and used it effectively in procuring nominations
and carrying elections. The order of Good Templars had
sprung into existence in central New York and was
spreading rapidly; soon after my eighteenth birthday I

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 51
became a member of the local lodge and was made secre
tary, conducting the correspondence with other lodges
of the country, by means of which we joined our forces
for the fall campaign of 1854. Our candidate for the
legislature was elected, and he voted, the next winter,
for the prohibitory law which, for a year or more, had
a name to live on the New York statute-book.
Thus began, at an early day, my apprenticeship to
practical politics. There was keen satisfaction in playing
the game ; it was good to be in it, and to know that you
were helping to bring things to pass. I have not forgot
ten the gratification I felt when, at two or three o'clock
of the morning after election, after a ride of twenty-four
miles through the rain and mud in a doctor's sulky, I
was able to hand to "Frank" Tracy the returns from
the most distant townships by which his election as dis
trict attorney was assured. It seems almost incredible
now that so large a hand could have been taken in poli
tics by a boy so much under his majority. It is a slight
indication of one change which has taken place in social
conditions. Boys were in the habit of doing many
things fifty or sixty years ago which they would hardly
be expected to do to-day. I am sure, however, that I suf
fered no injury whatever from my contact with politics
at this callow age. Nothing dishonorable was required
of me; there were no signs of bribery or corruption;
for the political work which I did I never received a
penny, nor dreamed of such a thing. It must have taken
very little money in those days to carry elections. Tioga
County, New York, has since been supposed to be one of
the centres of dubious politics, but it was clean enough
in those old times.

52 RECOLLECTIONS
Further to complicate the political situation, there
entered, about this time, the agitation against citizens
of foreign birth. The Irish famine, and the unsuccessful
revolutionary movements of 1848 upon the European
continent, had greatly stimulated immigration to the
United States ; and many Americans had begun to feel
alarm respecting the possible encroachments of foreign
ideas and influences. This fear had long been simmering ;
it came to a boil in the organization, about 1852, of an
oath-bound secret order, popularly described as Know-
Nothings, whose purpose was the exclusion from citizen*
ship and from political office of all persons born outside
the United States. The antipathies appealed to were
partly racial and partly religious. With some the fact
of foreign birth was the reason for ostracism ; with others .
the attachment to the Roman Catholic Church was the
ground of condemnation. Indeed, the crusade divided
on this issue. Another order appeared whose votaries
were called Know-Somethings; the difference between
the two being that the Know-Somethings proposed to
disfranchise all Roman Catholics, no matter where born ;
and the Know-Nothings to disqualify all those of foreign
birth, no matter of what religion. The Know-Some
things gained but a small following ; but the Know-
Nothings, in a year or two, overran the land. "In the
autumn of 1854," says Woodrow Wilson, "they elected
their candidates for the governorship in Massachusetts
and Delaware, and put close upon a hundred mem
bers into the Federal House of Representatives. In the
autumn of 1855, they carried New Hampshire, Mas
sachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York,

VILLAGE LIFE AND APPRENTICESHIP 53
Kentucky, and California, and fell but a little short of
majority in six of the southern states." *
There is not much to flatter our national self-com
placency in the contemplation of such an episode as this
in our history. Prejudices so rank and noxious ought
not to grow upon American soil. Even if the suspicions
on which they were based were justified, it ought to be
evident to those who have breathed this free air all their
lives that the methods of secrecy are not the methods
by which liberty may best be safeguarded. I very well
remember the feeling of the atmosphere created by this
clandestine propaganda; it was sultry and fetid with
distrust and resentment; it was distinctly anti-social.,
No one knew what plots against his freedom might be
hid in the breast of any neighbor whom he might meet.
Such a state of things is simply intolerable. Liberty
would stifle in an air like that. Whatever may be said
of secrecy in relations which are purely fraternal or
social, there is no room for it in political or civil affairs.
Here everything must be out in the open. No man has
any right to be plotting public policies which are to be
carried by concealment and stealth; for such policies
affect the interests of all his neighbors, and they have
a right to know all about them. Secret political orders
in a free country can never be anything but a curse.
It is the first duty of every patriotic citizen to denounce
and oppose them, no matter at what cost to himself.
It is not altogether cheering to reflect that in a coun
try which boasts of universal education, this elementary
principle should have been so feebly grasped ; that there
1 History of the American People, ii, 171.

54 RECOLLECTIONS
could be in Congress a hundred representatives who
had been chosen by dark-lantern methods, and who
were pledged to the disfranchisement of all such men
as Carl Schurz and John Ireland.
What gave free course to this epidemic, at this time,
was, undoubtedly, the political disintegration which
followed the election of Pierce in 1852. The Whig Party
was done for, there was no doubt of that ; and the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise was forcing a new combina
tion of the elements. The logical outcome was fore
shadowed by the Free Soil Party, which had had its
candidates in the field for the last two campaigns ; but
the leaders were reluctant to take that plunge. While
they stood shivering on the brink, this wave of nativism
swept over the country. But there was, of course, no
future for an organization whose strength was in its
antipathies and whose ways were subterranean. As Mr.
Greeley shrewdly said, it held about as much promise
of permanence as an anti-cholera or an anti-potato-rot
association. The Know-Nothings were very confident,
in 1855, that they would elect the next President ; in
fact, they carried the State of Maryland, and had eight
votes in the electoral college. It is not comforting to
remember that the American people harbored such a
conspiracy as this, even for a brief space ; but it is reas
suring to recall the promptness and decisiveness of the
judgment by which they put it out of existence. It
would have been well if they had made an end of it then,
but that kind of bigotry has as many lives as a cat, and
we shall meet it again before the end of our story.

CHAPTER IV
THE CHOICE OF A CALLING
Not to fawn on wealth and state,
Leaving Lazarus at the gate;
Not to peddle creeds like wares ;
Not to mutter hireling prayers ;
Nor to paint the new life's bliss
On the sable ground of this ;
Golden streets for idle knave,
Sabbath rest for weary slave!
Not for words and works like these,
Priest of God, thy mission is;
But to make earth's desert glad
In its Eden greenness clad;
And to level manhood bring
Lord and peasant, serf and king;
And the Christ of God to find
In the humblest of thy kind! John Greenleaf Whittier.
It would not be fair to myself to permit the impres
sion that the period of my newspaper apprenticeship
was devoted wholly to politics. Other interests claimed
a large share of my attention. I must confess that dur
ing the first new months of my residence in the village
I spent a good many of my Sundays elsewhere than in
church. I cannot say that this was a reaction against
the compulsion of earlier years, for there had been no
compulsion ; if there had been pressure upon my life, it
had been as unobtrusive and mevitable as the pressure

56 RECOLLECTIONS
of the atmosphere ; I had gone to church without ques
tioning. But when the influence was removed, I found
my own inclination hardly sufficient to move myself
in that direction. In fact, my garments were a little
shabby; that excuse was sufficient for some weeks, and
when it was no longer serviceable I had already formed
the habit of staying away from church; and such a
habit, as I discovered, is easier formed than broken.
With the strict notions about the use of Sunday in
which I had been reared, I could never have devoted
the day to ordinary pleasure-seeking ; I usually spent it
in the printing-office, reading and writing ; often promis
ing myself that I would resume the church-going habit,
but easily finding reason for delay as the Sundays
came round.
That brief experience has thrown some light for me on
the question of church neglect. We are all creatures of
habit; church-going and staying at home are largely
matters of habit. It would have been easy enough to
attribute my absence from church to intellectual or
theological or social causes ; in fact, it was due to inertia.
And it is safe to conclude that a large share of the
church neglect for which earnest men in these days are
trying to account is chargeable to indolence rather than
to unbelief.
The voice that called me back to my accustomed ways
was that of an evangelist, somewhat famous in those
times, the Reverend Jedediah Burchard, D. D.,who was
conducting a series of services in the Congregational
church. Dr. Burchard was a man of keen intellect and
vivid imagination ; his theology was a mild Calvinism,.

THE CHOICE OF A CALLING 57
but his notion of Christian experience was simple and
sensible ; and he cleared away, with a breath, the fogs
which had so long been obscuring the way of disciple-
ship. I connected myself at once with the church, and
found myself deeply enlisted in its work. As the months
went by these interests laid stronger hold upon me,
and gradually brought me to reconsider my plans of life.
In the early months of 1855, a way was unexpectedly
opened to me to begin my preparation for college, and
after teaching a brief term in a country school, I found
myself, in April of that year, in the Owego Academy
with my face set toward the work of the Christian min*
istry. Church life, in the middle of the last century, was
much less highly developed than it is to-day. The activi
ties of the church were summed up in the two Sunday
preaching services, the Sunday-school, and the mid
week prayer-meeting. Social meetings were rare> the
young people were not organized, an occasional sewing-
society or mothers' meetmg sufficed to express the
religious zeal of the women. Worship, in the non-
Episcopal churches, was the reverse of ornate. Usually
the hymns were sung by a mixed choir, and the people
took no part in the singing ; there were no hymn-books
with tunes ; the choir was provided with tune-books, of
which "The Dulcimer," "The Shawm," and "Carmina
Sacra" are well remembered. Sometimes the key was
found by the chorister's tuning-fork, and the hymns
were sung without accompaniment ; generally, however,
a small melodeon sustained the voices. Here and there
was a pipe organ. The more ambitious choirs ventured^

58 RECOLLECTIONS
occasionally, upon an anthem. Of course all this service
was voluntary.
The preaching was, for the most part, theological, and
it was often controversial. The Calvinistic doctrines
were much debated, the Presbyterians and the Baptists
affirming, and the Methodists denying. The doctrine of
predestination was, of course, the one around which the
contention raged most hotly; but the fatalistic infer
ences drawn from it were warmly repudiated by the
New School Calvinists. Indeed, there were many, even
then, in the Calvinistic churches, who were inclined to
say with Mr. Beecher, "The elect are whosoever will,
and the non-elect are whosoever won't."
Baptism was also, in our neighborhood, a frequent
theme of controversy. The Baptists were very enter
prising evangelists, and they pushed their distinctive
plea with relentless logic, and enforced it by immersing
scores of candidates, every winter, in openings cut
through the ice of the river.
The preaching, in all the churches, when it was not
controversial, was almost wholly evangelistic. The con
version of sinners was supposed to be the preacher's
main business. Respecting the eternal punishment of
those who die impenitent, and the impossibility of re
pentance beyond the grave, there was no difference of
opinion among evangelical Christians, and the immense
importance of saving men from this fate overshad
owed all other interests. The appeal was, therefore,
almost wholly individualistic. It constantly directed
the thoughts of men to the consideration of their own
personal welfare. The motive of fear was the leading

THE CHOICE OF A CALLING 59
motive, but the bliss of the heavenly life was also
vividly portrayed. That hell was a veritable lake of fire
and brimstone was hardly questioned by any one. My
memory holds many such representations. I was accus
tomed to hear, in my boyhood, the famous Jacob Knapp,
one of the most popular evangelists of the central
states; and I shall never forget some of his descriptions
of the burning pit, with the sinners trying to crawl up its
sides out of the flames, while the devils, with pitchforks,
stood by to fling them back again. It was intended, of
course, to frighten sinners ; probably it had that effect
on many, but I wonder whether it was, on the whole,
even then, as telling as it was supposed to be. For
myself, though a small boy, I distinctly remember that
it made me angry.
Not many of the preachers of that time indulged in
the sensational savagery of Elder Knapp ; but the ter
rors of the future were steadily held before our minds.
That fear was always haunting me in my childhood;
my most horrible dreams were of that place of torment.
The expectation of the destruction of the world by
fire was another nightmare. The Millerite horror was
hanging over us in my earliest days ; I remember well a
lecture, in the Baptist church, when I was only seven
years old, in which the lecturer, with figures drawn
from the prophecy of Daniel, proved with chalk upon a
blackboard that the world was going to be burned up
in 1843. I could add up those figures for myself; there
they were in black and white, and the correct sum was
1843. Was it not a demonstration? There was a blazing
comet, too, in the sky that winter, — "wonders in the

60 RECOLLECTIONS
heaven above, and signs on the earth beneath," the
preacher said ; and I could see the comet, through my
window, every night. I shall not be blamed for hiding
my head under the coverlet, from the terrible portent.
When the last days of 1843 had passed, and the sun
was bright on the New Year's morning of 1844, I was
delivered from a great horror, but the peril was only
postponed, for it was admitted by all that that catas
trophe was inevitable, and that probably the day was
not distant. My greatest relief came from a conclusion
reached in a conversation of men standing about the
well one hot summer day. They were seriously ponder
ing the discredited prediction of Miller ; they agreed that
while he had missed in his calculation, the conflagration
was coming ; and they were inclined to accept a state
ment which one of them had seen, that it was likely
to take place about 1860. That lifted a load from my
heart. If the disaster was to be deferred to such a
remote futurity, — if the world had a good seventeen
years yet to endure, — there was no need of worrying.
I went back to my play.
Still, the dates were all uncertain, and with such a
1 peril impending one could not always resist the onset
of sudden fears. Any unusual appearance in the sky
was likely to quicken the pulse. I remember one
October day, five or six years later, when the haze grew
dense and yellow, and the air was filled with the odor
of smoke, and there were lurid spots in the sky. I was
working alone in a back lot, and fear took possession of
me ; I thought that the Great Day had come.
I do not think that subjective conditions such as I

THE CHOICE OF A CALLING 61
have described were rare in those days; they were the
natural product of the prevailing teaching. The busi
ness of religion was to fill the hearts of men with fear.
The fear was a personal fear; it concentrated the
thoughts of men on their own danger, and their own
safety. It cannot be argued that this is the normal
regimen of the human soul. If force and fear are moral
motives, they are certainly among the lowest moral
motives; the conduct which they inspire must be an
inferior kind of conduct. And it must be admitted that
the aspects of religion which were most commonly pre
sented to men from the pulpit in those days were not
such as tended to develop an altruistic habit.
This is not saying that all religious people were
egoists. Far from it. Though the motive which was
most often addressed in leading men into the religious
life was the motive of self-interest, when they were
brought into the Christian life they were required to put
themselves under the tuition and leadership of Jesus
Christ. That was the meaning of discipleship. And
if, through the four Gospels, they made themselves
acquainted with him, — if they took his yoke upon
them and learned of him, — they would soon find them
selves under the sway of very different motives from
those which first turned them toward discipleship. So
it is true that the religion of the Christian church has
always been immeasurably more Christian than its
theology. Christ is a Saviour in more senses than
one ; he has always been saving his own church from
the blighting consequences of a bad theology, and
helping his disciples to be a great deal better people

62 RECOLLECTIONS
than, by their own theories, they would or could have
been. I have been speaking of the conceptions and tenden
cies which were prevailing in the Protestant churches
of this country up to the time when my mind was
turned to the Christian ministry. But I ought to explain
that, about this time, some very marked signs were ap
pearing of a different temper and tendency. The interest
which the churches were taking in the temperance
reform and the anti-slavery reform was an indication of
a new spirit. The ethical and altruistic note was being
struck now, in many pulpits, with clearness and vigor.
That mighty change, of which I have spoken, which
passed upon the popular mind in the sixth decade of the
nineteenth century, was felt in the churches as deeply as
anywhere else. By the middle of that decade it was
finding voice everywhere. Some churches responded to
this influence more promptly than others. The Epis
copalians and the Presbyterians, always conservative,
were slower to answer to it. The Baptists in our neigh
borhood were most hospitable to the new humanitarian
impulse; I heard Gerrit Smith speak more than once
from their pulpit, and they welcomed colored preachers
and lecturers speaking in the interest of their race. The
Methodists, generally, were enthusiastic advocates of
the new gospel of freedom,, yet here and there were con
trary tendencies. The local Congregational church, to
which I had become attached, was, from the first, in the
front rank of this ethical movement. It had originated,
indeed, in a protest against the conservatism which for
bade the church to identify itself with the interests of

THE CHOICE OF A CALLING 63
humanity. Its first pastor was the young minister who
had been compelled to leave the Presbyterian church
because he had dared to pray for the slaves ; after he had
returned to New England, a number of his former par
ishioners seceded from the Presbyterian church, formed
themselves into a Congregational church, and called him
back to be their pastor. He was in his place in the
church on the day when I was received into its mem
bership, though his health was broken, and his work
was done. I think that that was the last time he ever
appeared in the pulpit.
A church with such an origin was not likely to occupy
an ambiguous position in such a time as that ; and the
members of this church, though not many of the mighty
and the noble were among them, were men who had
the courage of their convictions, while their pastors
were brave and faithful leaders. Doubtless there were,
in those days, Congregationalists who were timid and
hesitant in confronting the issues of the hour, but our
church was not of that school. The New York " Inde
pendent" was the paper we all read, and Mr. Beecher
and Dr. Cheever and Dr. Thompson of the Broadway
Tabernacle were the leaders with whom we found our
selves in closest sympathy.
Such, then, was the soil in which my purpose to enter
the ministry took root. It was not an individualistic
pietism that appealed to me ; it was a religion that laid
hold upon life with both hands, and proposed, first and
foremost, to realize the Kingdom of God in this world.
I do not think that any other outlook upon the work
would hiHfcAtfcracted me. I had known the history of

64 RECOLLECTIONS
this little Congregational church from its beginning;
I had been in keenest sympathy with all for which it
stood, and the ethical thoroughness with which it com
mitted itself to the cause of freedom when the gage of
battle was thrown down by the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise called out all my enthusiasm. I wanted
to be — if I could make myself fit — the minister of a
church like that. I could not think of any life better
Worth living.
The next year and a half was a strenuous period.
There was no time to waste in my work of preparation
for college. Happily the methods were so flexible both
in the Owego Academy and in a boarding-school near
the village, between which schools my time was divided,
that it was possible for one who wished to advance
rapidly to go at his own gait. Much of the time I was
studying alone, and my teachers gave me every possible
assistance and encouragement. I think that I gave, on
an average, fourteen or fifteen hours a day to study, for
six days in the week ; on Sunday the rest was absolute.
Of all the days I had known, these were the happiest,
The mathematical studies had no special interest forme,
though I had no serious difficulty with them ; but the
languages and the literatures of Greece and Rome, into
which I was now getting an introduction, were full of
fascination. Perhaps my linguistic bent was due to the
early training of my father ; at all events, I have always
found the keenest pleasure in such pursuits, and it has
been a life-long regret that I have found so little time
to give to them. These years in which I was getting
acquainted with the rudiments of the, Latjn? and the]

THE CHOICE OF A CALLING 65
Greek were, therefore, delightful years; and I confess
that I am never able to get the point of view of those
educational reformers who propose to deprive American
boys of this kind of pleasure. The days and the nights
that I spent in tramping through Gaul with Julius
Caesar, or delving, with Titus Livius, into Roman anti
quities, or following the fortunes of Vergil's hero, or
marching with Cyrus against the Persians, or debating
with Socrates against the Sophists, are memorable days
and nights. Do you tell us, my masters, that there are
to be no more of them ; that our boys are nevermore
to know the joy of turning one of Homer's sonorous
hexameters into resounding English, or of finding the
just right word for one of Horace's dainty epithets ? It
may be that you will have it so, but some of us will be
glad that we lived in a better day.
Absorbing as these occupations were, other matters
were forcing themselves upon the attention of the
busiest of us. These months of 1855 and 1856 were wit
nessing some portentous political movements. The
struggle for the possession of Kansas was going on, and
exciting reports of the collision between the free state
forces and the border ruffians were reaching us by every
mail, so that the wrath of Achilles and the perfidy of
Catiline were mingled, in our musings, with the strenu-
ousness of Stringfellow and the fanatical vengeance of
old John Brown. The Congress which the northern
reaction against the Nebraska Bill had sent to Washing
ton was going through a protracted struggle to get itself
organized ; legislation was paralyzed while the House of
Representatives fought for two months over the elec-

66 RECOLLECTIONS .
tion of a speaker. The conflicting currents of public
opinion which found expression in this contest were,
however, gradually merged in a new political organiza
tion which called itself the Republican Party, and which
chose John C. Fremont to be its leader. When such
things as these were happening, it was sometimes diffi
cult for a boy to give undivided attention even to the
rhetoric of Cicero, or the dialectic of Socrates. Now and
then I found myself enticed away to a mass meeting
in the village; and with much trepidation I ventured
to contribute a song — a parody on Saxe's "Rhyme of
the Rail " — which served the Republican Glee Club
through this campaign. The leader of the club, then
taking his first lesson in politics, was Mr. Thomas C.
Piatt. I read, not long ago, in one of the magazines, a
satirical description of the performances of Mr. Piatt
in this campaign ; the satire was not meant to be mali
cious, but it was quite beside the mark, for the leader
of the Glee Club was no such gawky personage as he is
there painted. Whatever judgment we may entertain
respecting Mr. Piatt's career as a national politician,
we need not deny that in these early days he was a
well-mannered young gentleman, a good singer, and
an effective conductor of his club.

CHAPTER V
COLLEGE DAYS
Come, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by, —
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright as morning dew.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
It was for Williams College that my preparation had
been made. When I entered the Academy I had never
heard of it, and my thought had been directed toward
Hamilton College, at Clinton, New York ; but the prin
cipal of the Academy was an enthusiastic graduate of
Williams, and he soon convinced me that that was
my proper destination. In September, 1856, having, as
I confidently hoped, made myself ready to enter the
sophomore class at Williams, I turned my face again
eastward. Many things had happened during the four
teen years which had elapsed since I traveled to Massa
chusetts in a buggy ; the Erie railway connected Owego
with New York, and a midnight train carried me to the
metropolis. The sleeping-car was not yet, and the pol
luted air of the crowded coach, coupled with the sicken
ing motion, made my first long railway ride a dismal
memory. What a relief it was to stand upon the deck
of the ferry-boat at Jersey City and breathe the salt
air ! The sky-line, as one looked eastward, was not what
one sees nowadays ; the spires of Trinity and St. Paul's
churches punctuated the horizon; with architectural

68 RECOLLECTIONS
sublimities of such dimensions our souls could then be
stirred, and there were buildings of five or six stories in
height, the sight of which made us dizzy. But the great
river was all there ; and the beautiful bay with the small
islands in the foreground, and the green slopes of Staten
Island in the distance, with the shipping ranged along
the wharves, and ocean steamers that, seemed huge
lying there at anchor, and the smaller craft plying to
and fro, made a picture never to be forgotten.
A day in the metropolis, with glimpses of the grandeur
of the Astor House and the St. Nicholas Hotel, and the
other marvels of Broadway, with a peep into the offices
of the "Tribune" and the "Herald," a wondering look
at Barnum's Museum, and a brief stroll through the
Battery, was ended by a sail up the East River on the-
Hartford boat, for I was going to take in Southampton,
on my way to Williamstown.
It was a beautiful September evening, half an hour
before sunset, when I mounted the Williamstown stage
at North Adams ; recent rains had freshened the mead
ows, the forests on the mountain-sides still wore their
summer dress, the fleecy clouds touched with crimson,
that rested upon the Taghkanics in the west, or crowned
the Saddle profile on the south, set off the bluest of
skies. I had never seen anything so beautiful as that
Williamstown valley appeared to me that evening ; and
I cannot say that I have seen anything since that has
robbed it of its charm.
The entrance examinations the next day were not
formidable, and before night I was matriculated as a
sophomore, and established in the southwest corner of

COLLEGE DAYS 69
West College on the lower floor. Thus opens a chapter
of this history which must have far more significance to
the writer of it than it can have to any of its readers.
Williams College in 1856 was an institution of modest
pretensions. Its faculty consisted of but nine members,
all of them full professors, and the four classes averaged
less than sixty each. There may have been half-a-dozen
"special" students who were taking a partial course;
but almost all were candidates for the degree of bachelor
of arts. The curriculum was perfectly rigid ; all the work
was required ; the only electives were in the junior year,
when we were permitted to choose between French and
German. The classes were not divided, the instructional
force did not admit of that ; the whole class met, three
times a day, in the recitation-room ; naturally a student
became pretty well acquainted with all his classmates.
There was some advantage in the fact that all the in
struction was given by full professors ; tutorial assist
ance had been called in, in former years, but there was
none of it in my day.
The teaching was madnly by means of text-books and
oral recitations ; lectures were few ; in the last two years
there were a few courses, but note-books were not much
used in my time. The range of teaching was not wide.
In the first two years Greek, Latin, and mathematics
took up nearly all the time ; in the sophomore year there
was a course in Weber's "Universal History." No Eng
lish was required for entrance, and the only English
work of the first two years was one or two themes each
term, with an occasional declamation before the class.
There was also a speaking exercise, every Wednesday

70 RECOLLECTIONS
afternoon at the chapel, which the entire college was
required to attend, and there were two speakers from
each class ; seniors and juniors presented original ora
tions, sophomores and freshmen declaimed. The presi
dent and the professor of rhetoric presided, and criticised
each speaker at the close of his performance.
In the junior year there were lessened rations of Latin
and Greek, and some elementary instruction in science
was given, so that every graduate might have some
notion of the groundwork of botany and chemistry and
physics and astronomy and mineralogy and geology;
a single term was sufficient for political economy, and
the tale of the themes was slightly increased. The senior
year was devoted largely to mental and moral science,
logic, the elements of rhetoric, and criticism, and the
evidences of Christianity, with Paley's "Natural The
ology" and Butler's "Analogy." I have reproduced the
curriculum wholly from memory, but I think that I have
not omitted anything essential.
Something like this was, I suppose, the course of study
in most of the New England colleges of that period.
Compare it with the bulletins of any of them to-day, and
it seems a meagre provision for a liberal education. Yet
there was enough in this, if rightly used, to secure a fair
amount of mental discipline, and to guide inquiring
minds toward the things worth knowing.
Better than the methods of instruction was the per
sonal contact with the instructors. Every student in
college was personally known by every member of the
faculty, and the personal interest of the teachers in the
students was as paternal as the students would permit.

COLLEGE DAYS 71
This is not, indeed, saying a great deal, for in that time
there was much of that traditional antagonism which
makes it a point of honor for a student to refuse all
friendly relations with teachers, as members of a hostile
class, and which stigmatizes as "bootlicks" all those
who seek such relations. Nevertheless, the association
between teachers and students was, of necessity, so close
that the personal touch could not be wholly evaded, and
most Williams men of that time are ready now to con
fess that the best gains of their college course came to
them in this way.
The conspicuous figure of the college was its president,
Mark Hopkins, one of the four or five great teachers that
America has produced. In 1856 he was in his prime,
fifty-four years of age, tall, with a slight stoop, but stal
wart, with a swinging gait. Over the great dome which
crowned the broad forehead, and which was now nearly
denuded of its covering, long brown locks were coaxed ;
and the strong chin and the Roman nose, with the eyes
that glanced from under beetling brows, made up a
countenance of great dignity and benignity. There was
but one opinion about Dr. Hopkins in college ; among
the students his intellectual prowess was not disputed,
and the wisdom and integrity of his character were
never questioned. Every man has his foibles, and those
who stood nearest to President Hopkins must have
known what were his ; but the student body, generally
quick enough to spy out inconsistencies and weaknesses,
was always singularly unanimous and enthusiastic in its
loyalty to the great president.
He preached, frequently, in the village church, whose

72 RECOLLECTIONS
galleries the students occupied ; and these extempora
neous discourses, delivered with great deliberation and
dignity, while they always held our attention, were not
apt to awaken our enthusiasm; but the baccalaureate
sermon was always an event. That was fully written;
its philosophical framework was strong, its logic was
convincing, and it was delivered with a power and fervor
which made a lasting impression.
It was in the senior year that the students came in
touch with Dr. Hopkins ; a large share of the work of
that year was in his hands ; the seniors met him every
day and sometimes twice ; in philosophy and ethics, in
logic and theology, he was their only teacher. The
tradition of his masterful instruction was always
descending; the freshmen heard of it from all above
them; it was the expectation of every student that,
however unsatisfactory other parts of the course might
turn out to be, there would be something worth while in
the senior year. The expectation was not disappointed.
There was nothing sensational in Dr. Hopkins's teach
ing ; his method was quiet and familiar ; his bearing was
modest and dignified ; but he was a past-master in the
art of questioning ; he knew how by adroit suggestion
to kindle the interest of his pupils in the subject under
discussion, and by humor and anecdote he made dry
topics vital and deep waters clear. What his best stu
dents got from him was not so much conclusions or
results of investigation, as a habit of mind, a method
of philosophical approach, a breadth and balance of
thought, which might serve them in future study. What
Garfield said (and I heard him say it, at a Williams

COLLEGE DAYS 73
banquet at Delmonico's in New York) expressed the
feeling of many another graduate of the Berkshire col
lege : " A pine bench, with Mark Hopkins at one end of it
and me at the other, is a good enough college for me!"
A unique exercise was the conversation on the Cate
chism every Saturday morning in senior year. Following
the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, Dr.
Hopkins led his seniors carefully over the whole field of
theology. The questions and answers, while not furnish
ing in all cases an adequate statement of doctrine,
served as a convenient guide in the investigation of the
deep things of God ; and there was no other exercise in
which the peculiar quality of this teacher appeared more
strikingly. These Saturday morning discussions would
have been a good equivalent for a Seminary course in
systematic theology.
President Hopkins's brother Albert was another great
character in our faculty. With a figure as erect and lithe
as an Indian's, a face like Abbey's Elijah, an eye that
flashed from cavernous sockets, and a voice like a trum
pet, "Prof. Al" was the one man in the faculty whose
moral and religious influence was most positive and
profound. Our respect for him amounted to awe. I have
never known any one whose personality more perfectly
filled my idea of a Hebrew prophet.
Other professors whose memory the students of that
decade will recall were the jocose Tatlock, whose mathe
matical teaching was not much more than a joke; the
versatile but somewhat irascible Chadbourne, who
taught but a little botany and chemistry, but taught
that little wonderfully well ; the sprightly and vivacious

74 RECOLLECTIONS
Lincoln, with whom Latin prose was a passion ; the calm
and scholarly Phillips, who helped us to feel the power
of Sophocles and the glory of Demosthenes; and the
enthusiastic Perry, whose warm heart won the affection
of all right-minded men, and whose championship of
free trade gave rise to controversies in the class which
were sometimes very entertaining.
Of all the instructors, however, the one to whom I am
most indebted was John Bascom, then professor of rhe
toric, later, for many years, President of the University
of Wisconsin, and now resting, after his long day's work,
in his old home among the stately trees planted by his
own hand in Williamstown. I was not a little irritated
by my first interview with Professor Bascom; I had
carried to him a theme for criticism; I thought it a
meritorious performance, but his blue pencil seriously
disfigured it. I went away much exasperated, but on
looking it over, I had to confess that the points were
well taken. Of that just and penetrating judgment I
gradually learned to avail myself ; before the end of the
course, respect had deepened into affection, and all my
life long my debt to that brave and veracious soul
has been growing. The score of volumes of which Dr.
Bascom is the author have had but a limited circula
tion ; but there are few books of the last half-century,
dealing with applications of philosophy to life, which
are better worth knowing.
College life in that time was very simple. The college
buildings were plainness itself, wholly devoid of archi
tectural pretensions ; the furniture of most of the rooms
was far from luxurious ; the expense of living was light.

COLLEGE DAYS 75
My board, in a club, the first term, cost me two dollars
and thirty cents a week; it never exceeded two dollars
and seventy-five cents a week. The entire expense of
my college course, for the three years, including cloth
ing, was less than nine hundred dollars. Several of the
students who boarded themselves, in their own rooms,
brought the cost far within that figure.
Several Greek-letter fraternities were flourishing, and
there was an anti-secret confederation which made war
upon them, but was quite as clannish as they were. None
of these societies had houses of their own ; they were
content with humble quarters, which they rented in
private houses, or in lofts over village stores.
A large place in the life of the college was taken by the
two rival literary societies, — the Philologian and the
Philotechnian, — to the one or the other of which every
student belonged. These societies had well-furnished
rooms in one of the dormitories, with libraries of three
or four thousand volumes each. Their weekly meetings
were events of no little interest to the college com
munity ; the programme generally included one or two
original orations, a debate, sometimes a poem, an essay
or two, and the report of the censor upon the perform
ance of the previous meeting. The two societies were
united in the Adelphic Union, which gave three or four
debates or exhibitions annually, in the chapel or the
village church.
The summer vacation was short, not more than five
or six weeks, and there was a long winter vacation,
beginning at Thanksgiving and continuing into January,
that students who were supporting themselves might

76 RECOLLECTIONS
teach in the winter terms of country schools. All my
winters were thus employed.
Of the men in my time some names are well known.
First among them was Garfield, of the class of '56, who
was a senior when my class were freshmen, and whom,
therefore, I did not personally know. The fame of him,
however, was large when I entered college. He had dis
tinguished himself as debater and orator; there were
many reminiscences of his brilliant performances in the
Logian forum and on the chapel stage. When my class
graduated, he returned and took his second degree,
delivering a "master's oration" on our Commencement
stage. He had taken to himself a wife, who accompanied
him to the scene of his former triumphs, and proudly
witnessed his induction into the new honors. He was
then President of Hiram College, in Ohio, and must then
have been a candidate for the state senate at Colum
bus, to which, in October of that year, he was chosen.
He was a fine, strong young fellow, with a ruddy face,
a massive head, a cordial manner, and an air of master
ship. The hour that I spent with him on this occasion
gave me a large sense of his power. Few who knew him
in those days were surprised at his swift ascent to the
places of command.
In my own class, the man who was soonest to obtain
distinction was the youngest man in the class, Ranald
Slidell Mackenzie. He came to college a mere lad of
fifteen, in a roundabout; he had a slight lisp and
was extremely shy ; but he was a good scholar, and a
thoroughly likable boy. He was the son of Commodore
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, the distinguished naval

COLLEGE DAYS 77
officer and author, whose name had been made famous
by the manner in which he had dealt, fourteen years
before, with a mutiny on the brig Somers, of which
he was commander. The ringleader of this mutiny
was a youth named Spencer, son of John C. Spencer,
then Secretary of War. After a brief trial on shipboard,
Spencer and two others were hanged to the yardarm. It
was a curious fact that a kinsman of Spencer's, Walter
DeForest Day, was also a classmate of mine, and that
Mackenzie and Day were members of the same Greek
letter fraternity, and close friends. Mackenzie did not
finish his course in Williams. In the middle of our
junior year he received, through the influence of his
uncle, Senator Slidell, of Louisiana, an appointment to
West Point, from which he graduated with high rank in
1862, and immediately entered the Union army. Of his
splendid work as a soldier the records of the service tell
abundantly. He was shot to pieces again and again, but
he always managed to pull himself together and get back
into the field very speedily. "Among those who dis
tinguished themselves," says Sheridan's dispatch after
Cedar Creek, "was Colonel Mackenzie, twice wounded,
but refused to leave the field." At Five Forks he was
brevetted major-general on the field for gallantry, and
it was he who outran Lee to Lynchburg, and checked
the final retreat of the Confederate army.
Two of our best-known magazine editors, Mr. Henry
M. Alden, of "Harper's Monthly," and Mr. Horace E.
Scudder, of the "Atlantic," were contemporaries of mine
at Williams. Alden's forte was metaphysics; he was
supposed to be occupied mainly with interests purely

' 78 RECOLLECTIONS
transcendental, absorbed in investigating the "Thing
ness of the Here" ; and if the Messrs. Harper had come
to Williamstown inquiring for a young man who would
be a skillful purveyor of short stories and poems and
sketches for a popular magazine, the last man' to whom
they would have been sent was Henry Mills Alden. Nor
is it probable that our veteran managing editor ever
dreamed, at that day, of the kind of occupation in
which he was destined to spend his years and to render
to the world a service so high and fine. Just how Alden
ever got down from cloudland to Franklin Square I
have never been able to find out, but it is well for the
world that he came, and perhaps the world has been
the gainer by his early residence in cloudland. We
get our best training for work in this world by living
above it.
As for Scudder, whether he ever dreamed of editing
the "Atlantic Monthly," I know not; he might, for his
pen had a dainty nib, even then ; we counted him One
of our most graceful writers ; what he wrote had an air
of distinction and refinement to which undergraduate
prose does not often attain. The "Atlantic," in those
days, was in its pristine glory. Its life began in Scud-
der's senior year, and every number, with possible con
tributions from Emerson or Longfellow or Hawthorne
or Lowell or Whittier, and with "The Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table" running its bright career, was an event
in our little college community. How we canvassed
those first numbers, guessing the authorship of the con
tributions, all of which were anonymous, and glorying
in the new light that had arisen upon American letters!

COLLEGE DAYS 79
Scudder was a shy and modest fellow ; I doubt if he
ever conceived of climbing into Lowell's seat.
Both Alden and Scudder practiced for their promo
tions by editing the "Williams Quarterly." I have six
volumes of that stately periodical, and a comparison of
it with undergraduate publications of the present day
enforces the conclusion that the intellectual life was a
larger concern in college fifty years ago than it is to-day.
We were, indeed, so unfortunate as to have few interests
which were not intellectual. Athletics were not yet ; we
sometimes kicked a football rather aimlessly about the
campus, never having seen a football game ; we played,
among ourselves, an occasional game of what we called
baseball — class against class ; and in our senior year
we had one match game with Amherst ; but the interest
in athletic sports was a negligible quantity. Some of
our more adventurous spirits found vent for their sur
plus force in natural history expeditions to Newfound
land and South America, and an occasional picnic at
Lanesboro Pond, or a tramp to the top of Greylock,
gave zest to life. But for the most part, the subjects
which claimed our attention were those which had some
reference to the work of the college. The rivalry for col
lege honors was keen ; every man's chances of getting on
to the "Moonlight," — the prize rhetorical contest, —
or to the "Junior Exhibition," or to the Commencement
stage, were freely canvassed by every other man ; who
was the best Grecian, the best Latinist, the best mathe
matician, the strongest writer, the finest speaker in any
class, was a question on which differences of opinion
were freely expressed.

80 RECOLLECTIONS
College music at the middle of the nineteenth century
was not of a high order. At Yale and Harvard there had
been some singing; in the fresh-water colleges the reper
toire of the singers was scanty. At Williams, in my
sophomore year, two or three old Latin songs were occa
sionally sung, — "Gaudeamus Igitur," to a good Ger
man choral; "Integer Vitae," to Flemming's strong set
ting; and "Lauriger Horatius," to the air since better
known as " Maryland, my Maryland." For the rest there
was a meagre collection of nonsense songs, like the lines,
set to Rousseau's "Greenville," "Go tell Aunt Nancy
her old gray goose is dead," and several drinking songs,
like "Landlords, fill your flowing bowls," and "Roll,
roll, rolling home!" Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" was
also chanted to a rollicking melody with the refrain of
"Cocachelunk-chelunk-chelaly," which was a little hke
dressing up the Apollo Belvidere in a sweater and tennis
shoes. Occasion for song had also been developed by
the Biennial Examinations, which had been introduced
not long before my day. After two weeks of written
examinations on all the subjects of the first two years,
the Sophomores were apt to feel the need of hilarity;
and they were wont to serenade the professors of whom
they were taking leave, and to celebrate the event in a
supper at the Mansion House. For these festive occa
sions songs were written, and some of them were good
enough to be preserved and transmitted.
During my junior year one or two men came to us
from Yale, bringing some of the nonsense songs which
were current there, and groups began to gather in the
summer evenings on the benches in front of East College

COLLEGE DAYS 81
for the singing of these new songs. It must have been
early in my senior year that a musical organization was
formed which called itself "The Mendelssohn Society,"
of which I was made the conductor. This society made
some ambitious attempts at glees and male choruses,
giving, in the course of the year, a few concerts in the
surrounding towns. By these various measures so much
interest in college singing was awakened that I ven
tured to publish, at the close of our senior year, a collec
tion of the "Songs of Williams." Most of the songs were
written for the collection, and many of them were, of
course, lyrically defective; it is not an easy thing to
write a singable song. But I find in the latest Williams
song-book fourteen numbers from my old compilation.
How many of them are sung in these days I do not
know. One of these I had the good fortune to write. I
had been wishing that I might write a song which could
be sung at some of our exhibitions; and one winter
morning, walking down Bee Hill, the lilt of the chorus
of "The Mountains" came to me. I had a little music-
paper in my room in the village, and on my arrival I
wrote down the notes. Then I cast about for words to fit
them, and the refrain, "The Mountains, the Mountains ! "
suggested itself. I wrote the melody of the stanza next,
and fitted the verses to it. We were soon to have a pub
lic debate, in the Chapel, for which the Mendelssohn
Society was to furnish the music ; we learned this song
and sang it on that occasion. The next morning I heard
the melody whistled by students in the halls and by
town boys in the streets; it was evident that it had
caught on. That it would be sung by fifty college classes,

82 RECOLLECTIONS
and become the accepted College Song, I could not, of
course, have imagined. It is a simple and catchy melody,
and the words serve to connect it with that which is most
impressive and permanent in the environment of college
life at Williamstown, and so it has established itself as
one of the traditions of the college. I know not what
greater grace could be given to any man than to become,
for generations, the voice of the happy loyalty of the
men of such a college as Williams. He would be a low
man who would be proud of such a thing, but he needs
not be ashamed to confess that it has given him not a
little unalloyed pleasure.
A friendship of the greatest value to me was that
which I formed during my college life with Samuel
Bowles and Josiah G. Holland, then editors of the
Springfield "Republican." My newspaper knack easily
gained for me the place of college reporter for the
"Republican," and after a while I ventured occa
sionally to send a poem or a story. One day I found,
in the "Republican," a poem of mine, which I had
written for delivery at a meeting of the Logian Society,
printed with an editorial comment that quite took my
breath away. It was the first recognition which had
ever come to me from a literary source whose verdict
was entitled to respect. How much it signified I shall
never be able to tell. Any one who has committed his
life to a venture which has been, hitherto, wholly prob
lematical, is apt to be stirred by the first clear token
of success. What these words told me was simply this,
that there was good hope for me. I should wrong my
self if I confessed that they nourished my self-conceit;

COLLEGE DAYS 83
they made me humble ; but they lifted up my heart
with a great thankfulness.
Dr. Holland was then writing his "Titcomb's Let
ters," his "Gold Foil," and his "Bittersweet," and his
writings had a great vogue, not only in the columns of
the "Republican," but in the book form in which they
were rapidly appearing. He was not the finest of our
essayists, nor the greatest of our poets; but there was a
wholesome good sense and a sound and sweet human
ity in him that greatly endeared him to a multitude
of American readers. How considerate and generous a
friend he was to me, in the day when I needed friends,
I could not fail to bear witness.
Mr. Bowles was a man of keener wit and more brilliant
parts; to many persons he seemed to have a harsh
temper and a biting tongue ; but he, too, was quick in
his appreciations, and ready and prompt to lend a hand
to those in whom his interest was enlisted. During my
senior year I visited Springfield and spent a Sunday
-with these two editors, and that was the beginning of
a friendship that death has interrupted, but has not
broken. For both of them it was my privilege to speak,
after death, the last words of memory and affection.
I think they both knew that the boy to whom, in his
college days, they gave a strong right hand, was never
forgetful nor ungrateful.
Commencement, in those days, was a high festival.
It drew to the village all the people of the countryside,
and there were booths for gingerbread and root beer,
and sellers of whips and toy balloons, and the usual
assortment of fakirs. Few of the hundreds of country

84 RECOLLECTIONS
people who flocked to the show paid much attention to
the graduating exercises ; the occasion simply supplied
them with an out-of-door holiday.
The Commencement occurred during the first week in
August, and the day was sacred to the graduating class.
Out of a total of fifty or sixty, from thirty to thirty-five
men presented original orations. The speaking began
in the village church about nine o'clock in the morn
ing, and continued until noon; after an intermission
of two hours for dinner, the floodgates of oratory were
reopened, and it was after four o'clock before the vale
dictorian made his final bow to the applauding crowd.
With such powers of endurance were the audiences of
those days endowed !
It was a heavy heart that I carried out of that valley
when the Commencement festivities were ended, in the
summer of 1859. I had tarried for a day after my class
mates were gone ; and I was alone on the train that bore
me away to the westward that August afternoon. I sat
at the window and looked backward till Greylock and
Prospect were shut from sight, and I knew that the cur
tain had gone down on the happiest time that I had ever
known. Not that there were no flies in the amber, for
there were blunders and faults enough to recall ; but the
work had been congenial and the friendships inspiring,
and there had been enough of achievement to kindle
hope. To turn my back on all that care-free college life
and face an unknown world cost a pang. I do not think
I have ever had the same sense of the closing of a door
upon the past as that which I experienced when the train
carried me homeward from dear old Williamstown.

CHAPTER VI
PUTTING ON THE HARNESS
Hark, hark, a voice amid the quiet intense !
It is thy duty, waiting thee without.
Rise from thy knees in hope, the half of doubt.
A hand doth pull thee — it is Providence.
Open thy door straightway and get thee hence ;
Go forth into the tumult and the shout ;
Work, love, with workers, lovers, all about.
George Macdonald.
The end of college life is apt to bring some sense
of depression, but for me there was no time for regrets
or deplorings. Something to do must be found, without
delay. Half-a-dozen possibilities were in sight ; but the
three or four weeks in which I was canvassing them
seemed a very long time. By the end of that period I
had contracted to teach the principal public school in
Owego, and had entered upon a life of continuous labor.
Since that day I have never been "out of a job" for a
minute. Always I have been somebody's hired man,
under contract for service. There have been no pauses
or interludes between occupations ; I have never had a
chance to know how it would seem to have nothing to
do. Whether that day will ever come, I do not know ; I
rather hope that I may, one of these days, get a little
time out of harness, but I am not sure that I shall know
what to do with it.
Schoolmastering, however, was not my trade. The
big school — seventy or eighty pupils in one room,

86 RECOLLECTIONS
where all my teaching had to be done — worried me.
The instruction was a pleasure, and there was no sense
of failure in the discipline, but the constant nervous
strain wore upon me, and I began to doubt whether it
would be possible for me to earn, by this calling, the
funds needed for my professional studies.
In the meantime I was enjoying a most delightful
companionship with a young man who had recently
been called to the pastorate of our Owego Congrega
tional church, the Reverend Moses Coit Tyler. He was
a graduate of Yale and Andover, and was only a year
older than I. We occupied adjoining rooms in the same
boarding-house, and his friendship brought into my life
a most stimulating influence. With him I began at once
reading along theological lines; and at his request I
preached my first sermon in his pulpit, not many weeks
after my return from college. It was also at his rather
urgent instance that I presented myself before the Sus
quehanna Association of Congregational Ministers, and
was licensed by them to preach, Mr. Tyler's expectation
being that I would exercise my gifts in schoolhouses
and country meeting-houses as occasion offered. That
was, probably, a very irregular procedure ; the fact that
the Reverend Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, was mod
erator of the Association may help to explain it. Mr.
Beecher, to put it mildly, was not a stickler for eccle
siastical proprieties. My year in theology, under Mark
Hopkins, may have given me some small outfit for such
an examination, which, as I cannot help remembering,
was not a shining exhibition of theological proficiency.
My certificate of licensure is in Mr. Beecher's hand-

PUTTING ON THE HARNESS 87
writing. The scribe of the Association, who was an
illiterate blunderer, had written it and handed it to the
moderator to sign ; he glanced at it, and suddenly said :
"What's this? 'The Susquehanna Association, having
examined [So and so, in such and such things] com
mends him to the churches of Chr,' at the end of the
line, with a hyphen, 'ist' at the beginning of the next
line! Is Christ divided? Give me a pen and let me
write a certificate that will not disgrace this body."
It was not the first time I had met Mr. Beecher. He
was a familiar and picturesque personage in central
New York through the second half of the nineteenth
century. His ministry in Elmira began when I was in
the printing-office, and he frequently came to Owego to
preach or lecture. Once, when I was in the Academy, he
came, at my request, to speak at an Academy exhibition,
and on that occasion he drew me into his room at the
hotel, and talked to me until a late hour, probing my
purposes, and offering me counsel. He seemed most
anxious that I should not venture into the ministry
unwarned of its difficulties and discouragements. Above
all, I must be sure of myself, and must stand on my
ownfeet. "When I started out," he said, "a great many
people seemed to think that I would sail in the wake of
my relations, availing myself of their popularity ; I have
tried to let them see that I don't propose to be the copy
or the echo of anybody else." Nobody ever accused him
of that. He was a most original and independent char
acter, often offending against conventions, and traveling
wide of the beaten paths, but full of warm humanity and
spiritual enthusiasm. His slender but graceful figure,

88 RECOLLECTIONS
his expressive countenance, and his sympathetic voice
gave him exceptional power as a speaker ; I have heard
from him more persuasive and convincing speech than I
ever heard from his more famous brother.
It so happened that there came to the meeting of the
Susquehanna Association, which had so rashly turned
me loose upon the churches, a supplication from a dis
couraged church, just over the Pennsylvania line, in
Le Raysville, that some one be sent to help their minister
in a series of special services, by means of which they
hoped to resuscitate the enterprise. The Association,
again throwing discretion to the winds, advised the
church to send for me ; and I, with no more prudence,
resigned my school and accepted the invitation. This
was early in January, 1860. Arriving in Le Raysville
on Wednesday afternoon, after a stage-ride of twenty
miles, I found myself announced to preach Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday evenings, and twice on the com
ing Sunday. For eight weeks this programme was ex
tended, — five week-day services and two or three Sun
day services. That it was very crude preaching hardly
needs to be said ; the theology was raw, and the rhetoric
was ragged; the only thing that rescued it from con
tempt was the saving grace of a youthful enthusiasm
and a real wish to help men find the way to a better
life. Far more was done in the daily personal contact
with old and young ; and the result of the effort was
not only a considerable addition to the membership
of the church, but a deepening of my conviction that my
best way to prepare for the ministry was in the work of
the mmistry. After preaching for a year or two I might

PUTTING ON THE HARNESS 89
hope to step aside for a year or two of theological study.
That, as things had turned out, seemed to be the prac
ticable programme.
After the work at Le Raysville was finished, invita
tions came to preach in three or four vacant churches
of the neighborhood, and while I was considering these,
a call came from Brooklyn, andby the beginning of May
I was in charge of an organization which styled itself
the First Congregational Methodist Church of that city.
I am entirely sure now that this was a place where
angels would have feared to tread; that was why I
rushed in. A more foolhardy undertaking it would be
difficult to imagine. The church was the fruit of a seces
sion from the Methodist body, arising in a quarrel about
a minister ; it had a small membership, with few men
of substance, and an enormous debt incurred in the
erection of its edifice; it had no natural constituency;
the attempt of an untrained boy to carry such a load
is not more astonishing than the fatuity of the people
who asked him to undertake it. The fact that there was a
theological seminary within easy reach, of whose advan
tages I might hope to avail myself, was one reason for
accepting this offer. But that was a vain expectation.
Brooklyn, in 1860, was a comfortable city of about
275,000 people; it had not quite outgrown its bucolic
traditions, and the Dutch flavor in the municipal life
was quite perceptible. It was the City of Churches, and
there was no lack of them ; Mr. Beecher was, of course,
the star of the first magnitude in the ecclesiastical firma
ment, but Dr. Storrs and Dr. Cuyler and Dr. Bartlett
and others were also shining lights. In the midst of such

90 RECOLLECTIONS
a galaxy, the rushlight is dot likely to miss the fact of its
own insignificance. It seemed, indeed, a hopeless busi
ness, once it was fairly on my hands; but the people
were kind, and I gave them the best that was in me.
The city, from the first day, was a thing stupendous
and overpowering, a mighty monster, with portentous
energies ; the sense of its power to absorb human person
alities and to shape human destinies was often vivid and
painful. To one who had nursed his fancies for the
greater part of his life in the solitude of a back country
farm, and who had breasted no currents of life stronger
than those which meander through the streets of a quiet
village, the contact with the strenuous life of the great
city was a revelation. One was standing in the centre
of a galvanic field, with lines of force crossing each other
in every direction. Everything was alive, yet there
was a vivid sense of the impersonality and brutality of
the whole movement, of the lack of coordinating intel
ligence. The Brooklyn ferries and street-cars were then
a quiet scene compared with the volcanic torrents of
humanity at the bridges and in the subways in these
days ; but the amount of titanic energy which was even
then finding vent in the life of what we now call the
Greater New York was enough to start a great many
queries about how all this might be wisely handled, and
whereunto it was likely to grow. One could not help
wondering whether in liberating the force which gathers
men into cities, and equipping it with steam and elec
tricity, a power had not been created which was stronger
than the intelligence which seeks to control it; whether
such aggregations of humanity, with wills no better

PUTTING ON THE HARNESS 91
socialized than those of the average nineteenth-century
American, are not by their own action self-destructive.
I do not mean that I reasoned out this query, at that
time; but some sense of the appalling nature of the
municipal problem was certainly present with me. It
signified much to me that I was forced to meet, on
the threshold of my ministry, what Dr. Strong calls
"the challenge of the city." I could not answer it then,
and I cannot now ; it has been a lifelong problem.
It was not, however, to municipal politics that the
thought of the people was then turning. Other and what
seemed more momentous questions were forcing them
selves upon our attention. These were the days when
opinion was moving swiftly toward the decision which
plunged the nation into the Civil War. Buchanan's
administration had resulted in consolidating the anti-
slavery sentiment of the North; the struggle on the
plains of Kansas had revealed the increasing purpose of
the northern people to prevent the further extension
of slavery ; and the great debate between Lincoln and
Douglas had practically completed the education of the
people of the free states. Reports of that debate had
been widely circulated; many of us had read all the
speeches, and had found in the invincible moral sense
of Lincoln the word of the hour. When I went back to
Owego, after my first visit to Brooklyn, to close up my
affairs and prepare for removal to the city, the Chicago
convention was in session; every day brought excit
ing news; and it was on my return to the city, as the
train stopped at Narrowsburg or Port Jervis, that the
news came of Lincoln's nomination. Many of the New

92 RECOLLECTIONS
Yorkers looked glum; Mr. Seward's state had been
backing him heavily ; but my cap went up in the air
with a shout; the thing seemed too good to be true.
So it came about that my first year in the ministry
was destined to be a momentous year. The free-state
forces were rallying for an aggressive campaign, and
there was a note of confidence in their appeal ; the split
in the other party gave them good ground for hope.
The Wide- Awake movement was spreading ; torch-light
processions, and rallies in the wigwams, filled the sum
mer nights with a boisterous enthusiasm.
Religious circles were less moved by this commo
tion than might have been expected ; for the most part,
the churches kept on the even tenor of their ways. Mr.
Beecher, now and then, shot out a shaft of satire or
invective; but there was very little reporting of ser
mons, and if less conspicuous men spoke on the issues
of the day, few outside the immediate audience were
likely to hear of it. There was, indeed, much solicitude,
even among right-minded people, lest the pulpit should
be desecrated by politics. There was apt to be in every
congregation a contingent who were excessively sensi
tive on this point, and who were wont to hear the voice
of political agitation in the most obvious Biblical com
monplaces. I remember an occasion when a neighbor
was preaching in my pulpit, and I had selected James
Montgomery's hymn, "Daughter of Zion, from the
dust." One of the stanzas of that hymn is a versified
paraphrase of a passage in Isaiah, respecting the return
ing exiles: "I will say to the north, Give up; and to the
south, Keep not back." The rhymed version runs thus:

PUTTING ON THE HARNESS 93
Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge,
And send thy heralds forth ;
Say to the South, Give up thy charge,
And keep not back, O North.
My neighbor in giving out the hymn, which is a long
,one, suggested the omission of this stanza. The next day
there appeared in the daily paper an enthusiastic letter,
praising this minister for having rebuked the pastor
of the church, who was trying to foist upon the congre
gation an abolitionist hymn. It was an outrage, he
said, to stir up sectional feeling by such inflammatory
words, and the minister who had put down this sinister
endeavor was worthy of all commendation.
One sermon which was preached in one of the most
conspicuous pulpits of the city, during that summer,
raised some excitement. The preacher was the Reverend
Henry J. Van Dyke, one of the most honored and influ
ential of the Presbyterian pastors, and the sermon was a
closely-reasoned and forcible argument to prove that
abolitionism and infidelity were synonymous terms;
that no man could be an abolitionist without being an
infidel. The argument, of course, was Scriptural ; it was
easy to show that slavery was a Biblical institution ; that
the holders of slaves had in many cases been inspired
men; and that laws under the imprimatur of Jehovah
himself had enjoined slavery; this was a demonstration
that God had made Himself responsible for the institu
tion, and that opposition to it was rebellion against Him.
The logic was relentless ; the conclusion was one of many
monstrous results, which, upon the assumption of the
jnerrant authority of the whole Scripture, are inescapa-

94 RECOLLECTIONS
ble. It was tragical to see a man of the acumen of Dr.
Van Dyke writhing in the coils of such a conception.
The summer of 1860 was uneventful. As the prospect
of Lincoln's election grew more clear, the threats of
disunion were more frequent and passionate, but they
were regarded, for the most part, as rhodomontade ;
the actual rupture of the national bond seemed a thing
incredible. My own work went on without interruption through
the summer ; most of the churches, in those days, kept
up all their services; the need of a two or three months'
vacation had not yet been discovered by many of them.
In the course of the autumn my church escaped from
its anomalous independence, and entered the Congre
gational fellowship, and my own association with the
ministers of that communion became increasingly
pleasant. Those courses of study at the Union Seminary
on which I had been fondly counting did not, however,
materialize ; two sermons a week, with all my pastoral
cares, were enough to occupy my time; there was no
space for systematic study. No phenomenal success
could be reported in the work of the church ; the gains
were slow, but they seemed to be substantial; on the
whole, there was reason for encouragement.
The sixth of November brought the eventful day
when the fate of the nation was to be decided. That
evening I spent in Printing-House Square, New York,
watching the bulletins on the Tribune Building, and I
did not return to my lodgings until the telegrams had
made it sure that Lincoln was elected. What a night .
was that, my countrymen! And who that had been

PUTTING ON THE HARNESS 95
living eight years before, and breathing the political
atmosphere of the commonwealth that chose Franklin
Pierce to be its chief magistrate, could have believed
that the same nation would now be shouting itself
hoarse over the choice of a man who represented what
Abraham Lincoln stood for?
For no man could help seeing that this political revo
lution registered an ethical advance in the American
people. There had come about, during the eight years,
a change in the moral feelings of the multitude. Their
ideals had been, in some good measure, transformed;
the public opmion of the masses held a larger infusion
of altruistic sentiment. Their attention had been drawn
to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" and they had
learned to answer it more nearly in the sense of the
good Samaritan.
Such changes as these in the habitual thoughts of
the people, in their ruling ideas, are to be looked for; the
hope of the world is in them. The notion that human
nature is a fixed quantity ; that men always act from the
same motives; that the troglodyte in his cave and the
philanthropist in his laboratory respond in the same
way to the same moral stimuli is sufficiently absurd, on
the face of it; but such a transformation of the moral
feelings of a whole population as occurred in the eight
years of which we are speaking ought to put an end to
all such pessimistic reasonmg. "Human nature," says^
Arnold Toynbee, "is not always the same. It slowly
changes, and is modified by higher ideals and wider and
deeper conceptions of justice. Men have forgotten that
though it is impossible to change the nature of a stone or

96 RECOLLECTIONS
a rock, human nature is pliable, and pliable above all
to nobler ideas and to a truer sense of justice." The
instance to which Toynbee points, in support of this
contention, is "that great change of opinion which took
place in England with regard to slavery." * In England,
as well as in America, the entire attitude of the people
upon a great question of morals was changed within a
generation. It is well to bear such facts in mind, for they help to
show that the function of the prophet and the moral
teacher is not superfluous; that the destiny of mankind
is not wholly shaped by physical and economic forces;
that Confucius may prove to be as much of an empire
builder as Alexander or Genghis Khan — perhaps a
more enduring builder. "If," says Toynbee, "such a
rapid change as that relating to slavery could take place
in our moral ideas within the last hundred years, do
you not think it possible that in the course of another
hundred years English employers and English laborers
may act upon higher notions of duty and higher con
ceptions of citizenship than they do now?" Theories
of social reform which rest upon the skeptical notion
that human nature is irreformable appear, therefore, to
be unscientific.
The verdict of the North was decisive ; what would
be the answer of the South? That question was on the
mind of every thoughtful man at the North, when he
read in the dispatches of November 7 the news of Lin
coln's election. And there were not many among us who
gave the correct reply. The North did not believe that
1 The Industrial Revolution, p. 175 .

PUTTING ON THE HARNESS 97
the South would secede, and the South did not believe
that the North would fight to resist secession. A tre
mendous disillusion was in store for both sections. If
the North had taken the southern threat of secession
seriously, would not strenuous efforts have been made
to patch up some kind of compromise? If the South
had known that the North would have an army of half
a million men in the field within a few months, would
not even the hot-headed South Carolinians have been a
httle less precipitate in their haste to fling themselves
out of the Union? Perhaps not. Perhaps the conflict
was irrepressible, and had to be fought out. Perhaps the
vast infidelity of the nation in harboring slavery — a
crime in which both sections were implicated — had to
be atoned for by the frightful retribution of the Civil
War. I doubt if there were many men in either section who
were looking for war, on the morning of the seventh of
November. But our optimism was rudely shaken before
many days. On the tenth of November the Legislature
of South Carolina called a State Convention to dissolve
the union of that state with the Federal Government ;
within a day or two both her senators at Washington
resigned their offices, and their resignations were ac
cepted by the Legislature ; and steps were taken at once
to secure a similar action in several of the other cotton
states. It was in the midst of these ominous and exciting
events that a council was called by my church for my
ordination to the ministry. That was no part of my
own plan; but the church insisted that it must have the

98 RECOLLECTIONS
services of a fully qualified minister, and that I must
accept ordination. The council convened on Novem
ber 15 ; the moderator was Dr. Richard S. Storrs, who
gave me the right hand of fellowship ; the sermon was
preached by the Reverend William Alvin Bartlett, and
the address to the people was given by my former pastor,
Reverend Moses Coit Tyler, who was then in the Con
gregational church of Poughkeepsie. It was an emi
nently respectable and learned council, and now that all
the members of it have passed to their reward, I may
express my wonder that they should have been willing
to proceed, unanimously, with the ordination of one
whose examination must have exhibited in a strong
light his lack of preparation for so great a work. It can
be explained only by imputing to them a large measure
of the charity that covereth a multitude of deficiencies,
or of the faith that judges a man less by what he is
than by what he hopes to be.
Perhaps I was dealt with less judicially, because the
hearts of the men composing this council must have
been full of a great solicitude respecting the state of the
country. In every assembly of serious-minded Ameri
cans that interest was uppermost; the ominous possi
bilities were gathering like a sullen cloud all along the
southern horizon.
Another event which followed close upon my ordina-
'tion was my marriage, in my own church, on Decem
ber 5, to Miss Jennie O. Cohoon, who had been a school
mate in the Owego Academy, and was at that time a
resident of Brooklyn.

CHAPTER VII
THE BURSTING OF THE STORM
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword
Dreams in its easeful sheath ;
But some day the live coal behind the thought,
Whether from Baal's stone obscene,
Or from the shrine serene
Of God's pure altar brought,
Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men.
James Russell Lowell.
Just two weeks after my ordination services came
Thanksgiving Day, and as it was known that Mr
Beecher would speak on the national issues, I went to
hear him. The great church was crowded to the doors,
and the air was quivering with suppressed excitement.
I think I have never been in any orderly assembly in
which there were more signs of intense feeling. Before
the preacher had been speaking very long, some trench-*
ant utterance started a ripple of applause, which was
quickly suppressed by the indignant "Sh-h-h!" of thej
regular worshipers, who had no mind to have their sanc
tuary profaned by such noises. Mr. Beecher paused a
moment, and with a quick glance about him, said
quietly, "T ain't Sunday!" That let the audience loose.
From that moment onward the address was punctuated

100 RECOLLECTIONS
with vociferous applause. It was a scene long to be
remembered. The sermon is printed — the bones of it — in Mr.
Beecher's " Freedom and War," under the title, "Against
a Compromise of Principle." It is, after all, but a mea
gre outline of the passionate plea to which we listened
on that memorable day. Yet that was the substance
of it: compromise is fatuous; the nation must stand
fast upon the principles to which it is now committed.
"The North," cried the orator, "loves liberty, and will
have it. We will not aggress on you. Keep your institu
tions within your own bounds ; we will not hinder you.
We will not take advantage to destroy, or one whit
to abate, your fair political prerogatives. You have al
ready gained advantages of us. These we will allow you
to hold. You shall have the Constitution intact, and its
full benefit. The full might and power of public senti
ment in the North shall guarantee to you everything
that history and the Constitution give you. But if you
ask us to augment the area of slavery ; to cooperate with
you in cursing new territory ; if you ask us to make the
air of the North favorable for a slave's breath, we will
not do it ! We love liberty as much as you love slavery,
and we shall stand by our rights with all the vigor with
which we mean to stand by justice toward you."
With one sentence of this declaration the southern
man would have joined issue. The intimation that no
slave can breathe northern air contradicts, he would
have said, the constitutional provision for the return of
fugitive slaves. "So long," he would have urged, "as
you refuse to send back our slaves, you are insincere in

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 101
telling us that we shall have the Constitution intact
and its full benefit." That, indeed, was one of the seri
ous complaints of the southern people, and it must be
admitted that not only by the personal liberty laws
enacted by several of the northern states was the spirit
of the Constitution violated, but that the public senti
ment of the North practically nullified the Federal
statute by which this constitutional provision was
enforced. Here, if anywhere, the people of the North
were failing to keep their part of the compact. And in
the anxious days that followed the election, many
among us were inclined to confess this default, and to
try to make amends for it. The personal liberty laws
were, in fact, mainly repealed, and there was a disposi
tion on the part of some conservative statesmen to get
the Fugitive Slave Law so amended that it might be
enforced. All this, however, was futile. The moral sentiment
of the North had reached a stage at which the return
of fugitives to slavery was a thing no longer possible.
That provision of the old compact was dead, and could
never be resurrected. If secession could be averted only
by that kind of guarantee, secession must take its
course. And Mr. Beecher, in this tremendous sermon,
told the South the exact truth about this.
Suppose you tell the people, then, that when their fugi
tives come North they shall be surrendered. Will you not
please to catch them first? You know you cannot. There
are five hundred men that run through the northern
states where there is one that stops or is turned back.
They know it, you know it, we all know it. The radical

102 RECOLLECTIONS
nature of the feelings of the North is such that they will
hurry on the black man and trip his hunter. If the man
agers of parties, and heads of conservative committees,
say to the South, " Be patient with us a little longer, do
not punish us yet, let down the rod and the frown ; spare
us for a short season, and we will see that your slaves are
returned to you," do you suppose there will be a fulfill
ment of the promise? You know there will not. I know
there will not. I would die myself, cheerfully and easily,
before a man should be taken out of my hands when I had
the power to give him liberty and the hound was after
him for his blood. I would stand as an altar of expiation
between slavery and hberty, knowing that through my
example a million men would live. A heroic deed, in
which one yields himself up for others, is his Calvary. It
was the lifting up of Christ on that hill-top that made it
the loftiest mountain on the globe.
As the weeks went by, it became increasingly evident
that the great majority of the people who had voted
for Lincoln stood on this platform, and could never
be moved from it. They believed that freedom was
national and slavery sectional; they would suffer no
further extension of slave territory. Nor would they
bind themselves to send back fugitives.
And now suppose that South Carolina should make
good her threat of secession, and that the other cot
ton states should follow her: what then? How should
the nation meet that emergency? Mr. Beecher did not
answer that question explicitly. But a day or two
before, in Boston, in reply to the question, "Do you
think the South will secede?" he had said: "I don't
believe they will, and I don't care if they do." Such was

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 103
the first response to the secession movement of many
radical Republicans. The New York "Tribune," which
was the Repubhcan Bible, said, three days after the
election: "If the cotton states shall decide that they
can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist
on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may
be a revolutionary one, but it exists, nevertheless. . . .
Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall
deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive
measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live
in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the
residue by bayonets."
Up to the middle of December this policy was tenta
tively advocated by a good many anti-slavery men.
The reason of it was in the horror of war, and in the
grave doubt whether such a question could be settled
by force. Gradually these doubts were overborne, and
the Websterian sentiment of the indissolubility of the
Union began to prevail. The enormous difficulty of
maintaining two nationalities upon this territory, with
no natural frontier ; the certainty of constant collisions
and entanglements over economic and political ques
tions; the intolerable consequence of having our nat
ural access to the Gulf closed against us, — all these
considerations soon began to get such possession of the
northern mind that peaceable secession was practically
dismissed, as a chimerical proposition.
Just how much of this conclusion was rational and
how much of it was due to instinctive impulses and ele
mental passions, we may never know. It is useless now
to speculate on what might have been, but one cannot

104 RECOLLECTIONS
help wondering what would have happened if General
Scott's first impulse had been followed, and the " erring
sisters" had been bidden to "go in peace." How many
of them would have gone? The Gulf states, undoubt
edly ; but eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and western
Virginia could hardly have been forced out of the Union.
And the states thus seceding could have set up no claim
to any of the territory of the nation, north or south;
certainly, such a claim would never have been allowed.
The new slave republic would thus have been inclosed
within free territory, with little chance for expansion.
Cuba would, no doubt, have been benevolently ab
sorbed very soon ; beyond that, the boundaries were not
likely to be extended. That restriction would have
meant economic feebleness and decay, for, as Cairnes
had so cogently argued, the existence of such a system
of unskilled labor depends on the constant enlargement
of territory. Since the land which it occupies must
needs be impoverished, it can live only by continual
migration to fresh fields. This was the reason why the
slave power was always so hungry for more slave terri
tory: it was an economic necessity.
And there can be no doubt that the new republic,
making slavery its corner-stone, and having no other
obvious reason for its existence than the determination
to perpetuate its peculiar institution, would have fallen
under the ban of the enlightened opmion of the world.
[With the entire (ethical evolution of modern society; it
would have found itself at war. It is not credible that
a slave republic could long have maintained itself upon
that territory. The stars in their courses would have

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 105
fought against it. It would have been forced, before
many decades, to face the problem of emancipation. And
it is not improbable that that problem might have been
worked out in a peaceful evolution, with results less
disastrous than those which have attended the destruc
tion of slavery as a measure of war. The relations
between the races would have been less strained. It is
not impossible that the freedmen and their masters
might have dwelt together as amicably as they are
dwelling in Jamaica to-day. Beyond a question, a large
part of the race hatred which now exists in the South is
due to the irritations and antagonisms engendered by
the war.
When emancipation had been effected, there would
be no reason whatever why the severed sections should
remain apart, and they would be almost sure to come
together. It is by no means improbable that we might,
by this time, — at the end of a half-century after the
rupture of the national bond, — have been negotiat
ing for a restoration of the Union, with good hope of
dwelling together again in peace and amity, with the
race question settled, and the prospect bright of a new
Saturnian reign.
What the northern nation might have become, by this
time, if it could have devoted all the enormous sum
which has been expended for the war, and on the pen
sion list, in the development of its resources, in making
its domain more fruitful and more beautiful, and in
filling the homes of its people with the abundance of
peace, I will not try to tell. Nor could any man compute
the moral gain which might have accrued to the nation

106 RECOLLECTIONS
if the demoralization and corruption incident to such
a war could have been avoided.
I know very well that quite another series of possibili
ties could be excogitated, as the result of peaceable
secession, — possibilities as much more dire than exist
ing conditions, as those which I have been imagining
are more benign. And nobody will ever know which of
these possibilities is the more probable. But, as I recall
those anxious days of November and December, 1860,
I cannot help wishing that the ethical passion of the
North for liberty had been matched with a faith, equally
compelling, in the cogency of good will. One or two
sermons, yellow with age, bearing those dates, testify
of a strong desire to find a better way out of the trouble
than the horrible way of war, and I am not ashamed
of the youthful faith that a better way was possible.
The dreadful winter dragged slowly by. Congress was
trying to patch up a compromise, but the effort was
nugatory. The southern states were completing their
preparations for the formation of a southern Confeder
acy, and the shadow of a great calamity lay heavily upon
the land. Commercial activities were prostrated; it
began to be evident that the debts due from the South
to northern merchants would never be paid ; the money
market was tight and panicky, and the social atmosphere
was as dense and depressing as that which we sometimes
breathe when an August thunderstorm is brewing.
In February Mr. Lincoln started from Springfield for
Washington. The telegraph brought us daily tidings of
his progress, and the reports were not, on the whole,
reassuring. There was a tender genuineness about the

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 107
speech to his old neighbors that touched all our hearts,
but the other speeches seemed lacking not only in
felicity, but in grasp and seriousness. There was little
of the cogency and directness of the debates with
Douglas; could we have been mistaken in our man?
The possibility was appalling. I went over to New York
to see him pass down Broadway. He stood in his
barouche, bowing rather stiffly right and left to the
throng that packed the sidewalks. There was more
curiosity than enthusiasm. His face was wan and
anxious ; he must have known that his greeting greatly
lacked cordiality. I stood upon the curbstone, and his
carriage paused for a minute or two opposite the place
where I was standing, so that I had a good look into his
face. It was the only sight of it I ever had, except one
brief glimpse of him on horseback, at City Point, in war
time. The face was strong and benign, but unspeakably
sad ; the burden of a nation was on his heart. Was he
man enough for the hour? Some who had come into
close contact with him felt confident. ThurlowWeed,
the veteran editor, who was no sentimentalist, had had
good opportunity to measure his mind, and his verdict
was unhesitating ; he told us that he was not only honest
and true, but "capable — capable in the largest sense of
the term. He has read much and thought much of gov
ernment, inwardly digesting its theory and practice."
It was good to get such assurance just then ; in fact, we
needed it. For, doubtless, in the hearts of millions who
had watched this journey there was a painful misgiving
that another brilliant editor's estimate of him, as "a
simple Susan," might be nearer the mark.

108 RECOLLECTIONS
For the dispersion of these fears we had not long to
wait. The first inaugural address put them all out of our
minds. The man who could meet a great emergency
with such wisdom and courage and gentleness was a man
whom we need not fear to follow. There was no need of
making apologies for Abraham Lincoln, from the hour
when the great responsibilities of office were placed upon
his shoulders.
Soon came the crucial test of the national authority.
The Confederate government, with seven states, had
been organized at Montgomery; South Carolina was
gathering an army in the environs of Charleston, and
had occupied two of the forts in that harbor ; but Fort
Sumter stood there grim and defiant, with the United
States flag flying over it, and a brave Federal officer
commanding it. Should it be evacuated or defended?
Mr. Lincoln said that it should not be evacuated, and
sent supplies' for the garrison. The Confederate authori
ties, hearing this, demanded its surrender. The demand
was refused, the Confederate batteries opened on the
national citadel, and after an unequal contest the gar
rison was compelled to abandon the fort. The war was
begun, and there was no question as to who began it.
Mr. Lincoln had kept the promise of his inaugural ad
dress. "The power confided to me will be used to hold,
occupy, and possess the property and places belonging
to the government, and to collect the duties and
imposts, but beyond what may be necessary for these
objects there will be no invasion, no using of force
against or among the people anywhere." Not a thing
had been done " to coerce a sovereign state " ; no troops

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 109
had been sent even to strengthen the garrison at Fort
Sumter; no act more warlike had been committed by
the national government than the attempt to supply
Major Anderson's soldiers with food. It was for this that
the batteries of the seceders had opened on Fort Sum
ter; that the flag had been insulted and the authority
of the nation defied. The patient Lincoln had won the
game. This wanton attack upon Sumter gave him, in
one hour, a united nation. "Had any one," said Lowell,
"ventured to prophecy on the Fourth of March that the
immediate prospect of Civil War would be hailed by the
people of the free states with a unanimous shout of
enthusiasm, he would have been thought a madman.
Yet the prophecy would have been verified by what
we now see and hear in every city, town, and hamlet
from Maine to Kansas." l And George Ticknor, in a
letter of April 21, bore testimony: "The heather is
on fire. I never before knew what a popular sentiment
can be. . . . Indeed, here at the North there never was
anything like it ; for if the feeling was as deep and stern
in 1775, it was by no means so intelligent or unanimous,
and then the masses to be moved were as a handful
compared to our dense population now." The prompt
call of the President for seventy-five thousand militia
men to defend the capital was greeted with exulta
tion. The populations that had been hesitant, sullen,
apathetic, sprang to their feet as one man.
Professor Shaler had a theory that the processes of
development are sometimes mightily hastened; that
there are critical instants which complete the work of
1 Atlantic Monthly, June, 1861.

110 RECOLLECTIONS
long periods, as when water on the verge of freezing is
suddenly converted into ice by a slight blow on the ves
sel containing it. Such a crystallization was the work
of the first gun fired at Fort Sumter.
Probably there was no place in the land where this
change was more nearly miraculous than in the city of
New York. Through the early months of 1861 New York
had been by no means sure that it was not a city without
a country. The New York "Herald," which was the
paper of largest circulation, was in undisguised sym
pathy with the secessionists ; the mayor of the city, in
a message to the Council, had urged that if the South
seceded, New York city should also declare itself a free
city and dissolve its relations with the Federal Govern
ment ; and there seems to be good evidence that a plot
was incubating, in which a large number of " the most
influential and wealthy citizens" were involved, "to
throw off the authority of the Federal and State govern
ments, to seize the navy yard at Brooklyn, the vessels of
war and the forts in the harbor, and to declare New York
a free city." To one who had been gasping in this
stifling atmosphere for some months, the change which
took place on the day when the bombardment of Fort
Sumter began was exhilarating. It was like those sud
den northwest breezes which sometimes come down
upon the city in the torrid days of August and drive the
humidity out to sea.
I went over to the city nearly every day ; it was like a
bath of oxygen to mingle with the crowds on the ferries
and in the streets. One morning, as I went up Fulton
Street from the ferry, a crowd appeared, coming up

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 111
Nassau Street from the south. Some one told me that
they were visiting the offices of sundry newspapers,
whose attitude upon national questions had been equi
vocal. They had just come from the office of the
"Journal of Commerce," and in response to their sug
gestion the flag had been 'displayed on the building of
that newspaper. They were by no means a rough crowd ;
they were making no noise, but there was determination
in their looks, and many of them had brickbats or pav
ing-stones in their hands. They had paused in front of
the office of the New York "Herald," on the corner of
Fulton and Nassau streets, and some one had gone up
the stairway on the Fulton Street side. Presently a boy
in his shirt-sleeves came down the stairs and ran toward
Broadway, returning, in a few moments, with a long
parcel, wrapped in brown paper. Immediately a window
was opened, and the American flag was thrust out. The
crowd cheered it, dropped their brickbats, and dis
persed, with some merriment. I had the "Herald" in
my hand at the time ; its leading editorial was an exas
perating plea for affiliation with the South. The next
morning its loyalty was unequivocal. "War," it de
clared, "will make the northern people a unit." I felt
that I had been the witness of a conversion which for
suddenness quite eclipsed that of Saul of Tarsus.
The next day the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry
marched down Broadway, through crowds that rent the
air with shouting. What a different temperature from
that through which Lincoln had passed not many days
before! But in the midst of all this exaltation there
came terrible moments of depression. I shall never for-

112 RECOLLECTIONS
get the sickening sense of the reality of it all which came
over me as those Massachusetts boys tramped by. They
were not all hilarious: on the faces of the more thought
ful there was a strained look ; they knew that they were
not out for a holiday. I had seen soldiers on parade
many times, but this was something else ; ball cartridges
were in these belts, and these men were marching to
dreadful war ; before the next noon, some of them would
be lying dead in the streets of Baltimore.
It was the next day that our own crack regiment,
the Seventh, started for Washington. The massacre in
Baltimore had hastened their departure. The metrop
olis again went wild. Theodore Winthrop, whose life
was laid' down but a month or two later, was in those
ranks. "It was worth a life, that march," he wrote.
"Only one who passed, as we did, through that tempest
of cheers two miles long, can know the terrible enthu
siasm of the occasion."
Not many days after, a great war meeting was held
in Union Square. The whole space was packed with tens
of thousands of shouting patriots ; there were half-a-
dozen speaking platforms, and the orators of Gotham
were out in force. The "Tribune" was probably justi
fied in saying that it was the greatest crowd ever
gathered upon this continent. Leading Democrats were
among the speakers, and Archbishop Hughes sent an
enthusiastic letter. Mayor Fernando Wood, who a few
days before had been counseling alliance with the Con
federates, made a vehement speech, in which he an
swered the boast of the Confederate Secretary of War,
that the rebel flag would soon be flying over the national

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 113
capital and Faneuil Hall, by declaring that to get
Boston they would have to go over the body of every
citizen of New York, and that the capture of the capital
would mean the enlistment in the army of "every man,
woman, and child in the North." New converts are
always zealous.
The instances show that the blood of the North was
up. The leaders at Charleston and Montgomery must
have been astounded. They had reliable advices from
well-informed secret service agents in New York that
the metropolis was all ready to range itself on their
side. Something must have happened.
Yet, in the midst of the tumult and the shouting, the
hearts of thoughtful men were very sad. Men like
Seward, whose optimism was almost flippant, could talk
of ending the war in ninety days, but that was a fond
imagination. That bloody years were before us seemed
a dreadful certainty. In the "Century War Book," 1 is
a testimony by General J. D. Cox, which reveals the
undertone of feeling : —
The situation hung upon us like a nightmare. Garfield
and I were lodging together at the time [in Columbus], and
when we reached our sitting-room, after an evening ses
sion of the Senate [of the Ohio Legislature], we often found
ourselves involuntarily groaning : " Civil war in our land! "
The shame, the folly, the outrage seemed too great to
believe, and we half hoped to wake from it as from a
dream. Among the painful remembrances of those days
is the ever-present weight at the heart, which never left
me until I found relief in the active duties of camp life at
the close of the month. I went about my duties (and I am
1 Vol. i, p. 87.

114 RECOLLECTIONS
sure that most of those with whom I associated did the
same) with the half-choking sense of a grief I dared not
think of ; like one who is dragging himself to the labors
of life from some terrible and recent bereavement.
In fact, the labors of life, for people in general, were
greatly interrupted. Business was at a standstill; the
army of buyers from the South were of course not there,
and remittances from that region had ceased ; all over
the country industry was paralyzed ; men were standing
idle in the market-place. And it must be confessed that
this unwonted excitement did not prove conducive to
the growth of churches. The congregations dwindled,
the Sunday-schools were decimated, the whole work
of the church seemed to have come to a sudden pause.
Every Sunday, regiments from New England or north
ern New York were marching down Broadway on their
way to Washington, and the crowds flocked over the
ferries to see the spectacle. Our own church, which, in
the autumn, seemed to be gathering up its forces, shared
in these distractions, and the young pastor found him
self struggling with conditions that were hopeless. Like
many other enterprises in those days, the church was
financially disabled, and the wolf was looking in at the
door of the parsonage.
The strain of the work and the anxiety, intensified by
the conditions of the national life, were quite too much
for a constitution which had hitherto recognized no
limitations upon its endurance, and a nervous collapse
left me in a crippled condition. It was clear that this
work must be abandoned; it was not clear, for a few
weeks, that any other work could soon be undertaken.

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 115
But it happened that there was a little church in
Morrisania, two miles north of the Harlem River, which
was just then vacant, and it was a good Providence
that drew me into that quiet suburb. The people were
willing to let me do what I could, which was little, at
the beginning ; and the light labor was probably better
for me than any enforced leisure would have been. So
it came about that without a week's interruption my
work went forward in this new field.
The territory now included in the borough of the
Bronx which stretches north and east from the Harlem
River was then parceled out among a number of sprawl
ing villages, Mott Haven, Melrose, Morrisania, Tremont,
Fordham, and West Farms, — access to which from the
city was given by the Harlem Railroad, and by a line
of little steamboats plying between Peek Slip and the
Harlem River. From Harlem Bridge a line of rickety
stages ran north to the various villages through bottom
less mud in the wet seasons, and clouds of dust in the
dry. The Third Avenue horse-cars also crawled from
the City Hall to the bridge in an hour and twenty
minutes. Yet I am persuaded that life was more restful
in those days for the inhabitants of that region than it
is in these. The sail of forty-five minutes up the East
River was very refreshing; the torment of the stages
was brief; and we found ourselves at the end of our
journey in green country lanes, with no noise of wheels
or whistles, with time to work in our gardens, and birds
and bees and butterflies filling the air with life and
color and music.
Our home in Brooklyn had been upon a street trav-

116 RECOLLECTIONS
ersed by the Long Island market wagons, the din of
whose wheels on the cobblestone pavements began soon
after midnight and never ceased ; and the silence of the
first nights in Morrisania was so oppressive that we
could not sleep. The nerves had to adjust themselves to
the new conditions. It did not take long, however, and
the stillness and sweetness of the rural life were very
medicinal. Through the years of the Civil War this was to be my
home. In an hour I could be in the heart of the metrop
olis, but we were far enough from the madding crowd
to escape the nervous wear and tear, and find space
for reading and reflection. The little church offered
me kindly and grateful associations. It was made up of
young professional and business men, teachers, libra
rians, city officials, and the like ; the average of intelli
gence was much higher than that of my Brooklyn con
gregation, and the people were disposed to be generous
and considerate in their judgment of a young man's
limitations. Meantime the volunteers were pouring southward
every day, and the troops of the insurgents were begin
ning to concentrate in the neighborhood of Washington.
Early in July the "Tribune" began printing, under its
editorial heading, in flaming capitals, this imperious
demand : Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!
The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there
on the twentieth of July. By that date the place must be
held by the national army! This language was repeated
with the same emphasis, day after day. The newspaper
supposed that it was giving voice to the national impa-

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 117
tience ; perhaps it was ; but the time had been brief for
the assembling and equipment of an army prepared to
take the offensive in a country difficult of invasion. It
was not long before the tidings came that McDowell was
moving southward, in force, and our hearts stood still.
On Sunday morning, July 21, as we gathered at the
church, news came that the fight was beginning. That
night and the next morning the word was all of victory ;
but before Monday noon we knew that the short-lived
triumph had turned to disaster, and that our shattered
and demoralized army had come huddling back into the
fortifications about Washington. Will any one try to
estimate the load that lay that night upon the heart of a
loyal nation? There was no discouragement, and not a
thought of turning back ; the purpose of the people was
stronger than ever ; but the magnitude and the appalling
seriousness of the work before us was brought home to
us with terrible power. And it must be admitted that
there was much rash and wild talk ; the people were not
yet sufficiently sure of themselves to bear such a reverse
quite steadily. Scapegoats were sought for; the gov
ernment at Washington was bitterly denounced for
inefficiency; the "Tribune" went so far as to demand
the immediate resignation of the entire Cabinet. It was
well for us that the patient Lincoln was at the helm.

CHAPTER VIII
DARK DAYS
So long ago it seems, so long ago,
Behold, our sons, grown men since those great days, —
Born since the last clear bugle ceased to blow
Its summons down the valley ; since the bays
Shook with the roar of fort and answering fleet, —
Our very children look into our eyes
And find strange records, with a mute surprise;
As they some curious traveler might greet
Who kept far countries in his musing mind,
Beyond the weltering seas, the mountain-walls behind.
And yet it was this land and not another,
Where blazed war's flame and rolled the battle cloud.
In all this land there was no home where brother,
Father, or son hurried not forth ; where bowed
No broken-hearted woman when pale Death
Laid his cold finger on the loved one's breath.
Richard Watson Gilder.
The outstanding memories of all those days in Mor
risania are, of course, the events of the war ; but in the
midst of arms the voices of the spirit were not wholly
silent ; our life went quietly forward, and other interests
were not neglected. The little church gave me no finan
cial worries, and there was time for study. An intro
duction to the librarian of the Astor Library gained me
the freedom of the theological alcoves, and I spent
much of my time in them. Professor Roswell D. Hitch
cock and Professor Henry B. Smith, of the Union Theo
logical Seminary, also kindly permitted me to attend
their lectures, and I gave what time I could to these
stimulating teachers. Of greater consequence, however,

DARK DAYS 119
than these influences, was the entrance into my life of
Frederick W. Robertson and Horace Bushnell, — each
of them through volumes of sermons which opened to
me a hew world. Here were men to whom spiritual
things were not traditions but living verities ; men who
knew how to bring religion into vital touch with real
ity. What I found upon these throbbing pages was
what Dr. Munger afterward described as "The Appeal
to Life." I can never tell how much I owe to these two
men — to Robertson, first, for opening my eyes ; to
Bushnell, chiefly, for teaching me how to use them.
Some one, to whom I was confessing my indebtedness
to Bushnell, told me of an earlier book of his, — "God
in Christ," — which I procured, and hved with for some
months. The introductory essay, on Language, was, for
me, a "Novum Organon," giving me a new sense of the
nature of the instrument which I was trying to use, and
making entirely clear the futility of the ordinary dog
matic method. And in the three great discourses which
followed, delivered at New Haven, at Andover, and at
Cambridge, I found an emancipation proclamation
which delivered me at once and forever from the bond
age of an immoral theology. That there was a gospel
to preach I had no longer any doubt, for I had been
made to see that the Judge of all the earth would do
right. That was the foundation of Bushnell's faith ; his
heresy was the unfaltering belief that God is just. What
he denied was simply those assertions and implications
of the old theology which attribute to God injustice.
He had found God, in his college days, by his insistence
upon an ethical theology. And his entire quarrel with

120 RECOLLECTIONS
the traditional dogmas grew out of his determination to
admit no explanations of the divine conduct which were
in conflict with the fundamental principles of morals.
That men should be judged and doomed before they
were born ; that men should be held blameworthy and
punishable for what was done by their ancestors ; that
justice could be secured by the punishment of one for
the sin of another, were propositions to him unthink
able. He dared to say so, and by his courage he opened
the way to a larger liberty for a great multitude. Yet,
at that day, he was still under the ban of his own de
nomination; the heresy-hunters had not been able to
dislodge him from his church, but they had filled the
churches with suspicions of him, and "Bushnellism"
was a name with which no ambitious minister could
afford to be branded. It was well understood that no
body suspected of that taint could hope for ordination
over a Congregational church. Nevertheless, what he
had taught seemed to me true, and it was hardly pos
sible that I should hold my tongue about it. Gradually
my own teaching reflected the new conceptions into
which I had been led, but as they were not set forth
controversially, nobody seemed to be greatly troubled
by them.
One Sunday morning, after a sermon in which I had
been more frank than ever before in the expression
of the heretical theory, I found myself following up
the street one of my most conservative parishioners,
who had intimated to me, once or twice, his dissent
from what he had been hearing. Naturally I hesitated
to expose myself to his criticism, but he was walking

DARK DAYS 121
slowly and I found it difficult to avoid overtaking him.
His greeting was: "That was a good sermon ! I wish we
might have more sermons like that." The good man
would have been confounded if he had known that he
had been listening to heresy. I did not enlighten him.
Since the only bit of genuine heresy to which he had
been exposed seemed so palatable to him, it would have
been unkind to disturb his enjoyment of it.
The small chapel in which we were worshiping soon
became too strait for us, and with much labor and sacri
fice we succeeded in replacing it with a larger and more
attractive church. That the church ought to serve all
the higher interests of the community seemed to us a
sound principle, and we opened the new church the first
winter for a course of lectures which made no small stir
in our quiet suburb. The course included Miss Anna E.
Dickinson, then a popular speaker on political and so
cial subjects, George William Curtis, Bayard Taylor, and
Ralph Waldo Emerson. My first meeting with Mr.
Curtis was when I called to invite him to deliver this
lecture. He was then writing the editorials for "Har
per's Weekly," and his work was done at a small pine
table in the middle of the composing-room on the top
floor of the Harper Building on Franklin Square. Here
I found him, surrounded by printers working at their
cases, intent upon his own task and quite oblivious of
what was going on about him. It was a curious envi
ronment for a nature so fastidious. Mr. Curtis received
me very genially, and cordially entered into my plans.
I visited him more than once, after that, in the same
place, and always brought away from the interview the

122 RECOLLECTIONS
impression of a man whose kindness was equal to his
refinement. With Bayard Taylor, too, I had two or three interest
ing interviews, in connection with this engagement. On
the winter night after the lecture I joined him in a long
walk, and he talked quite freely of his experiences in
Egypt and in the Norse countries. He was a fine speci
men of a man, with a frame fitted for such adventures
as had made the staple of his life ; and while his man
ner as a public speaker was not unpleasing, his talk was
far finer. I had followed him round the world in the
"Tribune," and it was a great pleasure to hear some of
the stories from his own lips.
Emerson's simple and gracious ways were very win
ning. He chatted with me most naturally for a little
while before the lecture, and I could easily understand
how the farmers of Concord found him an agreeable
companion. There was not a particle of affectation, and
he met you on your own ground and talked about the
things you were interested in. I do not think that his
lecture was popular. I have forgotten, now, what he
called it ; it was one of his ethical essays — preaching,
of course, of a high quality. But his manner was so
quiet and deliberate, there was so little of what the
reporters call "oratory," that most of the audience
voted it rather tame. His manuscript, as was often the
case, was a pile of loose leaves, which he turned over and
turned back quite frequently, sometimes losing his place,
and giving us a chance to reflect on what had been said.
I remember a subsequent occasion in Boston, when the
audience waited for a minute or two while he fumbled

DARK DAYS 123
with his leaves. At last he got what he had been looking
for, and it was but a single sentence, — the last sentence
of the lecture. As we came out of the hall an auditor
said : "We had to wait a good while for that last word.
But," he added after a pause, "it was worth waiting
for." One of my Morrisania parishioners was Mr. Robert
Bonner, proprietor of the New York "Ledger," who had
a summer home on the West Ridge, and who was wont
to give me an airing, now and then, behind the swift
steeds of which he was so fond. Mr. Bonner was then
negotiating with Mr. Beecher about a story for the
"Ledger," and had made him, undoubtedly, a munifi
cent offer for such a production. He showed me, one
day, a letter from Mr. Beecher, promising to under
take this work, and humorously imagining some future
biographer referring to him as "this distinguished nov
elist (who sometimes preached)." Mr. Bonner was him
self quite a character. Of sturdy Scotch sense and clean
mind, there was nothing yellowish about his journal
ism. It may be admitted that the fiction on which he
fed the multitude was not of the highest literary art,
but it was as moral as a Bowery play. "I tell all my
editors," he said, "that nothing must ever appear in the
'Ledger* which would trouble my Scotch Presbyterian
mother if she should read it after prayer meeting."
All this life in Morrisania is so colored and flavored
with memories of the war that it is hard to separate its
fortunes from those of the nation during this period.
Of course the national interest was the absorbing inter-

124 RECOLLECTIONS
est ; the suppression of the rebellion, the preservation of
the Union, was not only our business, it was our religion.
The young men of our homes were given up with a con
secration as holy as that with which any gift was ever
laid upon an altar of sacrifice. And there was privation
and suffering for those who remained at home, as well
as for those who enlisted. When the price of gold kept
mounting up until a dollar in gold would buy two dollars
and a half in currency; when a yard of plain shirting
cost thirty cents, and a pound of sugar twenty-seven,
and a pound of rump steak twenty-five, people whose
salaries had not been raised found themselves in exigu
ous circumstances. The rigid economies to which we
were forced, the shifts we were compelled to make to
supply our common needs, and keep ourselves present
able, were part of the price we had to pay for the life
of the nation. Nor was it always grudgingly paid; we
did not forget the heavier sacrifice of the men at the
front. I must not forget that I am not writing a history of
the war, but it is hard to turn the pen aside from all
that made life in those days memorable and significant.
One recalls, with a sense of suffering, the long agony
of the conflict in Virginia, with the frequent changes of
commanders ; the great expectations of McClellan, long
cherished and often revived, but gradually sinking into
hopelessness; the experiments with Pope and Hooker
and Burnside; the heartsickness of hope long deferred
which now and then overcame the nation. Through all
these dark days the conviction was growing that the war
could not end without the destruction of slavery. Lin-

DARK DAYS 125
coin's large statesmanship early pressed upon Congress
measures for the compensated emancipation of the
slaves of the border states ; he believed that motives of
economy as well as of justice would warrant the nation
in assuming the burden; but his overtures met with
scant encouragement from the people most concerned.
The border states declined to move in the matter, and
the President was driven to consider emancipation as
a military necessity.
No single incident of those dark days of 1862 is more
vividly impressed on my mind than Lincoln's answer
to Greeley's "Prayer of Twenty Millions," for the
emancipation of the slaves. Greeley's open letter to the
President gave voice to the impatience of the nation;
the war, which Seward was going to end in ninety
days, had dragged itself through a year, and although
some light had appeared in the west, the outlook was
gloomy. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign had met with
disastrous failure, and the spirit of discontent was
abroad in the land. "We require of you," said the great
editor, rather magisterially, "as the first servant of the
republic, charged especially and preeminently with this
duty, that you execute the laws. We think you are
strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of
your official and imperative duty with regard to the
emancipating provisions of the new confiscation act;
that you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the
representations, the menaces of certain fossil politicians
hailing from the border slave states ; that timid coun
sels in such a crisis are calculated to prove perilous
and probably disastrous. We complain that the Union

126 RECOLLECTIONS
cause has suffered and is now suffering immensely from
your mistaken deference to rebel slavery." And there
is much more, equally petulant and critical. It would
seem that Mr. Greeley might have had a little more
patience and charity; certain it is that not all of the
twenty millions for whom he assumed to speak were
equally skeptical of the President's purpose. But what
ever may have been the popular disaffection when this
letter appeared, the President's reply effectually extin
guished it. Mr. Greeley probably never rendered the
country a greater service than when he called forth that
answer. It appeared in the "Tribune" itself, and
probably every newspaper in the North printed it. Few
American state papers have been more universally read,
perhaps none ever made a more profound impression.
I doubt if any battle of the Civil War helped more to win
the final victory than did this short letter of Abraham
Lincoln. It cleared the air. It silenced the croakers.
It filled the whole North with a new spirit. It drew the
hearts of hundreds of thousands to Lincoln with an
affection and trust that from that day never wavered.
There is room for it here ; it is one of the great words
that must not be forgotten.
If there be in it [your letter] any statements or assump
tions of facts which I may know to be erroneous, I do not,
now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any infer
ences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not,
now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible
in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it, in
deference to an old friend whose heart I have always sup
posed to be right.

DARK DAYS 127
As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," as you say, I
have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save
the Union. I would save it in the shortest way, under
the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can
be restored, the nearer the Union will be "the Union as
it was." If there be those who would not save the Union
unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not
agree with them. If there be those who would not save
the Union unless they could at the same time destroy
slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object
in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either
to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union
without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I
would also do that. What I do about slavery and the
colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the
Union, and what I forbear I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less
whenever I believe that what I am doing hurts the cause,
and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more
will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when
shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast
as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose, according to my view
of official duty; and I intend no modification of my
oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere
could be free.
How fine and large it is ! Not a trace of resentment or
impatience, not an ungracious tone ; the calm utterance
of a strong soul, who has learned the great prophetic
word: "In quietness and confidence shall be your
strength." And how perfect is the form of it! Were

128 RECOLLECTIONS
words ever handled more deftly? His sentences go like
bullets straight to the mark.
And who could have guessed from anything here said
that the Emancipation Proclamation was already writ
ten; that it had been lying for some weeks in his port
folio; that it had been submitted to his Cabinet and
approved by them, and was withheld only from the
feeling that the issuance of it in those dark days might
seem like an act of desperation, and in the conviction
that it would be better to send it to the country on
the wings of victory? That was one of Mr. Seward's
wise suggestions, which Lincoln had promptly adopted.
How little ground there was for the accusation that
Lincoln's policy was dictated by a "mistaken defer
ence to rebel slavery" ! It was just a month later, after
the battle of Antietam, that the Proclamation was pub
lished; but this letter of August 23 put an end to the
radical carping against Lincoln, and united the North
in his support. "We are coming, Father Abraham, three
hundred thousand more," was the answer of the people
to this call of their leader. The enlistments went on with
new spirit, and it was the revival of hope and courage
in the Union army that gave us the victory of Antietam
and prepared the way for the Proclamation.
I remember well that September day when the long-
delayed blow was struck which destroyed slavery. The
New York State Association of Congregationalists was
in session at Syracuse ; and the news was brought into
one of our meetings. Immediately the order of the day
was suspended, and the venerable Doctor Joshua
Leavitt, then an editor of the "Independent," formerly

DARK DAYS 129
editor of the "Emancipator," and one of the original
members of the "Anti-Slavery Society," was called
upon to offer prayer. What a cry to Heaven it was — of
thanks and praise, of penitence and humiliation, of hope
and courage ! This great soul had long been waiting for
this hour, and probably never expected to see it. How
many of those who had been seeking to awaken the
conscience of the nation against slavery had ever cher
ished the hope that the end of it would come while they
were on the earth? By most rational men such an
expectation would have been counted visionary. It was
pathetic to catch the note of surprise which mingled
with the exultation of Dr. Leavitt's prayer.
The end was not yet. The moral victory was won, but
there were yet dreary months before the tide of battle
would turn. The disasters of Fredericksburg and Chan-
cellorsville, and the dubious combat of Stone River,
were yet to follow, while the irritating and disheartening
opposition of such men as Vallandigham at the North
was a heavy tax upon the patience and faith of loyal
men. It is hardly to be wondered at that General Lee,
emboldened by his almost uniform successes in Virginia,
and encouraged by what he believed to be the rapidly
rising tide of opposition to the war in the North, should
have resolved to carry the war into the enemy's country,
to capture Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and to cut off
the national capital from communication with the rest of
the nation. That, he naturally thought, would bring the
war to a speedy termination, and would secure the inde
pendence of the Confederacy. His bold advance into

130 RECOLLECTIONS
Maryland and Pennsylvania, in the midsummer of 1863,
was a stroke of strategy which the conditions seemed to
warrant. But he was reckoning without his host. Get
tysburg made it plain to him and to all the world that
the will of the nation was unbroken.
The anxiety and suspense of those days are still, to a
few of us, a vivid memory. When we knew that Ewell's
corps was within four miles of Harrisburg ; that the rail
way station between Harrisburg and Baltimore had
been destroyed; that York had been occupied by the
Confederate forces; that Philadelphia was threatened;
that business was completely suspended ; and that the
people of the Quaker City — ministers and lawyers and
merchants, among the rest — were working in the
trenches to fortify the city against the invaders, — it
can be imagined that for many of those who lived a little
further north there was not much calm repose. Yet I
cannot recall any symptoms of a panic. Those were
anxious days, but they were not days of despondency or
fear ; and if it had been imagined that the appearance of
a Confederate army on northern soil would be a signal
for the rising of the disaffected elements in the North
to welcome the invader, the expectation was rudely
overthrown. Governor Seymour, of New York, had been
one of the sharpest critics of the administration, but
before Ewell could get to Harrisburg, Governor Seymour
had nineteen regiments of New York militia in the
trenches before that city. In the presence of this peril
the divisions which had existed among the northern
people disappeared. And when, in the critical and deci
sive struggle of the war, the Confederacy gathered up all

DARK DAYS 131
its strength and hurled it against the unflinching battle-
line of Meade, only to shatter itself against that ada
mant, we all knew that the beginning of the end had
come. What a Fourth of July was that, my countrymen,
when we read in our morning papers these restrained
but tender words ! " The President announces to the
country that news from the Army of the Potomac, up to
10 p. m. of the 3d, is such as to cover that army with the
highest honor, to promise a great success to the cause
of the Union, and to claim a great condolence for all of
the many gallant fallen ; and that for this he especially
desires that on this day He whose will, not ours, should
ever be done, be everywhere remembered and rever
enced with profoundest gratitude."
Yes, we were alive, that day, some of us; and we
have not all forgotten how the landscape grew dim with
the mists of thankful tears, and how our voices choked
when we tried to speak to one another the words of
congratulation. If we could have known what news was
traveling toward us, — that a dispatch from Grant,
dated that very morning, was on its way to the nearest
telegraph station, to let us know that Vicksburg had just
surrendered, — the cup of our rejoicing would have
been filled to overflowing.
It would seem that such victories should have resulted
in rapidly recruiting the national army, but in fact vol
unteering had ceased, and the only resource of the gov
ernment was the enforcement of the Conscription Act.
In most of the states this measure, though very unpopu
lar, was submitted to without resistance; but in New
York city there were large elements of imperfectly

132 RECOLLECTIONS
Americanized immigrants to whom this exaction was
intolerable. And almost before the odor of the burnt
powder of the Fourth of July rejoicings had faded from
the air, there was insurrection in NeW York city against
the enforcement of this law. The scenes of those draft
riots one would gladly erase from the memory. Such
an eruption of savagery has not often disfigured our
civilization. For two or three days New York was under
mob rule. The police were powerless ; the militia regi
ments were away in Pennsylvania, resisting the inva
sion, and the lawless elements were let loose. Frenzied
crowds stormed the saloons and demanded drink, and
with their fury thus rekindled, roamed the streets, deal
ing death and destruction. The buildings in which the
draft had been progressing were burned to the ground,
and when the flames spread to other buildings it was dif
ficult to secure the cooperation of the firemen to stop the
conflagration, for they, too, were more or less bitten with
the madness of the mob. The house of the mayor was
assailed; the "Tribune" office was gutted; worst of all,
the Colored Orphan Asylum, on Fifth Avenue, a philan
thropic institution which was giving shelter to several
hundred children, was sacked and burned. The negroes
were the principal victims of the brutality of the mob.
The rioters were inflamed with the notion that this was
an abolition war, and that they were being drafted to
fight to free the negro. They proposed, instead, to do
what they could to exterminate him. A dispatch to
Secretary Stanton at 9.30 on the night of Monday,
July 13, informed him that small mobs were chasing
individual negroes "as hounds would chase a fox."

DARK DAYS 133
We watched the city anxiously that night, from our
home in Morrisania ; the horizon was lurid with confla
grations. What would have happened before morning,
it is difficult to imagine, if before midnight a tremendous
rain had not begun to fall, putting out the fires and
quenching the madness of the mob. The next morning,
however, chaos came again. The bands of civilization
were loosed, and arson and pillage were running riot.
All the thieves and thugs in the region were set free
to work their will. Men were held up and robbed in
the streets. The omnibuses and horse-cars ceased to
run. The Harlem and Hudson River tracks were torn
up, and there was no access to the city from the north.
Telegraph lines were cut. All business was suspended.
The little passenger boats on the East River con
tinued to run, and by means of one of them I managed
to make my way to the lower part of the city, which
was not, perhaps, a prudent adventure. I looked in at
the wrecked office of the "Tribune," and found the
City Hall Park opposite filled with the mob. Governor
Seymour, it was reported, was coming to the city, and
would address the rioters. The throng was moving
uneasily about, evidently with no leadership or concert
of action, and there was httle noise. While I stood there
Governor Seymour appeared in the balcony of the City
Hall, and made his famous address. I could hear his
voice, but was not near enough to catch his words.
Much was made of the phrase, "My friends," with
which the governor began his speech. That criticism is,
perhaps, somewhat captious. Nevertheless, it was no
time for persuasion. None but the most rigorous mea-

134 RECOLLECTIONS
sures were adequate in that emergency. General Wool,
with such regulars as could be spared from the forts in
the harbor, and with such veterans as could be hurriedly
organized for service, soon had a force which could
make short work of mobs. With the return of the
militia regiments from Pennsylvania, order was soon
restored ; not, however, until a thousand men had been
killed and wounded, and a million and a half of property
had been destroyed.
The suburbs, in the meantime, were largely unpro
tected, and the lawless depredators, checked in their
operations in the city, were soon making incursions into
the outlying districts. It became necessary to organize
a Home Guard in Morrisania to perform police duty;
and men of the vicinage volunteered for service, taking
turns in patrolling the streets at night. With my next
neighbor I served for several nights in this capacity,
seeking to become a terror to evil-doers. A huge horse-
pistol was the only weapon I could lay my hands on ; it
was never loaded, and I fear that I could not have dis
charged it without peril, but it was a formidable-looking
piece of artillery, and I trusted that the sight of it
might strike dread to the heart of any lurking footpad.
A curious comment it was upon the race prejudice
which found such brutal expression in these draft riots,
that while the ruins of the Colored Orphan Asylum were
still smoking, Robert Shaw was leading the storming
column of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts colored regi
ment in the assault upon Fort Wagner. "Thirty-four
years later," says Mr. Rhodes, "appeared on Boston
Common the contribution of sculpture to this heroic

DARK DAYS 135
episode. The thought and skill of Augustus Saint-Gau-
dens portraying Shaw and his negro soldiers marching
to Battery Wharf to take the steamer for the South, has
forever blazoned the words of Lincoln : 'And then there
will be some black men who can remember that with
silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and
well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to
this great consummation.'" *
From this time onward the hopeful symptom was the
rapid enlistment of the negroes, and their good behavior
on the battlefield. It began to look as though the neces
sity of conscription would be obviated by the replenish
ing of our armies from this source.
1 History of the United States, iv, 333.

CHAPTER IX
THE END OF THE WAR
Rushed the great drama on its tragic way
Swift to the happy end from that tremendous day.
Happy, indeed, could memory lose her power
And yield to joy alone the glad, triumphant hour;
Happy if every aching heart could shun
Remembrance of the unreturning one ;
If at the Grand Review, when mile on mile
And day on day the marching columns past,
Darkened not o'er the world the shadow vast
Of his foul murder — he the free from guile,
Sad-hearted, loving, and beloved, and wise,
Who ruled with sinewy hands and dreaming eyes.
What soul that lived then who remembers not
The hour, the landscape, ah ! the very spot, —
Hateful for aye, — where news that he was slain
Struck like a hammer on the dazed brain !
Richard Watson Gilder.
Through the autumn of 1863 victory seemed to be
coming our way, but with hesitant feet. Chickamauga
dulled our hopes, but Missionary Ridge and Chatta
nooga gave us a happy Thanksgiving. The appointment
of Grant to the chief command in the next spring, and
the resolute movement of the Army of the Potomac
southward, brought us all new hope. But the battles of
the Wilderness and Spottsylvania tried our faith, and
the disastrous repulse of Cold Harbor sent our hopes
down to zero. There was nothing between us and despair
but the invincible determination of a man who did not
know how to be beaten.

THE END OF THE WAR 137
It was four or five days after Cold Harbor that I
received a letter, scrawled on the leaf of a blank-book,
from my half-brother, who was a private in the Eighth
New York Heavy Artillery, telling me that my only
brother, who was a lieutenant in the same regiment, was
missing, after that fatal repulse; he had fallen at the
moment when his regiment retreated, and had been left
upon the field. Securing an appointment for service in
the Christian Commission, I started immediately for the
front. The scenes of that journey are fresh in my memory.
From Baltimore I took passage on the transport for
Fortress Monroe, finding on my arrival that Grant was
moving his army to the south side of the James River.
Transports laden with troops were coming down the
Bay from the York River, and ascending the James ; we
heard that the bulk of the army was moving across the
Peninsula between the two rivers, and would cross
the James at Harrison's Landing. There was a delay of
a day or more at Fortress Monroe, which I utilized in
visiting Norfolk, and in passing the scene of the fight
between the Monitor and the Merrimac. A flag marked
the watery grave of the rebel ram.
It was on a hot morning, late in June, that we steamed
away up the James, past the wrecks of the old wooden
frigates that the Merrimac had destroyed, past Newport
News and Jamestown Island. The Confederates had
been amusing themselves by firing upon transports at
various places along the south bank, which lent an
element of expectancy to the rather dull journey. One
surprise was the entire lack of cities and villages for a

138 RECOLLECTIONS
hundred miles of this navigable stream. The banks of
the Hudson and the Connecticut, with which I was
familiar, were lined with towns ; where were the people ?
An hour before sunset we found ourselves in the
midst of stirring scenes. The river was full of craft of
every size and shape lying at anchor ; beyond this flotilla
was a pontoon bridge over which troops were pouring
south in ceaseless procession. We disembarked and
climbed the north bank; from a bluff overlooking the
river, and commanding the plateau which stretched
away to the west and north, a spectacle was visible
which one might travel far to see. The supply trains,
the ambulances, and the artillery were parked there
upon that plain, whitening the summer fields as far as
the eye could reach ; the lines of the soldiery came wind
ing across the plain, and went filing down to the river-
crossing. The men had been marching for days ; they
were grimy with dust and perspiration; their clothing
had evidently been reduced to the minimum ; yet they
were apparently in good heart. I stood for more than an
hour and watched them marching by, exchanging greet
ings with them, and almost all of them had a laugh or a
jolly comment on things visible or audible. A ponderous
old negro cook stood simmering over his evening fire,
just south of the line; every man's head was turned
toward him, and every variety of good-natured chaff
was shouted at him. There was little to choose between
officers and men so far as toilet was concerned, all were
about equally disreputable ; but the men were in good
health, and, although they had just come from Cold
Harbor, they were full of good cheer. I

THE END OF THE WAR 139
After sunset we boarded a transport above the pon
toon bridge on which a portion of the Sixth Corps was
going up to Bermuda Hundred, and late that night
were landed there, finding shelter in the hospital tent
at Butler's headquarters. Here, and at City Point, on
the other side of the Appomattox, I found my work for
the next few weeks. The army was investing Peters
burg, for the last long struggle of the war. Two or three
corps had crossed the river; Grant himself had not
yet arrived. His headquarters were soon established
at City Point, and before his arrival I helped to pitch
the first tents of the post hospital on the Appomattox,
which, before I came away, had grown to be a city of
eight or ten thousand sick and wounded men.
Immediately on my arrival I sought out my brother's
regiment. At my first visit to the front I found it in
the battle-line a mile or two from Petersburg. An aide
at Hancock's headquarters showed me the field across
which the trenches ran in which the regiment lay, but
admonished me that no one could safely cross that field.
Accordingly I betook myself to the field hospital into
which wounded men were constantly being brought on
stretchers and in ambulances. It was a farmhouse, with
ample grounds and outhouses ; in the shade and under
the shelters two or three hundred wounded men were
lying. It was my first experience of this kind of service.
I had always supposed myself to be an exceedingly
squeamish person, liable to be overcome by sights of
blood and suffering, but, for some reason, the gruesome
sights which here assailed my sense did not disturb me.
There was work to do in caring for the needs of these suf-

140 RECOLLECTIONS
fering men; a cup of cold water was a welcome gift
to many of them, and the cloths that had been laid
upon their wounds needed wetting. I kept myself busy
till near sundown caring for these sufferers, and then
hurried through the woods to the headquarters of the
Eighteenth Corps, where my blankets were, to find that
that corps had been ordered to cross the Appomattox.
It was a night's march of a dozen miles, and by the time
we reached the end of it, I was ready to he down by
the roadside with no covering. For the next six hours
I am sure that the heaviest cannonade would not have
wakened me.
A day or two after this, a chaplain from my brother's
division brought me word that the regiment was in an
accessible place, and I hastened to learn what I could
of the fate of the missing one. It was little that any one
could tell me, but enough to make it probable that I
should never see him again. The colonel of his regiment,
Peter A. Porter, of Niagara, a man of large influence in
New York, had fallen in the same charge. The regiment
had gone into the Cold Harbor fight, eighteen hundred
strong ; the adjutant showed me his roster that morning,
and there were less than six hundred names. Lieutenant-
Colonel Bates was in command ; I sat down and talked
with him for a little while that Sunday morning about
the experiences of the last few days. Within a week he
was brought into one of my wards at City Point, mor
tally wounded. I cared for him until the end.
Those few weeks with the army were a rather impor
tant part of my educational opportunity. I learned
rseveral things which are not taught in the theological

THE END OF THE WAR 141
seminary; the close contact with men, under circum
stances when pretense and insincerity were out of the
question, was very illuminating. The men were exceed
ingly grateful for all that was done for them. The Sani
tary Commission and the Christian Commission sought
to render them a kind of service which the regular hos
pital workers could not always command. Under the
advice of the physicians we prepared for the sick men
various delicacies, we provided them with certain com
forts which were not in the hospital supplies, and we
endeavored to befriend them in many personal ways.
We wrote letters home for them, we distributed to them
papers and reading-matter, we sometimes read to them,
we encouraged them to call on us for any help we might
render. Sick men are proverbially selfish and exacting,
but these men were not. "Serve that boy first, chap
lain; he needs it more than I do." That was the rule.
Men thought of the comfort and welfare of their com
rades more than they thought of their own. It could not
have been always so ; there must have been selfishness
and meanness among them ; all I can say is that in all
my work among them, I encountered almost none of it.
The memorandum-book which I carried in this hos
pital work contains many other items suggesting the
kind of service needed. Joyce, in Ward 3, wants a pair
of crutches, and Gysi, in 17, a pair of drawers, and
O'Neill, in 18, a shirt ; Anthony, in 8, craves mustard
for his salt junk, and Ward, in 1, hankers for some cheese
and a Testament ; and Elmer, in 3, wants a comb, and
Underwood, in 6, a pencil. All such supplies are in our
store tent, and it is a great pleasure to provide them. A

142 RECOLLECTIONS
Confederate soldier, in one of my tents, who cannot
write, permits me to be his amanuensis. He wishes me
to tell his wife that he is wounded in the left leg below
the knee, and that the doctors hope to save it ; in his first
letter he requires me to say that he is treated "as well
as he could expect to be." That is rather diplomatic.
But before I write again he is ready to make it much
less equivocal. The kindness with which he is sur
rounded is, evidently, a great surprise to him. We do a
banking business, in a modest way; I find that I have
charged myself with two hundred dollars which I have
received from his chaplain, for Alexander Mclvor, who
has gone to Washington, and which I am to deliver to
him there, on my return ; and beneath it a receipt for the
amount from a Christian Commission man in Washing
ton, who undertakes to pass it over to Mclvor. Confi
dence is not lacking.
One day, going hurriedly into the tent of one of the
nurses, I met her coming out with a short man in a
blue blouse and a slouch hat. Paying no attention to
her guest, I did my errand, when she confounded me
by saying, "Do you know General Grant?" I came to
attention very promptly, and invited the general to go
with me to the headquarters of the Christian Commis
sion. We gave him a comfortable seat, and treated him
to lemonade, and tried to learn from him something
about the result of the hard fighting which had been
going on for the preceding thirty-six hours. We learned
very little. We had suffered some heavy losses, he
said, — which was not news to us ; but we had gained
some decided advantages in position. But the general

THE END OF THE WAR 143
was more interested in the weather than in the details
of military movements; he was evidently a man who
could be silent in several languages.
Another day, going down to the landing, I saw quite
a cavalcade coming out of Grant's headquarters. Paus
ing to let them pass, I saw that General Grant was
accompanied by President Lincoln, mounted on a tall
steed, and his little son Tad on a pony ; Colonel Hor
ace Porter was also of this party, and there were sev
eral staff officers. They were just starting for the front,
seven or eight miles away. Lincoln was wearing a tall
silk hat, and he was not a conspicuously graceful rider.
It was Lincoln's only visit to the army before Peters
burg. I was not at the front when he arrived, but Mr.
Rhodes thus describes it: —
The President on horseback, wearing a high silk hat,
frock coat, and black trousers, rode with Grant along the
line. A civilian, mounted, was always an odd sight amid
the crowd of uniformed and epauletted officers; and
Lincoln, although a good horseman, was ever awkward,
and now, covered with- dust, presented the appearance of
a country farmer riding into town, wearing his Sunday
clothes. But the character of the man disarmed the keen
sense of the ridiculous of the American soldiers, and as the
word was passed along that "Uncle Abe is with us," he
was greeted with cheers and shouts that came from the
heart. He visited a division of colored soldiers who had
won distinction by their bravery in Smith's assault on the
works at Petersburg. They flocked around the liberator
of their race, kissing his hands, touching his clothes for
the virtue they conceived to be in them, cheering, laugh
ing, singing hymns of praise, shouting, " God bless Massa

144 RECOLLECTIONS
Lincoln!" " De Lord save Fader Abraham ! " "De day
of jubilee am come, shuah." His head was bare, his eyes
were full of tears, his voice broke with emotion.1
The weather was sultry and dry, the water-supply
was inadequate, and before the end of June it became
evident that I should soon be an inmate of the hospital,
if I did not hasten homeward. Very reluctantly I laid
down that labor. My note-book bears witness to that
regret, on the ground that " There is so much to do
and so few who are willing to work, or who can work,
effectively, for the temporal welfare of the soldiers."
The underscoring of "temporal" would seem to have
some significance, though I do not now distinctly recall
the circumstances which justified it.
That homeward journey was a troubled dream. The
malaria was burning in my veins, and the weariness
and suffering of the passage by the fetid transports and
the crowded railway cars are a horrible memory. For a
day or two after I reached home I hoped to be able to
resume my work, but the poison was in my blood, and a
sullen fight of two months with a slow fever was ahead
of me. The vital breath of the Berkshire Hills at length
brought me back to life.
The last winter of the war dragged gloomily by;
Sherman's army was raiding the South; Thomas and
Schofield were striking deadly blows against the Con
federacy in its western strongholds, and the Army of
the Potomac was besieging Petersburg and waiting for
the hour to strike when the long agony should be at
an end. That it must come soon seemed probable ; the
1 History of the United States, iv, 492.

THE END OF THE WAR 145
resources of the South were well-nigh exhausted, and
some of the Confederate leaders were beginning to talk of
the terms of peace. But we had waited long, and hope
was half-dead in our hearts. For four bitter, wasting,
terrible years we had been carrying this load, and pre
dictions of success were now always discounted by our
fears. When, therefore, in the beginning of April, we heard
that the Army of the Potomac had moved south and
west with the purpose of surrounding and capturing
Lee's army, there was but a dull popular response to
tidings which would once have been exciting. And
when we learned that Sheridan, at Five Forks, had cut
the enemy's army in two, and that Petersburg was
taken, that was good news; but we had heard good
news before, and we dared not permit ourselves to be
elated. And when the dispatches made it clear that Lee
was flying away toward the mountains, and that our
own left wing was pushing ahead to circumvent him,
we only wondered what mischance it would be that
would dash these expectations. For a day or two the
news was scanty and confused ; but at last that bright
Monday morning came which turned the long winter of
our discontent to glorious summer.
I was working in my garden, and, looking up, I
saw my next neighbor, who was a Wall Street broker,
come striding down the street, his coat-tails flying. He
had been down to the city, and at this early hour was
returning, evidently in a very exalted mood. He rushed
into his house without stopping to speak to me, and
immediately came out with his flag, which he hoisted to

146 RECOLLECTIONS
the top of his flagstaff; then he ran back into the house
and came out again with his revolver, which he began
firing into the air. "What's the matter, MacArthur?" I
shouted. "Lee has surrendered!" was all he had time
to say. He went on with his shooting. At last he com
posed himself sufficiently to tell me that there was no
business down town; that the Street had gone wild;
that the people were frantic with joy. Mr. Rhodes's
description revives the scene, which my neighbor that
morning pictured to me with gleaming eyes and hilarious
tones and profuse gesticulation : —
Business was suspended and the courts adjourned.
Cannons fired, bells rang, flags floated, houses and shops
were gay with the red, white, and blue. There were
illuminations and bonfires. The streets of the cities and
towns were filled with men who shook hands warmly,
embraced each other, shouted, laughed, and cheered, and
were indeed beside themselves in their great joy. There
were pledges in generous wines and much common-
drinking in bar-rooms and liquor shops. There were fan
tastic processions, grotesque performances, and some
tomfoolery. Grave and old gentlemen forgot their age
and played the pranks of schoolboys. But always above
these foolish and bibulous excesses sounded the patriotic
and religious note of the jubilee. "Praise God from
whom all blessings flow " were the words most frequently
sung in the street, the Board of Trade, and on the Stock
Exchange. One writer records that in the bar-room of
Willard's Hotel, Washington, when the news arrived,
an elderly gentleman sprang upon the bar and led the
crowd in singing with unwonted fervor the well-known
doxology. "Twenty thousand men in the busiest haunts

THE END OF THE WAR 147
of trade in one of the most thronged cities of the world,"
Motley wrote, " uncovered their heads spontaneously and
sang the psalm of thanksgiving, ' Praise God.' " x
Nor was there, in that outburst of thanksgiving, much
of the exultation of the victor over the vanquished.
The first impulse of the people, as I recall the impressions
of the hour, seemed to be one of tenderness toward a
fallen foe. I have found a soiled and faded sermon,
which was preached on the Sunday after Lee's surrender.
There has been [says this old witness] in the hearts
of the people who have been rejoicing, a sincere pity for
the vanquished. With our joy for the victory there has
been mingled a real sorrow for the army and the people
of the South, — a sorrow not only because they are called
upon to suffer so terribly, but that they are made to pass
through such humiliation. If we could have saved their
lives and their property and their pride and at the same
time have saved the nation, I do not know who would not
have chosen it. There is nothing hke hatred or vengeance
in the hearts of the people of the North toward the people
of the South. There has only been a stern determination
that they should not rend the nation asunder. ... I
most firmly believe that by a hearty and considerate kind
ness to the southern people we can restore the old rela
tions of amity; nay, that we can establish new relations
of friendship which shall be far closer and more enduring
than the old ones were. But to do this will require the
utmost gentleness and patience on our part. There must
be no more angry disputings, no more ridicule, no more
crimination and recrimination. Bygones must be by
gones. Shame upon the northern man who would fling in
1 History of the United States, v, 131.

148 RECOLLECTIONS
the face of his southern brother a single taunt! Shame
upon the northern newspaper that speaks of the southern
people in any other terms than those of considerate kind
ness! Shame upon the Federal officer, whether civil or
military, who will not do all in his power to lighten the
load of humiliation under which the people of the South
must come back into the Union! There is room now for
the exercise of a true chivalry, — opportunity to show
our southern friends that we know how tender a feeling
is wounded pride, and how to treat it with the gentleness
and the respect that are the only medicine adequate to its
cure. Such words as these reflected the temper in which
many of the people of the North were disposed to bring
to a close the bitter and bloody struggle. That Lincoln's
great heart was full of this irenic purpose was soon mani
fest. What he said at his last Cabinet meeting was not
known to the people till long afterward, but it was indi
cated in all his public utterances : "I hope there will be
no persecution, no bloody work, after this war is over.
No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or
killing these men, even the worst of them. Frighten
them out of the country, open the gates, let down the
bars, scare them off. Enough lives have been sacrificed.
We must extinguish our resentments if we expect har
mony and union." *
None but those who bore the heavy burdens and the
tormenting anxieties of those four years of war can
understand the sense of relief that filled the hearts of
the people in those April days. Every man seemed to be
1 Rhodes, History of the United States, v, 137.

THE END OF THE WAR 149
drawing a deeper breath, and speaking in a calmer and
more confident tone. It was over and gone — the hor
rible nightmare ; our hearts were so buoyant that it did
not seem as if we had ever known trouble. We read of
the unfurling of the flag over the ruins of Fort Sumter
just four years from the day on which it was lowered,
with a deep and solemn gladness ; there was no shouting
or hilarity. The heart of the nation was filled with the
abundance of peace.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday —
days fuller of well-being than some of us had ever
known. Saturday morning I went out to my doorstep
and picked up my morning "Tribune." It was black
with mourning lines !
Merciful God ! What a cry it was that went to heaven
that morning ! The disaster was appalling, but the grief
was heart-breaking. There are many living yet who
will not deny that they have never known a more
poignant sorrow. Our President was more to us than
the head of the government. He was the heart of it, too.
Through all these years of agony and suspense he had
been winding himself into the affection of every loyal
man and woman, until those of us who had never spoken
with him were conscious of a sacred sense of friendship
for him. He had stood, more and more firmly, for all the
things we cared for most. He had spoken, in darkest
days, our deepest wishes, our dearest hopes. He had led
us, safely and triumphantly, through the nation's sorest
testing-time, and had restored to us our country, united
and free. Not often, in history, has a bond so vital,
so tender, so finely human, bound together ruler and

150 RECOLLECTIONS
people. And when was any nation ever so suddenly
plunged from such a height of rejoicing into such a
depth of sorrow?
That month of April seems, as I recall it, a month
of years. The gladness and grief of a generation were
crowded into its momentous days.
Most saddening of all was the sudden turn of the
popular feeling from kindness to vengeance. At once
there was a disposition to hold "the South" — that was
the popular phrase — responsible for Lincoln's assas
sination. It was the impulse of the unthinking crowd;
but alas! in such moments it is the unthinking crowd
which speaks quickest and loudest. If, at the moment,
we could have had a leader of clear moral sense and real
magnanimity, — a man like Lincoln, — who could have
spoken the sane and convincing word, how much misery
and disaster might have been averted ! But the leader
ship fell upon a man utterly incapable of discerning the
great opportunity, who could do no better than catch
from the mouths of the mob their cries of wrath and
retaliation, and repeat them from the seat of authority;
who vociferated that the day of mercy for rebels was
now past, and that the voice of justice must be heard ;
that it was time now to say that treason was a crime,
and that traitors must be punished and impoverished,
and who, before Lincoln was buried, had issued a pro
clamation accusing the President of the Confederacy
and other officers high in that government of having
"incited and encouraged" the assassination. With
such a man at the head of the nation there was little
to stem the tide of unreasoning fury which swept over

THE END OF THE WAR 151
the land. In every city and town crowded assemblies
listened to the voices of orators who clamored for ven
geance upon "the South" for the murder of Lincoln.
That was what the people wanted to hear ; the fiercest
denunciations and the most sweeping demands for a
vindictive policy evoked the loudest applause. If there
had been any evidence that this act of a desperado had
been the result of a plot in which the southern leaders
were implicated, such an outburst would have been
justifiable; but no such evidence appeared, and the
determination to hold "the South," and especially the
southern leaders, responsible for this crime was one of
the saddest illustrations of popular injustice that his
tory records. Even level-headed men like Grant were
swept away by this torrent of unreasoning anger, and he
issued an order for the imprisonment of leading Con
federate officers of state at Richmond, and for the
arrest of "all paroled officers unless they take the oath
of allegiance." "Extreme rigor," he said, "will have to
be observed whilst assassination remains the order of the
day with the rebels." But there was no proof, none
that rational men in sober mind could have deemed
worthy of a moment's consideration, that assassination
had been made the order of the day by the rebels. And
it seems one of the monumental wonders that strong
men in the high places did not see the truth and speak
to the raging populace the word of calmness and wis
dom. Where were Sumner and Chase and Fessenden
and Trumbull? Could they not see that just and mag
nanimous words, at this hour, were worth more to the
nation than fleets or armies? Some of these men to

152 RECOLLECTIONS
whom we had a right to look for leadership were egging
on Johnson, in his violent speeches, and intimating that
the removal of Lincoln was providential, since a man
was in his place from whom traitors need expect no
mercy !
On Wednesday, the 19th of April, at the hour of the
simple funeral in Washington, religious services were
held in most of the towns and cities of the North. In
most of these, as I remember, the demand for a rigorous
policy in dealing with treason made itself heard. There
were a few who did not feel that this was the word to
speak at Lincoln's bier. My own little church in Mor
risania was crowded that day, and I knew that most
of those to whom I was speaking were listening for a
very different message when I said to them : —
This assassination seems to have awakened in the
breasts of all the people a disposition to use stern and
severe measures to the end that such an act may not be
repeated. My belief is that stern and severe measures,
instead of preventing the repetition of such acts, will have
a tendency to multiply them. But it is said that this
assassination is itself an illustration of the futility of
clemency. " President Lincoln showed a disposition to be
forgiving to the rebels, and they have murdered him.
Does not this prove that his policy will not work?" I
answer, no. It proves nothing of the kind. This deed of a
knot of desperadoes in Maryland and Washington cannot
be fairly taken as an index of the feeling of the southern
masses or even of the southern leaders at the present time.
Do we forget that Mr. Lincoln went to Richmond, once,
twice, and came home safely? No attempt was made to
harm him there. No disrespect was shown him. Would

THE END OF THE WAR 153
it not be wise, before preaching a crusade against the
southern people, to wait and hear what they have to say
upon this matter? Some voices from the South have
reached us already. General Ewell, on his way to Fort
Warren, heard the news and burst into tears, declaring
that it was the worst thing that could happen to the
South. The word from Richmond is that the tidings
caused universal sorrow. I do not learn that a single word
has been heard from the South justifying or applauding.
The events of the last few days have tended to exas
perate and inflame the public mind and to lead men to
perpetrate vengeance, calling it by the more euphonious
name of justice. The instinctive indignation that rises
in men's hearts upon the perpetration of such a deed is
deepened and strengthened continually by their contact
in the excited crowds of cities, and it needs not to be
nursed and stimulated. It is easy enough at such times
to gain applause by falling in with the popular current.
A man has only to shout, "Hang them! crush theml
exterminate them!" and the ceiling will resound with
cries of approval ; but that applause is not worth having.
Rather should the reason, the calm, unprejudiced reason,
be appealed to; rather should these instinctive feelings
be rigidly challenged and held in check.
Of the few hundreds who listened, a score may have
been convinced ; but a voice like this affected the raging
of the populace about as much as the chirping of the
swallows on the telegraph pole affects the motion of the
Twentieth Century Limited.
Let us confess that it takes a stalwart optimism to
stand up against such a spectacle as was presented to
the eyes of the world in this emotional cyclone which

• 154 RECOLLECTIONS
swept a whole nation out of the ways of sanity, and
practically destroyed the finer growths of tolerance and
magnanimity on which the successful reconstruction of
our national government so largely depended. To me,
at least, there came, in those bewildering days, a sense
of the possibilities of popular error and madness from
which I have never been able wholly to free myself.
For nothing is clearer than that the passions engendered
by that tragedy have left their blight on the whole sub
sequent history of this nation. The bitter outbreak of
anti-southern sentiment at the North blasted all pos
sibilities of prompt reconciliation ; it left the southern
people angry and sullen ; above all, it resulted in that
complete ostracism of the southern men of character
and influence which was the one ghastly and fatal blun
der of the reconstruction policy. Nothing short of a
wholesale execution of the southern leaders would sat
isfy the sentiment of the multitude in those fierce days.
Out of that hot demand came forth the ugly progeny of
measures by which it was attempted to revitalize the
southern body politic by eliminating its brains. To this
dire result President Johnson abundantly contributed,
— first by his intemperate utterances respecting the
rebel leaders ; then by his complete volte-face, within a
month, in the interest of the class which he had been
denouncing. But it must be confessed that, with all this
muddling at the White House, there was also a plentiful
lack of sane and firm leadership at the other end of the
avenue. "That nothing walks with aimless feet," in the great
movements of divine Providence, is my deepest faith ;

THE END OF THE WAR 155
and I am sure that in some way the death of Lincoln
must be working, through long lines of hidden causes,
for the ultimate good of mankind; but I know of no
great historical event which it is so hard for me to
reconcile with the doctrine of a wise and good Provi
dence. So far as I am able yet to see, the effect of it was
wholly calamitous. It removed from the head of the
nation, at the hour when he was most needed, the man
who was supremely qualified for its leadership, and it
left in his place a man who by temperament and trainr
ing was hopelessly disqualified for such a task. At the
moment when the one thing needful was the soothing
of vindictive tempers and the awakening of the spirit of
forbearance and conciliation, it fanned the smouldering
embers of resentment and distrust into a conflagration.
In the day when the supreme need was such a hand
ling of the business of emancipation as should enlist the
interests of the southern people in their former slaves,
and bind the two races together in friendship, the whole
pohcy seemed to be directed toward the fomenting of
antipathies between the races, and the employment
of the blacks for the humiliation of the whites.
Social philosophers find the source of the social
reforms which have characterized recent decades in a
"great fund of altruistic feeling," which Christianity
has been silently accumulating in the hearts of the
people. But it is possible, by the indulgence of popular
passion, to propagate and accumulate a great fund of
hate and suspicion, which shall undermine the founda
tions of society and make the work of social reconstruc
tion well-nigh impossible. Bitter indeed have been the

156 RECOLLECTIONS
fruits of that madness which was engendered in the
popular mind during the last days of the war. For
though we have the greatest reason for thankfulness
that the sober second thought withheld the people of
the North from those extremities of vengeance which,
in those days, they were threatening, so that, in fact, not
a single judicial victim was found needful to assuage the
popular wrath, yet the seeds of distrust and ill-will were
widely and deeply sown, and through the entire period
of reconstruction the nation was gathering the harvest.
For myself, I must confess that if I had ever cherished
any fond belief in the infallibility of the populace, that
illusion was forever dispelled by the spectacle of those
days. It became only too apparent that a whole people,
swept by a flood of excitement, may go hopelessly
wrong. Burke says that it is difficult to draw up an
indictment against a whole nation. Difficult it may be,
but it is sometimes necessary. That entire populations
are subject to epidemics of unreason is historically true.
And the only hope for this democracy is in the rise of a
class of leaders who have the courage to resist the mob,
and to speak the truth in the days when the truth is the
last thing the people want to hear.
The danger in a democracy is on the side of the emo
tions. So long as the people can be encouraged to
think, to use their reason, to govern their action by such
intelligence and judgment as they are conscious of pos
sessing, we are tolerably safe. Issues which are deter
mined by free and fair discussion are generally well
determined. But when passion is substituted for reason,
and political action is guided mainly by prejudices and

THE END OF THE WAR 157
impulses and antipathies and resentments, the results
are apt to be calamitous. If there is one thing that this
nation has need to guard against, it is the prevalence
of hysteria in politics. Such spectacles as those which
we are witnessing in the great national conventions are
not reassuring. The attempt to determine the choice
of leaders and the destinies of the nation by such fran
tic demonstrations is essentially immoral. We have no
right to submit the great interests of the state to the
arbitrament of an unbridled emotionalism. Our busi
ness is "to make reason and the will of God prevail" in
politics, and not to invoke and organize pandemonium
in the assemblies which are called to settle the great
affairs of the nation.

CHAPTER X
AMONG THE HILLS
Early had he learned
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die;
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
All things, responsive to the working, there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving; infinite;
There littleness was not; the least of things
Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects, nor did he believe, — he saw.
William Wordsworth.
In the summer of 1865 many of the colleges gave to
their Commencement exercises a commemorative char
acter, and the Williams Society of Alumni arranged for
an address and a poem celebrating the return of peace.
For the latter service the choice fell upon me, and I
had the honor of delivering, in the old church at Wil
liamstown, on the day before Commencement, a poem
entitled "After the War," which sought to rehearse, in
descriptive lines, the march of events, and to reproduce
in lyrical measures some of the more salient incidents
of the great struggle. The verses were received with
more favor than they deserved ; but the most important
consequence to myself was the presence in the audience
of certain members of the Congregational church in the
neighboring town of North Adams, by whose solicita
tion I was induced to spend the next Sunday with that

AMONG THE HILLS 159
church. Out of that acquaintance came, the next Janu
ary, an invitation to its pastorate ; and in the following
March we bade farewell to our old home in Morrisania,
and turned our faces toward the Berkshire Hills.
North Adams in 1866 was a smart factory village of
eight or nine thousand people, situated at the junction
of the two branches of the Hoosac River. South Adams,
five miles distant, was perhaps half as large. Both ,these
villages were included in the town of Adams, which
boasted of being the largest "town" in Massachusetts.
Within the territory of the town of Adams, which occu
pied the narrow valley between the Hoosac Mountain
on the east and the Greylock group on the west, there
must have been a population of perhaps fourteen thou
sand people, who were still governing themselves, after
the manner of the primitive New England democracies,
the business of the town being transacted in town-
meetings, at which all legal voters were entitled to be
present. The town-meetings were held sometimes in the
North village and sometimes in the South ; occasionally
in a large schoolhouse midway between the two. They
were called by a warrant issued by the "selectmen" of
the town, in which the business to be transacted was
definitely set forth in a number of "articles." These
popular assemblies regulated by direct vote all the
important public affairs of this large community: the
bridges, the roads, the public buildings, the schools,
the care of the poor, and all such matters were under
their supervision; they appropriated the money which
the selectmen might use in each of these departments.
Like the Swiss hndsgemeinde, the Adams town-meeting

160 RECOLLECTIONS
exhibited a free people in immediate control of their
common interests. It was government of the people
by the people, and, so far as I was able to discover, it
was good government. There was no suspicion of job
bery or corruption ; for although many of the details of
administration had to be left to the discretion of the
selectmen, they were too closely watched to leave room
for any malversation. Not all the voters attended the
town-meetings, but the numbers were often sufficient
to crowd the largest hall in North Adams, and the
discussions were keen and business-like. Anything
savoring of what is commonly called oratory was at
a discount; the assembly would tolerate no spread-
eagleism ; speeches must be short and to the point.
The time came when the affairs of this densely popu
lated community became too complex to be regulated by
the people in mass meeting, and when the pure demo
cracy had to give place to a city charter with representa
tive government, but during all my residence in North
Adams the primitive form of local government prevailed,
and I have always been grateful for the good fortune
which permitted me to be for five years an interested
participant in the business of an old-fashioned New
England town.
North Adams was, indeed, a good sample of a New
England democracy. All its traditions were of an un
compromising radicalism. If there were aristocratic
elements in the population of many New England towns,
Adams boasted none of these things. It was Sam Adams,
and not John, whose name she had borrowed when her
organization was set up. There were no old families who

AMONG THE HILLS 161
claimed homage on the score of birth or breeding. There
were a few men to whom the war had brought large and
rapid gains: the cotton and the woolen mills and the
print works were in the high tide of prosperity, and
several of these wealthy manufacturers were building
for themselves fine houses; but nothing had yet occurred
to disturb the sense of equality which characterized
all social relations. These prosperous manufacturers
were not disposed to put on airs, nor were their neigh
bors overmuch inclined to defer to them; they were
addressed by their first names as they had always been;
if one of them assumed too much in town-meeting, he
was as likely to be called down as any other man.
Indeed, there was nothing resembling a social strati
fication in the society of North Adams at that day. I
have attended an evening party in one of those new fine
houses at which were present not only capitalists and
merchants and professional people, but working me
chanics and clerks and operatives in the mill of which
the host was the owner. That class consciousness which
some of our industrial leaders are so eager to cultivate
would have been wholly inconceivable to the people of
this New England town forty years ago.
I need hardly say that this change from Morrisania to
North Adams was a most grateful experience. The con
ditions of life and work were far more stimulating in the
new field. In the suburb of a great city there is so little
social contact that there can be no common life ; neigh
bors do not know one another ; the cultivation of local
interests and enthusiasms is almost impossible. Society
is well-nigh inorganic. It is an aggregation of social

162 RECOLLECTIONS
atoms rather than a vital unity. In Morrisania I always
found that any effort of mine to influence the commu
nity reached no farther than the few persons to whom my
words were addressed ; in North Adams I soon discov
ered that I was speaking to the whole community; that
the neighbors were taking up and repeating and discuss
ing anything which appealed to them. It might have
seemed that in removing from a suburb of the metropo
lis to a New England town of ten thousand inhabitants
I had narrowed my field of influence ; on the contrary,
it appeared to me that I had vastly extended it.
In truth, there is more or less of illusion in the sup
posed commanding influence of the metropolitan pul
pit. The churches which' exist in the great centres of
population find it extremely hard to maintain among
their members any vital social relations; attachment
to the minister is the only tie that holds most of them
to the church ; and it is extremely difficult to relate the
church, in any effective way, to the community round
about it. A church in a small city is likely to be far
more closely connected with the life of its own commu
nity, and thus to affect more directly and powerfully the
life of the state and the nation. This is not saying that
there is not need of churches in the great cities, nor
denying that they have a great work to do ; it is simply
pointing out that in the performance of the work they
are greatly handicapped by the social conditions; and
that the minister who supposes that his influence is sure
to be extended by removal to a bigger city does not
quite comprehend the situation.
The mountains and the vales of northern Berkshire

AMONG THE HILLS 163
came back into my life with great gifts of strength and
peace. They had long been dear to me, and there was
reassurance in their unchanging message. It was surely
good for me to get away from the rush and roar of the
metropolis and feed my soul for a little space upon the
strength of these steadfast hills.
North Adams, in those days, was a wide-awake com
munity, much less set in its ways than the average
New England town, hospitable to fresh thinking, not
afraid of the truth even if it was new truth. There was
a Scotch deacon against whom I had been warned ; he
would be a permanent obstruction, they told me. In
stead of that, he was my loyalest supporter from the
beginning. "The young man has his ideas," he said.
" He wants to lead. We want a leader. Let us follow
him." That was the spirit in which the church took
up the work. No young preacher could have asked for
anything better. There were no financial problems;
the people were sympathetic and enthusiastic; never
before had the environment been so stimulating. There
was time for reading, and the larger problems of theo
logy began to lay hold on my thought. Fortunately or
unfortunately, I had not been charged with the mainte
nance of any theological system, and the work of inves
tigation must be done largely along independent lines ;
my theology had to be hammered out on the anvil for
daily use in the pulpit. The pragmatic test was the only
one that could be applied to it: "Will it work?"
An article or two contributed to the New York "In
dependent," during these early years in North Adams,
brought me cordial words of recognition from editors

164 RECOLLECTIONS
and readers, and opened to me the possibility of service
with my pen, — a possibility long coveted, but hitherto
beyond my reach. From that time until the present my
connection with periodical literature has been close and
constant, and a large part of the work of my ministry
has been done through the columns of the newspaper or
the pages of the magazine. To those who are disposed
to put the work of the press into a rank inferior to that
of the oral ministry, it is sufficient to reply that the
ministry of the greater apostles, Matthew and John and
Paul, seems to have been mainly wrought with the
pen. We can hardly put the work of St. Paul, which
we possess, into a lower class than that of a traveling
evangelist or a local pastor.
One of the first of the "Independent" articles was
entitled "Are Dr. Bushnell's Views Heretical?" A
young Congregational minister in Illinois had been
refused ordination by an Ecclesiastical Council, because
he had indicated his sympathy with the teachings of
Dr. Bushnell on the Atonement. My own study of the
subject had abundantly convinced me that in his main
contention Dr. Bushnell was right ; that there could be
no such thing as a judicial transfer of blame or penalty
from a guilty to an innocent person; that the entire
transaction was within the ethical rather than the fo
rensic realm. I knew that for me there could never be
any other doctrine to preach than that which I had
learned from this great teacher; and if men were to
be denied the privilege of preaching it in the Congre
gational ministry, the sooner that fact was known the
better it would be for me. Accordingly I set forth, as

AMONG THE HILLS 165
clearly as I could in a brief article, the substance of Dr.
Bushnell's teaching, and expressly committed myself
to it, declaring that if this was heresy I desired to be
counted among the heretics, and offering the right hand
of fellowship to the young man who had been rejected
for teaching it.
I had never known Dr. Bushnell, but this article
brought me a letter from him so cordial and grateful
that it touched me deeply. He was living in Hartford,
no longer in active service, with broken health; and
although, in his disabled condition, no open warfare was
made upon him, and he was still in good ecclesiastical
standing in the Congregational body, yet "Bushnell-
ism" was under the ban, and there were few Congrega
tional ministers who were willing to confess their accept
ance of it. So it was that this old hero, who had fought
and won the battle for {he moralization of theology^ was
not yet permitted to enjoy the fruits of his labors, in the
full and grateful recognition of his brethren; and that
this frank avowal of indebtedness to him, made by a
person wholly obscure and unknown to him, was suffi
cient to bring forth from him this expression of his
gratitude. It was evident that he needed, even then,
such comfort as my poor letter could give him. It was
good to know that a word from such a source had com
forted him, but it was tragical to think that he could
have needed it.
Thus began a friendship which, in its influence upon
my life, was one of the most stimulating that I have
known. Not many months after this, the question of
my own installation over the North Adams church was

1 166 RECOLLECTIONS
raised. On coming to North Adams I had stipulated
that there should be no formal settlement for the first
year; if, at the end of that time, both parties were
agreed to make it permanent, the installation might
take place. At the end of the year the church signified
its wish that I should remain, and a council was called.
At once I wrote to Dr. Bushnell, asking him to come and
preach the sermon. His health was infirm, but he occa
sionally preached, and I hoped that he might be willing
to perform that service for me. His reply was charac-
taristic. He thought it highly imprudent for me to take
upon myself the odium which might be incurred in asso
ciating myself with one whose standing was question
able; it might make trouble for me; it would put the
heresy-hunters on the scent ; it would be far wiser for me
to invite a safer man. My answer was that I wanted him
and nobody else, and that I was prepared to accept the
consequences. To this challenge his reply was prompt,
and he came and spent nearly a week with me, before
the installation.
Those were great days, driving over the Berkshire
Hills, lying in the shade, talking of things visible and
invisible, meditating upon the mysteries of the heavens
above and the earth beneath. Horace Bushnell was one
of the great talkers. There was something Carlylean in
his rugged rhetoric and the raciness of his metaphors ;
and his homely speech was lit up with poetic touches
which made it a delight to listen. He had a keen eye for
natural beauty, and the glories of those Berkshire Hills
filled him with rejoicing. He told me much about his
life in California, and about his search for the site of the

AMONG THE HILLS 167
university ; for it is to him that the Golden State owes
the ideal location of the State University at Berkeley.
It was the most natural thing in the world that he, an
invalid, seeking health among the mountains and foot
hills of that new commonwealth, should have taken up
and solved that vital question, convincing the Calif or-
nians of the wisdom of his choice, and thus rendering
to the state a gratuitous service of the highest value.
Similar to this was his work for his own city of Hart
ford, whose beautiful park, that bears his name, was
secured by his sagacity and persistence. While he was
sojourning with me, in North Adams, he came in, one
morning, from a walk which he had been taking before
breakfast, saying: "I've found the place for your park.
Now go to work and get it." It was the right location
beyond a doubt; and if I had possessed his power of
getting things done, I might have rendered a great ser
vice to that thriving Berkshire town.
Dr. Bushnell was, beyond a question, the greatest
theological genius of the American church in the nine
teenth century, but the facts which I have recited show
that he was something more than a theorizer ; his grasp
of reality was very firm, and he had a statesman's vision
of human needs and possibilities.
The council for the installation brought together the
ministers and delegates of the Congregational churches
of northern Berkshire, — among them President Hop
kins, from the Williams College church, and his stalwart
brother Albert, Dr. John Todd, of Pittsfield, and others.
It was naturally an occasion of some solicitude to me ;
what might happen to me in view of my explicit avowals

168 RECOLLECTIONS
of heretical doctrine, I could not tell. Of one thing I
felt pretty sure. The church was satisfied with my
work, and the council would hesitate to forbid the work
to go on. That proved to be the decisive consideration.
Dr. Todd, who was the moderator of the council, was
plainly unwilling that the council should explicitly tol
erate my heresies, but he would not risk the wrath of the
church by refusing me installation ; so he skillfully con
ducted the examination over ground on which there
was no chance of discussion, and, after about twenty
minutes, brought it to an abrupt conclusion. It was
a palpable evasion, but I was not responsible for it.
"I thought," said Dr. Todd to me after the examina
tion, "that you were a great heretic." "Perhaps I
am," I answered; "but you didn't bore in the right
place." Dr. Bushnell's sermon on the occasion is included in
his volume, " Sermons on Living Subjects," — "The Gos
pel of the Face" is the title. Delivered, as it was, in a
voice somewhat impaired by illness, and with httle of
physical vigor, it was yet a most impressive utterance.
One could see how perfectly his delivery had been
adapted to his written style; one could catch even in
those broken tones the ring of irresistible convictions.
"Is not that the Gospel?" some one asked Dr. Hopkins,
after the service. "Nothing else is the Gospel," was his
prompt reply.
One episode of the North Adams ministry has a whim
sical interest, as a revelation of the ascetic notions
then almost universally prevailing respecting popular
amusements. A Young Men's Christian Association had

AMONG THE HILLS 169
been organized, and in opening new rooms for the society,
the question arose whether amusements of any kind
should be admitted. The proposition was received with
some disfavor, and a conference of ministers and lead
ing laymen was called to advise the officers. All that
was proposed was that a small room be set apart in
which checkers, chess, and backgammon might be
played by those who did not care to read. These were
the only three games which were to be tolerated ; cards
were to be rigidly excluded ; billiards were not to be
allowed; but it was urged by some of the more daring
spirits that it would be safe to permit the young men to
play checkers and chess and backgammon. That view
of the case commended itself to me ; but I found myself,
at the Conference, in a small minority. All my brethren
in the ministry very positively disagreed with me; to
them it seemed highly dangerous to allow worldly amuse
ments of any kind to be practiced in a place for whose
management the churches were responsible. Most of
them, indeed, took the ground that amusement of any
kind was to be deprecated, as withdrawing the thought
from those serious concerns upon which it should be
fixed; that a truly converted man needed no diver
sions; that the joys of religion alone should satisfy the
soul. And I found myself subjected by my brethren in
the ministry to a sharp cross-examination respecting
my own views on various popular amusements, in the
course of which I expressed opinions that to some of
them appeared httle short of scandalous. The propo
sition to have an amusement room in the hall of the
Y. M. C. A. was incontinently voted down ; to no such

170 RECOLLECTIONS
dangerous innovation as that could these good people
be brought to consent. And the reports which went
abroad from that conference respecting what the Con
gregational minister had said in it were of a character
so inflammatory that I thought it best to set myself
right by a sermon on "Amusements; their Uses and
Abuses." The sermon was heard by a crowded audi
ence, and was afterwards printed. As I read it to-day,
it is difficult to believe that such an argument could
have been needed in defense of a rational use of diver
sion. When one visits the rooms of the Christian Asso
ciations to-day, in all the cities, and observes the extent
to which the play impulse is provided for, and the wide
range that is given to innocent and healthy recreations,
he is able to see that considerable change has taken
place in public opinion. It was only the next summer
after our controversy in North Adams that the same
question was brought before the International Conven
tion of Young Men's Christian Associations at Montreal ;
and there the proposition that amusements, carefully
guarded, be offered to the young men of the Associa
tions was blown out of the meeting by a whirlwind
of popular wrath. The men who had ventured to stand
for it were made to feel that they had deeply offended
against the piety of their brethren, and had forfeited
their right to leadership in the body. I have rarely wit
nessed an outbreak of intolerance more rank than that
which triumphed in this Montreal Convention. Yet it
was not many years before the policy so hotly disap
proved was universally adopted by the Christian Asso
ciations.

AMONG THE HILLS 171
One reason why the ascetic view of the amusement
question came to be discredited in North Adams may
have been found in the fact that the minister who
undertook the leadership of the crusade against amuse
ments, and who preached several violent sermons, in
which he maintained that all sport is sinful and that
true piety has no place in it for any other enjoyments
than those which are purely religious, was discovered a
few weeks afterward to have eloped with a young wo
man of his congregation, and to have feigned suicide by
drowning, in order to cover his flight to a distant state.
His arguments did not need this kind of confutation,
nevertheless there were, undoubtedly, those whose hold
upon the bad logic was shaken by the conduct of the
advocate. I have spoken of the fact that the labor question
had not made its appearance in North Adams, at the
time when I made my home there. Before my depar
ture it arrived, in a somewhat virulent form. In one of
the largest shoe-factories a disagreement about wages
resulted in a lock-out. The doors of the factory were
closed for several weeks, during which time repeated
attempts to fill the shop with workmen were foiled by
concerted movements of the men out of work, who met
the incoming strike-breakers at the railway station and
persuaded them to return. No violence was used, but
the picketing was effectual, and the employers were
unable to start their machinery. After an ominous
silence of a few weeks, word came that the superin
tendent of the factory was on his way from San Fran-

172 RECOLLECTIONS
cisco with a force of Chinamen large enough to man the
shop. The town was ablaze with excitement, and there
were dire threats. When the train arrived, the streets
¦ between the railway station and the factory were lined
with an excited crowd, but the police were out in force,
and no violence was attempted. All kinds of noises
and execrations assailed the ears of. the slantreyed
Mongolians as they marched to their destination, and
the poor creatures were terribly frightened, but they
escaped with no injuries. In fact, the curiosity of the
crowd was so acute that its brutality was held in check.
These pig-tailed, calico-frocked, wooden-shod invaders
made a. spectacle which nobody wanted to miss even
long enough to stoop for a brickbat. But all of us who
looked on were profoundly grateful that the entrance
had been effected without bloodshed.
A loft of the factory was fitted up with bunks for
the Chinamen, and their own cooks provided their food
within the walls, so that they had little occasion to be
out on the streets. Few if any of them knew anything
of the shoe-trade, and it became necessary to teach them
all, even the simplest processes; it was several months
before the output of the factory approximated to what
it had been with white labor. But the Chinamen were
fairly apt pupils, and at length it was reported that the
experiment had justified itself, and that the profits were
satisfactory. It had been necessary, however, to make
a long contract with the men, to cover the losses sus
tained in the period of pupilage ; and when the terms for
which they were engaged had expired, most of them
slipped away to other occupations; and the fear that

AMONG THE HILLS 173
the mdustries of New England were to be "ruined by
Chinese cheap labor" was laid to rest.
On the whole, the venture can hardly be regarded as
a success from any point of view. The social condi
tions under which these Chinamen were forced to five
and work were not normal; industry which can be
maintained only under such conditions might as well
be abandoned.
The self-restraint of the working-people of North
Adams, in the presence of this irritating spectacle, was
a cause for gratitude. Although these Chinamen con
tinued to five in the community for several years, there
was very little disposition to interfere with them ; they
were permitted to go and come without insult or annoy
ance. The philanthropists of the community soon made
these Orientals the object of their care, and various well-
meant endeavors to teach them the English language
and fit them for self-support and citizenship were
promptly, set in operation. In truth, the experience of
North Adams with the Chinamen was an encouraging
instance of the absorbent power of good sense and good
will in an American community, in dealing with an acute
case of social inflammation.
It was during the summer of 1868 that my first ven
ture was made in the field of authorship. A series of
Sunday evening lectures to young people had been con
densed into weekly articles for the Springfield "Repub
hcan," and when the series was finished I collected them
and sent them to Ticknor and Fields, under the title
"Plain Thoughts on the Art of Living." Their prompt

174 RECOLLECTIONS
acceptance, as no writer of books needs to be told, was
an experience wholly unique, never to be repeated. The
first book and the first baby are in a class by them
selves. It has always been quite impossible that any
literary success should ever loom so large in my con
sciousness as this one did.
It was during my residence in North Adams that
another literary enterprise was launched in which I
was destined to have a large interest. Dr. Holland and
Roswell Smith, with Charles Scribner, had organized a
company for the publication of a new magazine, to be
known as "Scribner's Monthly " ; and Dr. Holland came
to North Adams to arrange for an illustrated article
upon the Hoosac Tunnel, then being cut through the
Hoosac Mountain in the neighborhood of North Adams.
The preparation of that article was assigned to me, and
but for my illness, it would have appeared in the first
number of the " Monthly." It went into the second
number, and thus began a connection with the maga
zine, as contributor, which continued for many years,
and proved of great profit and satisfaction to me. Dr.
Holland and his associates, both in the "Scribner's
Monthly" and in the "Century Magazine" (by which
name the periodical has long been known), were
always free to call on me for needed work, and the
kind of service required was in the highest degree
congenial. If one has a mind to use his pen in the ser
vice of the public, it is a great thing to have a medium
of communication whose cleanness and integrity are
unquestioned, and I have always esteemed it an honor
to have been permitted to work with men whose jour-

AMONG THE HILLS 175
nalistic aims were never below the highest. There was
a touch of pathos, for me, in the fact that Dr. Holland's
last work on earth was the reading of the proof of an
editorial of mine, which he marked "0. K.," and locked
within his desk as he went home in the evening. His
death occurred that night. It was good to get from
my dear old friend that final verdict. I wished that I
might dare to give it a broader interpretation.

CHAPTER XI
THE FOOLISHNESS OF RECONSTRUCTION
Gather you, gather you, angels of God,
Freedom and Mercy and Truth ;
Come, for the jearth is grown coward and old,
Come down, and renew us her youth;
Wisdom, self-sacrifice, daring and love,
Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above,
To the Day of the Lord at hand. Charles Kingsley.
During these quiet days in North Adams the great
affairs of the nation were in a tumultuous state. The
egotism and obstinacy of President Johnson were well
matched by the vindictiveness of Thaddeus Stevens and
the quixotic idealism of Charles Sumner, and amongst
them they kept the witches' cauldron steaming. As I
recall the moral attitude of the northern people in those
days, it seems that they had but a dim apprehension of
the nature of the forces with which they were dealing.
Four years of war are certainly not a good school in
which to learn the arts of peace. It could hardly be
expected that the conquerors in such a fierce conflict
would find themselves at the end of it prepared to be
wholly just and magnanimous to those whose revolt
against the national authority had caused them so much
loss and suffering. And it cannot be denied that the
average northern man found it difficult, in thinking
of his southern fellow citizens, to rid himself of some
rankling resentments.

FOOLISHNESS OF RECONSTRUCTION 177
One capital fact of the situation was scarcely appre
hended by the northern people. They did not realize,
as fully as they are now able to do, that the war was
primarily a struggle between two conflicting theories
of the nature of our government. The southern people
generally believed that the United States were a confed
eracy of sovereign states ; the northern people believed
that the United States was a nation. The superior alle
giance of the southern man was due to his state; the
superior allegiance of the northern man was due to the
United States. Robert E. Lee believed that Virginia had
the supreme right to his loyal service ; Ulysses S. Grant
believed that the sovereignty belonged to the Gov
ernment at Washington. This was an issue that had
to be decided ; the two theories were irreconcilable ; one
or the other must prevail. The theory of the North, the
national theory, did prevail ; this was the fundamental
question settled by the war. But the people of the North
needed to remember that the people of the South were
brought up on the other theory ; that they adhered to
it with all honesty and good faith, and that there was
much in the history of our national development to sub
stantiate their claim.
When, therefore, we denounced them as rebels and
traitors, and insisted on putting that moral stigma upon
them, we were much less than just. Robert E. Lee, as
I have said, believed that his first allegiance was due
to Virginia; that the claim of the Union on him was
a secondary claim. When Virginia seceded from the
Union and summoned him to draw his sword in her
defense, he would have been a conscious traitor if he had

178 RECOLLECTIONS
refused. Thus it was not true that the southern people
deserved at the hands of the North the severe moral
judgment which was visited upon them. They held a
false and fatal theory of our political relations, but they
held it honestly, and are not to be judged by a standard
to which they had never consented.
The failure to make this distinction lent bitterness to
the whole process of reconstruction. It was hard for the
average northern man to believe that southern "rebels"
and "traitors" could be honorable, loyal, trustworthy
men; he was inclined to regard them as essentially
treacherous. The leaders in Congress ought to have been
able to take a larger view ; some of them did, but unhap
pily the dominant spirits were men of narrow vision and
vindictive temper, and there was enough bitterness in
the popular mind to sustain them in the enactment of
measures which made the speedy restoration of peace
to the South a moral impossibility.
There was another strong reason why the northern
people were inclined to make strenuous terms with
the South — that was their determination to protect
the negroes. Whatever arrangements were made for the
restoration of the state governments in the South must
include guaranties for the freedom and welfare of the
emancipated slaves. How much the intelligence and
good will of the former masters would be needed in
securing this, they did not know ; they had very little
faith in any help from this source ; and they had unlim
ited faith in the ability of the negro to take care of
himself if the suffrage was given him. There was, there
fore, an honest and laudable purpose behind these recon-

FOOLISHNESS OF RECONSTRUCTION 179
struction measures. The people of the North were
responsible for having given the negro his freedom, and
they were bound to see that it did not prove a curse to
him. Nevertheless, it was a sad muddle they made of it.
To imagine that it was possible, by any political device
whatever, to invert the natural order of society, and
give to the ignorance of the community the supremacy
over its intelligence, was an infatuation to which
rational legislators ought not to have been subject. Nor
ought it to have required such costly tuition to convince
an intelligent people that the ballot, in the hands of
voters who are utterly unfitted to use it, has no magical
power to transform them into useful citizens, but can
only prove their own undoing.
The reconstruction measures, which were based on
the disfranchisement of the people of intelligence and
character, and the enthronement of the illiterate and
degraded, and which were given efficacy by the complete
prostration of the civil before the military power, thus
sowed the South with dragon's teeth, whose crop will
not be fully harvested, lo, these many years. Those
of us who were living in Massachusetts then are able
to recall with some satisfaction the attitude of our
own great war governor, Andrew, to whom the futility
of these methods was obvious. "Why not," he cried,
"try the natural leaders of opmion in the South? They
are the most hopeful subjects to deal with, in the very
nature of the case. They have the brain and the experi
ence and the education to enable them to understand the
exigencies of the present situation. They have the cour
age, as well as the skill, to lead the people in the direc-

180 RECOLLECTIONS
tion their judgments point, in spite of their own and the
popular prejudice." There is no doubt that if these
"natural leaders of opinion" had been taken into con
sultation, they would have agreed to the gradual en
franchisement of the negroes. Thus we should have
been spared that hopeless separation of the races and
that violent exacerbation of racial hostility which the
attempt to establish negro supremacy inevitably pro
voked. Another of the puerilities of our politics in this period
was the attempt to impeach President Johnson. This
was the culmination of Johnson's quarrel with Congress,
a wrangle in which neither party was entitled to much
sympathy. Congress had been seeking in every possible
way to tie the President's hands ; it had gone over the
verge in interfering with prerogatives of his, hitherto
unquestioned ; it was ready on the smallest pretext to
impeach him and remove him from office. As an illus
tration of the heated condition of popular opinion, I
remember a double-leaded editorial of Theodore Tilton'-s
in the New York "Independent," in which it was seri
ously urged that whether Johnson had violated the Con
stitution and the laws or not, he had certainly been
guilty of disloyalty to the Repubhcan Party, and that
was good reason why a Republican Congress should
impeach him. The technical basis on which the im
peachment rested was weak ; party animosity lent it all
its force. It is humiliating to think that the Senate
came within one vote of convicting the President, on
a charge which few Repubhcan partisans at this day
would sustain ; but there are reasons also for thankful-

FOOLISHNESS OF RECONSTRUCTION 181
ness. "The reflecting citizen," says Mr. Rhodes, "will
hke to recall the memory that the high state trial, taking
place in the midst of great excitement, was conducted
with gravity according to the forms of law. He will
recall, too, that the verdict, which ran counter to an ag
gressive majority in the legislature and an intense popu
lar sentiment, was accepted without any disturbance,
indeed with entire submission. 'Few nations,' wrote
Bagehot, 'perhaps scarcely any nation, could have
borne such a trial so easily and so perfectly.'" *
And while we find much to deplore in the manner in
which this entire business of reconstruction was man
aged, yet we must not fail to record the fact that there
are no bloodstains on the legislative pages which tell its
story. "The common sense of the American people,"
says the same authority, "saved them from crowning
blunders. They confiscated (practically) none of the
land of their prostrate foe; they hanged nobody for a
political crime. These are grand results, furnishing a
new chapter in the world's history. Never before, on the
signal failure of so great an attempt at revolution, had
a complete victory been attended with no proscriptions,
no confiscation of land, no putting of men to death.
Another Ireland would have been created in the south
ern states, had not our people been endowed in large
measure with humanity and good sense."2
1 History of the United States, vi, 155.
1 Ibid., vi, 49.

CHAPTER XII
FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM
Here shall the Press the People's right maintain,
TJnawed by influence, and unbribed by gain;
Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw,
Pledged to Religion, Liberty and Law.

In the early winter of 1871 a proposition reached me
to become a member of the editorial staff of the New
York " Independent." Mr. Theodore Tilton had been,
until recently, the editor-in-chief of that newspaper,
and his editorial pohcy had become so erratic and va
garious that the proprietor of the paper, Mr. Henry
C. Bowen, had secured his resignation, and had com
missioned Edward Eggleston to act as superintend
ing editor, with William Hayes Ward as office editor.
Through Eggleston the invitation came to me. The first
offer was that of the literary editorship, lately vacated
by Justin McCarthy, which I declined ; it seemed rather
aside from my chief aim. Then came the proposal to
take the desk of religious editor, — to have under my
survey the entire field of religious thought and action.
This attracted me. Yet I did not find it easy to gain my
own consent to turn from the work of the pastorate into
this new field. There were misgivings as to the business
side of the enterprise — fears lest the policy of the
counting-room might embarrass the editorial manage
ment. On all these matters, however, the assurances

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 183
were positive: the editors were to have an absolutely
free hand. The "Independent" had been a great force
in the nation; Mr. Tilton's wild notions had somewhat
discredited it, but the determination to bring it back
into safe ways was now declared, and it had still a very
large constituency of intelligent readers. On the whole,
it seemed to me that the opportunity offered me was
far larger than any church could give me; and I took
up the work with hope.
Nevertheless, it cost me a pang to separate myself
from the associations and companionships of my Berk
shire home. There is an old prophecy, — "the moun
tains shall bring peace," — the meaning of which I had
verified. With all this region I had become very famil
iar. There were few heights to which I had not climbed ;
there were not many trout-brooks whose length I had
not measured ; and though it came to me late, something
of the meaning of Nature which Wordsworth unfolds in
"The Prelude," had been taking possession of me during
those five memorable years. Nor had I ever before found
so many loyal friends, or so many reasons for believing
that my labor was not in vain.
It was in the early spring of 1871 that we turned our
faces Babylon-ward, finding our home again in Brook
lyn. The office of the "Independent" was in Park Place,
New York, just west of the City Hall Park, and my desk
in that office held me close for the next four years. But
the work was in no sense drudgery ; I have never found
anything into which I was able to put more of vital
interest and enthusiasm. It was my business to know
what was going on in the religious world, among the

184 RECOLLECTIONS
churches-, what was being said in the books and maga
zines; and to interpret and guide, as best I could, the
movements which were bringing to earth the kingdom
of heaven. There was never any lack of subjects to
write about ; there was never an hour when any number
of significant things were not taking place. And I am
bound to say that I did not shirk my job, or slight my
work. I have a file of the "Independent" for the four
years while I was on its staff, with my contributions
marked, and the testimony is abundant that so far as
quantity is concerned, I did my full share of the edi
torial work.
The editorial associates with whom I was at first most
closely related were Edward Eggleston and William
Hayes Ward. Eggleston was a versatile and breezy fel
low, with high ideals and boundless enthusiasm ; he was
a most companionable workmate, and it was with much
regret that I heard from him, only a few months after
joining the staff, that he had accepted the editorship of
another periodical. This left Ward the managing editor,
and for the remainder of the four years the laboring oars
were in his hands and mine. He had been in the service
three or four years before I entered it, and he is still in it,
— after Alden, I should think, the oldest of the active ed
itors of the metropolis, — unless Richard Watson Gilder,
of the "Century," may be his senior. Dr. Ward must
have seen full forty years of continuous editorial service
on the "Independent." Intelligent and capable service
it has been ; for hght and leading the world's debt to him
is much larger than it will ever know. Dr. Ward is by
instinct and habit a scholar; with greatly impaired eye-

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 185
sight, he has been devoting all the leisure of his life to
the study of the old languages of Babylon and Assyria ;
and there are few scholars in this country to whom the
old cylinders and their inscriptions are more familiar.
Yet his interest in these recondite concerns by no means
obscures his judgment in practical affairs, or dims his
interest in the problems of the present time. My asso
ciation with him in the office of the "Independent" was
always cordial and harmonious. If we did not always
agree, we never failed to come to a good understanding,
with entire respect for each other's opinions. I have
rarely known a more just-minded man, nor one on
whose practical sense I could more confidently rely.
The veteran of the staff was Dr. Joshua Leavitt, who
had been connected with the paper from the begin
ning, and was now performing a nominal service, which
brought him into the office for a part of every day.
Dr. Leavitt was one of the war-horses of the Anti-
Slavery Reform. When Garrison's war upon the church
became bitter and relentless, Leavitt was the leader of
those who separated from the Anti-Slavery Society and
organized a society with which the churches could co
operate. The organ of that society, of which Dr. Leavitt
became the editor, was "The Emancipator." When the
"Independent" was projected, he was called to be its
managing editor. He was a man of great dignity and
kindness, — a magnificent figure, still erect in body
and alert in mind, — with a deep voice and a fatherly
demeanor. It was interesting to talk with him about
the controversies of the early years, and to catch the
enthusiasm which still glowed in his young heart. I

186 RECOLLECTIONS
have mentioned, on a former page, the prayer of thanks
giving with which he greeted the [Emancipation Procla
mation, eight years before.
One incident connected with Dr. Leavitt brings into
clear light his strong personality. In those days the
"Oneida Community" was laying considerable claim on
the public attention. It assumed to be a religious com
mune, but its views of the relations of'the sexes were
astounding. It proposed to abolish monogamy, and to
substitute for it a shameless promiscuity, and it based
this cult on the teachings of Jesus Christ. The law had
not yet interfered to break up this association, and the
founder of it had recently been seeking to commend his
system to the world through the organ of the commu
nity. It was about this time that he came one day to the
"Independent" office, and presented himself, as good
fortune would have it, to Dr. Leavitt, announcing his
name and his address. Dr. Leavitt declined to take the
proffered hand, but, rising slowly to his feet and looking
his visitor full in the face, said in a voice like thunder :
" Sir, I abhor you ! " The man answered not a word, and
paused not till he was on the other side of the door.
Nobody else said anything. It did not appear that there
was anything more to say.
Another associate of the early days in the "Inde
pendent" was Mr. Charles F. Briggs, whose pen name
was "Harry Franco," a dear friend of Lowell's, and the
man to whom "The Fable for Critics" was addressed.
Many of Lowell's most intimate letters were written to
Briggs. He was also a close friend of William Page, the
painter, then a somewhat prominent figure in the world

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 187
of art. Briggs was a genial and companionable gentle
man. His taste, as might be supposed, was somewhat
severe, and he was disposed to hold us to high standards
in our work, but he was, withal, a most appreciative and
generous critic, and his praise of work that pleased him
was ungrudging.
The political editor of the "Independent," during
these days, was the Reverend Samuel T. Spear, D. D.,
who had no desk in the office, but who contributed more
or less matter every week to the editorial page. Dr.
Spear had impressed himself upon Mr. Bowen as a man
of great profundity ; in the reaction against the Tiltonian
radicalism he probably seemed to be a safe resource.
Yet it must be admitted that he was neither an inspired
nor an inspiring political leader ; and when we came into
the heats of political discussion, the narrowness of his
partisanship was oftentimes intolerable.
Early in connection with the " Independent," the liter
ary editorship was offered to a young man who had just
graduated from Dartmouth, Mr. Charles F. Richardson.
It was a large place for a mere boy, for the traditions of
the "Independent" caUed for capable discussion of cur
rent literature. But our faith in the youth was justified.
Without venturing beyond his depth, Mr. Richardson
contrived to fill the literary department with fresh and
entertaining matter, — illustrating, in the beginning of
his career, the insight and discrimination which have
made him an authority in American letters. When he
first came into our office, Mr. Richardson was in the very
freshness of youth. His college course had raised a mul
titude of questions in his mind and had settled very

188 RECOLLECTIONS
few; through art and sociology and theology his mind
was ranging free ; it would have been hard to find a more
ingenious or a more persistent questioner. It is many
years since I have seen him. I know of him now, through
his work, as a man whose mind is pretty well made up on
most of the subjects with which he has to deal; but I
wonder if he remembers what a multitude of things there
were, in the early seventies, about which he wanted to
know. It was a perennial refreshment and delight to
have him about the premises ; at any moment he might
come bounding in, to roost on the arm of your chair and
plump at you some question about the supremacy of the
Pope or the doctrine of the eucharist.
When Richardson went away, his place was taken by
my college classmate, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, a skillful
and accomplished writer, whose practice had begun with
mine in the pages of the "Williams Quarterly." Dr.
Coan's work as critic was intelligent and careful; he
has since made for himself a good name in the world
of letters.
Besides these names upon the regular staff, there were
several who regularly contributed to different editorial
departments, such as Science and Missions and Biblical
Research. And there was a multitude of writers, male
and female, with whom we were in constant corre
spondence, and whose faces we were likely to see, from
time to time, in the office. The "Independent" had
always made much of its list of contributors ; it found
great names a profitable asset, and sought to add as
many of them as possible to the roll of its advertised
writers. Our office therefore became a somewhat popu-

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 189
lar resort of literary people, and of public men and
women who were then more or less conspicuous.
One of our frequent callers was Schuyler Colfax, then »
Vice-President of the United States, an exceedingly
affable gentleman, who was frequently pleased to con
tribute to the "Independent," and with whom it was
interesting to gossip about politics at Washington. An
other was Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, who,
a httle later, succeeded to the Vice-Presidency. Senator
Wilson was then engaged in writing his voluminous
"History of the Slave Power in America," which was
appearing serially in the "Independent" ; this made his
excuse for visits to the office whenever he came to the
metropolis. Nor was he an unwelcome visitor. Wilson
was not a brilliant writer, nor a man of culture, but he
was an exceedingly shrewd, sagacious, well-informed
politician, and a talk of an hour with him on what was
going on at Washington would give a clearer idea of
political conditions than it was possible to gain in any
other way.
A fresh and piquant personality who often enkindled
our spirits by his presence was the Reverend Gilbert
Haven, afterward Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, a man with whom it was delightful to disagree,
and who had the happy faculty of stating with perspi
cuity the things which you knew you did not wish to
believe. To few men do I owe a larger debt than to some
who have put clearly before my mind the things which I
knew to be untrue. It would be unfair to "Gil" Haven,
as we then familiarly named him, to leave the matter
here. I suppose that I agreed with him in ten ^natters

190 RECOLLECTIONS
where I disagreed in one ; but there were various theo
logical questions on which our differences were sharp,
and his delightfully incisive and perfectly good-
natured way of defining those differences was extremely
serviceable. Another frequent visitor of a somewhat similar men
tal habit was the Reverend Leonard Woolsey Bacon,
who assumed the role of "General Suggester," and was
always exercising his very fertile and ingenious mind
upon our journalistic problems. We were indebted to
him for some valuable hints, and always found him a
helpful counselor as well as a welcome contributor. His
nimble wit often enlivened our toil. When Ward came
home from his college Commencement with the honorary
degree of Doctor of Divinity, Bacon's greeting was: "I
regret to hear that you have been removed from the
small but select circle of untitled men into the indis
tinguishable herd of D. D.'s."
William Lloyd Garrison was also an occasional con
tributor, and his benignant countenance now and then
looked in on us. It was interesting to note the atmos
phere of quiet content by which he was always sur
rounded ; he had fought the good fight and had entered
into peace. I do not think that the reconstruction con
troversies troubled him greatly ; not so much, perhaps,
as they might reasonably have done. His faith in the
efficacy of pohtical emancipation was so strong, that
he had no serious fear for the future of those emanci
pated. The last time I saw Mr. Garrison he was on his
way home from a meeting of the Progressive Friends at
Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania, Th^t ipceting was. a$

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 191
assemblage of reformers of all shades and stripes; the
platform was free to every man or woman with a hobby,
and Mr. Garrison was telling, with much amusement,
of the queer people who had been ventilating their nos
trums. One man, he said, after listening to the mani
fold indictment of society for innumerable great and
growing evils, startled the assembly by declaring that
nobody had yet struck at the root of the social malady ;
that all the ills society is heir to were due to one cause ;
one word with four letters told the whole story —
s-a-l-t. The use of salt was the source of all our woes ;
abstinence from that would restore the lost paradise.
Mr. Garrison had reached a point at which the queer-
ness of reformers was diverting to him.1
Bret Harte was living in New York then, and I
remember a call from him; Joaquin Miller visited us
often, and Stedman and Stoddard now and then dropped
in. Among the women writers, Mary Clemmer Ames,
"Gail Hamilton" (Mary Abigail Dodge), "Susan
Coolidge" (Sarah C. Woolsey), and Helen Hunt were
occasional callers.
One's experience in meetmg thus, in the flesh, large
numbers of men and women whom he has hitherto
known only through the printed page, is sometimes
gratifying and sometimes not. There are those whose
words always mean more to you after you have known
them ; and others whom you cordially wish that you had
never seen. On the whole, however, I treasure, as a good
1 Mr. Garrison's son, who has read these proofs, admonishes me
that this sense of humor was not a late acquisition of his father's;
that he was always able to see the ludicrous side of things.

192 RECOLLECTIONS
part of my education, the extended acquaintance with
the men and women of letters which I enjoyed in the
office of the "Independent."
In 1871 the "Independent" was a blanket sheet of
huge dimensions, with a page twenty-eight inches long
by twenty-two in width; its regular issue contained
eight pages, with nine long columns on a page ; the first
number of every month added four pages, and was
somewhat crudely illustrated. It was a formidable sheet
to handle, and there was a sense of relief to editors as
well as readers when, at the end of 1872, the form was
changed to that of a quarto, with thirty-two pages about
half as long as the old ones, and four columns instead of
nine to the page. We got rid of our pictures also, which
was a deliverance. It was before the days of photo
graphic half-tones, and such wood-engravings as we
could command were far from being an unalloyed de
light to all the members of the staff.
In national politics nothing inspiring was coming to
light. The sordid and unsocial tempers bred by the war
were bringing forth their corrupt fruitage. Grant was
in the middle of his first term, and was beginning to
exhibit the incapacity for civil leadership which might
naturally have been expected of him. The reconstruc
tion measures were working out their dubious results;
much was made of "southern outrages," but it had
become evident to many northern men that these were
largely fictitious, invented or magnified to draw atten
tion from the abuses with which the national adminis
tration was reeking, and to stifle the cry for reform

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 193
of the Civil Service. Mr. Rhodes is certainly justified in
his statement that " the Congressional leaders, who so
powerfully influenced Grant, and who obviously rated
the apparent and transitory interest in their party
higher than the welfare of the country, found it easier
to carry elections at the North by harping upon the
'rebellion,' and 'rebels,' than to undertake the real work
of reform. The failures and scandals of Grant's two
administrations were largely due to the easy pardon
obtained, in accordance with Repubhcan ethics, for any
sort of rascality committed by one who was 'sound on
the main question,' which meant being pledged to uni
versal negro suffrage and the continued subjection of
the southern states. . . . Patriotism in the ranks of
the dominant party was now become almost synony
mous with traducement and abuse of the South." l
It was a dark period in the life of the nation — such
an era as might logically have been expected to follow
a demoralizing war. The dubious financial policy which
the nation had followed through the war had tended to
unsettle the common notions of commercial morality;
the irregularities in army and navy contracts, out of
which great fortunes had been made, had helped to
lower the tone of public opinion, and the worship of
Mammon had begun to assume that ascendency over the
mind of the nation which was destined to become so
portentous in after years.
Nor was there, it must be confessed, much to counter
act these evil influences in the administration of Presi
dent Grant. That he was ever guilty of palpable dis-
1 History of the United States, vi, 391.

194 RECOLLECTIONS
honesty, few people believed; but he was singularly
lacking in those dehcacies of feeling by which men are
preserved from offending against the larger proprieties
of official station; his admiration for rich men was a
symptom of weakness ; he used his prerogative unblush-
ingly in behalf of his relatives; and he not only per
mitted the members of his official family to accept
presents freely, but he himself received them with no
apparent sense of indecency. All this must be charged
against his inexperience ; he had had no training what
ever in civil affairs ; it was a cruel thing to thrust upon
him these great responsibilities. His associates were
largely men of doubtful record, from whom he could get
neither guidance nor inspiration. Americans returning
from Europe brought back tales of illiterate and un
couth characters traveling with letters of introduction
from the President of the United States and conveying
unhappy impressions of social conditions at the Ameri
can capital.
It was true, however, that General Grant had called
into his Cabinet three or four men of high character.
Hamilton Fish, his Secretary of State, Jacob D. Cox,
his Secretary of the Interior, and Ebenezer Rockwood
Hoar, his Attorney-General, were men of the finest
quality, and the most hopeful feature of the administra
tion had been the loyalty of these men to the President
and his apparent confidence in them. With what con
sternation, therefore, had the public witnessed the dis
missal from the President's official family, first of Hoar,
and then of Cox. The explanations given of the removal
of these two upright and faithful men reflected no credit

FROM STUDY TO SANCTUM 195
on the administration; it was quite too evident that
influences of a pernicious character were gaining the
ascendency at Washington.
TheseCabinet changes had been made in the summer
and autumn of 1870, and the disaffection of the country
had shown itself at the fall elections in a decided reduc
tion of the Repubhcan majority in both houses of Con
gress. Another monitory symptom was the rising de
mand for a reform in the Civil Service. In January of
this year, 1871, an article by General Cox had appeared
in the "North American Review," in which the scandals
of the spoils system were abundantly and strongly set
forth. The people believed that General Cox knew
whereof he spoke, and they were inclined to listen to
What he had to say. When he testified that " by far the
larger part of the time of the President and all the
members of his Cabinet was occupied in dealing out the
offices"; and when he said that "diplomacy, finance,
military, naval, and internal administration are the
minor affairs, which the settled policy of the country
has relegated to such odds and ends of time as may
be snatched from the greater cares of office," the coun
try seemed to be listening to an authoritative word,
which ought to require prompt attention and immedi
ate action.
It was during the first months of my work upon the
"Independent" that the demand for civil service
reform began to make itself audible. General Grant,
to do him justice, had already, in his last message,
declared that such a reform was needed. Probably his
convictions on the subject were sound; but the evil

196 RECOLLECTIONS
geniuses who were shaping his policy had less use for
a purified service than the devil has for holy water.
Nevertheless, a provision was smuggled into a sundry
civil expense bill, approved March 3, 1871, which au
thorized the President to "prescribe such rules and
regulations for the admissions of persons into the civil
service of the United States as will best promote the
efficiency thereof"; and empowering him to appoint
a commission for the preparation of such regulations.
President Grant showed his good faith by making
George William Curtis the chairman of the Commission.
Thus was launched the movement which was destined,
in later years, to have large consequences. It was a
matter that interested us keenly at the time ; but our
expectations of immediate results were not large. The
appointment of the Commission was a sop to Cerberus ;
Mr. Curtis and his associates might formulate their
plans, but ways would be found of making them of none
effect. The pohticians in power were of the same school
as Ensign Stebbins, of Maine, who was "in favor of the
prohibitory law, but agin its enforcement." Neverthe
less, it was something to extort from the army of spoils
men this hypocritical concession.

CHAPTER XIII
THE TWEED RING
Only three instances I choose from all,
And each enough to stir a pigeon's gall:
Office a fund for ballot-brokers made
To pay the drudges of their gainful trade ;
Our cities taught what conquered cities feel
By ffidiles chosen that they might safely steal;
And gold, however got, a title fair
To such respect as only gold can bear.
James Russell Lowell.
If the field of national politics was comparatively
barren of incident in the first months of 1871, local poli
tics were rapidly coming to a boil. The Tweed ring was
now at the height of its power, and the storm was
gathering which was destined to sweep it out of exist
ence. It was my good fortune to arrive upon the scene
in the months when this tremendous struggle was be
ginning. It would be difficult for the people of any
American city at this day to conceive of the conditions
which prevailed in New York in the spring of 1871.
We have had a good deal of rotten municipal govern
ment in this country in the past ten years, but nothing
comparable to the despotic brigandage of the Tweed
regime. The Big Four of that combine, William Marcy
Tweed, the President of the Board of Supervisors,
Peter B. Sweeney, the Treasurer of the City, Richard B.
Connolly, the Controller, and A. Oakey Hall, the Mayor,
were despots, with power as absolute as any Babylonian

198 RECOLLECTIONS
satrap ever exercised. Through their control of the
legislature of the state they had got the functions of the
city government so parceled out among themselves that
their control of its functions was complete, and they
were proceeding without let or hindrance to rob the tax
payers of millions for their own enrichment. That such
stupendous stealing was in progress was openly charged,
and the persistent and cumulative attacks of the New
York "Times" had given the people abundant rea
son to believe it. Nevertheless, the popular apathy
was amazing. There were thousands of intelligent and
respectable people who professed their belief that all
was sweet and sound at the City Hall. There were tens
of thousands more who knew better, but who were
inclined to plead that nothing could be done about it,
that the ring was so strongly intrenched that it was
practically invincible.[Just before the last election, in
November, 1870, the gang had persuaded six of the rich
men of New York — John Jacob Astor, Marshall 0.
Roberts, and Moses Taylor, among them — to look
over the books in the controller's office, and to issue
this certificate: "We have come to the conclusion and
certify that the financial affairs of the city under the
charge of the controller^ are administered in a correct
and faithful manner" !J At that very moment those
books, if thoroughly examined, would have shown the
robbery of tens of millions of dollars. One ought not, I
suppose, too curiously to inquire how it was that these
six rich men were so easily convinced of the honesty of
these colossal robbers.
On the week that I entered the "Independent" office,

THE TWEED RING 199
Tweed had before the legislature bills confirming the
hold of the gang upon the finances of the city. The bare
faced shamelessness of these schemes should have been
apparent to everybody, and a feeble attempt was made
to express the disapproval of the citizens. A mass
meeting was called at Cooper Institute, at which Wil
liam E. Dodge, William F. Havemeyer, Henry Ward
Beecher, and William M. Evarts sought to rouse the citi
zens to resist the passage of Tweed's bills. But the
effect was practically nil. The biUs were passed without
a grimace, and Tweed's defiant query was : " What are
you going to do about it?"
There are a great many milhons of American citizens
who can sit stiU and look on while things of this kind
are going on before their eyes; whose digestion is not
impaired nor their temper ruffled by the most flagrant
violation of public trusts; who are so intent upon
private gain that they find no room in their lives for
any concern about the commonwealth. They are repre
sented by that New York citizen who told President
Andrew D. White, in these very days, that he did not
distress himself about politics, because he could make
more money in the time that he should be required to
give to public affairs than the thieves could steal from
him in the same time. There are a great many millions,
I fear, to whom that would appear to be an entirely rea
sonable exposition of the obligations of citizenship. The
existence of these millions is the explanation and justi
fication of Tweed rings and all such cancerous growths
upon the body politic. For such citizens as these the
Tweed ring is the right kind of government. If only the

200 RECOLLECTIONS
robberies of the rings could be confined to citizens of this
class, all would be as it should be.
¦ Not having been sufficiently disciplined in this school
of indifference, I confess that the first months of my
sojourn in the neighborhood of the City Hall and the
County Court House were not a period of entire placid
ity. It seemed intolerable to five in the presence of such
enormities; and yet there appeared to be httle that
could be done. The New York "Times" and "Harper's
Weekly " were keeping up their bombardment of the
ring ; and there are few things in American history bet
ter worth remembering than the bulldog pertinacity
of that warfare. To four men, Jones and Jennings of
the "Times," Fletcher Harper and Thomas Nast of the
"Weekly," the nation owes much for the unrelenting
purpose with which they pursued these scoundrels.
They did not wait to strike till the iron should be hot,
they heated it by striking. It was their persistence
which finally emboldened some of the minor officials of
the ring to bring them the facts by which they were
enabled to substantiate their charges, and to arouse this
stupefied community to some sense of the iniquities
with which it was infested.
It was a dramatic moment when "Jimmy" O'Brien,
who had gained some standing with the ring and access
to Connolly's books, and then had quarreled with the
gang, walked into the office of the editor of the "Times"
and threw down upon the desk transcripts of the city
accounts which more than justified all the charges that
the newspaper had been making. The fact that the
"Times" had the evidence was soon known, and the

THE TWEED RING 201
desperation of the gang was not concealed. They had
already offered Jones one million dollars if he would
desist from his attacks ; having failed in that, they sup
posed that the only thing needful was to raise the price.
Mr. Rhodes tells the story : —
A lawyer, a tenant in the "Times" building, sent
Jones word that he wished to see him on an important
matter in his own office. Repairing thither and being
ushered into a private room, Jones was confronted by
Connolly. Jones turned to go, saying, "I don't want
to see this man." "For God's sake," exclaimed Con
nolly, " let me say one word to you," and he then offered
Jones five million dollars to forego the publication of
the accounts. " I don't think," said Jones, " that the devil
will ever make a higher bid for me than that." Connolly
pleaded, argued, and pictured the delights of rest, travel,
and luxurious living. "Why, with that sum," he de
clared, "you can go to Europe and live hke a prince."
" Yes," answered Jones, " but I should know that I was a
rascal. I cannot consider your offer or any offer not to
publish the facts in my possession." '
We are having, in these days, specious apologies for
public men who yield to great temptation. It seems to
be assumed that if the bribe is only big enough, and
the pressure strong enough, almost any act of perfidy
to pubhc interests must be condoned. "They could n't
help it ; they had to do it," is the plea by which grafters
of all stripes are sometimes justified. But the compul
sion, in all these cases, is nothing other than the love of
money. They had to do it because they could not resist
1 History of the United States, vi, 405.

202 RECOLLECTIONS
the temptation to get rich quick. That is all it means.
It is to be feared that there are, indeed, multitudes who
cannot conceive of any worthier or stronger motive.
But this little story of George Jones introduces us to a
higher realm of human conduct. "I should know that I
was a rascal" is after all the testimony of the normal
human consciousness. The thing that this man "had to
do" was to keep his conscience free from that guilty
knowledge. It was on July 8, 1871, that the New York "Times"
began the publication of these figures, giving, in facsim
ile, records of many of the more important transactions.
What a revelation it was ! It came hke a thunderstorm
in a sultry night. Destruction was in its path, but it
cleared the air; and every lightning flash revealed a foe
in ambush. Then Nast's tremendous cartoons came in
to make the exposure vivid and convincing. Perhaps no
speech from the rostrum or editorial in the newspaper
ever had a more powerful effect in enlightening and in
flaming public opinion than Nast's cartoon, "Who Stole
the People's Money?" The members of the gang and
their tools are standing in a ring, and each is pointing
with his thumb to the one who stands next him, and
saying, " 'T was him." No wonder Tweed was frantic to
silence this accuser. "Let's stop these pictures," he cried.
"I don't care so much what the papers write about me
— my constituents can't read; but they can see pic
tures." Half a million dollars Mr. Nast might have had,
if he would have taken a trip to Europe ; but he, like
George Jones, was not under the compulsion of cupidity ;
there was something else to five for besides money.

THE TWEED RING 203
It was refreshing to witness the confusion and con
sternation into which the gang was at once thrown
by these exposures. They tried to reply through the
newspapers, but the best they could say was so mis
erably inadequate that the public only laughed. Out of
their own mouths they condemned themselves. Then
they caught at the pohcy of silence. "Keep still a few
weeks," they said, "and it will all blow over." Their
faith in the indifference and irresponsibility of the aver
age American was unlimited. Who shaU say that it was
not too well founded ? But in this case they were at a
loss in their reckoning. The storm showed no signs of
abating. Every day the gale was higher and the lightning
was more incessant. The facts which were daily coming
to hght sufficed to prevent the subsidence of the popu
lar indignation. It began to be evident that a scheme
of raising the accounts of all who had any transactions
with the city had been for some years in operation, by
which untold millions of money had passed into the
hands of the ring. A man presenting to the city a bill of
ten thousand dollars for work or supplies was told that
that bill could not be paid, at present ; but that if he
could make it a hundred thousand, it would be attended
to at once. Raising his bill to one hundred thousand
dollars, and indorsing it over to Ingersoll, who was the
stalking-horse of the gang, he received his ten thousand,
and the other ninety thousand was drawn from the
treasury and divided among the confederates. Tweed
had twenty-four per cent, the others a fixed share.
There was a Board of Special Audit which passed on all
city and county claims ; the members of the Board were

204 RECOLLECTIONS
Hall, Connolly, and Tweed. The investigation showed
that at one sitting this board had allowed . claims for
six million dollars, out of which the city got only six
hundred thousand dollars. That County Court House
which had been going up across the way, and whose
marble facade invited our daily admiration, had cost
the city already eleven million dollars, but the amount
received by the builders had been only three million
dollars. Such were instances of the kind of operation
which had been going on for several years in the city
and county of New York. What the total amount of
these robberies may have been will never be known.
A "joint committee," which went over the accounts,
declared that the stealings for the past two years had
been ten times as great as the actual expenses of the
city. The amount of plunder captured by this gang
has been variously estimated at from forty-five million
dollars to two hundred million dollars. The lowest esti
mate is sufficiently astounding. It is evident from the
amounts of hush money that they were ready to pay
that their resources were princely.
It was on the eighth of July that the "Times" began
to turn over the leaves of the book of doom, and by the
end of the month the exposure had been so complete
that no vestige of doubt was left in anybody's mind as
to the guilt of the confederates. The only question was
what steps should be taken to bring them to justice.
On the first of August Dr. Ward went away for a
month's vacation, leaving me in charge of the edito
rial pages. That seemed to be my opportunity, and the
"Independent," for the next four weeks, trained all its

THE TWEED RING 205
guns on this citadel of corruption, seeking to guide
public opinion toward an adequate handling of the busi
ness before the city. I am sure that the testimony was
not lacking in point and conviction. The quotations
from our editorials made every week by the daily news
papers seemed to indicate their sense of its seriousness.
It was one of the times ©f my life when I have come
across something that needed to be hit and have had
a chance to strike hard. Such opportunities make hfe
worth living.
I have found, in some of these old editorials, a breath
of the gale that was blowing, just then, through the
streets of Gotham : —
The gates of the Tombs have never opened to receive
criminals of deeper dye than the men who compose the
New York Ring. For it is not only against property, but
against hfe and public virtue as well, that they have con
spired. They pocket the money that ought to pay for
cleansing the streets, and thus join hands with fever
and pestilence to slaughter the innocent. They keep for
their servitors the assassins of the purlieus, and murder
and rapine own their fostering care. They make com
mon cause with rumshops and brothels, and virtue and
order cry out against their rule. If there are any crim
inals in the land to-day, these men are criminals. If it
is worth while to punish any evil-doers whatsoever, it is
worth while to punish them.
These men were still in power, and Tweed was defi
antly demanding: "What are you going to do about it?"
The next week an explicit answer to that question was
ventured : —

206 RECOLLECTIONS
We are going to turn you and all your creatures out of
your offices. That we can do and shall do, please God,
before the new year is a week old.
We are going to get back as much as we can of the
booty you have stolen. We know the job will not be an
easy one, but you may depend on us not to give it up
without a fair trial.
We are going to use our best endeavors to send you
to your own place, the penitentiary.
At any rate, we are going to make the city and the whole
country too hot for you. There is some conscience in the
land yet, and you will find it out before you die. Upon
you shall rest, heavy and immovable, the weight of a
nation's curse. You have perverted our laws. You have
corrupted our young men. You have done what in you
lay to destroy our Government. There are some sins that
a nation may never forgive, and yours is among them.
It is our solemn charge to hold you up while you live
to the scorn and contempt of mankind. God may have
mercy on you ; but as for us, we promise you that your
ill-gotten booty shall be but a poor compensation for
the inheritance of shame which shall be yours forever.
That these hot words quite outran the hopes of most
of those who were prosecuting the robbers is quite
probable ; but within three months they were substan
tially verified. It is often well to assume that what
ought to be will be.
By the first, of September the people of New York
were ready to take up the matter in hand. A great mass
meetmg, which crowded Cooper Institute and over
flowed into the street, registered the determination of
the people to put an end to this monstrosity. A commit
tee of seventy was appointed to take the necessary legal

THE TWEED RING 207
measures. And now these conspirators, with the chiv
alry of rats, began to plot against one another. Con
nolly was chosen the scapegoat of the other three, but
he declined to be a "vicarious sacrifice," and the inqui
sition went on. Then Samuel J. Tilden and Charles
O'Conor were called in; Connolly was induced to ap
point as deputy controller Andrew H. Green, a man of
high character ; Tweed was arrested and held to bail in
the sum of one million dollars; and Sweeney and Con
nolly both resigned their offices, making good, how
ever, their escape to Europe, with booty enough to keep
them in luxury for the rest of their lives. How Tweed
was indicted, released on bail, convicted, imprisoned, re
leased, and rearrested again and again, twice escaping
from the country, and being brought back to end his hfe
in 1878 in the Ludlow Street jail, is a story that I do not
need to repeat. Suffice it to say that, before the end of
1871, the ring which at the beginning of the year was
at the summit of its power, levying millions of tribute
upon the tax-payers of New York, had been driven
from office and scattered ; one was under indictment as
a felon, and two were in exile.
There were lessons in this overturning for all who
were ready to learn. It presented a fearful example of
the criminal neglect of duty of which the citizens of a
municipality can be guilty, and of the extent to which
they can be robbed and victimized, without resistance.
It is a mere truism to say that people who live for any
length of time under such a despotism as the Tweed
ring prove, by that fact, that they are not fit for self-
government. If they cannot find out what their ser-

208 RECOLLECTIONS
vants in office are doing, they are too stupid to govern
themselves; if they know about it but cannot stop it,
they'are too weak to govern themselves. The episode
shows, however, how easy it is for an aroused and
resolute community to put an end to municipal misrule.
No other combination of selfish politicians in this coun
try was ever so strongly intrenched as was the Tweed
ring ; they had the legislature of the state under abso
lute control ; the judiciary of New York city were their
tools; they had their plans laid to dictate the next
nomination to the presidency of the United States; and
yet, when the people of the city awoke and gave united
thought to these iniquities, in a breath they shriveled
and disappeared.

CHAPTER XIV
THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN AND THE CREDIT MOBILIER
Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can choose
That sees the fife-blood of his dearest ooze?
I loved my Country so as only they
Who love a mother fit to die for may ;
I loved her old renown, her stainless fame, —
What better proof than that I loathed her shame?
This I know
That man or race so prosperously low
Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel,
Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune's heel ;
For never land long lease of empire won
Whose sons sate silent when base deeds were done.
James Russell Lowell.
The law of action and reaction in rotten politics was
finding ulustration in these days. It was because the
energies of the party in power were so completely ab
sorbed in the dubious reconstruction policies and in the
maintenance of the spoils system, that an iniquity like
the Tweed ring found room to flourish. And if anybody
now threatened the party in power in the nation with
pohtical retribution, the question promptly asked was
whether there would be any gain in turning the govern
ment over to a party of which Tweed was the shining
light. Rascality in each party finds a strong bulwark in
the rascality of the other party. And I have no doubt
that the overthrow of the Tweed ring gave considerable
impetus to the movement which began the next year for
a renovation of the Repubhcan Party. Originating in

210 RECOLLECTIONS
Missouri under the leadership of Carl Schurz, and boldly
attacking the southern pohcy of the party in power,
this Liberal Republican movement soon found itself
strongly supported by a number of the most influential
newspapers of the country, and by several of the ablest
Republican leaders, Senator Trumbull, Charles Francis
Adams, General Cox, Governor Blair, of Michigan, Gov
ernor Palmer, of Illinois, Judge Noah Davis, and Judges
Stanley Matthews and Hoadley, of Ohio, among them.
It was a formidable uprising ; and when a mass conven
tion was called to meet in Cincinnati in May, with the
purpose of making an independent nomination for the
presidency, it appeared that something important in
the way of pohtical reform was about to take place.
That President Grant would be renominated was
admitted by all ; the machine was irresistible. But if
an independent nomination could be made by these Lib
eral Republicans which the Democrats would accept, it
seemed not improbable that it might carry the country.
At this distance it appears that if the more sane influ
ences of the movement could have prevailed, and a man
like Trumbull or Charles Francis Adams could have been
nominated, the result might have been different. But
the nomination of Greeley reduced the movement to an
absurdity. Greeley did not stand for the things which
the serious men who were behind this revolt believed in.
He had, indeed, come to sympathize with the demand
for a more reasonable southern policy; but even here
the columns of the "Tribune" bore witness to his sup
port of the more drastic of the reconstruction measures.
As for civil service reform, there was no evidence that

THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN 211 \
Greeley had any interest in it whatever; and as to
the burning question round which the movement had
gathered at the outset, the need of tariff reform, he was
the one man in the country most strongly committed
against it.
Mr. Greeley was a man of warm humanitarian im
pulses, and great enthusiasm for popular rights ; he had
done good service in arousing the anti-slavery sentiment
of the North, and, in spite of certain petty eccentricities
of dress and manner by which he called attention to
himself and signalized his limitations, a kindly feeling
toward him prevailed throughout the North. But many
of those who had read the "Tribune" all their fives were
far from being convinced that Mr. Greeley was the right
man for the presidency of the United States ; they could
not help feeling that the man whose frantic cry, "On to
Richmond!" had done much to precipitate the worst
disaster of the war ; whose demand for the resignation
of the whole Cabinet after the battle of Bull Run had
revealed a similar heated judgment, and whose impa
tience with Lincoln had again and again found almost
hysterical expression, was a man of too emotional a
habit to be a safe leader of the nation. And therefore
many of those who had hailed the Liberal Republi
can movement with hope were constrained to fall back
upon Grant as, on the whole, the more trustworthy
executive. The "Independent" supported Grant, as was expedi
ent, but its method of supporting him was not at aU to
my mind. It was too narrowly partisan ; its treatment of
Greeley was often unfair. Those who depended upon it

212 RECOLLECTIONS
for information respecting the policy and purpose of the
other party must have been seriously misled. In all this
matter I found myself in sharp disagreement With those
who controlled the pohtical utterances of the paper,
and I ventured to express my dissent. It appeared to me
especially discreditable for a journal which sought to
maintain a religious character to descend to misrepre
sentation and abuse of a pohtical opponent. My protest
had little effect upon the pohcy of the paper, and the
result of the experience was to lessen, considerably, my
sense of the value, of my editorial opportunity. That
the rehgious influence of the paper must be impaired
by such pohtical methods, I could not help seeing.
The campaign dragged on through the summer to its
inevitable issue. It was by no means an inspiring con
test. Mr. Greeley took the stump, and made, on the
whole, an effective canvass. His plea for kindlier relations
between the North and the South was urged with an elo
quence that ought to have moved the people, but for the
most part it was turned to ridicule. "The baleful fires of
anger," kindled by the war, were still smouldering, and
it was melancholy to see how ready the politicians were
to fan them into flame for party purposes. The cam
paign descended, indeed, to a very low level. Nast's
pencil, which had been used so effectively in the expos
ure of the Tweed ring, was employed in this pohtical
struggle in a manner which tended to lower the respect
in which he had been held. It was a service to public
morality to make contemptible and abhorrent such
colossal criminals as Tweed and Sweeney and Connolly ;
it was quite another thing to treat in the same manner

THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN 213
men hke Horace Greeley and Lyman Trumbull and
Charles Sumner and Carl Schurz. The caricaturist needs
a conscience and some moral perspective, else he may
easily become a malefactor.
The sweeping Republican victory was a crushing blow
to poor Greeley. He was far from being a sagacious
political prognosticator ; doubtless he had entertained
hope of being President, though the October election
must have greatly clouded that expectation. But he had
come home from his speaking-tour to find his wife upon
her death-bed, and she had passed away before the elec
tion day. For many days he had watched by her bedside,
and the stress of the campaigning, and the burden of
anxiety and sorrow, added to the bitter disappointment
of his defeat, were more than he could bear. A little
more than three weeks after the votes were counted, they
carried him to his grave in Greenwood Cemetery. As the
funeral cortege passed near my house to the place of the
dead, I could not keep back my tears for the tragic fate
of the man who had been from my childhood my politi
cal teacher, and who, in spite of many limitations and
frailties, had done a good day's work for humanity.
How needless, in that hour, seemed the brutal assaults
upon his character with which the air had been resound
ing ! In a letter to a friend in New Hampshire, shortly
after the election, Mr. Greeley uncovered his grief: "I
was the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office.
And I have been assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew
whether I was running for President or the Penitentiary.
In the darkest hour my suffering wife left me, and none
too soon, for she had suffered too deeply and too long.

214 RECOLLECTIONS
I laid her in the ground with hard dry eyes. Well, I am
used up. I cannot see before me. I have slept httle for
weeks, and my eyes are still hard to close, while they
soon open again."
Some sense of the vast injustice which partisan pas
sion had done this man seemed to take possession of the
public mind when the grave offered him repose; and
there was kindness and consideration in the words that
were spoken everywhere concerning him. Grant and
Colfax and Henry Wilson rode in the same carriage
at his funeral. A small portion of the appreciation
which was gladly given to him after his death would
undoubtedly have saved his life. Thus we stone our
prophets, and make amends for our cruelty by hanging
garlands on their tombs.
During these four years of work on the "Independ
ent" my house was in Brooklyn, and the renewal of the
old associations with the rehgious circles of the city
where my ministerial work began was grateful to me.
Brooklyn was still, by right, "The City of Churches."
Matters ecclesiastical held a leading interest. The popu
larity of Mr. Beecher was still undimmed ; it was always
difficult to gain admission to his church at any preach
ing service. Dr. Richard S. Storrs had taken on a new
lease of preaching power, and his audiences, though less
thronged, were enthralled by his majestic eloquence.
Talmage was at the top of his fame ; his great tabernacle
was always crowded, and his unparalleled acrobatics,
physical and rhetorical, were an astonishment to many.
It was not possible for me to enjoy so much of this abun-

THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN 215
dant provision for the needs of the spiritual man as I
would gladly have done; for there were many vacant
pulpits in the metropolis and its neighborhood, and
nearly every Sunday found me occupying one of them.
Thus my acquaintance was pleasantly extended, and
the preaching habit was maintained by constant exer
cise. One of the pleasant associations of those years was
afforded by membership in a clerical club, known as
Sigma Chi. It was an undenominational society, minis
ters of various communions being included in the mem
bership. It met once in two weeks, on Saturday noon,
for a luncheon, a paper, and a discussion. Dr. Howard
Crosby, Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, Dr. Charles S. Robin
son, of the Presbyterians; Dr. Foss (afterward bishop)
and Dr. Bulkley, of the Methodists; Dr. WiUiam M.
Taylor, of the Congregationalists ; Dr. McVickar (now
bishop), of the Episcopalians, and others, were in the
membership. There were twenty-five or thirty men,
most of them mentally alert and courageous, and the
discussions were apt to be trenchant and enlightening.
To Crosby and Hastings, who were among the seniors
of the club, my memory goes back with especial grati
tude for the many manifestations of their courtesy to
those of us who were juniors. Crosby was a man of flash
ing wit ; his repartee was instantaneous, and his good-
fellowship was unfailing. The discussions of the club
were mainly theological, but, as I recall them, they were
kept within the lines of the traditional evangelical the
ology. As yet scarcely a ripple had appeared upon
the placid surface of American orthodoxy. Matthew

216 RECOLLECTIONS
Arnold's "Literature and Dogma" had excited some
discussion, but Arnold was not taken seriously by many
of those who read him. I cannot recall that any of the
questions respecting the Bible and the future hfe, which
were soon to agitate the church, were before the club
during my membership in it.
"Too Much Success" is the title of a late essay by one
of our most thoughtful writers. It is evident that the
political party in power was suffering from this cause
in 1872. The overwhelming victory had silenced the
demand for reform. The pohtical leaders accepted it
as a mandate from the people to follow their own inch-
nations. The administration of the government had
become loose and extravagant, and needed vigorous
overhauling in many places, but there was httle dispo
sition on the part of the men at the bead of affairs to
take these matters in hand.
One of the politicians who had some sense of the
seriousness of the situation was the newly elected Vice-
President, Henry Wilson. Before the end of the year, on
one of his periodical visits to the "Independent" office,
he told us something of his anxiety. He had been to see
the President, and had warned him that trouble was
brewing ; that the people were beginning to be critical in
their judgment of the administration ; that the only sal-v
vation for the party in power was in a prompt and ener
getic correction of abuses. To all this President Grant
turned a deaf ear. "There is no occasion for anxiety,"
he said. "Look at the tremendous majority the people
have given us. They are not worrying about matters

THE CREDIT MOBILIER 217
in Washington." Wilson shook his head gravely. He
clearly saw that it was a case of too much success.
It was not many months before the most infatuated
partisans were forced to see it. During the campaigns
the astounding charge had been made by the New York
"Sun" that a million dollars' worth of stock had been
distributed in bribes to members of Congress by the
Credit Mobilier, the construction company which was
engaged in building the Union Pacific Railroad. The
charge was treated by the dominant party as a mere
campaign fabrication; but on the assembling of Con
gress in December, an investigating committee was
appointed by the House of Representatives, and it soon
began to appear that, while the matter had been grossly
exaggerated, there was truth enough in the charge to
give great concern to all honorable citizens. It is not
needful here to rehearse the details of that disgraceful
history, nor to mention the names of the men who were
involved in it. The fact was that a great corporation,
depending directly on Congress for favor and protec
tion, had distributed considerable amounts of its stock
among the members of Congress. The stock was sold in
all cases for far less than market value ; in some cases
it seems to have been practically given away. Various
grades and shades of corruption came to hght in this
investigation ; in some instances the guilt was more fla
grant than in others, but the whole revelation was a dis
turbing sign of the presence in our national legislation of
dangerous influences, and of a deplorable lack, in many
of our representatives, of that sense of personal honor
which is the only safeguard of public morahty. And

218 RECOLLECTIONS
the solemn words of the Committee of the House which
investigated this business have been gaining force ever
since they were written : —
This country is fast becoming filled with gigantic cor
porations, wielding and controlling immense aggregations
of money and clearly commanding great influence and
power. It is notorious in many state legislatures that
these influences are often controlling, so that in effect
they become the ruling power of the state. Within a few
years Congress has to some extent been brought within
similar influence, and the knowledge of the public on that
subject has brought great discredit upon the body, far
more, we believe, than there were facts to justify. But
such is the tendency of the time, and the belief is far too
general that all men can be ruled with money, and that the
use of such means to carry public measures is legitimate
and proper. No member of Congress ought to place him
self in circumstances of suspicion, so that any discredit of
the body shall arise on his account. It is of the highest
importance that the national legislature should be free
of all taint of corruption, and it is of almost equal neces
sity that the people should feel confident that it is so. In
a free government like ours we cannot long expect the
people will respect the laws, if they lose respect for the
law-makers. The light which has fallen upon these words out of the
experience of the last thirty-six years makes them lu
minous and impressive. To what extent immense aggre
gations of money would seek to control the resources and
the destinies of this people in the swiftly coming years
Mr. Poland and his associates on the Committee could
have had but a dim conception. Yet it must be said

THE CREDIT MOBILIER 219
that there probably have not been many attempts in
the subsequent years to influence Congressional action
by methods as direct as were those of the Credit Mobi
lier. The fate of those who were involved in this transac
tion has been a terrible warning to all their successors in
office. The great combinations of wealth have found it
inexpedient to influence legislation by the method of
direct approach ; it is safer, and probably more econo
mical, to own legislators than to hire them. And ways
have been found of guiding the choice of the people, in
the primaries and at the polls, toward men who can
be depended on to protect the interests of the moneyed
classes. No one can know just how far this has gone ;
these methods are subterranean. But it has come to be
believed by the people at large that the great corpora
tions have long had trusty representatives in the na
tional legislature. This much is surely true. During the
last twenty years great aggregations of capital have been
diligently inventing and improving methods by which
they have been able to lay the industries of the land
under tribute, and to build up enormous fortunes by the
crippling or destruction of their weaker competitors.
All this was done under cover of law, and could have
been prevented by law. Yet the people who make the
laws have shown but a languid interest in preventing
and punishing these oppressions. It is only within the
last few years, under the spur of a resolute executive,
that any effective action in this direction has been
taken. The depressing effect of the Credit Mobilier scandals
upon the public mind was not relieved by the progress

220 RECOLLECTIONS
of political events at the national capital. It soon
became evident that the influences surrounding Grant
were determined to kill the civil service reform, and Mr.
Curtis, wh© had supported Grant, resigned the chair
manship of the Commission, because, as he expressly
said, the things which were taking place showed " an
abandonment both of the spirit and of the letter of the
civil service regulations."
The "Salary Grab" which soon followed was another
indication of the spirit which was ruling in the councils
of the nation ; it was engineered by Benjamin F. But
ler, of Massachusetts, who had become the evil genius
of the Grant administration. Nothing is so discreditable
to the memory of Grant as the fact of the ascendency
which this marplot succeeded in estabhshing over him.
The scandals connected with the New York and Bos
ton Custom-Houses, the shocking revelations about the
Whiskey Ring, the exposure of the villainy of Babcock,
the President's confidential friend and private secretary,
and the impeachment of Belknap, his Secretary of War,
were all indications of the extent to which corruption
was infesting the national administration. It is prob
able that no period in the history of the "nation has
witnessed such a carnival of graft and malfeasance as
that of Grant's second administration.
And this was mainly due to the fact that the game of
politics was being played in an insincere and fraudulent
manner. The issues were largely false issues. The pas
sions enkindled by the war were kept burning for pohti
cal purposes; reconstruction measures were imposed
upon the South which goaded the southern people to

THE CREDIT MOBILIER 221
madness, and when they undertook to free themselves
from the oppression, the most harrowing tales were told
of their lawlessness and brutality. Under cover of these
southern outrages all sorts of rascality flourished in
the national government. The eyes of the people of the
North were kept fixed upon the disorders of the South
so that they should not observe what was going on at
Washington and in the Federal offices.
All this, I cannot help reiterating, was the natural
fruit of the war. Just such sequelae as these are to be
looked for at the end of any war, and especially of a
civil war. War is hell, and it sets up continual pande
monium in any commonwealth. It inverts all moral
relations; it undermines social obligations; it spreads
its blight through every department of hfe. No nation
can engage in a protracted war without suffering a seri
ous loss of national probity and honor. The worst losses
are outside of the army and after the war. We make
much of the great mihtary virtues of courage, and sub
ordination, and readiness to sacrifice hfe for fatherland,
and there are, beyond a question, moral gains of great
value in war to those who meet these tests worthily.
There is no terrible calamity out of which brave and
faithful souls do not bring honor and virtue; but the
total effect of war upon the nation is disastrous ; inevit
ably it lowers the moral tone ; it scatters the seeds of
moral pestilence; it results in just such disorders and
corruptions as those which disfigure the pages of our
national history in the decade following the close of
the Civil War. While we give full honor to the courage
and consecration of the men who gave to their country

222 RECOLLECTIONS
on the battlefield the last full measure of devotion, we
must not shut our eyes to the terrible moral effects of the
enterprise in which they were thus summoned to lay
down their lives.
The physical losses which a nation suffers in such a
war — the loss of life, the destruction of property, the
crippling of industry, the creation of an army of de
pendents — are appalling ; but the moral losses, — the
weakening of the social bond, the unbridling of greed, the
letting loose of the plunderers, the fomenting of sus
picion and distrust, the creation of enmities which make
social reconstruction well-nigh impossible, — these are
the deadly injuries of which, before entering upon war,
we ought to make due account. It must be that the
nations will soon find a better way of settling their
disputes.

CHAPTER XV
THE SWING TRIAL
O joy supreme! I know the Voice,
Like none beside on earth or sea ;
Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice,
By all that He requires of me,
I know what God himself must be.
No picture to my aid I call,
I shape no image in my prayer;
I only know in Him is all
Of life, light, beauty, everywhere,
Eternal Goodness here and there!
I know He is, and what He is,
Whose one great purpose is the good
Of all. I rest my soul on His
Immortal Love and Fatherhood ;
And trust Him, as His children should.
John Greenleaf Whittier.
I have said that the theological pool was still un
troubled, when I took up my task upon the "Independ
ent." But signs of disturbance began to appear after a
year or two. I can hardly tell how it began ; some indi
cations of restiveness under the restraints of the tradi
tional orthodoxy were audible in certain quarters. The
"Independent" was interested in such phenomena, and
began to take an active part in discussing them. No
thing very radical was contended for ; the point mainly
insisted on was that theology must be moral. Every
doctrine must have an ethical foundation. Doctrines
which fail to agree with the plain principles of morahty

224 RECOLLECTIONS
cannot be true. Doctrines which represent God as acting
unjustly must be false doctrines. The foundation of
theology is in the statement that the Judge of all the
earth will do right. And if God's government is a moral
government, there must be between God and men a
common measure of morality. The principles which gov
ern the conduct of a righteous God must be principles
which approve themselves to the consciences of right
eous men. And when we are asked to believe doctrines
which imply that God is unjust, we ought with indig
nation to reject them. Something hke this was said
somewhat frequently in the "Independent." I find
in the number for July 3, 1873, an editorial entitled
"Immoral Theology," from which I quote : —
To teach that God is a being who has a perfect right to
bring into the world a creature with faculties impaired,
with no power to resist temptation, utterly unable to do
right, powerless even to repent of the wrong which he is
fated to do, and then send to everlasting misery this help
less creature for the sin which he could not help commit
ting, — to teach such a doctrine as this about God is to
inflict upon religion a terrible injury and to subvert the
very foundations of morality. To say that God may
justly punish a man for the sins of his ancestors, that
God does blame us for what happened long before we
were born, is to blaspheme God, if there be any such thing
as blasphemy. To say that any such thing is clearly
taught in the Bible is to say that the Bible clearly teaches
a monstrous He. Yet such theology as this is taught in
several of our theological seminaries and preached from
many of our pulpits. It is idle to say that it is nothing but
a philosophical refinement; that the men who come put

THE SWING TRIAL 225
of our theological seminaries with these notions in their
heads never make any use of them in their pulpits. They
do make use of them. They are scattering this atrocious
stuff all over the land. They are making infidels faster
than they are converting sinners. Men say, "If this is
your God, worship him, if you want to, but do not ask us
to bow down to your Moloch ! " Who can blame them ?
For our own part we say, with all emphasis, that between
such a theology as this and atheism we should promptly
choose the latter.
The obviousness of these contentions does not need
to be emphasized ; it would seem that prmciples so ele
mentary might have been taken for granted; but in
maintaining them the "Independent" soon had a lively
fight on its hands. The organs of several of the creeds
came to the rescue of their traditions, and undertook
to defend the dogmas which were thus impugned. The
controversy extended in a more or less desultory man
ner through several months.
One of the newspapers which engaged most actively
in this discussion was the "Interior," of Chicago, then
edited by Professor Francis L. Patton, now of Princeton,
who was then connected with the McCormick Seminary
of Chicago. It was not long before Professor Patton
found a heretic nearer home in the person of David
Swing, pastor of a Presbyterian church in Chicago, who
was preaching to great audiences every Sunday in
McVickar's theatre, and profoundly influencing the
thought of that city. Professor Swing was not a polemi
cal preacher ; he was not attacking the traditional theo
logy, though the implications of much of his teaching

226 RECOLLECTIONS
may have contradicted it ; he was a poet, and a seer, with
a reverent insight into the deep things of the Spirit, a
tender sympathy with everything human, a streaming
humor, a radiant optimism, a keen delight in all things
beautiful ; and his preaching was attracting multitudes
outside the ranks of the church-goers. Nor was there
any just cause of complaint against him on the ground
of heresy. He was not, indeed, preaching all the horrible
doctrines of the Westminster Confession, nor were many
of his brethren in the Presbyterian ministry ; his diver
gence from the ipsissima verba of the creed was really no
greater than that of thousands. The worst of his heresy
was his determination to beheve in a good and reason
able God, and to apply to all doctrines that ethical test
for which the "Independent" had been contending. But
the "Interior" found in him an enemy of the faith once
for all delivered to the saints, and after a somewhat bit
ter newspaper warfare upon him, it was announced that
charges of heresy had been preferred against him by
Professor Patton. The trial took place in the spring of
1874, and created no httle excitement in ecclesiastical
circles. The Chicago dailies gave verbatim reports of it,
the associated press devoted large space to it, the secular
as well as the religious newspapers freely discussed it.
Professor Patton is a keen logician, and he is thor
oughly grounded in the technicalities of the Calvinistic
system. He presented a formidable array of extracts
from Professor Swing's sermons, from which it was easily
proved that he was failing to teach many things specified
in the standards of the church. But there was no man
among the judges in the Presbytery against whom this

THE SWING TRIAL 227
could not have been proved. Any attempt to force a
strict construction upon the ministry of the Presbyte
rian church would result in driving a good share of its
ministers from their pulpits. Nobody believed the hor
rible article which taught infant damnation, and which
has since been expunged. All ministers of the church
were taking more or less hberty in the interpretation
of this obsolescent symbol. The only question was,
how much hberty should be allowed. And while it was
made to appear that Professor Swing had broadened,
considerably, the interpretation of the standards, three
fourths of the Presbytery were satisfied that he had
held fast to the substance of the faith, and voted to
acquit him.
But the Chicago Presbytery was made up of men of
unusual breadth and intelligence ; its leader, the Rev
erend Dr. Patterson, the grandfather of the young So
cialist who is making things interesting nowadays in
the western metropolis, was a benignant and liberal-
minded man, and he put himself strongly on the side of
Professor Swing; the ministers of Chicago who knew
him were nearly all his friends. And the prosecutor
judged that if the case were appealed to the Synod of
Illinois, the local influence in favor of Swing would be
overcome and the decision reversed. Notice was there
fore immediately given of such appeal, and the an
nouncement was promptly met by the resignation of Mr.
Swing from the ministry of the Presbyterian church.
That step the "Independent" greatly deplored. In
an editorial entitled "A Good Fight Declined" it de
clared : —

228 RECOLLECTIONS
Mr. Swing has made a great mistake. Through the
whole of the trial before the Presbytery he has borne him
self steadily and manfully ; his good temper, his frank
ness, his courage have increased the respect in which his
friends held him ; but now, at the end of the first trial,
when more than three to one of the members of his
Presbytery, including every prominent pastor in Chicago,
have voted to acquit him of the charges made against
him, he has withdrawn from the Presbyterian church.
His reason for this step is his unwillingness to continue the
litigation which his prosecutor has forced upon him by
appealing the case to the higher courts. . . . We have no
doubt that Mr. Swing has done what seemed to him right.
He is not a man of war ; the excitements of the trial,
though they must have been, for the most part, pleasur
able rather than painful, have severely taxed his strength,
and he is unwilling to encounter the fatigues and hard
ships which must attend the continuation of the case in
the Synod and the General Assembly. Besides, it seems
to him, doubtless, that the time and strength consumed
in warfare of this sort are just so much subtracted from
his proper work. . . . Nevertheless, we cannot help feel
ing sorry that he has not, at whatever cost to himself,
accepted the challenge now addressed to him. . . . There
is a set of literalists> like Professor Patton, who keep
insisting that no man has any business in the Presbyte
rian church who does not accept, ipsissimis verbis, all the
statements of the confession of faith. Everybody knows
that this is absurd, but these people will keep up their
clamor tiU their mouths are stopped by a decision of the
General Assembly. Nearly everybody knows that an at
tempt to enforce a literal acceptance of the terms of the
Confession would drive out of the Presbyterian church
at least half of its ministers. The Confession was framed

THE SWING TRIAL 229
two hundred and thirty years ago, and it is ridiculous to
suppose that the light which has been shed upon Biblical
and theological science since that day has revealed no
flaw in this old document, or that its phrases, many of
which, when they were adopted, were shrewd compro
mises between conflicting opinions, are all in this year
of grace the exact and scientific expression of the faith of
the living Presbyterian church. Dr. Patterson was right,
therefore, in saying the other day that the Confession
ought to be revised, but it is doubtful whether this can be
done. There is another alternative, and that is to let the
Creed stand as a historical symbol, and to obtain from the
highest tribunal in the church the decision that within
certain limits there shall be liberty in the interpretation
of it. Mr. Swing was the man above all others to secure
this decision. His reputation is unblemished, his hearty
acceptance of the vital truths of the Christian faith is
manifest, his devotion to his work and his success in it
are unquestionable, he is the best loved and the most
influential Presbyterian minister in the Northwest. The
Presbyterian church would not have ventured to expel
such a man from its communion, and when the decision
affirming his good standing had been proclaimed, there
would have been light all round the sky, and thousands
who are chafing in the bonds of old-time creeds would
have rejoiced in the hberty wherewith Christ makes us
free. I have quoted these words as an expression of the
principles by which I have sought to guide my own con
duct in the difficult matters of creed subscription and
denominational loyalty. There is an editorial here, writ
ten in one of the early months of my service on the " In
dependent," entitled "Come-outersandStay-inners," —

230 RECOLLECTIONS
based upon a saying of Governor Andrew : "I am not a
Come-outer; lam a Stay-inner." Thedutyof hberalmen
to stay in the churches to which they belong — if they
can be tolerated there — and, by kindness and patience
and fidelity to the truth as they see it, to do what they
can to enlighten and broaden the fellowship of those
churches, has always appeared to me very plain. The
question became, in subsequent years, a very practical
one for me; these words will show that I had time
enough to consider it.
Mr. Swing's subsequent career in Chicago was one of
great honor and usefulness. The church which he organ
ized, and to which he preached, for many years, in the
great 'Music Hall, was a strong force in the hfe of that
city; and, until the day of his death, this good man
held, in an unusual degree, the respect and affection of
the people. Nor was this due to any sensational or ad
captandum methods. His art, as a preacher, was sim
plicity itself ; there were no oratorical fireworks ; he read
his sermons, with no attempts at elocutionary effect;
they bore the character of essays rather than of orations.
What held the people was, partly, the beauty in which
his thought was always clothed, but, more than all,
the sincerity, the reality, the genuineness of it all. He
was a pure-hearted, gentle, faithful soul ; the words that
he spoke, like his Master's, were words of spirit and hfe,
and therefore the common people, and all the people,
heard him gladly. The fact that by methods so quiet and
unsensational a preacher could fill, Sunday after Sun
day, so large an assembly room, in the heart of the busi
ness quarter of a great city, is reassuring to those who

THE SWING TRIAL 231
would hke to believe in the effectiveness of simple
truth. The success of Mr. Swing as a teacher of religion was
due also in part to the fact that he knew how to mediate
between the church and the great outside multitude
which has largely withdrawn from its influence. While
he treated the dogmas of the church with great freedom,
yet he sought to present the essential truths of religion
in a manner so untechnical that they should commend
themselves to the common sense of men. My behef is
that great numbers of men who had been repelled from
the traditional statements of rehgious truth, were led
back to respect and reverence by the teachings of Mr.
Swing.

CHAPTER XVI
NEWSPAPER ETHICS
And they serve men austerely,
After their own genius, clearly,
Without a false humility;
For this is Love's nobility, —
Not to scatter bread and gold,
Goods and raiment bought and sold;
But to hold fast his simple sense,
And speak the speech of innocence,
And with hand and body and blood,
To make his bosom-counsel good.
For he that feeds men serveth few ;
He serves all who dares be true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Toward the end of my fourth year in the "Inde
pendent" office, certain matters which had been disturb
ing me more or less through the whole of my service
there, took on a form so aggravated that it became evi
dent to me that I must give up my work, and on Novem
ber 3, 1874, 1 gave the stipulated three months' notice
which terminated my engagement. It was not a grateful
conclusion, for the labor in which I had been engaged
was, in many ways, more congenial and inspiring than
anything that I had ever tried to do ; the compensation
was the largest I had ever earned ; the associations in
the office, on the whole, were very pleasant.
What troubled me was the business management of
the paper, especially in the matter of advertising. I do
not think that the "Independent" was, in this matter,

NEWSPAPER ETHICS 233
a sinner above all the weekly and daily journals of the
period ; most of them practiced, more or less continu
ously, the arts which appeared to me objectionable;
many of them resorted, now and again, to methods
which were never tolerated in our office. It was not
uncommon to discover, in the editorial and news col
umns of some of these journals, matter which wore the
garb of journalistic expression, but which the practiced
eye discerned to be simply an advertisement. From
this abuse our literary and editorial columns were abso
lutely free. Only once during my stay in the office was
it attempted to insert an advertisement among our edi
torial notes, and the insurrection which that provoked
brought a promise that it should never occur again. The
methods of the "Independent" of which I was disposed
to complain were confined to one or two departments
in which advertising matter was more or less skillfully
disguised. There was a department of "Publisher's
Notices," adjoining the editorial page, in which the mat
ter was printed in editorial type, and leaded to have
the exact appearance of editorial matter. It was often
written, also, in the editorial style, with the first person
plural. There was an "Insurance Department," which
purported to discuss insurance questions, and there was
a " Financial Department," both of which, undoubtedly,
were constructed in the same way. Now it is true that
these departments were announced as advertising de
partments in every number of the " Independent " ; and
the public was informed that reading notices in them
cost one dollar a fine. Readers of intelligence were not
deceived by this device. Of course it was not intended

' 234 RECOLLECTIONS
to deceive readers of intelligence. But a large percent
age, perhaps a majority of the readers, even of a journal
hke the "Independent," are casual or careless readers,
to whom these reading notices, in editorial form, would
appear to be the opinions of the editor. It was in the
expectation of deceiving these dull-witted readers that
the advertisers were wilhng to pay twice as much for
these reading notices as they paid for ordinary adver
tising space. And the journal, for the double rate, was
wilhng to lend itself to this scheme of the advertisers,
in deceiving the innocent and the unwary.
In a note to the publisher, written in May, 1873, I
made this frank statement : —
I have never been satisfied that the Publisher's Notices
are strictly honest. They appear to be what they are not.
It may be said that very few persons consider them to be
other than advertisements, but if this is so, why not put
them under the head of advertisements? I suppose you
get extra rates for them, and that these extra rates are
paid because they appear to be the publisher's opinions,
and because they may be quoted into other papers from
the "Independent." That, as you know, is constantly
done, and it gives the impression that the " Independent "
is a monster puffing-machine.
Such was the scruple, in which I confess that I did not
find much sympathy among newspaper men, but which
kept growing more burdensome to me, until, in the fall
of 1874, certain transactions transpired, concerning
which it is not needful that I should go into particulars,
but which made it clear to me that I could no longer
share the editorial responsibility for this journal. In the ;

NEWSPAPER ETHICS 235
note to the pubhsher in which I resigned my position
I said : —
I cannot think as you do about those departments.
They seem to me essentially evil, and a source of weak
ness to the paper. My scruple may be a foolish one, but
I cannot overcome it. It is quite true that most of the
other papers have something of the same sort, but if the
thing is wrong, that is no excuse. You think that I am not
responsible ; but suppose that I was the pastor of a church
in the basement of which the President of the Board of
Trustees kept a policy shop; would n't my preaching be
somewhat discounted ? The analogy is not perfect, but it
is close enough to indicate how difficult it is to separate
two departments of a church or a newspaper in the popu
lar mind, and count one clean and the other unclean. It
seems to me that nothing will avail but a radical change
in the management of the paper, by which these depart
ments are abolished, and the business of advertising
placed on a perfectly square and intelligent basis. . . .
You act on what seem to you sound principles, — that
I do not dispute, — but they do not seem so to me. Now
that I have brought myself squarely to face the question
which I have tried for three years to evade, my way seems
very clear.
It ought to be said that the ideas of publishers in
general were less clear, upon the matter, in those days
than they are in these. Most reputable periodicals are
careful, nowadays, to make a clear and bold distinc
tion between reading-matter and advertisements. The
"Independent," itself, so far as I can see, is scrupu
lously free, to-day, from all such devices.
Yet signs have not been wanting, within the past ten

236 RECOLLECTIONS
years, of the existence of subterranean methods by
means of which large portions of the press are subsidized
for the misleading of the people. Beyond a question
large quantities of what purports to be reading-matter
are supplied to the journals of the country by interested
parties, and paid for by the line. Certain great corpora
tions pay large sums of money for influencing, in this
manner, public opmion. It appeared, not long ago, in
evidence before a court, that a certain magazine, which
had no very obvious reason for existence, but which had
been very friendly to corporate combinations, had been
subsidized, for several years, by a large corporation.
There are certain news agencies which supply country
papers with news or New York or Washington letters,
sometimes gratuitously and always at very low figures ;
the matter is well written, and is eagerly accepted by the
lesser journals, but it is cooked to suit the taste of the
"Interests" that stand behind the bureau and use it for
the creation of a public opinion favorable to themselves.
Many persons throughout the country have been sur
prised at receiving month after month a popular maga
zine for which they had not subscribed ; few of them,
perhaps, have observed the appearance in it of a series
of articles, purporting to discuss the conditions of pub
lic service companies in various cities, and generally
tending to cast discredit upon municipal ownership. It
ought to be evident to the readers that somebody,
who is not wholly disinterested, is trying to educate
them on this subject, and is using this magazine for
this purpose.
Such are some of the methods in which the press is

NEWSPAPER ETHICS 237
i
now being used by the money power to poison the
springs of public opinion. Often when the innocent
reader supposes himself to be instructed by some inde
pendent student of public affairs, he is reading matter
which is furnished by some interested party, and which
is paid for at advertising rates. Compared with these
vast schemes for deceiving the people, the disguised
advertising of the "Independent " in the olden time was
a venial offense.
Any man has a right to use the press in defending his
claims or promoting his interest, provided the thing is
done openly and without deceit or concealment. But
when a man or a corporation enters into a conspiracy
with a newspaper to palm off upon the public its own
special plea as the report or the judgment of a disin
terested investigator — paying money for the insertion
of such matter in the news or editorial columns of the
newspaper — the man who pays the money is a swin
dler, and the newspaper that accepts it is a prostitute.
If Mr. Lawson wishes to issue his financial manifestoes
in the form of advertisements, that is perfectly legiti
mate for him and for the newspapers which print them ;
his name is signed to his statement, and every reader
knows what he is reading. But if some syndicate inter
ested in public service properties buys space in the
newspapers and fills it with its own statements artfully
prepared for the promotion of its own interests, letting
it appear that it is the work of some unprejudiced
reporter or the judgment of some independent student,
the deceit thus practiced on the reading public is one
of the gravest offenses against modern civilization. The

238 RECOLLECTIONS
guilt of this offense is shared equally by the newspaper
and the advertiser.
The press has come to be the principal agency for the
creation of public opinion. The welfare of the common
wealth depends upon the intelligence and soundness of
pubhc opinion. The sacredness of the function of the
press is therefore obvious. It is pledged, by all that is
precious in our national life, to tell the truth ; to help
the people to see things as they are. When it suffers
itself to become an instrument for misleading the people,
it becomes the worst of our public enemies.
It was my own strong sense of the sacredness of the
newspaper as a public teacher, and of the grave immoral
ity of perverting its function for hire, that constrained
me to give up my work upon the "Independent."

CHAPTER XVII
BACK TO NEW ENGLAND
Sing on ! bring down, O lowland river,
The joy of the hills to the waiting sea;
The wealth of the vales, the pomp of mountains,
The breath of the woodlands, bear with thee.
Into thy dutiful life of uses
Pour the music and weave the flowers;
With the song of birds and bloom of meadows
Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours.
And well may we own thy hint and token
Of fairer valleys and streams than these,
Where the rivers of God are full of water,
And full of sap are His healing trees !
John Greenleaf Whiitier.
When I turned my steps from the door of the "Inde
pendent" office, the world was all before me. There did
not appear to be any promising opening in journalism,
and the pulpit seemed to be my only refuge. Nor was
the thought of returning to the active pastorate an
unwelcome one ; I had been preaching, most of the time,
during my editorial service ; two of the smaller churches
in Brooklyn I had served for periods of nearly a year
each, so that I had by no means lost contact with the life
of the churches. Fortunately I was not left long in sus
pense. The North Congregational Church of Springfield
was without a pastor; I had several friends in that
church, and I was invited to supply its pulpit for four
Sundays. The invitation was most welcome. Spring-

240 RECOLLECTIONS
field had always been to me the most attractive of the
New England cities ; it was only a few miles from my
father's old home ; Mount Tom, over which I used to see
the sun rise from my grandfather's house in Bedlam,
was in full view ; the lovely Connecticut valley had long
held me by an enduring charm. My dear old friend
Bowles, from my boyhood my critic and counselor, was
there on the "Republican"; it would be good to be
within hailing distance of him.
Of the church, too, I had known something. Dr.
Holland had been one of its leading members ; it was in
the choir gallery of this church, leading its quartette in
the Sunday worship, that I had caught my first glimpse
of him. He was now living in New York. It had been
a church of progressive temper, and its ministers had
been, for the most part, men of light and leading. I had
preached for the church, a few times, during my pastor
ate in North Adams, and did not come into its pulpit
wholly a stranger. To add to the attraction was a new
church edifice, one of the first and best of Henry H.
Richardson's churches.
Before the four Sundays of my occasional engagement
had passed, the church extended to me a call to become
its pastor, so that, on the expiration of my three
i months' notice, on February 1, 1875, I found my home
in Springfield. Thus begins nearly eight years of pas-
! toral life, in the fairest of the lesser cities of the land, in
the midst of fresh thought and stimulating movement,
with delightful ministerial companionships, with plenty
of congenial work to do, and with new roads opening
every day into the great realities.

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 241
Springfield in 1875 had a population of about thirty
thousand; it had five or six Congregational churches,
among them the old First, founded in 1636 by William
Pynchon and his brave pioneers, who pushed out to the
Connecticut valley when the settlement about Massa
chusetts Bay was still very young. The name of Pyn
chon still survives in the locahty, and the tradition of
him has been cherished by lovers of free thought in all
the generations. Like most educated laymen of his time,
he was something of a theologian; and a book of his,
"The Meritorious Price of our Redemption," made no
small stir in those early days. It was printed in England,
and some of the Puritan theologians there, falling foul
of it before it was imported to this country, raised such
a hue and cry about its heresies, that the "Great and
General Court" in Boston commanded that the copies
of it arriving by ship from England be seized and burned
by the hangman on Boston Common. How many copies
escaped the fire I do not know; only two or three are
known to be in existence to-day. One of these it was
once my pleasure to have in my custody for a few days,
and the perusal of it was a revelation. The tradition had
been that this book of Pynchon' s, upon the Atonement,
was a daring denial of all that is essential in substitu
tionary theology ; instead of that, its orthodoxy is rock-
ribbed and triple-plated ; there is no Calvinistic strong
hold in the land in which its doctrine would not to-day
be deemed archaic. The head and front of Pynchon's
offending seems to have been his denial that Christ as
our substitute actually suffered the pains of hell in his
60ul, including the pangs of remorse. That he positively

242 RECOLLECTIONS
refused to beheve ; that refusal made him a heretic, and
caused the burning of his book on Boston Common.
There was a hot controversy about it on both sides of the
sea. Pynchon was repeatedly cited to answer for his
heresies before the ministers of Boston, but he appears
to have disregarded the summons. So fierce, however,
was the censure to which he was exposed that, in 1652,
he returned to England, leaving to his children his
estates and responsibilities in the Connecticut valley.
It is a curious illustration of the manner in which the
heresy of one day becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
But the tradition of Pynchon, the founder of Springfield,
as that of a man in advance of his day, who was unjustly
persecuted by his contemporaries, may have had some
tendency to moderate the theological climate and en
courage toleration in that neighborhood.
Springfield was the natural capital of the four west
ern counties of Massachusetts, and the cluster of large
towns by which it was surrounded, Chicopee, Holyoke,
Northampton, and Westfield, with Hartford, the cap
ital of Connecticut, only half an hour distant on the
south, made it a centre of considerable influence. What
counted for much in this respect was the Springfield
" Republican, ' ' a newspaper whose weight and force as an
organ of public opinion has long been wholly out of pro
portion to the size of the community in which it circu
lates. It is doubtful whether the field of any newspaper
was ever better cultivated than this of the Springfield
"Republican." In every hamlet of these four western
counties a correspondent gathered up the local news and
forwarded it to Springfield, and these reports, generally

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 243
crude, were skillfully edited and condensed in the office,
so that a picture of the life of western Massachusetts,
complete in its detail, was spread before the readers of
the "Republican" every morning. By this means a
community of interest and feeling was cultivated; in
matters social and pohtical the people could cooperate
intelligently. Not that the lead of the "Republican"
was always followed in such matters ; often there was
wide dissent from its positions, and loud complaint
against the excesses of its independency ; but the people
had come to rely upon its truthfulness and its courage,
and its influence was felt in every part of its field.
How pervasive and salutary this influence has been,
the people of that community may not fully realize.
Over all their affairs this guardian has always been
watching sleeplessly; no conspiracy against the pub
hc welfare could escape its vigilance, and no corrupt
consideration could muzzle its utterance. Municipal or
pohtical irregularities of all sorts were sure to be dis
covered and dragged into the hght ; graft and extrava
gance were held in check by its presence. I think that
the municipalities of western Massachusetts will be
found to be singularly free from civic and financial
abuses. Springfield has expended money freely for pub
lic buildings and improvements, but its debt is small, its
tax rate is low, and no scandals that I remember have
appeared in its City Hall. The capitalization of its pub
lic service companies has always been very moderate —
at least this was so until a recent day ; what may have
happened since the great New England railroad mono
poly has been absorbing the electric lines of the cities, I

244 RECOLLECTIONS
do not know. But for all this social and civic health and
vigor western Massachusetts is indebted, in no small
degree, to the Springfield "Republican." It is not, of
course, the only influence ; other good newspapers and
other moral agencies have been at work in this field, but
there has been no other influence so salutary and so
persistent as that of this leading newspaper. If news
papers of the type of the Springfield "Repubhcan"
could be planted all over this country at intervals of
not more than one hundred miles, the foundation would
be laid for a great improvement in social and political
morality. For all this large result the community was mainly
indebted to Samuel Bowles. He was the second editor
of the name. The "Weekly Repubhcan" was founded
by his father, in 1824 ; it was changed to a daily, in 1844,
at the urgent instance of the younger Samuel, who was
then but eighteen years old ; the upbuilding and develop
ment of this paper had been his hfe-work. He had had
good collaborators, chief of whom was Dr. Holland,
whose wholesome and homely social essays had added
greatly to the popularity of the journal. But the hfe
and soul of the "Republican" had always been Samuel
Bowles. For thirty years he had been pouring all his
energies into it, and better than most men he had
worked out his ideals. On the hterary side they were
distinct and sensible. He wanted no fine writing, but
the news should be told and the comment presented in
clear, crisp, idiomatic English, with no surplus verbiage.
The paper must tell the truth ; correspondents were en
couraged to state the thing as it appeared to them ; not

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 245
seldom the editorial columns and the correspondence
columns were openly at war. Readers were made sure
that the facts would not be concealed from them, and
that they were likely to get all sides of a controverted
question. Over the staff of reporters and editors the
influence of the chief was potent. " He was a man," says
one of his old associates, "of notable presence, tall,
spare, nervous, with keen cavalier face, full brown beard
and dark brown hair that was neither of Indian stiff
ness nor of effeminate curl, but between the two ; a rich
brown-red complexion, a strong nose, and brilliant and
divining eyes before which no falsehood could stand.
... He was often severe, and sometimes the young
apprentice would feel that he was cruel; but he was
as generous in praise as stern in censure, and a word
of approval from the chief coupled with one of his
wonderful smiles was worth a hundred flatteries beside.
The personal aura which surrounded him in social in
tercourse was nowhere more potent than among the
young men in the office, when he criticised and inspired
them." When I first knew Mr. Bowles, during my college days,
and afterward in North Adams, he was very modest
about his ability as a writer. Of the management of a
newspaper he knew that he was master, but he was diffi
dent respecting his literary skill. Indeed, his earher
writing was by no means brilliant ; it was clear, intelli
gent, businesslike, but it had httle sparkle or color. All
this came to him late in life. During the last ten years
he developed a degree of skill as a writer which was a
surprise to those who knew him in his earher days. The

246 RECOLLECTIONS
blossoming of his art seems to have come on the occa
sion of his visit to California, in 1865 ; the letters which
he wrote to the "Republican" on that journey, which
are collected in his volume "Across the Continent," are
full of piquant, fresh, poetical English. And the letters
of all this period, which are gathered up in Mr. Mer-
riam's admirable biography, are delightful examples of
the epistolary art.
When I took up my home in Springfield in 1875, Mr.
Bowles was fifty-one years of age, and ought to have had
twenty-five years of good work ahead of him, but it was
easy to see that his work was nearly done ; the symp
toms of nervous breakdown were manifest. I saw him
not often ; his strength was consumed by his daily du
ties, and he had not much left for social pleasures. He
had been most cordial in his appreciation of my jour
nalistic experience. "I hope," he had written me three
months before, "you will not leave journalism. The har
vest is large and the laborers are few. It is bigger than
the pulpit. I won't be so conceited as to say that it is
better." But when I became, so to speak, a member of
his parish once more, he gave me a warm welcome, and
showed a kindly interest in my work. Now and then I
had the honor of a seat at his table, at those rather in
formal dinner parties which he sometimes gave to a few
gentlemen, when guests of distinction were visiting him.
Over all the questions of national politics we used to
talk freely when we met ; in the Hayes-Tilden campaign
he was disposed to favor Tilden, but he asked me to give
the "Repubhcan" my reasons for the opposite prefer
ence, and printed it conspicuously, with a cordial word,

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 247
on the editorial page. His fear was that Hayes was a
man of putty, and could be manipulated by the worst
elements of the Repubhcan Party; he was sure, after
Hayes was confirmed in his seat, that the Cabinet would
be composed of rotten timber. About this he was quite
pessimistic. On the day when the Cabinet was an
nounced, I saw the bulletin, with the names of Evarts
and Schurz and Sherman and Devens, — the strongest
Cabinet for many years, and nobody representing the
reactionary wing of the party, — and I climbed to the
editorial rooms of the "Republican." "How now?" I
demanded. "Well," he said, "it's too good to believe.
I did n't think they would let him do it. The fact is,
parson, there's one element these fellows never count
on, and that is God." It was no irreverence; it was
his way of saying that the machinations of the politi
cians had been divinely overruled. He was very chary
of expressions hke that, but I think that he meant it,
that day.
Several years before his death they made him a
Trustee of Amherst College. Free lance in theology as
he notoriously was, his appointment as custodian of
the interests of that very conservative institution was
regarded as somewhat extraordinary. But he proved to
be a most valuable member of the Board, nor were his
rehgious views ever suffered to embarrass, in any way,
the administration. One day I expressed to him my
gratification at the appointment, and jocularly ventured
the hope that he might do something to brace up the
orthodoxy of the institution. "Well, no, parson," he
6aid; "I don't go much on theology; but now and then

248 RECOLLECTIONS
a question of morals in the financial management comes
up, and then I shine out !"
During the last year of his life he stirred up the people
of Springfield to undertake a more efficient organization
of their local charities. The "Republican," at his insti
gation, kept the matter before the public until a meetmg
was called and steps were taken to form an association
for the care of the poor. It was my privilege to prepare
the report and to draft the form of organization by
which the Union Relief Association of Springfield was
constituted, in which service I was brought into frequent
conferences with Mr. Bowles. It was the last opportu
nity I had of talking much with him, and I gratefully
treasure the memory of those interviews. As soon as
the Association was organized, he himself took out a
subscription paper, and raised the money necessary for
putting the machinery into operation. It was almost
his last public service.
Six months later came the fatal stroke which pros
trated him, and left him but a few weeks of lingering
suffering. I saw him once, after that ; he asked for
me. The great brown eyes were full of wistful friend
liness ; there were a few cheerful and courageous words.
It was not many days later that we carried him away
to his resting-place in the beautiful cemetery, near his
home. When my work began in Springfield, in the spring of
1875, the mdustries of the country had not yet recovered
from the collapse of 1873. It was a season of industrial
depression; large numbers of men were out of work, and

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 249
the outlook for a multitude of industrious and capable
men was gloomy. Meetings of the unemployed were
held in the Police Court room at the City Hall, and vari
ous schemes were suggested by which the city might
offer relief to those in want. Those who attended these
meetings were not, as a rule, the soberest and most
capable workingmen, but the more restless and turbu
lent of the laboring class. Their leader was an Irishman,
of an impulsive and reckless temper, whose talk to the
crowd had sometimes been of an inflammatory charac
ter. One day he came to me with an urgent request that
I go down to the meeting that night, and speak to the
multitude. I accepted the invitation, and found myself
confronted with a company of laborers who were evi
dently not in a complacent mood. What I had to say to
them did not fully harmonize with their ruling idea, for
I expressed doubt as to whether it would be possible for
the city to furnish work for them, and exhorted them to
be ready to do any kind of work that might be offered,
at merely nominal wages, rather than beg or be idle. It
was not, as I am able now to recall it, a speech which
was calculated to conciliate that audience ; I fear it did
not recognize so clearly as it ought to have done the
responsibihty of the community for the relief of such
conditions. I am sure that I should put the case a
little differently to-day, if I were speaking to such a
company. The men listened to me, however, respectfully, and at
the close of my address I said to them : " I have told you
what I think is the sensible thing for you to do ; next
Sunday night I am going to talk to your employers, to

250 RECOLLECTIONS
the people who are in the habit of hiring labor, and I
wish you would come to the church and hear what I
shall say to them." Quite a number of them accepted
the invitation. In that sermon I urged upon my congre
gation the duty of furnishing work, wherever it was pos
sible, to the unemployed ; I suggested that building and
repairing could be very cheaply done, in the existing
conditions of the labor market ; and that those who had
any surplus funds could probably use them produc
tively, just then, in the employment of labor. That ser
mon was one of the most effective I ever preached ; it
started two or three of my parishioners to building
houses ; it set -quite a number of people to repairing
and remodeling their premises ; it resulted in organizing
one or two small businesses which gave employment to
several people. If one could only get such results as
these quite frequently, preaching would seem to be
better worth while.
Those of the workingmen who heard what I had to
say to the employing class seemed to be satisfied that
the pulpit was not prejudiced against them, and my
friend, the Irish agitator, continued, after that time,
regularly to attend my church, with which he afterward
united, becoming one of my most loyal parishioners.
It was about this time that I began the series of lec
tures to "Workingmen and their Employers," which
were published, in 1876, in a volume with that title. The
field was one into which the pulpit had not often ven
tured, and my work had to be largely that of a pioneer.
But it was becoming increasingly evident that a great
social problem was thus forcing itself upon the thought

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 251
of the world, — a problem in the solution of which the
Christian church must have a large concern. Primarily
it must be a question of conduct, a question concerning
the relations of man to man, and it is the primary busi
ness of Christianity to define and regulate these rela
tions. The application of the Christian law to industrial
society would, it seemed to me, solve this problem, and
the church ought to know how to apply it.
Against this assumption strenuous objection was
raised in those days, and the protest is still heard. It
was said that the minister has no business to bring
questions of this kind into the pulpit ; that his concern is
with spiritual interests, and not with secular; that his
function is the saving of souls and not the regulation of
business. Tit was urged that if men are only "saved,"
all questions of this nature will solve themselves ; that
right relations will necessarily be established between
social classes.
In dealing with this objection, it was only too appar
ent that the facts did not support it. It was by no
means true that those who, in the judgment of charity,
were "saved " were establishing right relations between
themselves and those with whom they were associated
in industry. Many of them were practicing injustice and
cruelty, without any sense of the evil of their conduct.
They were nearly all assuming that the Christian rule of
life had no application to business ; that the law of sup
ply and demand was the only law which, in the world of
exchanges, they were bound to respect. If a man was
converted and joined the church, it did not occur to him
that that fact had any relation to the management of

252 ' RECOLLECTIONS
his mill or his factory. Business was business and reli
gion was religion ; the two areas were not coterminous,
they might be mutually exclusive, j Nothing was more
needed in the church than the enforcement upon the
consciences of men of the truth that the Christian law
covers every relation of life, and the distinct and thor
oughgoing application of that law to the common af
fairs of men.
There were those who urged the materialistic doctrine
that all these economic questions are outside the realm
of morals; that economic forces are beyond the reach
of moral causes ; that nothing can be done by human
agency to mitigate their severities or to modify their
action. All this appeared to me profoundly and mis
chievously untrue ; it seemed to involve a philosophy
of history which was openly at war with the facts of
history, and it was the denial of all that is heroic and
inspiring in human endeavor.
The most common objection to the discussion of such
topics in the pulpit was, however, the assertion that the
minister was not competent to deal with them. Con
cerning economic questions and business questions he
was not apt to have any adequate knowledge, and there
fore he had better let them alone. That objection largely
prevails, until this hour. A good proportion of our
ministers avoid all reference to the matters in dispute
between workingmen and their employers, and all the
great issues arising in industrial society, because, they
say, they have not the necessary information and tech
nical skill to handle them satisfactorily.
It is worth while candidly to scrutinize this pleat

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 253
Doubtless, for many of us, it is the easiest way to dis
pose of the matter. If we can get a dispensation from
our consciences to evade this subject, we shall keep out
of a thorny road. Doubtless, too, we maybe aware that
there are powerful influences which join to urge upon us
this pohcy of evasion. But it is a fair question whether
this is a subject which we can afford to ignore.
Let us say that our business is saving souls. Souls are
men. How to save men, their manhood, their character,
— that is our chief problem. Is there any other realm
in which character, manhood, is more rapidly and more
inevitably made or lost, than this realm of industry?
Is the man saved, who, in his dealings with his employee,
or his employer, can habitually seek his own aggrandize
ment at the cost of the other? Is not the selfishness
which is expected to rule in all this department of hfe
the exact antithesis of Christian morahty? Is there any
thing else from which men need more to be saved than
from the habits of thought and action which prevail in
the places where "business is business" ? Are we really
"saving souls," when we permit men hke the packing
house proprietors and the insurance wreckers to sit
comfortably in our pews and enjoy our ministrations?
I fear that some of these men may have grave accu
sations to bring against us, one of these days, for
having failed to tell them the truth about their own
conduct. In fact, there is reason for the belief that in these very
questions respecting the regulation of our industries,
the Christian church is facing to-day its crucial test. If
it can meet these questions frankly and bravely, if it

254 RECOLLECTIONS
can solve them successfully, its future is secure : it will
have won its right to the moral leadership of society.
If it fails in this, — if this tremendous problem is worked
out without its aid, — the world is likely to have very
little use for it in the generations to come. The church
is in the world to save the world ; if it lacks the power
to do this, and industrial society plunges into chaos,
are there any ecclesiastics infatuated enough to beheve
that the church can save itself out of that wreck? No;
it must save society, or go to ruin with it.
The plea of the religious teachers that they are in
competent to deal with social questions is, therefore, a
fearful self -accusation. They have no right to be incom
petent. Whatever else they are ignorant of, they must
not be ignorant respecting matters which concern the
-\very hfe of the organization they represent. If there
are any subjects on which they are bound to have clear
ideas and sound convictions, they are these subjects
which concern the relations of men in industrial society.
Here is the field on which the battle of Gog and Magog
is being fought out to-day. Shall the teacher of religion
confess that in the arena where character is mainly
won or lost, where the life of the church is at stake,
where the destiny of the nation is trembling in the bal
ance, he is unfit for any efficient service ? It is as if a
physician should declare that he would only prescribe
for nettle rash and chicken-pox and hke disorders, but
that he declined to deal with typhoid or diphtheria or
tuberculosis or any of the deadly diseases. The services
of such a physician would not be in great demand.
i The fact is that the application of the Christian law to

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 255
social questions is not a recondite matter. Many of the
abstruse questions of metaphysical theology with which
all ministers are expected to be famihar are mastered
with much more difficulty. The divinity schools have*1
no business on their hands so urgent as the instruction
of their students in the first principles of the Christian
social order. It is far more important that young minis
ters should understand how men ought to live together
in this generation than it is that they should be famil
iar with the Gnostic philosophy of the second century,
or the Supralapsarian theories. To some extent the
divinity schools are now seeking to meet this demand.
But those ministers who had no such advantages during
their professional studies may easily inform themselves
upon all the more important aspects of the social ques
tion. And the plea of incompetency is one which no
minister, with a due sense of the position he holds, and
of the responsibility resting on him, ought to think of
making. It was a conviction of the truth which I have been
trying to express which prompted me, in the autumn of
1875, to prepare that course of Sunday evening lectures
to "Workingmen and their Employers," of which I have
spoken. It has been many years since I looked into
that old volume, and I have found some interest in
glancing through it. It is not a profound discussion ; in
fact, it did not aim at profundity ; it was meant for the
average mechanic. It is by no means a radical utterance.
I remember that some positions were called in question
by some of my parishioners, but it is difficult to-day to
understand how they could have found fault with ideas

256 RECOLLECTIONS
so obvious. The attitude of the discussion toward labor
unions is not quite so sympathetic as it ought to have
been. The right of the men to organize for their own pro
tection is, indeed, maintained. "They have a perfect
right to deliberate together concerning the wages they
are receiving, and to unite in refusing to work unless
their wages are increased. The law gives to capital an
immense advantage in permitting its consolidation in
great centralized corporations; and neither law nor
justice can forbid laborers to combine, in order to pro
tect themselves against the encroachments of capital,
so long as they abstain from the use of violence, and
rely upon reason and moral influence." I am glad to
find that statement. Probably that was one of the posi
tions to which my parishioners objected. On the whole,
however, the treatment of the unions is critical rather
than cordial; the evils which they harbor are magni
fied; the higher purposes they serve are imperfectly
recognized. "I have no doubt " — thus it is written —
"that such combinations of laborers are often unwise
and unprofitable; that, as a general thing, they result
in more loss than gain to the laboring classes." That
was a narrow estimate; it rested on imperfect know
ledge. In various ways I find these old lectures some
what lacking in comprehension.
The principal suggestion in the way of social recon
struction is that of cooperation, which is urged, with
much confidence, as a method of putting an end to in
dustrial strife. What John Stuart Mill and John Eliot
Cairnes had written about this was quoted, and the
large success of the Rochdale Experiment in England

BACK TO NEW ENGLAND 257
was appealed to ; it was also suggested that a stepping-
stone to cooperation might be found in industrial part
nership, "by which the work-people in a manufacturing
establishment are given an interest in the business ; and,
in addition to their wages, a stipulated portion of the
profits is divided among them at the close of every year,
in proportion to the amount of their earnings." But the
fact was insisted on that all these methods must draw
their force from Christian motives. " Let no one fail to
see that cooperation is nothing more than the arrange
ment of the essential factors of industry according to
the Christian rule — 'we being many are one body in
Christ, and every one members one of another.' It is
capital and labor adjusting themselves to the form of
Christianity; and, like every other outward symbol, is
a false, deceitful show, a dead form, unless filled with
the living spirit of Christianity itself."
"Workingmen and their Employers" is not an im
portant book; I have been quite resigned, for many
years, to the fact that it is out of print ; but it was a
serious attempt, made at an early day, to apply Chris
tian principles to the solution of the social question. I
am not proud of the achievement, but I am not sorry
that I made the endeavor.
Another little book was published in this Centennial
year, — six short chapters of counsel to those contem
plating the religious life, under the title "Being a Chris
tian : What it Means, and How to Begin." I have ex
plained on earlier pages of this story how I came to
write this book. It was an attempt to make plain the
way of Christian discipleship, which, before my own

258 RECOLLECTIONS
feet, had been made so obscure and difficult ; and the
favor with which it was received was very gratifying.
It has had a larger circulation than any other of my
books, with one exception ; and I have been comforted
in knowing that out of the perplexities of my boy
hood, help has come to many who were seeking the
way of life.

CHAPTER XVIII
HERESY HUNTING
Opinion, let me alone ; I am not thine.
Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear
To feature me my Lord by rule and line.
Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's law,
Not one sweet inch : nay, if thy sight is sharp,
Wouldst count the strings upon an angel's harp?
Forbear, forbear.
I would thou leftst me free, to live with love,
And faith, that through the love of love doth find
My Lord's dear presence in the stars above,
The clods below, the flesh without, the mind
Within, the bread, the tear, the smile.
Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile,
Let me alone. Sidney Lanier.
It was during the earlier years of my Springfield pas
torate that the question respecting the inerrancy of the
Bible began to trouble the mind of the churches. It was
known, to begin with, that a company of learned men
were meeting monthly in the Jerusalem Chamber of
Westminster Abbey in London, for the revision of the
received version of the Bible, and that certain eminent
American scholars were cooperating in this revision.
This was, in itself, to many, a disturbing suggestion.
Revision implied change, and change, whether of word
or phrase, in the language of the Bible, could be nothing
less than sacrilege. It was known to some that consider
able critical study had been bestowed upon the Bible,

260 RECOLLECTIONS
of late years, by German scholars, but, up to this time,
very little was known in the churches, or even in the
theological seminaries of this country, of the results
of this study. Theodore Parker translated, in the forties,
De Wette's monumental "Introduction to the Old Tes
tament," but very few copies were sold; Parker's name
on the title-page was the red signal of infection ; not
many of those who regarded their reputations would
buy a book about the Bible for which he stood sponsor.
Now and then one might hear from the pulpits sharp
monitory words about the "German neologists," but
just what their innovations might be, there was no way
of finding out.
Gradually, however, the light that was shining all
about us found its way through our shutters. In news
papers and magazines, and in an occasional heretical
book, statements of fact appeared which arrested the
attention of thoughtful men. There were even Biblical
commentaries which ventured to call attention to inter
polated verses and doubtful passages. It began to be
evident to some that the doctrine of inerrancy had been
overworked ; that there was need of the application of
critical study to the sacred Scriptures. Yet after this
fact began to be plain to students and teachers, there
was still great timidity in admitting so much in the
hearing of the public. I remember sitting at table, at the
Massasoit House in Springfield, in 1875, with a score of
intelligent Congregational clergymen, when the question
arose whether it would be judicious to tell the people of
our congregations that 1 John v, 7 — a verse not found
in the Revised Version — was an interpolation ; and not

HERESY HUNTING 261
one of the twenty agreed with me in thinking that the
fact could be safely stated. They all admitted that
the verse was spurious, but feared the effect of letting
the people know a truth so disturbing. About the same
time I ventured to remark from the pulpit in reading
the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that the
thirty-seventh verse was not in the original manuscript,
and the next day I received an indignant letter calling
my attention to the fate reserved for those who "take
away from the words of the book of this prophecy."
Such was the prevailing attitude of English-speaking
Protestants upon questions of Biblical criticism, through
the first three quarters of the nineteenth century.
Early in the seventies, a copy of the New Testament in
English was published, containing the received version,
with footnotes indicating the variations from this ver
sion of the three oldest and best manuscripts in exist
ence, — the Vatican, the Alexandrian, and the Sinaitic
Bibles. It was stated that none of these manuscripts
had been known to the men who made the King James
translation; and it was held by scholars to be almost
axiomatic that where these three oldest manuscripts
agreed, their reading must be accepted, and that where
they unitedly disagreed with the received version, that
version must be erroneous. This edition of the New
Testament put within the reach of all intelligent readers
the means of judging to what extent our English version
needed revision, and made it plain that the task under
taken by the men at work in the Jerusalem Chamber
was one of serious importance.
Such a concession, however reluctantly it might be

262 RECOLLECTIONS
made, involved considerable relaxation of the rigidity
of theological dogmatism, and opened the way for the
examination of many traditional beliefs. There was
"the sound of a going in the tops of the trees," — the
spirit of inquiry was abroad.
In the autumn of 1877 the Reverend James F. Mer
riam, a son of Deacon George Merriam, of Springfield,
was invited to the pastorate of the Congregational
church in Indian Orchard, one of the Springfield sub
urbs. It was a factory village, and Mr. Merriam had
already, by a year of service, greatly endeared himself
to the community. He was a man of a most unselfish
and consecrated temper ; he had sought this field because
of the opportunity it gave him to come into close con
tact with the working-people.
Before the council called to install him, Mr. Merriam
indicated some slight variations from the traditional
orthodoxy. The only one to which any importance was
attached concerned the doctrine of future punishment.
Mr. Merriam was unwilling to assert that all who die
impenitent suffer, everlasting conscious torment; he
was inclined to believe that those who were incorrigi
ble might suffer extinction. Over this heresy the council
wrestled long and painfully; Mr. Merriam was called
back once or twice and labored with to make him revise
his statement, but he would not ; and finally, after the
hour for the evening service had arrived, a majority of
the council voted to refuse him installation. The debate
was a warm one, and there was great excitement in the
community, where Mr.. Merriam and his family were
well known and greatly honored. The local newspapers

HERESY HUNTING 263
gave the matter large attention, and the press of the
whole country, secular as well as rehgious, took it up ;
it became a matter of national interest.
Those of us who were in the minority in this contro
versy were naturally called on to give account of our
selves, and the whole question of the conditions of fel
lowship and of the obhgations of denominational loyalty
was up for wide discussion. In several sermons preached
about this time, I tried to defend the action of the mi
nority of the council, and to show that no interest of
Congregationalism or of Christianity could be imperiled
by including such men as Mr. Merriam in our fellowship ;
while their rejection was an act of narrowness for which
We ought to suffer. The next Sunday after the council I
reviewed its action, pointing out the precise doctrinal
ground on which fellowship was refused to Mr. Merriam,
insisting that such a divergence as his from the tradi
tional beliefs was not a good ground for excluding him
from the ministry, and concluding by saying : —
" As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the
sons of God." Whomsoever we exclude, them we want to
include, surely, in all our choicest fellowship. And how
shall we find out who are led by the Spirit of God? We
can bnly-fi-hd out by looking at their lives. By their fruits
we know them. " And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek
ness, temperance — against such there is no law." No ;
there is not in God's Kingdom, and there never shall be by
my help or consent in any human organization that tries
to represent God's Kingdom. The man who believes in
Christ, who has the spirit of Christ in him, who shows in
his Hfe the fruits of that spirit, who, denying himself and

264 RECOLLECTIONS
taking up his cross, is following Christ in toilsome but
loving labor for the salvation of men — he is my brother,
and nothing shall hinder me from offering him the right
hand of fellowship. I do not care what name they call
him by, whether he is Churchman or Quaker, Universalist
or Roman Catholic, he who is united to my Master shall
not be divided from me. And when such a man has found
a company of people who love him, not because of any
brilliancy of wit that has dazzled them, nor because of
any tricks of sensationalism that have amused them, but
just because of the Christ life that is in him, — and want
him to live among them and show them how to serve and
follow Christ, — and when he asks me to come and help to
join him in loving bonds as pastor to this people, I shall
go, every time ! My blessing is not worth much, but, such
as it is, God forbid that I should withhold it ! And if any
body bids me be cautious, I answer, Yes, I will be very
cautious lest I hinder in his work a true servant of Jesus
Christ ! I will take great care always lest I exalt the letter
above the spirit, the dogma above the life. For I would
rather make two mistakes on the side of charity than one
on the side of bigotry.
Mr. Merriam's people insisted that he remain with
them, in spite of the adverse decision of the council;
and for this reason some other disagreeable things were
done, in the ecclesiastical assemblies of the neighbor
hood, with the purpose of excluding the church from
Congregational fellowship. Through the whole matter
Mr. Merriam bore himself with exemplary gentleness and
forbearance, refusing to engage in any controversy, and
quietly going forward with his work, until broken health
compelled him to lay down his charge.

HERESY HUNTING 265
It was only a few weeks after the Indian Orchard
Council that another council was called at North Adams
for the installation of the Reverend Theodore T. Munger
over my old church. Of that council also I was a
member. Mr. Munger was known to hold hberal views
on many questions, and the issue of this council was
awaited with much interest. The council was a more
representative body than that at Indian Orchard; it
included President Noah Porter, of Yale, and President
Hopkins, of Williams. Mr. Munger's statement of his
theological views was presented skillfully, but without
evasion ; on one or two points which Mr. Merriam had
not touched he diverged from the traditional statements,
and on the subject of future punishment he was even
more emphatic in his rejection of the orthodox view
than Mr. Merriam had been. He was somewhat sharply
criticised, but he defended himself, and when the dis
cussion was ended, the council voted to proceed with his
installation. It was pleasant to be in the majority again,
and to carry back to Springfield the testimony that
there were other views of the conditions of Congrega
tional fellowship than those which had prevailed at
Indian Orchard.
These two councils created no small stir in our Con
gregational communion. Everywhere the ecclesiastical
bees were buzzing. What were the conditions of fellow
ship? How much must one beheve to be a Congrega
tional minister in good standing? It was known, of
course, that there was no national Congregational creed,
and no ecclesiastical body which had the power to frame
or impose such a creed upon the denomination; the

266 RECOLLECTIONS
only creeds were those of local churches, and these were
by no means uniform, and were binding only upon those
who belonged to the local church. It was argued, how
ever, that there was a consensus of doctrine, which was
sufficiently well understood by Congregatidhalists ; and
that those who did not, eic animo, accept that consensus
of doctrine had no right to remain in the Congregational
ministry. To this it was easy to reply that this consensus
had been continually changing ; that one doctrine after
another once universally accepted had been modified
or dropped, and that there must be room at the present,
within the fellowship, for varieties of belief.
In default of any definite denominational standards
to which ministers could be held, some of the defenders
of the faith undertook to enforce the idea of self-disci
pline. Every man, they argued, knows whether he is an
orthodox Congregationalist or not ; if he knows that he
is not, he is bound to take himself out of the fellowship ;
and if he fails to do so, he is acting a dishonorable and
unmanly part. The "Congregational Quarterly," which
assumed to represent the denomination, urged, with
considerable acerbity, this method of eliminating here
tics. Naming certain doctrines as not included in the
Congregational system, — among them the -moral theory
of the Atonement, — it declared that the only way in
which men holding those doctrines could "evince a
noble manhood " was by promptly withdrawing from
that ministry. To that challenge I ventured a reply in
the columns of the "Congregationalist." After explain
ing that I held and taught some of the doctrines de
nounced by this censor, I said : —

HERESY HUNTING 267
To be told that I am not acting a manly part in remain
ing in this fellowship, is an impertinence which I heartily
resent. I am here in the Congregational denomination;
I suppose that I have a right, to be here, and here I pro
pose to stay. If, holding the opinions that I do, I have
not a right to be. recognized as a Congregational minister,
I want to know that. I do not wish to be "tolerated." I
do not care to be in a ministry in which I have not equal
rights with every other minister. Such rights I suppose
myself to possess, and I shall continue to ex^reise them
until I am advised by some competent tribunal that they
h§ve been abrogated.
The editor of the "Quarterly" says, that the moral
theory of, the atonement " does not belong to our orthodox
system," Perhaps it does not belong to his, bqt.it.doeg to
mine  " There is no logical stopping-place," he goes
on, " between the moral theory of the atonement and infi
delity." An older if not a better pope has declared that
there is no logical stopping-place between Protestantism
and infidelity. The one saying is just as true as the other.
I take the liberty of deciding for myself what logic requires
of me.
I speak for nobody but myself ; but I happen to know
that,! am not alone in my opinions, nor in. my determina
tion to stand by them. There are quite a number of. u$
who have no wish for controversy, but who dp beheve
to gome extent in the manly art of self-defense, and we
shall not be posted, as sneaks in the " Congregational
Quarterly" without mildly protesting. If, by refusing
to go straight over to infidelity, we must lose the respect
of the editor of the " Quarterly," so be it; we shall try not
to lose our self-respect.
The. response to this was surprising.. Letters and
postal' cards came pouring in for a week or two with the

268 RECOLLECTIONS
heartiest approval of this declaration of independence.
Yet those who were standing for the new measure of lib
erty in the denomination were still in a small minority,
and many ways were found of making their position
quite uncomfortable. There is always a denominational
"machine," more or less pohtical in its methods, by
which ecclesiastical affairs are managed, and those who
incur the displeasure of this machine are apt to find
their paths to promotion obstructed, and their oppor
tunities of service limited. A young man sometimes
finds himself branded as a suspect, and avoided by
those whose confidence he wishes to deserve. For sev
eral years I was passing through this experience. It did
not greatly distress me, for I knew that it would not
endure, and my own church never wavered in its loyalty.
Sometimes, the manifestations of this suspicion, on the
part of those who knew me only by name, were quite
amusing. Yet I confess that this method of dealing with
those who are supposed to differ, in certain matters of
doctrine, from the majority of their brethren, often
filled me with indignation.
Following the lead of the "Congregational Quarterly,"
the Vermont State Convention of Congregationalists,
shortly after this, passed a resolution declaring that
men who rejected "any substantial part" of the doc
trines "commonly called evangelical" ought to take
themselves out of the Congregational fellowship. And
when an amendment was proposed, providing that the
resolution involved no imputation against the charac
ter of a man who "neither in his own mind, nor by
the decision of a competent ecclesiastical tribunal" was

HERESY HUNTING 269
unworthy of fellowship, it was overwhelmingly voted
down. Thus it was sought to raise a hue and cry by
means of which heretics should be scared out of the
denomination. The comment on this procedure which
I ventured to make in a letter to the "Republican"
was this : —
It would seem that so long as a Congregational minis
ter regards himself as being in substantial accord with the
Congregational churches, and so long as no church and
no council of his brethren has ventured to call his standing
in question, he ought to be regarded as in good stand
ing. I have never before heard of any device by which
his standing could be impaired, without any action of
church or council. But this resolution, as interpreted by
the action upon the amendment, provides a way whereby
any minister's standing can be impaired without any
action of church or of council. What is that way? It is
the way of private accusation. That is precisely what is
authorized by the Vermont convention. By slurs and in
sinuations and mischievous reports a minister's standing
can be badly damaged. The action of the majority in the
Vermont convention is calculated to encourage this kind
of practice. It permits every man to judge of the ortho
doxy of every other man, and to pronounce those who do
not come up to his standard unworthy of fellowship. It
denies to every man who may be suspected of heresy the
right of private judgment respecting himself, and gives
to every one who may choose to accuse him the right of
private judgment upon him.
This matter of the relation of a minister whose mind
is moving, and whose beliefs are necessarily changing,
to the church with which he is identified is one of ,

270 RECOLLECTIONS
considerable- interest, not only to, the clergy, hut, to the
laity as well. Upon the cases of ministers who are not
in, entire harmony with the ecclesiastical organization
to which they belong the secular newspapers are apt to
comment freely. It is generally as§umed that; if a minr
ister has ceased to agree in all respects with the major
ity of his brethren, he ought to leave them. But there
are several considerations which ought to be carefully
weighed before censuring him for the failure tp. depart.
In the first place, this, fellowship may be very dear tp
him, He may have grown up in it; its associations
and friendships are the best part of his hfe; to bid
him begone and leave it is a harsh demand.
In the second place, while recognizing that he has
come to differ, in some matters, from his brethren, he
may not feel that these are essential matters. In the
main concerns he still remains at one with them ; there
are a hundred agreements where there is one difference.
In the third place, he. feels that he needs, for himself,
this association ; it furnishes to him not only stimulus.
but restraint, and it tempers the individualism qf isp-^
lated thought with historic usages and social judgment^.
In the fourth place, it may be, very absurd. i» him, bu|
he cannot help thinking that in some, at least, of the
things concerning which he disagrees with his brethren,
he is right and his brethren are wrong. He believes that
the truth which God has given to him is truth which his
brethren need. Fidelity to his Master and love for his
brethren constrain him to continue in the fellowship.
He will differ with them as kindly as he can ; he will not
emphasis his difference in divisive and unseemly ways,

HERESY HUNTING 271
but he will b& faithful to the truth as he sees it, in
order that those with whom he walks may be led to see
it also. In short, he is not a "Come-outer," he is a "Stay-
inner." If such a relation as this is intolerable to his
brethren, and they will proceed, in orderly ways, to
acquaint him with that fact, he will go away and leave
his blessing with them ; until then he will remain in their
fellowship. Such have been the prmciples by which I have sought
to guide my own conduct, and as I review my relations
to the Christian communion with which, through all my
life, I have been identified, I am satisfied that they are
sound principles. I was invited, in former years, a great
many times, and not always too politely, by those who
"seemed to be somewhat," to take, myself off, but I
could not see that they had authority, and I declined to
go. I am glad that I did not go. I know that it has been
better for me to remain. The differences which were
once emphasized have disappeared, and the fellowship
has grown increasingly dear.
I should not leave the impression that in those- years
of controversy I was an ecclesiastical outcast. There
were good friends in many of the strong pulpits of" New
England, — in Hartford and New Haven, in Worcester
and Providence and Norwich and Boston ; and my peo
ple frequently enjoyed the privilege of listening to the
best preachers of the eastern states, who offered to
exchange pulpits with me. After the first flurry over
the Indian Orchard Council, most of my Springfield
brethren were very cordial and neighborly, and all that

272 RECOLLECTIONS
I suffered as a heretic is of small account. A little good
fighting had to be done, which was not, on the whole, a
hardship, and the loss of favor in ecclesiastical circles
was quite made up by gains in other quarters.
There was a Connecticut Valley Theological Club,
into which I was admitted soon after arriving in Spring
field, and with which I continued in delightful comrade
ship until I left Massachusetts. It was made up of va
rious denominations, who met, monthly, at the Massasoit
House in Springfield and spent the best part of a day
together. In the forenoon we heard three or four papers,
on different aspects of a single theme which had been
assigned for study ; after dinner we discussed the papers
and the topic. It was not a frolic ; thorough and splen
did work was done, both in the written and in the oral
discussions. There was entire freedom and fearless
ness of criticism, every man spoke his mind with few
reserves, and the educational value of these meetings
was to me not inconsiderable.
In January, 1878, there was issued, in Springfield, the
first number of "Sunday Afternoon, a Magazine for the
Household," of which I had undertaken to be the editor.
It was a well-printed monthly of ninety-six pages, with a
physiognomy not unlike that of the "Atlantic Monthly."
The first editorial explained its purpose. It would fur
nish Sunday reading for the family, of a character at
once wholesome and entertaining. The contents would
not be wholly of a devotional or meditative character ;
a large portion of each number would be devoted to sto
ries, of sound moral tendency ; questions of social life and
national well-being would be discussed, but always in

HERESY HUNTING 273
their relations to the Kingdom of God. "Questions of
practical philanthropy will, however," — so the pro
spectus runs, — "occupy the largest space in 'Sunday
Afternoon.' How to mix Christianity with human af
fairs ; how to bring salvation to the people who need it
most ; how to make peace between the employer and the
workman; how to help the poor without pauperizing
them ; how to remove the curse of drunkenness ; how to
get the church into closer relations with the people
to whom Christ preached the Gospel ; how to keep our
religion from degenerating into art, or evaporating
into ecstasy, or stiffening into dogmatism, and to make
it a regenerating force in human society, — these are
questions which our readers are likely to hear most
frequently and most urgently asked."
For nearly two years I kept the entire editorial con
trol of this magazine, conducting all the correspondence,
reading and editing all the manuscripts, reading the
proof, and writing about twelve pages in minion type
of editorials and literary notices. After that, for a year
or more I relinquished the management and wrote the
editorial matter. Here came in play my practical train
ing in the printing-office ; without that technical know
ledge I could not have managed aU these details. For
during these years the work of my church was not neg
lected, and it was steadily enlarging on my hands. It
was hard work — more than I ought to have under
taken ; but it was dehghtf ul work ; the field of the mag
azine was one that I had chosen for myself; I was
entirely free to cultivate it in my own way, and the
journalistic instincts were again given free play. The

274 RECOLLECTIONS
magazine sjarted well ; we soon had a fair circulation
and a generous recognition by the press, and we were
able to call to our service a fine array of contributors. It
seemed to be a promising venture,, but the. health of
the. publisher failed, and as. there was no one to whom
he was willing to relinquish his. enterprise, it came to
an untimely end.
Through the whole of my residence in Springfield my
communications were open with the "Century Maga?
zhie." Dr. Holland called, now and then, for contribu
tions, to the body of the magazine, or to the editorial o?
literary departments ; and after his death, in 1881, Mr.
Roswell Smith, the president of the Century Company/,.
seemed disposed to put considerable work, upon me.. He
was a man of great fertility of suggestion!,, and,, through
his editors, he was always proposing topics, for treat
ment in the magazine. Sometimes I found his sugges
tions practicable, and sometimes not ; but there gradually
grew up between us a close friendship, and I. came tp
regard, him as my most trusted counselor.
It was at his instance that I undertook what proved
to be one of the most successful of my liteiary taskg,, —
the writing of "The Christian League of Connecticut^'
" I want you," he said, "to write a kind of- a story show
ing hpw the people in some New England town got.
together and united their forces in practical Christian
work." It was to have been a single article ; but before
I had gone far, I wrote to Mr. Gilder that I might want
to extend it to two or three numbers, and after reading
the first, installment he. gave me the right, of way to fill
as. much space as I wished. The. seri.es of, four articles

HERESY HUNTING 275
attracted more attention than any other magazine
work of mine had done ; not only church people, but all
sorts of people, appeared to be interested in them. The
practical question of Christian cooperation which they
raised was one that appealed to many. To a large extent
they were taken for veritable history ; I received many
curious letters both from this country and from Eng
land, Where they were republished, asking for further
information concerning the experiment. Quite a num
ber of movements for cooperation among churches and
for the consolidation of churches in over-churched com
munities were reported to me as having been directly
suggested by these articles. After the series was con
cluded in the magazine, the articles were collected in a
small volume. Toward the wide movement for the pro
motion of the unity of Christendom they furnished a
contribution. During the eight years of my life in Springfield, many
notable things were happening in national affairs.
Grant's second administration had come to an end, and
the deplorable deadlock of the Hayes-Tilden contest, in
the Centennial year, had ended in the seating of Hayes.
Of his election I had been a hearty advocate; in the
soundness and sanity of his mind I strongly believed ;
but the events connected with the settlement of the dis
pute were not such as to fill the hearts of thoughtful
patriots with satisfaction. The last days of 1876, and
the early months of 1877, were a critical period in Amer
ican history. It is difficult, at this day, to determine who
had the moral right to the presidency. In Louisiana, in

276 RECOLLECTIONS
South Carolina, and in Florida, the elections were thor
oughly vitiated by fraud and violence. The questions
arising as to the method of ascertaining the result of the
election were complicated and critical. Congress must
decide, and the Senate was Repubhcan while the House
was Democratic. On the returns as presented, the Pre
sident of the Senate was sure to declare Hayes elected,
and the House of Representatives would decide that
no election had taken place and would proceed to elect
Tilden. There was imminent danger of collision and
revolution. In almost any other country, such a result
would have been inevitable. The sober sense of the Con
gress which finally determined to leave the whole matter
to an Electoral Commission, composed of five Senators,
five Representatives, and five Justices of the Supreme
Court, registered a great victory for free government.
It seemed at the first intolerable and shameful that a
judicial tribunal like the Electoral Commission should
divide upon the questions before it on party lines, every
Republican deciding for Hayes and every Democrat for
Tilden. Was there no man of the fifteen who was more
of a judge than a politician ? It was a humiliating spec
tacle. Yet the question had to be settled; Congress,
which had all the power, had prescribed this way of set
tling it ; and there was nothing to do, for a law-abiding
people, but to acquiesce in the decision.
Too much praise is not likely to be given to Mr. Tilden
and the Democratic leaders for their behavior in this
exigency. Beyond a doubt they believed that the presi
dency rightfully belonged to them. They had agreed to
the Electoral Commission with the understanding that

HERESY HUNTING 277
Justice Davis, of Illinois, an Independent, would be the
fifteenth man. It turned out that he could not serve,
and Justice Bradley, a Republican, was substituted for
him. They believed that they had had something less
than a fair show in the constitution of the tribunal. In
any less law-abiding community they would have felt
that they had good ground for refusing to accept the
decision. But there was hardly a threat of resistance.
The Democrats, realizing that they were wronged, sub
mitted with perfect patience to a legal decision which
deprived them of the fruits of victory, and of the control
of the nation for four years. And those who had been
identified with the Republican Party from its origin, and
who had shared in the distrust of Democratic leaders
and policies, felt bound, in those days, to confess that
the patriotism of the nation was not confined to the
Republican Party.
Aside from the dubious procedure with which it was
introduced, the administration of President Hayes was
one of great wisdom, purity, and efficiency. The removal
of the troops from the South, the restoration of home
rule, and the substantial pacification of that region
brought relief to all parts of the land. This rational
policy came too late to repair all the injury which had
been wrought by the measures of coercion, but it was
the only thing to do, and Mr. Hayes acted in the matter
with great prudence and firmness. The resumption of
specie payments, after a suspension of seventeen years,
also occurred during this administration. Mr. Hayes
greatly failed to please the politicians, but the people
generally believed in him ; the verdict of history is that

278 RECOLLECTIONS
few presidential careers have been more honorable and
successful than his.
In subsequent years, after my removal to my pre
sent home, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Hayes
quite frequently. He Was then living at his home in
Fremont, Ohio, and finding constant employment in
various uncompensated services of the commonwealth.
"I thought," he said to me one day, "when I laid down
my high office, that I was going to have plenty of leisure
for the remainder of my life, but I am nearly as busy as
ever I was." The question what to do with our ex-Pres^
dents had not troubled him ; he was active in our state
charities, he was a trustee of our state University, he
was always ready to help in any good work. It was a
benignant ending of a faithful life.
The nomination of Garfield was, of course, highly
gratifying to all Williams College men, and his trium
phant election gave promise of a brilliant administra
tion of the government. But the bitter political feuds in
which he was soon involved were disheartening, and the
terrible tragedy of his assassination was a blow that
shook the nation to its centre. Well do I remember
the shudder of horror that ran through our streets that
July morning. One memory of my own gave the event
a peculiar vividness. A few months before, there had
come, one day, to my study, a rather unkempt person,
with reddish hair and stubbly beard, who handed me a
small placard on Which he was named and described as
"the brilliant and eloquent Chicago lawyer and orator."
He was delivering lectures in reply to Robert Ingersoll,
and he wished to speak in one of the churches of Spring-

HERESY HUNTING 279
field under the patronage of the ministers. I told him
at once that I had no interest in his enterprise ; that if
the Christian people were living as they ought to live,
what Robert Ingersoll said about them would not hurt
them ; that if they were not, the less said about it the
better. He went away, but elsewhere succeeded in se
curing a church for his lecture, which was duly adver
tised. Before the hour appointed for it, however, an
officer from a neighboring city appeared upon the scene
with a warrant for the arrest of the lecturer for jump
ing a board bill. The brilliant and eloquent defender of
the faith succeeded in making good his escape, and the
dubious parcels left behind him in the house where he
was lodging, which were supposed to contain his per
sonal effects, were found to be filled with waste paper.
The name of this personage was naturally impressed on
my mind.
On the day of the assassination I called at the Mas-
sasoit House to pay my respects to Father Gavazzi, the
distinguished Italian Protestant leader, who was then
visiting Springfield. On the steps of the hotel I bought
the latest extra, in which it was stated that the name
of the assassin was "Charles J. Getto," his personal ap
pearance was described, and the conjecture was ven
tured that he was an Italian. I read the dispatch to
Father Gavazzi, and the venerable man threw up his
hands with horror. "God forbid," he cried, "that he
should be an Italian !" The name upon the handbill at
once occurred to me, and I saw that this was a phonetic
spelling. "No !" I said, "he is not an Italian. I know
this man. His name is not 'Getto,' it is Charles J.

280 RECOLLECTIONS
Guiteau, and his home is Chicago." The next extra had
the name rightly spelled, and the assassin fully identi
fied as our quondam defender of the faith.
The long agony of that summer, while the nation
waited by the bedside of its dying chief, left its mark on
the fives that passed through it. Most unadvisedly the
recovery of the President was made a test of faith by
many religious people. It was held, in many crowded and
weeping assemblies, that if there were prayer enough,
and if the prayer were the prayer of faith, he would surely
be healed. And there were not a few who were ready to
claim that they had the assurance of faith, and knew that
his life would be spared. For those who had entertained
this confidence the issue was a sore trial. There were
many, doubtless, who came to doubt whether prayer has
any efficacy ; their faith was overthrown. Perhaps there
were others who learned to take a more reasonable esti
mate of the relation of prayer to Providence. That is not
prayer which assumes to dictate to the infinite Wisdom
what He shall do in any given case ; nor is that prayer
which exalts a subjective assurance into a revelation of
the divine will. There is no true prayer which is not
summed up in the petition, "Thy will be done!" and
which is not sure that whether the specific request be
granted or denied, God's will is done.
One of the striking issues of this tragedy was the
transformation which was wrought in the character of
the man on whom the leadership of the nation fell. He
had not been a man of high political ideals ; it was with
a great sinking of the heart that many of us saw the des
tinies of the nation committed to his hands. But the

HERESY HUNTING 281
sense of his high responsibilities roused him and braced
his manhood. At once we saw him invested with a dig
nity and a discretion with which we had never credited
him. Instead of being the leader of the "Stalwart " fac
tion, he at once became the President of all the people ;
his policy was just and liberal ; his administration called
forth the praises of those who had distrusted him, and
President Arthur laid down his office, at the end of his
term, with the respect and confidence of the nation.
I remember a remark, made by President Hayes, some
years later, shortly after the beginning of Cleveland's
first term. Some good Republican had said, with an air
of half -incredulous surprise, "I really believe that that
man is trying to do right." "Of course he is," said Mr.
Hayes. "What else can he do? That is the only way
out. There is no position in this world in which the
motives for doing right are so powerful as in the presi
dency of the United States. As long as a man sticks to
that determination, he is safe ; the moment he wavers
in it, he is in infinite trouble."
It would seem that some sense of this truth has
been apprehended by most of the men who have occu
pied this high station ; for there are few of them in later
years who have not come out of the presidency stronger
and better men than they were when they entered upon
its duties.

CHAPTER XIX
POSTMERIDIAN
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past ; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, — to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all humankind. Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The eight years of my hfe in Springfield, from Decem
ber, 1874, to December, 1882, were busy and eventful
years. I have told very little of what was most intimate
and significant in my life ; the relations of a pastor to his
people cannot be reported in such a narrative. There
were no surprising gain® to be recounted ; but the mem
bership of the church and the congregation steadily
increased, and the unity of the brotherhood was unbro
ken. Through all the days of controversy I never had a
misgiving as to the support of my people ; no words of
dissent or criticism reached my ears. The work of the
preacher had always been a welcome and inspiring
labor, but in these eight years my sense of its impor
tance had greatly deepened.
But the work of the pastor of a city congregation, in
these inquisitive and strenuous times, is sure to grow

POSTMERIDIAN 283
harder every year. His congregation increases, his pas
toral cares multiply; be is more and more enlisted in
pubhc interests ; the calls upon him are more numerous,
and the work of the pulpit is more exacting every day.
There must be no sense of failure there, and unless he
preaches a httle better this year than he did last, there
is apt to be a sense of failure. Any business man, any
other professional man, as his success becomes more as
sured, is able to relieve himself of more and more of his
load, but this is not the case with the minister ; the more
successful he is, the harder he has to work, and there js
very little help for it. So it came about that the end of
my eighth year found me considerably worn and jaded,
and the need of some respite was apparent. I had not,
however, mentioned this conviction to any one, when,
one blue Monday morning, a letter arrived from Colum
bus, Ohio, inquiring whether I would consider a call to
the First Congregational Church of that city. While I
had the letter in my hand, a telegram was handed me,
from my friend, Roswell Smith, of the "Century," to let
me know that he was on his way to Springfield. The case
was before me, and the counselor was coming. I went
over the matter with him, and he was prompt and posi
tive in the judgment that I must go. He had lived for
several years in what we then used to call "the Middle
West," and he was clear in his opinion that I should find
profit in transplanting myself into that soil. The areas
were larger, and so were the opportunities. I might want
to come back to the East, some day, but for the next
ten years, at least, that was the place for me.
His advice moved me to give a receptive answer to

284 RECOLLECTIONS
the letter from Columbus, and the result was a call by
telegraph, a visit to Columbus, and the removal to that
city in Christmas week, 1882.
Columbus, in 1882, was a city of fifty-two or three
thousand people. Commercially and industrially it has
always been rather conservative; it has not much re
sorted to booms ; its growth has been steady and solid ;
its enterprise has not been flighty. I have seen the city
more than treble its population, but it has all been done
soberly. Its first settlers came largely from Virginia
and Kentucky; quite a perceptible southern flavor
could be detected in its social hfe a quarter of a century
ago. One sign of that was a hospitality rather more
cordial than one would look for in a New England city,
or in a typical western city.
Nothing was wanting to the welcome with which my
new neighbors greeted me ; they soon made me feel much
at home. Yet the environment was, I confess, depress
ing. The hills to which I had been wont to lift up my
eyes, and from which had often come my help, were no
where in sight ; the flatness and monotony of the land
scape were a perpetual weariness. I put all this out of
my thought as much as I could, but, at first, it was hard
to bear. The time came when this craving ceased to give
me pain, and I have learned to take great pleasure in
the quieter beauty of these fertile plains and river-bot
toms, and can now fully understand why the Hollanders
find a keen delight in their own flat country, and why the
artistic impulse has flourished there far more splendidly
than in Switzerland; but nothing of this was credible
to me in those first months in Columbus.

POSTMERIDIAN 285
In those days Columbus, on the physical side, was
rather crude ; few of its streets were paved, its lighting
was primitive, its domestic architecture was not, as a
rule, a delight to the eyes. It presented no such trim and
finished appearance as the best New England cities.
Yet the streets were wide and weU shaded, and there
were large possibihties of beauty. It was not only the
pohtical capital of the state : it was also, in some sense,
the educational and the philanthropic capital ; for the
state university was here, and state institutions for the
blind, the deaf, the insane, and the feeble-minded, as
well as the state penitentiary, were here located. This
made Columbus the natural rallying centre for the phi
lanthropic forces of the state. The state university was
then in its feeble infancy, with twenty or twenty-five
instructors and three hundred and fifty students. I have
seen it grow to a roll of two hundred teachers and twenty-
five hundred students. In this university, from the begin
ning, I have found many of the resources for my work ;
a large number of its faculty have always been connected
with our church, and many of its students have been
welcomed in our congregation.
Like every other capital city, Columbus has always
been pervaded by the atmosphere of politics. Most of
the state officials have their offices here ; many conclaves
of pohtical workers are held here ; it is the convention
city, by eminence, of the state, and considerable num
bers of those who have held pohtical office make their
homes here, after their terms of office have expired.
Such influences as active partisan workers can set in
motion are, therefore, likely to be encountered here.

286 RECOLLECTIONS
It is perhaps needless to say that these influences are not
always of the most salutary kind ; one would not, nat
urally, resort to a capital city for the freshening of his
pohtical ideals. Yet I am bound to say that the people
of Columbus have often, in recent years, manifested a
strong disposition to think for themselves, and I doubt
whether the "pernicious activity" of the politicians is
much more influential here than in other Ohio cities.
Twenty-five years ago, partisanship in Ohio was far
more intense than it is to-day. The fines were sharply
drawn ; every man was supposed to be a thick-and-#»
adherent of one of the two pohtical parties. To one who
had been living in a community where nearly every
body reads the Springfield "Repubhcan" at the break
fast-table, this kind of infatuation had a humorous
aspect, and I did not easily adjust myself to it ; often, I
fear,Any mugwumpery)was a serious offense to some of
my good neighbors ; but as time went on, we came to
a better understanding.
The church was an extremely plain structure, stand
ing on Capitol Square, opposite the State House, and in
the heart of the city ; for a family church it was not well
located, and as the city expanded, this disadvantage
would be accentuated ; but it was a good meeting-place
for general purposes, being accessible to street-cars
from all parts of the city, and there were people enough
within reach if the church could attract them. The work
began encouragingly, the church and the community
seemed to be hospitable to such views of Christian truth
as were presented, and there were early indications that
the field of the church was wider than the city.

POSTMERIDIAN 287
It was in the first year of my ministry in Colum
bus that what is known as "the Creed of 1883" was
published. The history of this Creed throws light on
Congregational- ways, and some account of it may be
interesting to those not Congregationalists.
During the days of our warm theological controversy,
in 1877 and 1878, there was much discussion as to
what were the Congregational doctrines. There is an
old creed, called the Savoy Confession, which is sub
stantially the same as the Westminster Confession of
the Presbyterian Church, and which, in the early days
of New England, had been recognized by the Congrega
tional churches as the expression of their belief. But
that creed had become utterly antiquated ; few Congre
gationalists of any stripe were now willing to subscribe to
it, and no other statement of doctrine had taken its place,
except a brief confession of "the evangelical faith,"
adopted by a mass meeting on Burial Hill, in Plymouth.
It had come to be recognized as Congregational doc
trine that no ecclesiastical body existed, or could be
created, with power to frame such a creed and impose it
upon the churches, — each church, by the primary Con
gregational principle, having the right to make its own
creed. Yet there were many who insisted that Congre
gationalists must have a creed ; and that the National
Council ought to formulate such a statement, represent
ing the present belief of the churches. That demand
found strong expression at the St. Louis Council of 1880,
and was met by a determined opposition on the part of
those who contended that the council had no power to
adopt such a creed ; that it would be an infringement of

288 RECOLLECTIONS
the hberty of the churches. The Gordian knot was cut
by a decision to appoint a committee of twenty-five of
our most competent theologians, with instruction to
prepare such a statement of doctrine, at their leisure,
and print it, when completed, in the newspapers. It was
not to be reported back to the council, and the council
was not to hold itself responsible for it; it would go
forth as the judgment of twenty-five of our leading men
respecting the essential Christian truths believed by
Congregationalists. It would probably be accepted as
a substantially true statement of what was generally
believed among us.
This committee of twenty-five was made up, of course,
mainly of very conservative men ; they took plenty of
time for their deliberations, and when they were ready
to report, their creed was found to be a document of sur
prising breadth and hberahty. All the distinctively
Calvinistic dogmas, for which our conservatives had
been contending, were ehminated ; there was no formal
doctrine of the Trinity — "three persons in one God";
election, in the Calvinistic sense, was not in it, nor was
original sin, nor Biblical infallibility; and the sufferings
of Christ on the cross were described as his "sacrifice of
himself." Twenty-three of the twenty-five names were
signed to this creed ; two signatures were withheld, and
it soon transpired that these were refused because the
creed failed specifically to declare that all persons, dying
impenitent, were forever lost, — that there was no pos
sibility of repentance beyond the grave. The twenty-
three had been unwilling to make this statement, be
cause, as they maintained, there was no clear Scripture

POSTMERIDIAN 289
to support it ; the two had insisted on it as essential to
orthodoxy. Thus began the discussion upon "second probation,"
or "probation after death," which made such a stir in
our Congregational circles. One of the two dissentients
was a secretary of our Board of Foreign Missions ; and we
speedily heard that the Board would be erected into a
bulwark against this loose doctrine ; that no missionary
would be commissioned who was not sound on this
question of future probation. For, it was argued, the
admission that there was a possibihty of repentance
after death would "cut the nerve of missions"; there
would be no adequate motive to work for the salvation
of the heathen, if such a thing could be beheved.
But presently there began to come from the mission
fields themselves earnest protests against being com
pelled to teach this doctrine. Intelligent Hindus and
Chinamen were crying out against the brutality of it.
If no man can be saved who has not heard of Christ, and
death is the limit of probation, then all their ancestors
were in remediless misery. They positively declined
to accept a "Gospel" of which this was a cardinal doc
trine. It became evident, by the testimony of some
of our strongest missionaries, that the "nerve of mis
sions" was most effectually cut, not by omitting this
doctrine, but by teaching it.
All this, however, availed nothing to such cocksure
dogmatists as those who were pushing the propaganda.
Some of these heretical missionaries were called home
and put under the ban ; the tests were rigidly applied to
all missionary candidates ; those who were not sure that

290 RECOLLECTIONS
death was the end of hope to all who died impenitent
were refused appointment.
The controversy waxed hot. Theological seminaries
were involved in it ; every meeting of the Mission Board
witnessed a great debate on the question of probation.
The conservatives were, at first, in a large majority in
the corporate membership of the Board; but the mi
nority persisted in its protest, steadily increasing its
force, until, in 1892, at Worcester, the whole propaganda
collapsed; those who had been pushing it retired from
the management of the Board, and the attempt to fasten
this mediaeval conception upon the Congregational faith
was abandoned.
It was an enlightening controversy ; the real nature
of the Christian faith was better understood because
of it. And it was an interesting fact that the strongest
testimony against this benighted notion came from the
missionaries. It is often supposed that missionaries are
a narrow and bigoted class of men ; the truth is that we
are indebted to them for much sound thinking on the
great problems of Christianity. The missionaries are
helping us to-day to take a broader view of the relations
of Christianity to the other religions, and to cultivate
that sympathy of religions by which alone ours may
vitalize and transfigure those with which it is brought
into contact.
Thus my work in Columbus began just as this con
troversy was launched; the debate in the Mission Board
and the Andover controversy were in full blast in the
early years of it, and the public mind was awake to
these theological issues. For, in truth, there is nothing

POSTMERIDIAN 291
that people of ordinary intelligence are so much inter
ested in, as in these deep questions concerning the life
that now is and that which is to come. I did not bur
den my congregation with discussions of these contro
verted questions, but I found them eager to hear what
was said about them.
It was an interesting period in which to exercise the
function of the Christian ministry. The spirit of inquiry
was in the air. Very little change had been made in the
statements of religious behef or in the forms of church
administration, but some ancient traditions Were chal
lenged, and it was evident that the Christian world was
getting ready for a forward movement.
What seemed to me of the greatest importance, how
ever, was the solution of the social problems which had
been rising into prominence since the war, and to which
the industrial depression had given emphasis. That ter
rible strike of the railroad men in 1877, in Pittsburg;
the telegraphers' strike in 1883, and a bitter struggle
between the operators and the coal-miners in the Hock
ing Valley, which began in April, 1884, had brought very
strongly before my own mind the critical character of
the relations between the men who are doing the work
of the world and the men who are organizing and direct
ing it.
The Hocking Valley strike came very close to me ; for
the company which was engaged in it was largely repre
sented in my congregation: the vice-president and
general manager was one of my board of trustees ; so
was another vice-president, and the treasurer was also a
member of my congregation. The struggle began with a

292 RECOLLECTIONS
demand for higher wages, but it was shortly merged in
a conflict over the right of the miners to organize for
their own protection. The company had had trouble
with the Miners' Union, and had come to regard that as
the chief source of the disturbances in the valley ; it had
now resolved to exterminate the union, no matter at
what cost. I remember a conversation with the general
manager, in his office, in which he expressed to me that
determination in very emphatic terms. "We'll kill that
union," he said, "if it costs us half a million dollars."
Yet he was not a narrow nor an inhumane person ; he
was one of the kindest and fairest-minded of men. I
had had frequent conversations with him on the rela
tions beween employers and employed, in which he had
expressed a strong wish to bring their interests into
harmony. In this contest, however, it seemed to him
that he was seeking the best good of the miners as well
as of the operators in fighting the union to the death.
I had frequently expressed my conviction of the right
and the necessity of labor organizations, and I did not
hesitate to reaffirm the conviction during this dispute ;
but my judgment did not go far with these men who
were in the thick of the battle. The struggle was pro
tracted for many months, and it cost the company quite
as much as my friend had indicated ; it was ended by the
ostensible surrender of the miners, who signed, on their
return to the mines, an iron-clad agreement that they
would never again join a miner's union. The futility of
this compact might have been evident to the employers;
for these starving men regarded it as a promise made
under duress, and as a contract void by reason of its

POSTMERIDIAN 293
conflict with pubhc morality; they felt no more bound
by it than they would have been by a promise made to
a highwayman at the point of a pistol. Within three
months all the miners were fully organized, and the
union, which half a million dollars had been spent to
kill, was thoroughly alive again.
About a year later, another demand was made by the
miners through the union for increased pay, and the
demand was promptly submitted to arbitration, by con
sent of both parties. The arbitrator chosen was Senator
Thurman, a man in whose justice everybody had con
fidence, and his decision was in favor of the miners. The
operators submitted without complaint, and an agree
ment was then formed by which, every year, the rate of
wages should be fixed by a convention of both parties.
That agreement has been adhered to until the present
day. A year or two later, I inquired of my friend, the gen
eral manager, how matters were getting on in the valley.
"All right," he said; "we are having no trouble. The
fact is that it is far better to have an organized and
disciplined force to deal with than to deal with a mob."
It had become evident to him that a labor union, when
wisely handled and dealt with in a just and friendly
spirit, is not necessarily an evil thing.

CHAPTER XX
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
These things shall be — a loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise,
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of knowledge in their eyes.
Nation with nation, land with land,
Unarmed shall live as comrades free;
In every heart and brain shall throb-
The pulse of one fraternity.
New arts shall bloom, of loftier mould,
And mightier music thrill the skies,
And every life shall be a song,
When all the earth is paradise. John Addington Symonds.
I have shown how it was that, at the beginning of
my ministry in Columbus, the labor question in its most
acute form was thrust upon me. I was not required to
go in search of it : it was made my duty, as a Christian
teacher, and as the moral counselor and guide of the
men under my care, to grapple with it, and try and get
at the rights of it. These men in my congregation who
were employing labor were sure to be deeply affected in
their characters by the manner in which they handled
this difficult business. The men and women who worked
for wages, inside the church and outside of it, would
have their attitude towards the church determined
by the way in which it dealt with this serious question.
I knew these employers, many of them, to be men of

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 295
humane and generous purposes; I knew many of the
workingmen, and was in entire sympathy with their
efforts to improve their condition ; and I witnessed with
sorrow and alarm the widening of the breach between
these classes ; the deepening tendency, in each of them,
to erect its own social group into a separate principal
ity, ignoring the solidarity of society, and pushing its
own claims at the cost of all the restf]
To deal with this question, it was necessary to have
some kind of social philosophy, some theory of the right
relations of men in society. By what principles or laws
ought men who are cooperating in industry to govern
their conduct ?
The prevaihng social philosophy of the nineteenth
century was grounded in the principle of laissez faire.
From the excessive paternalism of earlier centuries the
revolt in the direction of a let-alone policy was natural.
But such reactions are likely to go too far. Laissez faire
had come to mean not only "Let well enough alone,"
which is always a wise maxim, but also, "Let ill enough
alone." Its contention was that ill enough, if let alone
long enough, was sure to turn out well enough. About
that there is question.
The maxim applied, primarily, to governmental in
terferences with industrial and commercial affairs. It
was contended that the government had no call to med
dle with trade or production ; that its only function was
to keep the peace, to prevent encroachments of the
strong upon the weak, to establish and guarantee full
hberty of contract and action, and then leave all other
relations among men to settle themselves by natural

296 RECOLLECTIONS
law. The reasoning was plausible, but it was easy to
show that governments had found it impossible to keep
within these limits ; that the freest of them were con
stantly exerting their power for other and higher pur
poses. The post-office, the public-school system, the
public parks and museums and libraries and art gal
leries, are evidences that the kind of government which
springs from the life of a free and intelligent people is
sure to do a good many other things besides keeping the
peace. But just how far it may interfere to regulate the
industrial relations of men is still a question of great
difficulty. It is notorious that many such attempts
have been productive of more harm than good, and
the advocates of non-interference are able to make
out a strong case.
But there has been a tendency to extend the maxim to
individual action ; to make it mean that the whole in
dustrial process is under the dominion of inexorable law,
so that nothing can be done by intelligence and good
will to change its issues ; that we can only let it alone and
permit it to work out its inevitable results. Some such
philosophy as this lies at the bottom of many minds.
It is the notion that "the great natural law of supply
and demand" is supreme; that its hardships, whatever
they may be, are part of the natural order of things;
that it is futile to attempt to alleviate them. (jMany
employers, confronted with discontent and even suf
fering among their employees, shelter themselves be--
hind this theory of the inexorableness of the economic
process. ,
The essential untruth of this philosophy, as I have

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 297
before mdicated, was apparent to me; for, taught by
such economists as Francis A. Walker and Cliff Leslie
and Wilhelm Roscher and Adolf Wagner, I had been
able to see that human intelligence and will do pro
foundly affect the course of economic development.
Take such a capital fact as this, — that the rents of
agricultural land in England had always been lower than
in Ireland, for this plain reason : pubhc opinion in Eng
land frowned on the rack-renting practiced across the
Irish Channel. Here was a moral force essentially modi
fying the economic process. And there are multitudes
of such instances. The inexorableness of economic law
did not, then, forbid the attempt to bring the principles
of justice and kindness to bear upon the solution of
the labor problem. Reason and conscience must have
much to do in finding the right solution.
To bring the reason and the conscience of the com
munity, and especially of the Christian community, into
close contact with this problem was a large part of my
endeavor during the first years of my hfe in Columbus.
In several Sunday evening addresses, more or less
closely related to this theme, most of which were after
ward printed in the "Century Magazine " and other peri
odicals, and which were finally included in a volume
entitled "Applied Christianity," I sought to deal with
this central question. The title of the volume indicates
the gist of the discussions. I remember that when I sub
mitted this volume to the publishers, Mr. Scudder, who
was then the reader for the firm, hesitated over the title.
He could not see the force of the adjective. I tried to
show him that the whole significance of the book was in

298 RECOLLECTIONS
that adjective ; that the thing which the world needed
most was a direct application of the Christian law to the
business of life. He accepted the explanation, and I
fancy that whatever may have been the fate of the
contents of the book, the title of it has served to call
attention to an important fact.
That the sufficient remedy for the disorders of the in
dustrial world is the application to them of the Christian
rule of life is the conclusion to which my study brought
me, and the entire progress of events since that day has
confirmed the judgment. But it is necessary to under
stand what the Christian rule of life is. The form in
which it is stated in Christ's compend of the moral law
is, I believe, exact and adequate ; but the full force of
it is not always apprehended. "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself " is sometimes taken as a maxim of
sheer altruism. But the fundamental obligation is ra
tional self-love. That is made the measure of our love
for our neighbor. How much shall I love my neighbor?
As much as I love myself. This implies that I regard
myself as a being of essential worth. I am a child of
God as truly as my neighbor is ; and I am bound to
honor and cherish the selfhood intrusted to me. I have
no more right to neglect and despise myself than I have
to neglect or despise my neighbor. I ought to have some
sense of the value and sacredness of my neighbor's per
sonality. I am not to degrade or destroy myself in min
istering to him, nor am I to degrade and destroy him
in ministering to myself ; I am to identify his interest
with mine, and we are to share together the good
which the divine bounty distributes to all.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 299
This is the Christian law, as I understand it, and it
gives ample room for that legitimate self-assertion which
some moralists have failed to find in Christianity, as well
as for that self-denial which restrains the excesses of
self-love. In the first chapter of "Applied Christianity"
this principle, as it relates to human society, is stated in
words which I venture here to repeat.
Society results from a combination of egoism and al
truism. Self-love and self-sacrifice are both essential ; no
society can exist if based on either of them to the exclu
sion of the other. Without the self -regarding virtues it
would have no vigor: without the benevolent virtues
it would not cohere. But the combination of capitalists
and laborers in production is a form of society. These two
elements ought to be combined in this form of society.
The proportion of altruism may be less in the factory than
in the home or the church, but it is essential to the peace
and welfare of all of them. Yet the attempt of the present
system is to base this form of society wholly on competi
tion, which is pure egoism. It will not stand securely on
this basis. The industrial system, as at present organized,
is a social solecism. It is an attempt to hold society to
gether upon an anti-social foundation. To bring capital
ists and laborers together in an association, and set them
over against each other and announce to them the prin
ciple of competition as the guide of their conduct, —
bidding each party to get as much as it can out of the other
and to give no more than it must — for that is precisely
what competition means, — is simply to declare war, a
war in which the strongest will win.
The Christian moralist is, therefore, bound to admonish
the Christian employer that the wage-system, when it
rests on competition as its sole basis, is anti-social and

300 RECOLLECTIONS
anti-Christian. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy
self" is the Christian law, and he must find some way of
incorporating that law into the organization of labor. It
must be something more than an ideal, it must find ex
pression in the industrial scheme. God has not made men
to be associated for any purpose on a purely egoistic basis,
and we must learn God's laws and obey them. It must
be possible to shape the organization of our industries in
such a way that it shall be the daily habit of the workman
to think of the interest of the employer, and of the em
ployer to think of the interest of the workman. We have
thought it very fine to say that the interests of both are
identical, but it has been nothing more than a fine saying;
the problem now is to make them identical.
The substance of what I have been trying to say on
this subject, through all the years of my mmistry, is
included in this short extract. Nothing is plainer to
me than that the existing system of industry, with rigid
organization of employers on the one side and laborers
upon the other, each determined to override and sub
jugate the other, is the essence of unreason. The entire
attitude of both parties is anti-social. It is simply
absurd to imagine men are made to live together on any
such basis. They are putting themselves into deadly
conflict with the primary laws of hfe.
In the spring of 1886, when a fierce strike had
been raging in Cleveland, a philanthropist of that city
conceived the idea of getting the employers and the
employed to come together in a mass meetmg to be ad
dressed by some one who was supposed to be reasonably
impartial in his attitude toward the contending parties.
The choice fell on me, and I found myself confronted,

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 301
in the Music Hall of that city, by an audience in which
the laboring-class was mainly in evidence, though a
sprinkling of the other class was visible. "Is it Peace
or War?" was the question to which I addressed my
self. The workingmen before me were evidently in
a critical mood. They fistened, through the first half
of my address, with respect, but in silence. They had
their doubts about parsons ; they probably expected me
to take sides with their employers. In due season they
were reassured on that point ; they saw that they were
listening to one who was able to get their point of view,
and it was pleasant to see the suspicion fade out of their
eyes and the signs of appreciative interest appearing.
This is part of what they heard : —
Since this is the day and age of combinations, since
capital in a thousand ways is forming combinations for
its own advantage, who will deny to labor the right to
combine for the assertion of its just claims? Combina
tion means war, I admit. Combinations, whether of capi
tal or labor, are generally made in these days for fighting
purposes. And war is a great evil — no doubt of that.
But it is not the greatest of evils. The permanent de
gradation of the men who do the world's work would be
a greater evil. And if, by combination, the wage-workers
can resist the tendencies that are crowding them down,
and can assert and maintain their right to a proportional
share of the growing wealth, then let them combine, and
let all the people say Amen.
The present state of the industrial world is a state of
war. And if war is the word, then the efficient combina
tion and organization must not all be on the side pf capital.
While the conflict is in progress, labor has the same right

302 RECOLLECTIONS
that capital has to prosecute the warfare in the most effec
tive way. If war is the order of the day, we must grant to
labor belligerent rights. The sooner this fact is recognized,
the better for all concerned. The refusal to admit it has
made the conflict, thus far, much more fierce and san
guinary than it would otherwise have been.
When the workingmen heard that, they were not
silent ; they gave me a rousing cheer. But they were
compelled to hsten to quite a number of things after
that which did not make them cheer. For I did my
best to bring home to them, and to the employers who
sat among them, the foolishness of the enterprise in
which both sides were enlisted. The utter stupidity
and absurdity of an industrial system based on war;
the enormous waste of the common resources which it
involves; the far worse destruction of the moral wealth
of the community, the good will and mutual trust in
which all human welfare is grounded, — all this I tried
to make plain to them. "Is not this business of war," I
asked them, "a senseless, brutal, barbarous business,
at best ? Does either side expect to do itself any good by
fighting the other ? It is about as rational as it would be
for the right hand and the left hand to smite each other
with persistent and deadly enmity, or for the eyes and
the ears to array themselves against each other in a re
morseless feud. It is a sorry comment on our civilization
that here, at the end of the nineteenth Christian century,
sane and full-grown men, whose welfare depends wholly
on the recognition of their mutual interests and on the
cooperation of their efforts, should be ready to spend a
good share of their time in trying to cripple or destroy

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 303
one another. It is not only wicked, it is stupid : it is not
simply monstrous, it is ridiculous."
Some very frank words were then spoken to both par
ties in this controversy. While I was laying down the
law to the employers, the men cheered heartily ; when
I began to drive home to them their own blunders and
sins, they were less demonstrative, but presently evinced
their fairness by cheering the points that were scored
against themselves. And, at the end, after a warm
appeal for peace, the prolonged applause was a most
grateful testimony that the hearts of fifteen hundred
workingmen were in the right place.
The next week I had an engagement to lecture in
Tremont Temple, Boston. The occasion was one of some
importance: Governor Robinson, an old friend and
neighbor of mine, was to preside, and the audience
would be composed of some of the solid men of Boston.
I determined to repeat this address, "Is it Peace or
War?" Would these people, mainly of the employing
class, warm up to it as the workingmen had done ? I had
my misgivings. But the event showed that this audience
was quite as cordial as the other had been ; and at the
close of the address, the men on the platform, including
the Governor, a member of Congress, who was also a
leading manufacturer, and others, united in inviting me
to return to Boston on the next Saturday night and re
peat the address in the same place to the workingmen of
the city, to whom the hall was to be made free. On that
occasion I had with me on the platform several employ
ers, and several labor leaders, among them the head
organizer for Massachusetts of the Knights of Labor;

304 RECOLLECTIONS
and at the close of the address, every one of these
men indorsed, without quahfication, my argument and
appeal. - I have given the history of this address,1 because it
indicates the position which I have tried to maintain,
and because it shows that, at that time, the chasm be
tween the contending classes was not so wide but that
it could be spanned by reason and good will.
Another opportunity of a similar sort came to me a
little later. The Ohio State Association of Congrega-
tionalists made me chairman of a committee to investi
gate the labor conditions of the state ; and this commit
tee arranged for two conferences between employers and
labor leaders, one at Columbus and the other at Toledo.
To each of these conferences a number of the most intel
ligent and influential employers of the neighborhood
were invited, and about an equal number of the leaders
of organized labor. Most of the men invited responded
to the invitation. In each of the cities a day was spent
in the conferences, with two sessions, afternoon and
evening. A short series of very simple questions had
been prepared and printed on the letters of invitation, —
questions calling out the opinions of the men invited
upon existing conditions in the industrial world; upon
the reasons for the present conflict ; upon the practicabil
ity of industrial partnership and other possible methods
of promoting peace and welfare. The conference was
conducted by calhng first on a labor leader, and then on
an employer, to express his views of the situation. Some
1 It was published, in May, 1886, in the Century Magazine, and
is included in the volume Applied Christianity.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 305
questioning was permitted, but it was all civil and re
spectful; we all understood that it was not a dispute,
but a fair opportunity for each one to speak his own
mind. There was much frankness in the utterance of
opinion, but very httle acerbity ; it did not seem impos
sible that such men as were facing each other in these
discussions should be able to arbitrate their differences.
I fear that the relations between the contending
parties have not improved since that day. So far as I
can see, the breach is widening. The fierce strike in the
anthracite coal regions was the worst of our labor dis
putes ; and, although it was amicably settled, the condi
tions which followed were not reassuring. The working-
men, in that case, had the sympathy of the public, and
they won a notable victory ; I fear it must be said that
they failed to make the best use of it. Their demands
grew more exacting and unreasonable ; in all parts of
the country there were symptoms of a disposition to
push their advantage to the discomfiture of their em
ployers. The result of that has been a serious exacerba
tion of temper on the part of the employing class. Or
ganizations of employers have arisen in late years, whose
attitude toward organized labor is more hostile than
anything which has been known in our history. And I
fear that it will be found that there are thousands of
employers in all parts of the country who, a few years
ago, were disposed to be reasonable in their treatment
of the labor unions, but who, to-day, are maintaining
toward them an attitude of almost vindictive opposition.
The Civic Federation has done something to mitigate
these antipathies, but in so doing it has gained for itself

306 RECOLLECTIONS
the warm dislike of the beUigerent employers on the one
hand, and of the fighting labor federations on the other.
What the outcome of this conflict is to be, I do not
predict. The evident expectation of some of the em
ployers that they will be able to kill or cripple the unions
is hardly rational ; the evident determination of some of
the labor leaders to extend the use of the boycott and
the sympathetic strike is not intelligent ; such a conflict
as both sides seem bound to invoke can result in nothing
but disaster. Chronic warfare in the industrial world is
intolerable, and the world is coming to understand it so.
We are going to make an end of international wars very
soon ; the absurdity of that way of settling the disputes
of nations is becoming apparent to all civilized peoples.
And the foolishness of industrial strife is not less obvi
ous. If the wage-system means perennial war, the wage-
system must pass, and some less expensive method of
organizing industry must take its place.
The alternative now constantly in sight is Socialism.
Sociahsm proposes that the functions of the capitalist
and the entrepreneur shall be merged in the common
wealth. That seems to abolish one party to the quarrel,
and is indicated, in the Socialist diagnosis, as the way
of peace. That it may come to this sometimes seems
probable. Yet I have never been able to regard this
possibility with enthusiasm. There is an old Latin
proverb about making a solitude and calling it peace.
The Socialistic solution, applied as a panacea, would
not give us a solitude, but it might give us stagnation.
It does not agree with that theory of human nature of
which I have spoken ; it gives no adequate play to the

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 307
self-regarding motives. The present system overworks
them; Socialism undervalues them. What we have to
do is to coordinate them with the motives of good will
and sympathy, and get the full force of both in our
schemes of social construction. The gains of coopera
tion must not be purchased at the cost of the integrity
of the individual.
We may be plunged into a Socialistic experiment at
no distant day; toward that precipice our employers'
associations and our labor federations seem to be driv
ing us ; but if, in our haste, we take that step, we shall
find leisure to repent of it. This people is not yet, in its
prevailing ideas and tempers, sufficiently socialized to
work the machinery of Sociahsm. The testimony of one
of the ablest of the Socialists is in point : "It is well to
keep in mind the entire dependence of Sociahsm upon a
high level of intelligence, education, and freedom. So
cialist institutions, as I understand them, are only pos
sible in a civilized state, in a state in which the whole
population can read, write, discuss, participate, and,
in a considerable sense, understand. Education must
precede the Sociahst state. Socialism, modern Socialism,
that is to say, such as I am now concerned with, is
essentially an exposition of and training in certain gen
eral ideas ; it is impossible in an illiterate community,
a basely selfish community, or in a community without
the capacity to use the machinery and the apparatus
of civilization. At the best, and it is a poor best, a
stupid, ilhterate population can but mock Socialism
with a sort of bureaucratic tyranny; for a barbaric
population, too large and various for the folk-meeting,

308 RECOLLECTIONS
there is nothing but monarchy and the ownership of the
King; for a savage tribe, tradition and the undocu
mented will of the strongest males. Sociahsm, I will
admit, presupposes intelligence, and demands as funda
mental necessities, schools, organized science, literature,
and a sense of the state." * It is impossible for us to
persuade ourselves that "the whole population" of the
United States of America, or of any state in the Union,
has attained unto any such standard as is here pre
scribed. With the vast illiterate and unassimilated
elements of our national hfe, with so many millions who
are separated from the commonwealth and from one
another by the barriers of race and language, it would
be, indeed, a mock Sociahsm which we should succeed,
at this juncture, in setting up.
It would be a great calamity, therefore, if the intol
erable strife between organized capital and organized
labor should precipitate an attempt to put all our in
dustries upon the basis of collectivism. But though we
could not wisely go all the way with the Socialists, we
might, safely, go part way with them. Indeed, we are
already moving in the direction in which they would
lead us. The PostA)ffice is a socialistic institution; it
would be wise to extend its service, and make it the
universal carrier of small parcels. That the telegraph
should be added to this branch of the pubhc service is
evident ; and the relation of the railways to the indus
tries of the country is so close and vital that they, too,
must soon be brought under governmental control.
Doubtless we shall keep on for several years trying to
1 New Worlds for Old, by H. G. Wells, p. 113.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 309
regulate them, but doubtless we shall fail; the only
solution of the problem is pubhc ownership. This need
not mean pubhc management; the government may
own the tracks, as most European cities own the tracks
of their street railways, and may prescribe rates and
regulations, and then lease them, for definite terms, to
companies or syndicates to operate. The stock objec
tion to government ownership is the danger of adding
such an enormous number of employees to the civil
service; but that is not a necessary condition. The
power of oppression which resides in the private owner
ship of the means of transportation is so tremendous,
and so impossible of regulation, that the people will be
compelled, at no distant day, to take the business into
their hands. I think that it will also be necessary for
them to own the mines, and to establish a rigid super
vision over the watercourses. And, in the cities, not
only the water-supply, but the lighting and the trans
portation and the telephone service, will soon be
brought under public control.
All these are steps in the direction of Socialism which
we are likely to take at no distant day. All the indus
tries which I have named are virtual monopohes, and
the people must own all the monopohes. That is the
essence of democracy, on the economic side. There
must be no monopohes of goods or services necessary
to the hfe of the people which the people do not them
selves control. If democracy is to endure, it must assert
and maintain this prerogative.
But, after this principle has been fully established,
there will still remain wide areas in which private pro-

310 RECOLLECTIONS
perty may be recognized and private enterprise liber
ated, — in which individual initiative may have free
play. That industrial society in the future will have
large features of collective ownership and control, and
alongside of them extensive and varied enterprises in
which men are employing their own capital and manag
ing their own affairs, seems to me highly probable. The
main problem of statesmanship will be to draw the line
between these two industrial methods, to know what
industries can best be taken over by the commonwealth
and what can best be left in private hands. We shall
cooperate, more and more, through the state, for com
mon purposes, and we shall make vast gains by that
cooperation ; but we shall still cultivate the virtues of
self-direction and self-reliance, we shall still keep the
privilege of choosing our own careers, and of expressing
ourselves freely in our industries.
But in this coming industrial society, where freedom
of occupation is protected and cherished, there will still
be need of a guiding law for industry, and there can be
no other law than that of the Christ. In those days as in
these, the law of human association must be the law
of Good Will. The good of life is not found by those
who prey upon one another or plunder one another;
it is found only by those who in friendship serve one
another. The existing industrial order virtually rests upon the
assumption that it is every man's business in this world
to get for himself — and, of course, to get away from his
neighbors — as much as he legally and prudently and
safely can. That principle of life, no matter how art-

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTON 311
fully disguised, nor how cautiously practiced, is sure to
bring strife and poverty and wretchedness. Any organ
ization of society which is founded on selfishness will
come to grief. That is the bottom trouble with the
industrial world to-day ; and the only radical cure for
it is a change in the ruhng principle of hfe. The stable
and fruitful social order will be that which rests on the
assumption that it is every man's business to give as
much as he can, prudently and safely, and with due re
gard to his own integrity, to all with whom he deals.
This does not mean that he is to cripple or impoverish
himself in his giving, for his own well-being should be
precious to him, and he must not give in such a way
as to destroy his power to give. Cases may, indeed,
arise, in which the sacrifice of all may be demanded ; but
the ordinary regimen of life will require him to husband
his power of service.
This, as I understand it, is the meaning of Christ's
law of life. It is not his law because he originated it ;
it is his because he most clearly taught it, and most
consistently lived by it ; because he made it central in
morahty. It rests on no man's word; it is as truly a
natural law as is the law of gravitation or the laws of
chemical affinity; it is an induction from the facts of
human nature. Experience, if men will only pay atten
tion to it, will prove to them that this way of living
together makes for universal welfare and happiness;
that the way of living which keeps self central and
supreme is the way to destruction. The fundamental
objection to the world's way is that it is unnatural
and unscientific; it is an inversion of life; it is like an

312 RECOLLECTIONS
attempt to make plants grow with their roots in the
air and their branches on the earth.
This is the truth which the world is beginning to see.
It is; only as in a blurred mirror, dimly, that, most men
see it yet, but never before was it visible to so many.
The conviction is steadily strengthening that the one
thing needful is a change in the direction of the ruling
motive from self-aggrandizement to service. And to all
who will carefully study the prevailing tendencies it will
be clear that this is the way. the world is going'. "One
perceives," says Mr. Wells, "something that goes on,
that is constantly working to make order out of casualty^
beauty out of confusion, justice, kindhness, mercy out
of cruelty and inconsiderate pressure. For our present
purpose it will be sufficient to speak of this force that
struggles and tends to make and do, as Good Will. More
and more evident it is, as one reviews the ages, that
there is much more than lust, hunger, avarice, vanity,
and more or less intelligent fear, among the motives of
mankind: The Good Will of our race, however arising)
however trivial, however subordinated to individual
ends, however comically inadequate a thing it may be
in this individual case or that, is in the aggregate an
operating will. In spite of all the confusions and thwart-
ings of life, the halts and resiliences and the counter
strokes of fate, it is manifest that, in the long run,
human life becomes broader -than it was, gentler than it
was, finer and deeper. On the whole — and nowadays
almost steadily — things get better. There is a secular
amehoration of life, and it is brought about by Good
Will working through the efforts of men."

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 313
Good_Wjll is at work, and it is making things better.
In spite of the prevailing social philosophy, it is gaining
ground. Even now, with such partial, halting, half
hearted recognition as we give it, Good Will is making
things better. How much faster things would grow
better, if all the people who call themselves Christians
would accept what St. James calls "The Royal Law,"
and would give their hves to making Good Will regnant
among men !
No matter what the form of the social organization
may be, it is to this principle of Good Will, ruling the
hves of individuals, that we shah owe all our social peace-
and welfare. Our collectivism will be confusion and a,
curse, where it is wanting; where it is present, our in
dividual initiative will be beneficence and bounty.
' Is it not a Utopian dream that the principle of Good
Will will supplant the principle of Laissez faire in indus
trial society? Can we rationally expect that such an
ingrained tendency of human nature as that which is
represented by the maxim "Every man for himself,"
will yield to the other-regarding motive so that men
wiE learn to identify their interests with those of their
neighbors? The answer is that when men see that Good
Will is the law, they will learn to obey it. Most of them
have never yet clearly seen it. The maxims of business
have ah made self-interest supreme. The whole indus
trial structure has rested on that philosophy. The world
is beginning to see that Good Will makes things better.
That, so far as the business world is concerned, is a new
revelation. It is easy enough to see that a> good deal
more Good Will would make things a great deal betters.

314 RECOLLECTIONS
That is a fact which the logic of events will force upon
the convictions of men. And in the hght and warmth
of that knowledge the ingrained egoism of human
nature will slowly melt away.
Such, then, is the substance of thevsocial faith^which
I have been trying to inculcate.
I believe that monopolies, actual or virtual, which
supply the primary wants of human beings, must be
owned and controlled by the commonwealth.
I believe that in this way, collective ownership and
control will be and should be greatly extended; that
many of the industries which are now in private hands
will become departments of the pubhc service. I be
heve that such cooperation of all the people through the
state will result in great economies, and will put an end
to some of the worst oppressions.
I believe that when we have gone as far as we can
safely go in this direction, there will remain large room
for private enterprise which will offer a free field for
the cultivation of virtues quite essential to the social
welfare. I beheve that all this activity, whether organized by
the state, or conducted by independent enterprise, must
have as its ruling motive the principle of Good Will, the
spirit of service ; that the church by its ministry, and
the school by its training, and the state by its legisla
tion must inculcate and enforce the doctrine that the
primary business of every man in this world is service;
that the man who is here to be ministered unto, and to
levy tribute on his neighbors for his own aggrandize
ment, is living a hfe of sin and shame.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 315
When this principle of Good Will becomes regnant,
shall we see wealth increasing as it has been increasing
during the last four or five decades ? Certainly not in the
same way. In a society in which the Christian law was
recognized as the practical rule, there could be no such
enormous accumulations in the hands of individuals as
those which have been heaped up in the last twenty-five
years. Such swollen fortunes are the symptoms of social
disease; they have the same relation to social health
that hydrocephalus or elephantiasis has to the health
of the individual, and to all sound moral vision they
are not less repulsive. It is profoundly to be hoped that
the day of their prevalence may quickly pass. But it is
probable that the social good created under the impulse
of Good Will would be far more widely diffused ; that
in the greatly enlarged possessions and advantages held
in common, all would share ; that the slums would dis
appear ; that family life would be more secure and per
manent ; that the crushing burden of toil would be hfted
from the shoulders of httle children ; that there would
be leisure and comfort and happiness among men, in
which faith could find root and hope get some anchor
age, and in which it would not be incredible that love
is indeed the greatest thing in the world.

CHAPTER XXI
A WIDENING VOCATION
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high .man, with & great thing to pursue,
Dies ere lie knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred's soon hit-:
This high man, aiming -at a, million,
Misses an unit.
That, has the world here — should he need the next,
Let the world mind him !
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find Him. Robert Browning.
The presidential campaign of 1884 was waged with
ardor in Ohio, and I found great interest in watching
the pohtical operations on this field. The intensity of
the partisanship was noteworthy; it was difficult for
many worthy people to have any respect for a man
who was not on one side or the other. Mr. Blaine came
to Ohio and made a sensational canvass, but it was
impossible for me to vote for him ; over Mr. Cleveland
I hesitated, on the ground of the moral delinquencies
charged against him. His perfect manliness in the treat
ment of those charges ought to have reassured me, and
I have always regretted that I did not give him my
vote ; for I came to honor and trust him as one of our
bravest and most conscientious chief magistrates.
We had two elections, in Ohio, in 1884, — a state

A WIDENING VOCATION 317
election for governor and state officers, in October, and
the presidential election in November. Ohio was thus
regarded as one of the "pivotal states," and the ma
chinery of both the national parties was set in operation
early in every presidential year to carry the state at
the October election. This gave us more than enough
of politics for that year ; it kept the people in a state of
excitement from June to November, it deranged busi
ness, it brought into the state a great deal of money for
the use of the politicians, and it invited the colonization
of voters from the surrounding states. Admittedly it
was a great source of injury to the state, economically
and morally.
With this conviction I undertook to get the constitu
tion amended, so that the state election should be held
in November. Believing that the movement would best
succeed if quietly started, I wrote a petition for such a
change, and secured the signatures to it of the governor
Of the state, George Hoadley, all the ex7governors liv
ing but one, all the judges of the Supreme Court, the
two United States senators, and a few other leading
men. Among these signatures both parties were about
equally represented. The petition thus signed was then
printed in the newspapers, and with such a backing the
project readily commanded the attention of the people.
I then printed copies of the petition, and with my
own band mailed them to representative men in every
county. The matter was taken up everywhere promptly
and enthusiasticaUy ; petitions with thousands of names
poured in, and by the time the legislature met, in
January, the sentiment in the state was so strong that

318 RECOLLECTIONS
a joint resolution was easily passed submitting the
amendment to the people, to be voted for at the next
election. In preparing the ballots for the election, the Demo
crats and the Prohibitionists readily agreed to print only
the affirmative vote, so that those who did not scratch
their tickets would be counted as voting in favor of the
amendment. The Republican committee refused to do
this, though I earnestly besought them. The grist which
would come to the mill of the politicians by keeping Ohio
an October state quite outweighed, in their minds, the
moral injury which the state thus suffered. There were,
however, enough Republicans who took pains to mark
their baUots to carry the amendment by a decisive ma
jority. Thus a rather important change in the govern
ment of the state was very simply effected. No eloquence
nor influence was caUed for. The people aU knew what
they wanted ; they did not require to be convinced or
persuaded ; all that was necessary was to give them a
chance to express their minds, and that required a httle
painstaking effort. It was aU done without holding a
single pubhc meetmg, or making a speech, or appointing
a committee ; it cost me a few doUars for postage and
printing, and it cost nobody else, so far as I know, one
cent. I have alluded to the fact that the disturbing ques
tion of what is known as the Higher Criticism had
hardly been raised in New England at the beginning of
my Springfield ministry. Before my work in Columbus
began, the air was full of it. ) The epoch-making book of

A WIDENING VOCATION 319
Professor Robertson Smith, "The Old Testament in
the Jewish Church," had brought it before intelligent
men with a clearness which made it impossible to ignore
it. The traditional conception of the Bible as verbally
and scientifically inerrant was made, by this investiga
tion, untenable.
My work in Columbus brought me into contact with
many young men. The students of the university and of
the medical coUeges were weU represented in my congre
gations ; of the evening audiences it was often true that
two thirds were men, and the majority of them young
men. My acquaintance with them revealed the fact that
many of them were skeptical concerning the Bible.
They had read or heard the popular lectures of Robert
IngersoU ; and they could not help knowing that many
of the statements he made about the Bible were true ;
they had looked for themselves, and had found the dis
crepancies and contradictions aU there. When, there
fore, they were told by their pastors and teachers that
the admission of a single error in the Bible rendered it
worthless, they saw no other way than to cast it aside,
and this they were doing by scores and hundreds.
As one who was convinced that the Bible, after all the
truth had been told about it, would still remain the most
precious and inspiring book in the world, — more pre- •
cious and inspiring when the truth had been told about
it than it could be as an object of superstition, — I could
not help being deeply pained by the growing contempt
for the Bible which I could not help observing, and
which, as I perfectly well knew, was due to the persistent
attempt to force upon the acceptance of men a theory

320 RECOLLECTIONS
of its origin to Which its own pages gave overwhelming
contradiction. I knew very weU, however, that this was
a very sensitive question in the minds of many exceUent
people. The infallibihty of the Bible seemed to them the
foundation of religion ; if that were gone, nothing would
be secure. It is not a comfortable business to raise such
questionings in honest minds, and one is powerfully
moved to accept Tennyson's counsel : —
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views ;
Nor thou with Bhadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
But there are others, besides that sister praying, to
Whom the truth is due, and who can be saved only by
knowing it ; we bave to consider the needs of aU classes,
and we must not doubt, as rehgious teachers, that on
the whole, and in the long run, the safest thing to teU
the people is the truth. What would happen to me,
as the consequence of telling the truth about the
Bible, I did not know ; there Were grave doubts whether
it would not end my ministry in Columbus; but the
duty was before me, and I could not evade it without
cowardice and infidelity.
The series of Sunday evening lectures which were af
terward published in a volume entitled "Who Wrote
the Bible?'1 attracted larger audiences than any course
I had previously given. 1 asked my auditors to reserve
their judgment upon the argument until they had heard
it all. They seemed to think that a reasonable request,
and they graciously acceded to it, and there was no ex
citement or controversy in the congregation while the

A WIDENING VOCATION 321
lectures were in progress. At first I saw many troubled
and anxious faces, but as I tried to tell the people no
thing which I could not abundantly make good on the
authority of the Bible itself, they were soon listening
with increasing interest and sympathy. At the close I
felt that I had the nearly undivided assent of my con
gregation to the truth and wisdom of the exposition;
those from whom I had expected opposition were most
cordial in their expressions of gratitude for the service
rendered them ; there was not a ripple of controversy
over the matter in the church. We are sometimes quite
too apprehensive, brother ministers, about the risks we
run in telling the truth. If we speak it kindly and con
siderately, with due regard for the convictions of those
who differ from us, truth-speaking is not ordinarily a
dangerous venture.
/ "Who Wrote the Bible ?" has had the largest circula
tion of all my books. It has been widely used as a man
ual of instruction in Bible classes, and in Young Men's
Christian Associations. It is now properly regarded as
a very conservative book; such careful scholarship as
that represented in Hastings's ' ' Dictionary of the Bible "
leaves many of its positions far in the rear. It ought to
be revised and brought up to date, but I fear that I shall
never have the time or strength for that ; it wiU have to
stand as it is ; there are stiU multitudes in the morass
of traditional infallibilism to whom it may furnish a
bridge to a more intelligent understanding of the Bible.
The anxiety about a fixed standard of belief with
which many minds are troubled is natural enough, but
a httle careful thought would help to dispel it. To many

322 RECOLLECTIONS
minds "foundations of belief " seem to be indispensable.
But it is well to remember that some things need no
foundations. The old cosmogonists were put to it to find
foundations for the earth. Under each of the four cor
ners of it they put a colossal elephant, and under the
elephant a tortoise, and under the tortoise a serpent, and
under the serpent — but what was the use of exploring
further ? The problem had to be given up. By and by
Copernicus helped them to see that the earth needed no
foundation ; that it was moving through space nineteen
miles a second, sustaining itself by its own motion. Our
present conception of its relation to space is certainly
far more sublime, and far more satisfying to the mind,
than was the conception of the old cosmogonists. We
have not lost respect for the earth, nor confidence in it,
since we have found out the truth about it. The founda
tions on which it once rested are gone, and we do not
wish to restore them.
Is not something like this coming true with respect to
our rehgious beliefs? We have clung to the notion that
the body of truth must have a fixed and stable foun
dation, and we have had much dispute over the founda
tion, some putting the church in that place and some the
Bible. It is now beginning to be evident that the orb of
sacred truth needs no such supports ; that it is moving
with resistless power through the eternities; that our
task is not to bolster it up or anchor it, but to move on
with it, and keep our eyes open for the new consteUa-
tions always swimming into view. The ground of our
faith is not the church nor the Bible, but the living
God, who as Inspirer and Leader of men is as near to

A WIDENING VOCATION 323
us as He has ever been to the men of any generation,
and who, if we will trust Him, wUl enable us to draw
from the messages of the past the truth that we need
for the hfe of to-day. Great need have we of the Book
which has been for so many generations our guide and
counselor. It contains the record of that continuous
revelation which God has been making to our fathers
in the flesh and in the spirit ; it is the only Book that
tells us of Him from whose life and words comes all
that makes this age significant. But we need to read
this Book in the light of this day, and under the guid
ance of the same Spirit who spake by the prophets,
and who speaks to-day to aU who have ears to hear.
Few experiences of the last twenty-five years are more
gratefully recalled than those which have brought me
into contact with the hfe of a number of the coUeges and
universities of the country. It has been my happiness to
visit many of them, and I find nowhere audiences so
keenly receptive and sympathetic. Several of my books
owe their existence to demands made upon me by these
audiences. In 1886 a series of lectures to the students
of our own Ohio State University, on fundamental reh
gious truths, was reported by one of the professors for
the "Christian Union," now the "Outlook," and re
printed in the "Christian World" of London. The pub-
fishers of the latter journal proposed to gather them into
a volume, and "Burning Questions" was thus origi
nally pubhshed in London, and republished, on this
side, by the Century Company. In 1893 I was invited
to deliver the lectures of the course on the Lyman

324 RECOLLECTIONS
Beecher Foundation in the Divinity School of Yale
University. Those lectures, part of which were afterward
dehvered at Cornell University, and at Mansfield CoUege
in Oxford University, in England, and aU of them at.
Meadville Theological Seminary, make the volume enti
tled "Tools and the Man ; Property and Industry under
the Christian Law." A series of lectures on "Social
Facts and Forces" was given first at Chautauqua,.
then at Iowa CoUege in GrinaeU-, and afterward on the
Ryder Foundation in Chicago; these were pubhshed
under this title. "Witnesses of the Light" is a course-
of lectures dehvered before the students of Harvard;
University; "Social. Salvation" is a second course on
the Lyman Beecher Foundation at Yale; and "Chris
tianity and Sociahsm" consists of lectures given before
the students of Drew Theological Seminary. The weeks-,
that I have spent, in these great institutions, in pleas
ant companionship with instructors and students-, are'
among my most delightful- recollections.
In 1893 I was invited to become one of th& staff of
preachers to Harvard University. This staff consists of.
sixmen,who share among themselves the spiritual over
sight of the students of the, University. Each man fe
expected to spend about six weeks of the year in resi
dence at the University, dividing his time into two
terms, one before and one after Christmas. He takes up:
his residence in the minister's rooms in the old Wad*-
worth House in the College Yard ; he conducts prayers
in. Appleton Chapel every morning, leads a vesper ser
vice on Thursday afternoon, and preaches in the Chapel
on Sunday evening. Every week-day he is expected to,

A WIDENING; VOCATION 325
be in his room in the Wadsworth Houge for two or three
hours, to meet any students who may wish to call upon
him, and he is permitted to make himself useful, in such
ways as he may choose, in the University community.
I have had the happiness of serving three years in this
capacity, and the experience is memorable. The pubhc
service has always been grateful and rewarding. I have
never conducted worship in any place where the decorum
was more perfect or the attention more reverent than at
morning prayers in Appleton Chapel. I have never seen
a sign of a book or a newspaper during the services. In
the responsive reading and in the singing the students,
join heartily. Attendance is, of course, voluntary ; no
one is there who does not wish to be,
The best part of the preacher's work, however; is his
personal contact with the students. All this, too, on
their part, is voluntary ;. he meets only those who> wish
to meet him.. They come, as PhiUips Brooks said, with
aU; sorts of questions; "some are inquiring the way, to
the bursar's office, and some to the kingdom of heaven."
Not. a few: of them have- theological tangles which they
want straightened, out-, "I want to know," said one
young fellow j "how you reconcile the first chapters q£
Genesis with what they teach us here about geology."
"They cannot be reconciled," I replied. "That story in
Genesis is not science ; it is a beautiful hymn of the: cre
ation, full of the noblest religious truth, but not a scien
tific account of how the world came to be." "I think,"
he said slowly, "that if my father should hear you, say
that, he.' would teU you that you are. an infidel." The
father, as the boy told; me, was a high officer in a leading

326 RECOLLECTIONS
Protestant church in one of our great cities. But the
son had never heard; from his father, nor from his Sun
day-school teachers, nor from his minister, one word
about the subject which was now disturbing his thought,
and he went away from me, I know, full of misgivings as
to whether he had not done wrong in listening to what I
tried to teU him. In sucha benighted state of mind as
this our youth are still often left by those whose business
it is to teach them the rudiments of religion. I found
among the students of Harvard not a few whose religious
ideas were astonishingly crude. A tragedy it is when a
boy who has had his eyes bandaged from his infancy is
led into the noonday blaze of a modern university. Are
those pastors and Sunday-school teachers of this coun
try, who are feeding their young people upon traditions
which modern science has outlawed, aware that these
young people are soon going out into the world ?
It was not, however, for theological instruction that
most of these young men came to the minister. There
were serious problems of personal conduct on which
some of them wanted counsel; I began to understand
the value of the confessional. They came to me on such
errands much more freely than the young men of my
own city and congregation have been wont to come, —
partly, perhaps, because I was more nearly a stranger ;
partly because they were away from home and felt the
need of friendship. But the largest class of my visitors
was composed of those who sought counsel about their
hfe-work. There were many who had not yet determined
what calling to foUow ; there were many others who had
chosen their work and wanted to talk about the best way
of preparing for it.

A WIDENING VOCATION 327
One fact deeply impressed me, — that was the extent
to which the idea of service appeared to be the control
ling idea in the minds of these young men. The note of
personal ambition was sometimes struck, but it was not
the prevailing note ; the emphasis was put upon the de
sire to find something to do which would be worth some
thing to the world. No doubt it will be said that men of '
this spirit would be the only ones likely to come and see
a minister ; but I am not quite sure of this ; my experi
ence in other places does not justify that judgment ; I
have found people of aU ages quite ready to come to me
for counsel and help in pushing their selfish ambitions.
But the seeming drift of the young fellows whom I met
in Harvard toward altruistic aims was a phenomenon
in which I have found much encouragement. And all
my experience with college students, which has been
considerable, strengthens my belief that the generation
of educated men and women now coming upon the scene
possesses a more sensitive social conscience than the
generation which is disappearing.
This privilege of service in Harvard University I
recaU as one of the best things that has ever come to
me. It was with much regret that I was constrained to
decline a reelection to this service. The distance from
home was great, and the absence from my pastoral
work for six weeks of the year was a matter so serious
that I felt obliged to relinquish the delightful task. It is
only fair to my own people, however, to say that their
behavior in the matter was most generous ; twice they
overruled my own decision and bade me go, when I was
not so minded.

CHAPTER XXII
THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM
Even here do I behold
Thy steps, Almighty! — here amidst the crowd
Through that great city rolled,
With everlasting murmur deep and loud —
Choking the ways that wind
'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.
Thy Spirit is around
Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along;
And this eternal sound —
Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng —
Like the resounding sea,
Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee.
William Cullen Bryant.
The problems of municipal reform began to engage
my interest at an early day. The city government of
Columbus, in the first year of my residence here, was in
a very chaotic condition ; its parts did not cohere, and
there was no concentration of responsibihty ; the mayor
served as the police justice, but he had little executive
power. The need of a better organization was palpa
ble, and the people were beginning to agitate for a new
charter, but the matter drifted from bad to worse for
several years. The formation of a Board of Trade, which
was intended to promote the general welfare of the
municipality, encouraged the hope of better things, and
I sought the opportunity of reading before that body
of business men a short paper urging the appointment

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 329
of a strong committee to study the problem, and draft
a new charter. Such a committee was appointed, and
spent some years in the investigation, but there was no
practical outcome.
At this time Seth Low was mayor of Brooklyn, and
that city had adopted a reformed charter, which con
centrated executive responsibihty and seemed to be
resulting in efficient administration. At my suggestion
the Columbus University Club invited Mr. Low to speak
upon Municipal Problems, and he accepted the invi
tation, giving an admirable address in the First Con
gregational church to an interested audience.
About this time the general looseness and inefficiency
of our municipal governments began to excite much at
tention, and organizations were formed in some of the
cities for the agitation of this question. Believing that
the time was ripe for a fuU discussion of the matter, the
editor of the "Century Magazine" authorized me to
take it up in a treatment similar to that of the Chris
tian League of Connecticut, and the story of "The Cos-
mopolis City Club" ran through three numbers of that
magazine. It was an imaginary tale, showing how a
group of men in an American city organized a club for
the study of municipal conditions; how they inves
tigated and exposed abuses, and how they threshed
out among themselves the whole problem of municipal
organization. The papers were pubhshed in a smaU vol
ume, in 1893.
That this discussion came in at the nick of time is
evident from the reports of movements in all parts of
the country during these years, looking toward improve-

330 RECOLLECTIONS
ment of municipal conditions. A manual of such or
ganizations, pubhshed in 1895, gives the names of five
municipal leagues formed in 1892, nine in 1893, and
twenty-six in 1894. One of the societies formed in the
last-named year was the National Municipal League,
which aimed to federate the local leagues, and unite
their studies and efforts for better city government. This
organization grew out of a conference held in PhUa-
delphia in January of that year, in which I participated.
I also had the honor to be invited to take part in the
organization of the City Club of New York; and at the
meeting in which the Civic Federation of Chicago was
formed, it was stated that the story of the "Cosmopolis
City Club'/' had been influential in awakening the in
terest which had resulted in that meeting.
While Mr. Roosevelt was at the head of the Police
Commission in New York city, I made his acquaintance,
through a letter which he wrote me ; and at my request
he came to Columbus and gave an address, reciting his
experience in that difficult situation, and discussing,
with the lucidity and force which are characteristic of
his utterances, the problems of municipal administra
tion. The problems of.-jmunicipal organization to whieh
most of the leagues and clubs have given much of their
time are of great perplexity. We are far from having
solved it yet ; I sometimes doubt whether we have made
much progress toward the solution. The rapid growth
of our cities has been one main cause of the difficulty.
The municipal machinery which answered well in a semi-
rural community of four or five thousand people became

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 331
utterly inadequate for the management of a population
of fifty or one hundred thousand. The methods have
not changed so rapidly as the needs have developed.
There has been a great deal of experimentation with
executive boards and commissions, by which responsi
bihty is divided and scattered. Nothing of that kind
is risked in business affairs; three or five heads of a
department in a railway or an iron miU would never be
thought of. A single head of an executive department
is the rule of efficient business administration. It is
only in municipal business that this tangle is tolerated.
Bipartisan boards and commissions have also been a
frequent resort of those who feared the spoilsmen, but
they are a lame device ; usually they spend a good share
of their time wranghng over the patronage. Worst of aU
are the attempts to rob the cities of the right to govern
themselves, by erecting state commissions for the con
trol of municipal business.
The Brooklyn plan, of which Mayor Low was an able
advocate and an admirable exponent, contemplated the
concentration in the mayor of executive responsibUity,
giving him the right to appoint and remove the heads
of city departments. Thus the police department, the
fire department, the water-works, the streets and sewers,
the health department, each was under a single head
who was directly responsible to the mayor, and who was
required not only to report to him, but to consult stat
edly with him and with the other heads of departments
about the work of the city. The power of the purse still
was left with the city council, chosen by the people;
and two or three other officers — a clerk, an auditor,

332 RECOLLECTIONS
and a treasurer, perhaps — were elected in the same
way. This plan, which has been styled, not very felicitously,
the Federal plan, seems to me in its general features far
better than the scheme of parcehng out the executive
power among hydra-headed boards and commissions.
When it has been permitted to stand long enough to
test its operation, it has given reasonably good results.
It is not a panacea. It is entirely possible to have very
bad government under this or any other form of muni
cipal organization. The people may be so careless or
so infatuated as to choose an incompetent or a malign
person for mayor; this system gives him the power to
do vast injury. In fact, any system which enables a
good officer to be efficient, necessarily enables a bad
officer to do great mischief. The best when perverted
always becomes the worst. Unfortunately our govern
mental methods have been largely contrived with the
possible mischief always in sight, and with the main
purpose to avoid that. In preventing that, they have
necessarily crippled the efficiency of the good officer.
The question is whether, on the whole, it is not better
to calculate on having good officers, and to arrange our
governmental machinery with this contingency in view.
In that case we may have good and efficient govern
ment ; in the other case we never can. And when the
people have had a chance to become thoroughly fa
miliar with the fact that everything depends on their
choice of a competent and upright chief magistrate, they
are likely to take pains to select such an one, and to
keep him in power.

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 333'
What is known as the Galveston or Des Moines plan
of municipal government is now exciting much discus
sion, and it is possible that in this device we are ap
proaching a more satisfactory solution of this difficult
problem. Doubtless this seems a drastic method. To
sweep away the entire fabric of municipal organization,
and commit the whole legislative and executive busmess
of the city to five men chosen by the people — giving
them the power to frame aU the laws and ordinances, to
raise and expend revenues, to appoint aU the subordinate
officials, and to manage and control aU the business
of the city — is a reform so radical that it takes away
one's breath. But it is not impossible that it may prove
to be the way out of the wilderness. The experiments
which a few of our cities are trying with this plan wiU
be watched with keen interest.
The choice of a quintuple instead of a single head for
the city government may seem to contradict what has
just been said about boards and commissions, but this
is not reaUy the case, for the five men are by law com
manded to divide the administration among them
selves, one of them being made chief executive, and each
one being placed at the head of a department of the
city, for the conduct of which he is held responsible.
It is for legislative purposes, mainly, that the five act
together. Between such a plan as this and that by which aU
English cities are governed, — where the supreme
power is vested in a council of from thirty to one hun
dred and forty members, chosen by the people, and
where each department is controUed by a committee

334 RECOLLECTIONS
of the council, — the contrast is striking. The English
plan works weU in England, but aU American experience
indicates that it would be a failure here. What makes it
efficient there is the fact that under each council com
mittee is an executive officer whose tenure is practically
permanent, by whom the committee is advised and
through whom its work is carried on. There is thus in
practical charge of each city department a skilled and
trained executive, who is never changed for political
reasons, who holds his position as long as he proves
his efficiency. Such a state of things as that would
never, of course, be tolerated in any American commu
nity, where the principle of rotation in office generaUy
overrides aU considerations of efficient administration.
What we Americans are most concerned about is not
how we shaU secure good government, but how we shaU
give the largest possible number of people a chance to
take a hand in the government, and secure the emolu
ments thereof. That appears to be the American idea ;
and whfle it prevails we shaU never, of course, have
good municipal government.
What would the people of an American city say, for
instance, to the proposition to choose sixty or eighty
or one hundred of their leading busmess and professional
men to seats in the city council, — with the under
standing that many of these men would continue to
serve the city in this capacity without compensation
for ten, twenty, thirty years? And what would these
leading busmess and professional men of the American
cities themselves have to say to such a proposition?
Is it not obvious that a scheme of this sort would be

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 335
utterly "un-American"? We cannot therefore consider
the British plan of municipal government. We shaU
have to invent a system more in accordance with
American ideas of the obligations of citizenship. Perhaps
the Des Moines plan wiU prove to be more practicable.
One or two advantages it wiU certainly possess. In
the first place, it wiU narrow, somewhat, the field of
responsibility. Even under what is called the Federal
plan, where executive responsibility is concentrated in
the mayor, there is apt to be a lack of harmony be
tween the mayor and the council, and legislation and
administration are often obstructed by such conflicts.
In the Des Moines plan, deadlocks of this kind would be
avoided. At any rate, the field of observation for the
people would be so small that they could easily keep
their eyes on the whole of it. If anything went wrong,
it would not be difficult to find out who was to blame
for it.
Another obvious advantage is in the fact that the
people would have to choose but five men to govern
them, instead of the score or more whom they are now
usuaUy caUed upon to select as their representatives.
There would be some chance that they could gain some
intelligent opinions about the quahfications of the men
for whom they were voting. I have never yet met a
man who would maintain, when narrowly questioned,
that he had ever voted intelligently in any municipal
election ; that there had ever been an occasion in which
he had had fuU and satisfactory information respecting
the character and the capacity of every candidate for
whom he voted. We often know three or four of them

336 RECOLLECTIONS
fairly well, but most of them are names which represent
nothing; we take them on the recommendation of the
political machine. In this matter the British voter has
an immense advantage over us. Each man votes for his
own member of council, — the member who represents
the district in which he lives ; this is all he has to do.
He may, without much difficulty, become instructed re
specting the qualifications of this one man. It is evident
that voting, in British municipalities, is a far more in
telligent business than in most of ours. But under the
Des Moines plan, where there were only five men to
be voted for, it is natural to suppose that the merits of
these men would be canvassed, and that the choice
of them would represent more knowledge and judgment
than usually finds expression in municipal elections
under present conditions.
It will be found, however, that no plan can be devised
which will give us good city government, so long as the
great majority of our citizens are unwilling to take any
responsibihty for the government of our cities. It is not
the fashion, in America, for men of substance and stand
ing to take any active part in the administration of city
affairs. Many of them seem to think it bad form to
interest themselves in such matters ; more of them feel
that they cannot afford the sacrifice of their busmess
interests which such a service would require of them.
So long as anything resembling this is true, we shall,
of course, have bad government in our cities. We are
shirking the primary obligations of our democracy, and
we shall get our deserts.
Some sense of these obligations constrained me, in the

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 337
spring of 1900, to take upon myself a task for which I
could claim no special fitness, and which might have
been far better performed by some of my neighbors. In
conversation with the editor of one of our daily papers,
I was told that a ring had been formed among the mem
bers of the city council whose terms were then expiring,
to reelect themselves and to levy tribute, in the coming
councU, upon those public-service corporations which
would be applying to that council for an extension of
their franchises. My informant seemed to believe that
a corrupt understanding had been or was likely to be
reached between these corporations, and a combination
by means of which the interests and rights of the people
would be sacrificed. It was also represented that the
member of the council from my ward was in the ring.
How much truth there was in this report I never have
known; probably it represented the imaginations of
some who wished to have it come true. But there seemed
to be reason for fear, under the circumstances, that
corrupt considerations would be employed in the busi
ness of the council at its next session. Without taking
counsel with any one, I announced the next day, over
my own signature, in aU the daily papers, that if the
people of the Seventh Ward desired to have me serve
them the next term in the city council, I would endeavor
to do so. This was aU that I found it necessary to do.
My neighbors took up the matter and elected me ; not
only did I make no canvass for the place, I scarcely
mentioned the matter in conversation to any one.
In April, 1900, 1 took up the duties of this office, and
served in it for two years. This involved attendance

338 RECOLLECTIONS
upon the regular meetings of the council on Monday
evenings, and upon the meetings of the committees on
Friday evenings — two evenings of every week. It in
volved, also, of course, the devotion of much time to the
business of the city outside of the meetings ; for I was
made chairman of one important committee and a
member of three others. It precluded absence from
the city for more than a few days at a time ; my usual
summer vacation had to be foregone. Altogether it
added much to the burden of one whose hfe was already
pretty heavily encumbered.
I did not, however, find the service in any sense a
hardship. From the beginning it was extremely interest
ing to me. There were three young lawyers, one phy
sician, three or four smaU business men, — grocers, retail
coal-dealers, and so forth; five or six clerks or book
keepers, and two or three saloon-keepers. We could
hardly claim for ourselves that we represented the in
telligence, the business sagacity, or the administrative
experience of the community. There were very few of
us who had ever given any study or thought to the
problems of municipal organization. There were one or
two of us who were often forced to cry out in wonder
that a city of more than one hundred thousand people
should be willing to intrust its great concerns to such
a body of men as we were.
For great matters were coming before us for our
decision. The street-railway franchises were expiring,
and it was necessary for us to make a new contract with
that company. The same was true of the company
which supphed us with natural gas. The city had a

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 339
small electric lighting plant, and the time had come to
determine whether it should be enlarged or abandoned.
Several interurban electric railways were seeking en
trance to the city, and charters must be granted them.
The water-supply of the city was lamentably inadequate ,
and steps must be taken to replenish it. The sewage
was defiling the river, and the towns below were crying
to us for protection. Here were mterests of tremendous
importance committed to us for our care and further
ance; did we know enough to deal with them inteUi-
gently and efficiently? I am sure that there were quite
a number of us who had not the slightest misgiving
about their entire competency to handle such matters,
but there were a few of us, at least, who could not help
being appaUed by the magnitude and intricacy of the
tasks before us.
My associates in the council were disposed, on the
whole, to treat me courteously. At first there was ap
parent shyness and suspicion in certain quarters, but
that soon disappeared, and the tinge of sarcasm which
once or twice in the early days was heard in some allu
sion to my calling, was dropped when it became clear
that no notice would be taken of it. It seemed to be
expected, when I entered the council, that I would be a
speech-maker; but I did not find it necessary to con
sume much of the time of the sessions in this way ; it
was better to depend on personal conference with mem
bers in carrying any measures in which I was interested.
On the whole, my relations with my coUeagues were
altogether cordial. Good order prevailed at our meet
ings, and there were few occasions upon which the

340 RECOLLECTIONS
decorum of the council was marred by any unseemly
conduct. The first important business on our hands was the
legislation called for by four or five electric trolley-lines
seeking entrance to the city and terminal privileges;
that was disposed of with reasonable expedition and
upon terms advantageous to the city. Next came our
local street-railway company with a demand for the
extension of its franchises. It was a strong company,
with a capitalization of about ten million doUars, and
the interests which it represented were, of course, very
powerful. Such companies are not, so far as I have ob
served, in the philanthropic line ; they wish to make
as good a bargain as they can for themselves. The
proposition which the company submitted involved
but a slight concession in the way of reduced fares ;
and the counsel of the company prepared an elaborate
statement, showing, by statistics gathered from many
sources, that it was impossible to make any reduction.
The inaccuracy of this statement was easily exposed;
my studies of the street-railway problem had put me in
possession of the facts ; and, in a letter, printed the next
day in aU the newspapers, I made it plain to the people
that there was a mass of experience accessible to all
of them, showing that the company could well afford
materially to reduce its fares. The demonstration was
not called in question, and from that time it was pretty
well settled that the people would not accept any con
tract with the company which did not greatly reduce
the cost of street transportation. A long and sharp
struggle ensued, the result of which was the adoption

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 341
of a contract which, although it is less favorable in some
features than some of us desired, is yet, on the whole,
the best that I know of in any American city. Our
people buy for twenty-five cents seven tickets, which
permit transfers in any direction; and after the gross
receipts have reached a certain sum, which is not far
off, the number will be increased to eight.
The saving of a cent and a half or two cents on a
street-raUway fare seems a small matter to contend for ;
but it is such smaU matters that make a difference, with
people of smaU incomes, between health and feeble
ness, between decency and squalor, between hope and
despondency. Take the case of a laboring-man with a
family of five, living at some distance from work and
market and school. It is a safe calculation that a differ
ence between a five-cent fare and a three-cent fare may
make a difference to this family of fifteen cents a day,
one dollar and five cents a week, fifty-four doUars and
sixty cents a year. That may mean quite a substantial
addition to the amount of nourishing food ; it may mean
a Sunday suit for the man and a decent gown for the
woman, and clothes and shoes for the children, —
items which have a great deal to do with self-respect
and contentment. It is out of these minute exactions
that great fortunes are built up ; a street-railway com
pany which is carrying fifty ninlion passengers in a
year adds to its gains half a million doUars by adding
one cent to its passenger fares. And it is equaUy true, on
the other side, that it is by these smaU exactions that
the comfort and welfare of the laboring-class is greatly
reduced. When these exactions are multiplied, — when

342 RECOLLECTIONS
a few cents a day are added to the cost of living by very
slight unnecessary additions to the price of carfare,
or gas, or electricity, or oil, or water, and by slight
enhancements of the cost of food or fuel which come
through the increase of freights, — the burdens of the
poor are aggravated that the revenues of the rich may
be enlarged. The gravest injustices and oppressions of
our modem hfe are of this nature, and out of them
spring our worst inequalities of condition. So long as
the private ownership of public-service mdustries is
permitted, the regulation of these businesses must rest
with the legislative bodies of the state or the city. That
is, as any one may see, a tremendously intricate and
difficult problem. It caUs for the most expert knowledge
of business and of finance, but it demands men who can
look beyond the immediate financial results and esti
mate the effect of municipal policies upon the health,
the intelligence, the contentment, and the self-respect of
the people. There are no questions of administration
requiring a higher order of statesmanship than those
which are now before the councils of our American
cities. To deal justly with aU parties in interest requires
a grasp of affairs which few of us can claim to possess.
So long as public-service mdustries are privately owned,
we must not deprive their owners of a just reward for
their services and sacrifices ; but neither must we per
mit them, by shifty financiering and corrupt bargaining
with politicians, to bind heavy burdens on the necks of
the producing classes. To deal wisely and justly with
these great interests, we must have the services of the
ablest and purest men in the community.

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 343
In dealing with the franchise of the natural gas com
pany, the council struck a problem of exceptional diffi
culty. The city had had a very favorable contract with
that company ; and the benefits of this most convenient
and serviceable fuel were enjoyed by the majority of
householders in the city. In asking for a renewal of
the franchise, the company strongly represented that,
owing to the lessening supply, and the increasing cost of
production, the price must be raised. The truth of the
representation it was almost impossible for us to verify.
The cost of producing artificial gas we could fairly
estimate ; of the sources of supply of the natural gas
we could not judge. When, therefore, the company laid
before us a proposition, as an ultimatum, and told us
that unless we would permit them to charge a certain
rate, they would seU their gas in another market, we
were confronted with a serious dilemma. The loss of this
fuel would be a great pubhc injury ; should we make sure
pf keeping the gas by acceding to the company's de
mand, or should we risk the loss of it by insisting on the
lower rate ? Many shrewd people refused to beheve that
the company would execute its threat ; others took the
word of the officers and urged that the offered terms be
accepted. For myself, I hesitated to take the responsi
bihty, and determined to throw it upon my constitu
ents. Accordingly I caUed for instructions from the
consumers of my ward, promising to vote as the ma
jority directed. The response was general, and the ver
dict was in favor of accepting the company's offer. For
that, therefore, I was constrained to vote. But I did
60 with some reluctance, being quite inclined, at the

344 RECOLLECTIONS
last, to agree with the majority of my colleagues, who
did not believe that the company would make good its
threat, and who insisted on the lower rate. The event
proved that they were right; the gas was not taken
away, and the people enjoyed the cheaper fuel.
Out of this transaction I learned one or two lessons.
The first was that a corporation, in dealing with a city,
need not be expected to teU the truth. The men who
gave me positive assurance respecting the purposes of
the company were men on whose word I could have
relied explicitly in any transaction between man and
man ; as representatives of a corporation dealing with
a city, a different rule of morahty seemed to obtain.
The second lesson I learned was that a representative
had better, as a rule, rely on his own judgment and not
seek instructions from his constituents. The elements
of the problem were better known to me, at the mo
ment when I was caUed to act, than they were to my
constituents; I should have decided more wisely for
them than they decided for themselves. That, I beheve,
is often the case with a representative of fair intelligence
and conscientiousness. It is better for him to assume
that he has been chosen to exercise his own judgment ;
in that way he is more likely to serve the mterests of
those who have chosen him.
The question respecting the maintenance and ex
tension of our municipal electric plant was one of con
siderable perplexity. It was only a fragment of a plant,
supplying the city with less than a third of its street
hghts ; the rest were furnished by a private company at
contract rates. There was much dispute as to whether

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 345
the city hghts were cheaper than the contract hghts;
but a careful investigation made it clear to me that,
although the city plant had been poorly handled, it
was effecting a real economy. When the private com
pany came to put in its bids for the new contract, its
prices were so high that a strong pubhc sentiment de
manded the extension of the municipal plant. In fur
therance of this demand, I succeeded in bringing to
Columbus the superintendent of the municipal lighting of
Chicago, whose testimony respecting the success of the
experiment in that city convinced the majority of my
coUeagues, and led to the decision that the city should
provide its own street hghts. We have now a well-
equipped municipal plant, and the cost of the lights,
when all legitimate expenses are reckoned, is lower than
any contract Ughting that has ever been offered to the
city. I am not at ah sorry that I had a chance to serve the
city in the day when this important matter was decided,
and that I was able to contribute toward the formation
of the public opinion which resulted in the adoption, to
this extent, of the prmciple of municipal ownership. For
I am as sure as I can be of anything that the municipal
ownership and control of public-service mdustries is the
right pohcy, — the only policy under which there is any
hope of preventing corruption and oppression. As I
have already tried to show, the public-service industries
are necessarily monopohes ; they are monopolies which
furnish us with the necessaries of life ; and monopolies
of that nature must belong to the people. It would be
just as rational to give a private corporation the right,

346 RECOLLECTIONS
of levying taxes, as it is to give it the exclusive control
of an industry by which the welfare of aU the people is
affected. No such control as this over the pubhc welfare
can rationally be delegated by the people to any private
agency. If this does not belong to the rudiments of
democracy, it would be hard to think of anything that
does. To say that the people cannot be trusted to manage
such matters is simply to say that the people cannot
govern themselves. Even, therefore, if it could be shown
that municipal ownership resulted, for a time, in increas
ing the cost of the service, that would be no reason why
it should not be chosen. If the people thus, by their
carelessness and neglect, bring suffering upon them
selves, that is just as it should be ; they will know that
they have brought it upon themselves, and will know
how to avoid it. Nothing is safe in a democracy but
the method which brings directly home to the people
themselves the consequences of their own misdoing.
That is the only way in which they can be educated.
The peril of private ownership of public-service in
dustries arises from the enormous power which, as a vast
experience shows, they possess to corrupt the govern
ment of the cities. If in any city there are ten or twenty
or two hundred millions of dollars invested by private
persons or corporations in public-service mdustries,
these millions, as human nature goes, are directly in
terested in having bad government in that city. Good
government, government by thoroughly intelligent and
efficient men, would not play into the hands of the own
ers of these millions, and could not be controUed by

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 347
them for their purposes. Good government would not
give them the kind of concessions and franchises which
they seek. Good government would not permit them to
levy tribute on the public for the payment of dividends
on vast issues of fictitious capital. With corrupt or in
efficient government, aU these things are possible. Dis
honest men can be bought — most of them at a very low
price ; weak and ignorant men can be eashy manipulated.
This is the kind of government which private capital
invested in public-service industries naturally feels that
it must have. It is simply rehearsing the long and dark
record which has been abundantly spread before the
reading public, to say that private capital invested in
public-service industries has been and is to-day the one
overshadowing and aU-pervading influence by which
municipal government in America has been debauched.
In many cases its plans are deeply laid to secure the
election of men who can be used ; in other cases it finds
that it is safe enough to trust the people to provide
officials who will serve its purposes. Unhappily that
confidence is not often misplaced. It must be true that
there are public-service corporations that deal fairly
with the pubhc, and that do not seek to corrupt the
officials; but I am saying what every intelligent man
knows to be true when I affirm that, as a rule, the capital
invested in such industries is well aware of the fact that
its interest lies in promoting bad government.
It is not reasonable to expect that such a power wiU
refrain from pushing its interest. It will continue to
do just what it has done in Philadelphia, in New York,
in St. Louis, in San Francisco, in Minneapolis, — and,

348 RECOLLECTIONS
in a smaller and more cautious way, in scores of other
cities. I do not think that the people of any city can afford
to have ten or twenty or two hundred millions of doUars
directly and consciously interested in promoting bad
government. It is a foolhardy thing to permit such
a makeweight to be thrown into the scale on the side
of pohtical immorafity. It is a crime to aUow such a
mighty organized force to be used for the destruction
of free government. Free government will never be
secure until that force is eliminated from the body
pohtic. I am aware that the municipal ownership of public-
service mdustries would not entirely abolish corruption
and temptation. There would still be opportunities of
graft, and room for aU sorts of corrupt combinations;
there would still be no possibihty of good government
unless intelligent and competent men were willing to
take office and the people were vigilant and sensible
enough to choose them; the spoilsman would stiU be
in the field plying his trade with diligence ; but what
ever dishonesties and infidelities prevaUed would be
in plain sight of the people; and no such stupendous
aggregations of material power would be insidiously
assailing the foundations of government.
Nor is it necessary to say that the success of this kind
of administration, as of every other, must depend on the
elimination from our city business of every vestige of
the spoils system, and in the adoption of the same prin
ciples of efficiency and economy which prevail in aU
other kinds of business. So long as our city offices are

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 349
vacated and refilled at every election, and so long as
they are regarded as stalls in which faithful party work
ers are fed from the public crib, the pubhc busmess wiU
be done in a slovenly and extravagant way. But, as has
been said already, if the people were managing their own
business, the consequences of their management would
be brought directly home to them ; and the millions of
private capital would be directly mterested in having
good and economical government. That makeweight
would be thrown into the scales on the side of pohtical
morahty. Instead of having a large part of the wealth
of the city enlisted in the promotion of weak and dis
honest administration, we should have the most of it
enlisted in securing honesty and competency. That this
would have a powerful influence in reforming the meth
ods of municipal administration, I cannot doubt.
It has been, therefore, a satisfaction to me that I had
the privilege of doing something, during my short period
of pubhc service, toward bringing municipal monopohes
under public control. That the evolution of democracy
must result in this is entirely clear to me. The owner
ship and control of aU monopolies is the goal ahead of
us, toward which we must move with no faltering.
Our two great problems of water and drainage gave
us also some interesting experience. A good share of the
members of our city government felt quite competent
to solve them, off-hand, and a picturesque variety of
suggestions was soon before us. We were so fortunate,
however, as to have an intelligent city engineer, who had
some sense of the magnitude of the problems ; and by
his advice the best authorities on these two subjects

350 RECOLLECTIONS
were summoned, to give us their counsel. It was not
easy for some of our number to consent to the appropri
ation of several thousand doUars for such advice; the
idea of employing experts to teU us what we should do
in matters of this nature appeared to some of them quite
preposterous; the word "expert" was flung about the
council chamber with much contempt. The engineer's
proposition was, however adopted; the preliminary
studies and surveys were made, and the first steps were
taken toward the provision for our city of an abundant
supply of filtered and softened water and the purification
and disposal of our sewage. It was a great and Costly
undertaking, and years have been occupied in accom
plishing it, but, as I write these words, in the summer of
1909, we are rejoicing in an abundance of filtered and
softened water, and the work for the cleansing of our
river from the pestilence-breeding germs is also quite
complete. The observation of these great public utilities and the
study of the needs to which they minister deepens one's
sense of the tremendous interests that are involved in
the growth of our cities, and of the extent to which it is
necessary for us to work together for the common good.
To supply a city of two hundred thousand people with
pure water is a colossal undertaking; but working to
gether, we accomphsh it with comparative ease, and
enjoy, at a nominal cost, a blessing of incalculable value.
It is a signal instance of the beneficence of cooperation.
One part of our experience in pushing this enterprise
was disenchanting. As soon as our source of water-sup
ply was determined, aU owners of land along the river-

THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEM 351
bank rose up to obstruct the city. For rights of way for
our mains, and for aUeged riparian damages of one sort
or another, the most extravagant demands were made.
If the city instituted condemnation proceedings and a
jury of the vicinage was summoned to assess damages,
we found the natives standing together to extort two or
three times the value of their property. It was a pitiful
revelation of human nature, and it is, I am told, the
common experience of cities. They are generaUy com-
peUed to pay enormous tribute to land-owners for access
to sources of water-supply. This is a species of brigand
age for which some remedy ought to be provided. It is
akin to the extortion which demands of a famishing man
a king's ransom for a cup of cold water. Our Christian
ity has not much vigor if it cannot make men ashamed
of such unneighborly conduct.
I took my leave of the Columbus city counch in April,
1902, with a sincere regret. I had no consciousness of
having achieved great things ; but I had come into close
contact with the vital needs of my city, and I had had
some part in solving some of its most pressing problems.
I laid the burden down because it was not possible for
me to bear it any longer. The work of my church was
heavy and exacting, it could not be delegated, I must
resign either my charge or my office. The results of my
experience were a deepened sense of the seriousness of
the business of municipal government and a more vivid
realization of the lack of knowledge and skiU on the part
of those who are handling it. This is the crying evil —
incompetency. There were not many occasions on which
I suspected the presence of corrupting influences in the

352 RECOLLECTIONS
council ; I do not think that money was often used ; but
the lack of the adequate knowledge and experience for
the tasks in hand was often painfuUy apparent. I be
heve that this is true of city governments as a rule, —
perhaps of state governments also. They are generaUy
in the hands of men who have no fitness to deal with
them ; and this is mainly because the men who have the
necessary equipment for such work almost uniformly
refuse to undertake it.

CHAPTER XXIII
BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS
While the manners, while the arts
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,
Between let ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun :
Yet still, from either beach,
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
"We are One." Washington Allston.
Not Thine the bigot's partial plea,
Not Thine the zealot's ban ;
Thou well canst spare a love of Thee
Which ends in hate of man. John Greenleaf Whittier.
These RecoUections would be altogether incomplete
without some mention of the journeys overseas, in which
I have found so large a fund of stimulating experience.
It was in the spring of 1888 that I first saw the green
shores of Ireland, and the may blooming in the English
hedgerows. Memorable are those first days in the sweet
English landscapes, wandering about the winding streets
of old Chester, foUowing the banks of the Avon from
Warwick to Stratford, resting in the gardens of Oxford,
or upon the soft slopes and the willow banks that border
the Cam, wondering and worshipmg in the minsters of
York and Lincoln and Canterbury and Ely and Win
chester. To one whose mind has been nursed on Enghsh
letters, no other land can offer anything akin to that

354 RECOLLECTIONS
which is constantly spread before him in the country of
Chaucer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Scott
and Burns and Ruskin and Tennyson and Browning.
The Alps and the Rhine and quaint little Holland and
sunny France had charms of their own, but when we
recrossed the Channel, we knew that we were coming
home. "Are you a foreign delegate?" asked one of the
reception committee of the World's Missionary Con
ference in Exeter Hall, London. "No," I answered,
rather indignantly, " I am an American." Five weeks in
London were enough to go round about her and teU some
of the towers thereof and consider a few of her palaces,
and lay by a store of memories that would need refresh
ing at no distant day.
I heard Archdeacon Farrar preaching in Westminster
Abbey to a crowd of delegates — bishops and priests —
then in attendance upon the Pan- Anglican Council. It
was brave and strong truth that he told them, too, about
the inclusiveness of Christ's church, and the meaning of
Christian fellowship. I had my only glimpse of Glad
stone on that visit, and the occasion was not altogether
an engaging one. It was at the Sydenham Palace, at the
Haendel Festival. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were there
to hear the "Israel in Egypt," and they occupied the
Queen's box in the transept, opposite the choir. Their
presence had not been noted, apparently ; but when, in
the middle of the performance, an intermission of half
an hour was taken, the audience, rising to move about,
saw the great Commoner and his companion sitting there,
and immediately there was an indescribable uproar.
Hisses and hoots came first, but these were met and sub-

BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS 355
merged by cheers. The voice of scorn has less volume,
happily, than the voice of acclamation. But there was
plenty of hot breath behind these hisses, and of spite in
the eyes that glared defiance at the venerable statesman.
Answermg the applause, he bowed and withdrew ; but
on the reassembhng of the audience, when he came back
to his seat, the same tumult was repeated. A woman,
not of the lower class, who sat near me, turned her face
toward the Queen's box and hissed like a snake. " What
does it mean?" I asked a weU-dressed man who was
joining in the hubbub. "He is ruining his country!"
was the hot reply. There was not, at that time, any
pohtical crisis, and Mr. Gladstone had done nothing re
cently to chaUenge criticism ; it was simply an outburst
of partisanship, and I confess that I had never seen, in
the heated pohtical atmosphere of my native land, any
thing quite so unlovely. It seemed an unspeakable out
rage that a man hke Gladstone could not attend a musi
cal festival in the capital of his own country without
exposing himself to insult.
One evening in London got itself underscored on the
tablets of memory. By invitation of my venerable
friend, the Reverend Henry Allon, D. D., of Islington, I
went with him to a meetmg of what I think was called
the Christian Union. It was a company of men of aU
ecclesiastical sorts and conditions, — Churchmen and
Dissenters, — who met, statedly or occasionaUy, in the
Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey, to discuss
the possibihties of feUowship and cooperation among
Christians. I think that the movement had been started
by Dean Stanley. We arrived at the Abbey early in the

356 RECOLLECTIONS
evening, and passing through the close to the deanery,
first paid our respects to Dean Bradley, the successor
of Dean Stanley, and then returned to the refectory in
the Abbey, where tea was served. Then, led by Dean
Bradley, the company, consisting of fifty or sixty men,
marched through the nave, in the solemn twilight, to the
choir, where, seated in the staUs, we joined with the
Dean in a prayer which he read by the hght of a single
flaring gas-jet ; after which we walked softly back to the
west end, and entered the historic Jerusalem Chamber.
One need not blush to admit some tingling of the nerves
as he seats himself within the venerable walls where the
Assembly of Divines fashioned a good part of the West
minster Confession, and where two companies of Bibhcal
scholars, one in King James's time and one in Queen
Victoria's, spent months and years of labor upon the
translation and revision of our Enghsh Bible. Hither,
too, Shakespeare brings King Henry IV, for his last
breath. He had meant to die in Jerusalem, and whim
sically deemed it the next best thing to die in the
Chamber that bore that name.
It hath been prophesied to me many years,
I should not die but in Jerusalem;
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land :
But bear me to that chamber ; there I '11 lie J
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
The ancient carvings and tapestries bring back the
memories of those old days. And here is a sUent and
attentive company ready to hear reasons why men of
differing creeds should dweU together in unity, with
some misgivings, alas ! lest they may not be able to do so.

BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS 357
What was said was not so memorable ; but it was good
that men were moved to come together in this place to
say it. It was in this company that I saw, for the only
time, the benignant face of James Martineau, and that
I first grasped the kindly hand of my gracious friend
Dean Fremantle, of Ripon, — then Canon of Canterbury.
Other visits to England and the Continent bring back
each its sheaf of memories, which I must not now un
bind. In 1891, as delegate to the International Council
of Congregationahsts, I revisited the old country; and
again in 1894 renewed associations and friendships there,
which had been multiplying. In the summer of 1898,
during the Spanish War, my Enghsh publishers, Messrs.
James Clarke and Company, of London, announced,
through the "Christian World," that I would speak
within the Kingdom, wherever desired, on the "Causes
of the War, and the Reasons for Friendship between
England and America." This was not a lecturing tour;
it was distinctly understood that I would pay my own
traveling expenses and receive no compensation for my
addresses ; hospitahty I would gladly accept, if that were
proffered. On these terms I found no difficulty in filling
a number of engagements, in various parts of the King
dom, and a more delightful summer I have not often
spent. The meetmgs were generaUy held in some public
hah, — sometimes in a church ; the mayor of the city,
a member of Parliament, or some honorable citizen
would take the chair, and the welcome of the town would
be cordiaUy extended. Almost everywhere the "Star-
Spangled Banner" was sung, — rather better sung than
by most American audiences. What I had to say about

358 RECOLLECTIONS
our national affairs, and especiaUy about the reasons for
friendship between the two countries, was received with
the heartiest favor. I never have spoken to audiences
in which the signs of enthusiasm were so marked. An
English assembly, when it agrees with you, is an in
spiring audience. It has its own ways of going along
with you, and — to use the Parliamentary phrase —
"associating itself" with you, which are very reassuring
to a speaker.
AU this experience was memorable. The reasons for
friendship between England and America multiplied
with every meeting. The throngs of men and women
who filed past me, at the close of the meeting, grasping
my hand, were all the while saying: "I've got a son, or
a daughter, or a brother, or a sister, over there !" That
there could be any other than the most friendly relation
between the two countries was to most of these men
and women inconceivable. One Englishman told me
of the shock which was given to his countrymen when
Cleveland's message upon the Venezuelan business sug
gested the possibility of war. He said that men met
one another in the street, holding up their hands in hor
ror and exclaiming: "War! War with America! It is
monstrous! It is preposterous!" That, beyond a ques
tion, is the attitude of the average middle-class English
man. There could hardly be a more unnatural or horrible
offense against civilization than any attempt to pro
mote hostilities between this country and England.
It wiU be observed that these RecoUections are not
attempting to foUow a strict chronological order; it

BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS 359
seemed better to bring together related topics without
strict adherence to the order of time. I go back, then, to
the Centennial year, for a glimpse at the Columbian
Exposition in Chicago, and especiaUy at the Parliament
of Religions, which was not only the most picturesque,
but perhaps the most significant, religious assembly
ever brought together upon this planet. The conception
was a daring one ; nowhere else but in Chicago could it
have materialized. Such a comparison of religions could
hardly help enlarging the range of many minds, and it
must lead the advocates of all religions to emphasize
that which is central and fundamental in their forms
of faith. AU this tends to unity and fraternity. That
the opportunity for such a comparison was offered by
Christianity is of great significance; no other form of
faith would have suggested such a thing ; this, in itself,
indicates the likelihood that Christianity wiU be the
solvent and unifier of faiths.
It was a strange and somewhat disheartening fact
that in the year of the Parliament of Religions our
country should have been visited by an astounding
outbreak of religious bigotry. Whether the fraterniza
tion of the religions at Chicago had anything to do with
this, I do not know ; it is possible that some small souls
were disturbed by what seemed to them a dangerous
lowering of barriers between religionists, and may have
been spurred to dig deeper the chasms which sympathy
and good will were filling up. The outbreak occurred in
the domain of ultra-Protestantism, and was directed
against the Roman Catholic Church. Several secret
orders, whose object was hostility to Romanism, either

360 RECOLLECTIONS
sprang into existence or awakened to new activity,
about this time. The movement began with the wide
dissemination of hterature of the most surprising
character. The document most extensively circulated
was entitled "Instructions to the Catholics." It pur
ported to have been issued by the order of the Pope;
the headlines generally made that assertion ; the names
of eight archbishops were signed to it, and the counter
sign of Cardinal Gibbons was appended. This document,
in the form of a tract for general circulation, was brought
to me by dozens of men, — most of whom supposed that
it must be genuine. The "Instructions to the Catholics"
included such admonitions as these: "We view with
alarm the rapid spread of educated intelhgence, knowing
weU that wherever the people are intelligent the priest
and prince cannot hope to five on the labor of the
masses whose brains have been fertilized by our holy
catechism. . . . We view with alarm the rapid diffusion
of the Enghsh language. ... In order to find employ
ment for the many thousands of the faithful who are
coming daily to swell the ranks of the Cathohc army,
which will in due time possess the land, we must secure
control of aU the cities, railways, manufactories, mines,
steam and sailing vessels — above aU, the press — in
fact, every enterprise requiring labor, in order to furnish
our newcomers employment ; this wiU render it neces
sary to remove or crowd out the American heretics
who are now employed. You need not hesitate ; it is
your duty to do so. You must not stop at anything to
accomplish this end. There are many ways to consult
your father confessor, but be careful to do nothing that
will create scandal."

BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS 361
The astounding fact is that this document was freely
circulated for many months, and that it was published
in scores of anti-Catholic papers. No exposure of its
fraudulent nature, so far as I know, was made in the
religious or secular newspapers. Probably most of the
editors may have supposed that its absurdity would be
evident, but in fact it was accepted as genuine by hun
dreds of thousands of American citizens who are able to
read and write, and who assume to be educated persons.
It was possible for them to believe that the high pre
lates of the Roman Catholic Church are stupid enough
to issue a document like this and sign their names to
it. And, believing that such were the purposes of the
Roman Cathohc authorities, it was easy to rope these
hundreds of thousands into a secret organization whose
purpose was a bitter warfare, pohtical, social, and in
dustrial, against aU members of the Roman Cathohc
Church. Such an organization sprang into active exist
ence and spread itself over the country in 1893. Its
members were bound by a solemn oath never to favor
or aid the nomination, election, or appointment to
office of a Roman Cathohc, and never to employ a
Roman Catholic, in any capacity, if the services of a
Protestant could be obtained. Such an attempt as this,\
not only to disfranchise Roman Catholics, but to prevent
them from obtaining an honest livelihood, — to starve
them to death, — was deemed the proper and Christian
thing by tens of thousands of our Protestant church
members and hundreds of our Protestant ministers in
the last decade of the nineteenth century. This organi-/
zation swept the state of Ohio, and several of the west-

362 RECOLLECTIONS
ern states; most of the local governments were in its
power ; our own state legislature was under its control ;
candidates from both parties rushed into it, to get its
support; men swore this hideous oath in order to get
themselves elected to judgeships.
As the madness spread, the tales respecting the ma
lign purposes of the Roman Catholics became more and
more harrowing. They were importing arms in coffins,
and other ghostly packages; they were drilhng every
night in the basements of their churches, — this was
confidently affirmed respecting many churches which
had no basements. One Protestant minister in Columbus
announced from his pulpit that he had bought a rifle
to defend his home, — evidently wishing to suggest to
his congregation the wisdom of adopting the same
precaution. Scores of newspapers, with large circu
lation, fanned the flame of suspicion and spread the
panic. A forged encyclical, to which the name and title
of Pope Leo XIII was prefixed, released all Catholics
from any oath of allegiance which they might have
taken to the United States government, and gave specific
orders that "on or about the feast of Ignatius Loyola,
in the year of the Lord 1893, it will be the duty of the
faithful to exterminate all heretics found within the juris
diction of the United States." This forged encyclical
was kept standing for weeks in the papers represent
ing the order. To arm themselves against this threat
ened slaughter, the lodges of the society in Toledo
ordered a large consignment of Winchester rifles,
which were distributed among their members. The fact
was subsequently brought out in an action at law, in

BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS 363
which the seller of the rifles sought to recover the cost
of them.
Such was the epidemic of unreason and bigotry which
was raging in free and enhghtened America, during
1893 and 1894. It cannot be said that the Roman
Cathohcs had recently done anything to excite this
antipathy ; all their tendencies had been in the direction
of more friendly relations with their Protestant neigh
bors. And while this fury was in the air, their behavior
was, for the most part, altogether admirable. They
endured, with great forbearance, the monstrous false
hoods which were told about them; they waited pa
tiently for the day when the mists of suspicion and fear
would clear away.
When the movement first began to gather strength in
Ohio, I lost no time in bearing my testimony against it.
In an evening sermon I took up and analyzed its htera
ture, proving from its own documents its fraudulent
character, and seeking to show how radically it was at
war not only with truth, but with justice and honor
and fair play and every dictate of Christian morality.
In my own congregation the society gained no foothold ;
I did not know of one member of my church who united
with it ; but the case was very different with most of the
Protestant congregations.
My sermon brought down upon me the denunciation
of the anti-Catholic crusaders ; by some of them it was
charged that I was in the pay of that church. One of
my ministerial brethren stated, as of his positive know
ledge, that my sermon was the result of a definite bar
gain between myself and the Roman Cathohc bishop;

364 RECOLLECTIONS
he gave, minutely, the conversation between myself
and the bishop over the telephone the Saturday evening
before, which was, substantiaUy, as f oUows : —
Myself. "Is this Bishop Watterson?"
The Bishop. "It is."
Myself. "Well, that sermon is ready."
The Bishop. "All right; preach it to-morrow night
and your thousand doUars wiU be ready for you on
Monday morning."
No comment is needed on the fertility of the imagi
nation which could evolve such a fiction ; the only thing
notable is that any man should find it prudent to teU
such a tale in an intelligent community. This is, indeed,
the amazing thing, that such monstrous fabrications —
stories so palpably at war With every element of proba
bility — : can be circulated by human beings who, in ordi
nary matters, must be credited with possessing common
sense. Apparently it is only when their religious preju
dices are excited that men completely part with their
rationality. And it must be remembered that this obses
sion cannot be Charged against "ignorant foreigners";
the vast majority of these zealots were English-speak
ing people.
I might naturally have hoped that, in my testimony
against this fraudulent and mischievous organization,
the pulpits of Columbus would be with me ; but such was
not the case. Five or six of them — not more, I think —
spoke out clearly and bravely ; the rest were either silent
or openly defending the pestilent order. Quite a number
of the ministers were known to be members of it ; most
of those who were not were either in sympathy with it

BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS 365
or afraid of it. Several of them told me that while they
did not approve of it, there were so many members of it
in their congregations that it would not do for them to
say anything about it.
It is asking too much to expect us to beheve that aU
those who circulated these astounding reports about
their neighbors were unaware of their falsity. The most
intelligent of them must have known that these tales
were hes. Probably they governed themselves by the
phUosophy which is rudely expressed in the maxim,
"Any stick is good enough to beat a dog." The stories
were slanders ; but the Roman Cathohcs were dangerous
people, and therefore any reports which tended to dis
credit them, whether true or false, might be useful. It
did not appear to these pious Protestants that in this
kind of casuistry they had adopted the worst maxim
ever credited to the Jesuitic teaching.
It was surprising to see how quickly this proscriptive
movement collapsed, for within two years it disappeared
from sight, and those who had availed themselves of it
to climb into power were eager to hide aU traces of their
connection with it.
I have lived through two of these epidemics of reh
gious rancor, about forty years apart ; I sincerely hope
that our country has seen the last of them. Our Roman
Cathohc feUow citizens have earned the right to be pro
tected from such proscription. There is no reason to sus
pect them of any unpatriotic purposes. They are bearing
their part in the promotion of thrift and order and intel
ligence. Any attempt to discredit or disfranchise them
on account of their rehgious behefs ought to be resisted
by every intelligent American.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE NEGRO PROBLEM
And ye shall succor men;
'T is nobleness to serve ;
Help them who cannot help again:
Beware from right to swerve.
I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow :
As much as he is and doeth,
- So much he shall bestow.
But, laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The reader of these pages wiU not need to be told that
the writer of them has not been unmindful, through his
lifetime, of the interests of the negro race in this country.
When the negroes were emancipated, and opportunities
were opened for their education and preparation for
citizenship, that philanthropy appealed to me as one of
the most enhghtened and most urgent of all. It hap
pened that there was an organization for missionary
work, affiliated with the Congregational churches, which
seemed to be specially fitted to take up this work among
the negroes. This was called "The American Missionary
Association" ; it had been formed by men who were in
revolt against certain pro-slavery comphcations of the
Congregational Mission Board ; its attitude toward the

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 367
negroes had always been sympathetic; and when the
contrabands were gathered by thousands at Fortress
Monroe and in the camps of the northern armies, this
society immediately entered the field and began among
them the work of education. With the coming of peace
and the swarmmg of the negroes in the southern cities
the opportunity was indefinitely extended ; and it was
not long before many schools had been established in
different parts of the South. Thus it was that the reh
gious body to which I have always belonged was a pio
neer in the work for the Freedmen. Other Christian de
nominations have been engaged in the same enterprise
and have done excellent work, but the Congregational-
ists, whose interest in education has always been deep
and active, were the first in this field, and have always
been among the foremost. To their enterprise is due a
very large provision for negro education in the southern
states. The great institution at Hampton was founded
by them ; it has, however, for many years, been on an
independent foundation. The same is true of Berea
CoUege in Kentucky. Fisk University at Nashville,
Atlanta University, Tougaloo University in Mississippi,
TaUadega CoUege in Alabama, Straight University at
New Orleans, TiUotson CoUege in Texas, are institutions
which have been planted and are maintained by the
American Missionary Association ; and added to these is
a considerable group of normal schools, and other sec
ondary schools in different parts of the South. In con
nection with these schools, in places where graduates of
these schools are gathered, and in many other places,
Congregational churches have also been formed.

368 RECOLLECTIONS
In this work of the American Missionary Association
I have had a deep interest from my earliest mmistry ;
most of its officers have been my friends. For several
years I was one of its vice-presidents, and in 1901 1 was
honored by being chosen its president.
It is not improbable that some of those who read
these pages may find themselves questioning whether
such an institution as this has now any proper work to
do. The southern states, it may be said, are making pro
vision for the education of the negroes, and it is better
to leave the business in their hands. It may be that
they have done aU that could be reasonably expected of
them, but the provision is yet, in most of these states,
wholly inadequate. The Southern Education Board,
which has been formed to aid the southern states in ex
tending and improving their educational facilities, is a
witness to the fact that such aid is needed, even by the
whites. Among the blacks the need is far greater.
The truth is that the emancipation of the slaves
threw upon the people of the South a tremendous bur
den, which, in their impoverished condition, they were
utterly unable to bear; and it was and stiU is the duty
of the people of the North to share it with them. For
the burden is not yet lifted, nor has it ceased to press,
with crushing weight, upon the southern people.
See what the problem is, as it presents itself to the
mind of one southern educator, Professor Woodward, of
Trinity College, North Carolina : "To state the terms of
this problem is to indicate its unexampled difficulties;
here are nine millions of aliens, doubling about every
forty years, fixed as to habitation, sociaUy ostracized/

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 369
politically disfranchised, moraUy undeveloped, — in
a word, a race, a thousand years behind, who must
somehow be bunt into this national fabric and organic-
aUy incorporated with the national hfe and character.
Evidently such a consummation wiU severely tax the
intelligence and the patience of the whole people for
generations to come."
No better statement of the task could be asked for.
But to whom does it belong? Let the same voice teach
us : "The negro problem is a national problem, however
southernly located, to be solved by the whole people of
the South, the whole people of the North, and the ne
groes, getting together and working together on common
grounds ; for on such agreement and co-work the solution
of it depends."
This southern gentleman is inclined to decline help
from the North in the education of white children ; " but
the North owes the black," he insists, "as much as the
South owes him, and that is the great debt. . . . Help
ing people whose best education is seff-help and who
have the means of self-help within reach, degrades both
giver and receiver. It is to be hoped that the North,
in its southern movements for negro education, wUl
correct this initial mistake, this confusion of duty and
charity, and fix organization on the safe basis of north
ern obligation for the education and civihzation of the
negro." We may feel that the southern gentleman is too sensi
tive on this score. One reason why northern help is ex
tended to southern whites is that the southern whites
are overburdened by their task of providing elementary

370 RECOLLECTIONS
education for the vast numbers of illiterate blacks. It is
not an impulse of charity, but a sense of justice, which
prompts northern men to share with them the burden.
So also testifies another brave southern man, the Rev
erend Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Alabama: "The Na
tion, including the South as well as the North, the West
as weU as the South and North, has to do with every
issue in the South that touches any national right of
the humblest of its citizens.""? That is surely the states
manlike distribution of responsibihty for this busmess.
But what is the nature of the task? The negro is on
the hands of the nation. What shall we do for him?
What shaU we make of him? Here the voices divide.
The prevailing sentiment at the South to-day undoubt
edly insists that he must be kept in a subject, if not in
a servUe position. Governor Vardaman declares that he
must be educated, but that his education must be in
dustrial and moral, not inteUectual. We must educate
his hands and his heart, says this philosopher, but not
his head. There is a problem in pedagogy for you ! Gov
ernor Vardaman reminds us of the Enghsh mechanic
who brought his boy to the night school, saying, "I
want this boy to learn to write ; I want him to write my
letters and keep my accounts." "Very good," said the
master ; " we will teach him to write and to read." " No,
no ! " said the father. "I don't want him to know how
to read. Teach him to read, and he 'U be wastin' his time
with books and papers and all such. Teach him to write ;
that'U be of some use." The notion that education can
be put up in air-tight, non-communicating compart
ments, and that the negro's heart and hands can be ade-

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 371
quately trained without developing his brain, deserves
a place in the museum of psychological curiosities.
If the main thing to be done for the negro is to keep
him in ignorance and subjection, that is a task which
requires no great amount of art, — nothing but hard
hearts and brutal wills. There is physical force enough
in the nation to hold him down for a while ; how long
that dominion would last, I will not try to teU. The civ
ilization built on that basis wiU fall, and great will be
the fall of it. We have had our admonition already, — a
war that cost six hundred thousand hves and twelve
billions of dollars, — and the bills are not paid yet. That
is a slice of the retribution due for trying to build a civil
ization on prostrate manhood. If we are not satisfied
with that, if we insist on trying the same experiment
over again in a slightly different form, another day of
judgment wiU come, and will not tarry. We shall get it
hammered into our heads one of these days that this is a
moral universe ; not that it is going to be, by and by, but
that it is moral now, moral all through, in tissue and
fibre, in gristle and bone, in muscle and brain, in sensa
tion and thought ; and that no injustice fails to get its
due recompense, now and here. The moral law admon
ishes us not to make our fellow man our tool, our tribu
tary. "Thou shalt treat humanity" — it is Kant's great
saying — "ever as an end, never as a means to thine own
selfish end." Disobey that law, and the consequence
faUs. Evade it no man ever does for so long as the wink
of an eyelid. Its penalty smites him with lightning
stroke ; he is instantly degraded, beclouded, weakened
by his disobedience. Virtue has gone out of him; the

372 RECOLLECTIONS
slow decay is at work by which his manhood is de-
spofled. The same law holds in all realms. It is as sure and
stern in its dealing with races as with persons. The
stronger race that tries to treat the weaker not as an
end, but as a means to its own selfish ends, plucks swift
judgment from the skies upon its own head. On such a
race there wiU surely faU the mildew of moral decay,
the pestilence of social corruption, the blight of its
civilization. This is not northern fanaticism. It is a truth which
has been uttered more than once, with the emphasis of
conviction, by strong men in the South. It is not the
view which prevails there to-day, but it is a view which is
held there by a strong minority of the ablest men, and
it must prevaU. The luminous studies of the negro ques
tion which have been given us by Mr. Ray Stannard
Baker in the "American Magazine" bring before us the
elements which will finally rule in the working out of
this problem. There are men at the South to-day who
know and say that the task which the negro presents to
the South and the nation is not the task of keeping him
in subjection, but the task of lifting him to manhood and
giving him the rights and responsibilities that belong
to a man. "The best southern people," says President
Alderman, of the University of Virginia, "are too wise
not to know that posterity will judge them according to
the wisdom they use in this great concern. They are too
just not to know that there is but one thing to do with a
human being, and that is to give him a chance." In the
same vein President Kilgo, of Trinity College, North

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 373
Carolina, insists that the negro must have the right and
the opportunity to make of himself aU that God meant
him to be. "He lifts his dusky face to the face of his
superior, and asks why he may not be given the right to
grow as weU as dogs and horses and cows. For a superior
race to hold down an inferior one that the superior race
may have the services of the inferior was the social doc
trine of medisevahsm. Americans cannot explain why
they shudder at the horrors of the tenth and eleventh
centuries, and are themselves content to keep the weak
in their weakness in order that the strong may rule
better." To this southern testimony some northern men would
do weU to give good heed. Its implications are large. It
means that while the primary need of the negro is indus
trial education, the scheme which stops with that will not
do at aU. It is this southern college president who says
again : "The education given at Tuskegee and Hampton
is founded in wisdom. However, industrial education
does not and cannot develop the highest and broadest
moral character. If the negro is only capable of learning
the lesser morals, and fiUing the lesser spheres of moral
duty, then industrial education wiU prove sufficient for
aU his development. . . . H he is to be judged by the
higher standards of moral hfe, then he must be given
those things which wiU fit him to meet the duties and
tasks of the higher moral life. To shut a race within
narrow limits forces it to develop a contentment with a
low order of things."
There is a further truth which these far-seeing south
ern men do not fail to seize and emphasize. If, as seems

374 RECOLLECTIONS
to be determined, there is to be social separation be
tween the races, that is itself a decisive reason why the
black man must have access to the highest culture.
' ' For the very reason, ' ' says Mr. Murphy, ' ' that the race,
in the apartness of its social hfe, is to work out its
destiny as the separate member of a large group, it
must be accorded its own leaders and thinkers, its own
scholars, artists, prophets ; and while the development
of the higher hfe may come slowly, even blunderingly,
it is distinctly to be welcomed."
These southern witnesses make it clear that the kind
of work which those with whom I have been associated
have been trying to do for the negro is not unnecessary
or superfluous work. Much ill-considered criticism has
been expended upon the "universities" and "colleges"
maintained in the South for the benefit of the negroes ;
but these are for the training of leaders and teachers ;
and if the races are to be socially separate, the nine mil
lions of blacks must have their own teachers and leaders,
and they must be weU trained and competent. If aU
social contact between the races is to be prevented,
then it will not be seemly for a white physician to
practice medicine in a black man's home, nor for a white
lawyer to do business for a black client ; the race must
have its own doctors and lawyers, and they must be
men of skill and learning. Is there any good reason why
a black physician should not be as weU educated as
a white one? No less imperative is the demand for
thoroughly educated schoolmasters and preachers.
What is more, it is abundantly proved that it is only
where the higher education flourishes that primary edu-

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 375
cation can be efficiently maintained. Teachers who
know no more than is taught in the primary schools
cannot teach primary schools. And those who are
teaching in the industrial schools must know more than
is taught in those schools. Mr. Washington's school at
Tuskegee is one of the noblest institutions on this con
tinent ; but the men and women who are working by his
side were largely trained for their work in the coUeges
which our American Missionary Association has been
maintaining, and in. others hke them. It is not needful
to plead the cause of industrial education ; that is abun
dantly vindicating itself, and such work as Hampton
and Tuskegee are doing deserves the enthusiastic sup
port of aU men of good wiU. Industrial education is part
of the curriculum in aU the institutions whose names I
have given, and of which our Association has the care.
I have only desired to caU attention to another aspect
of the question which the superficial observer is apt
to overlook.
There is no reason why there should be any quarrel
between these two classes of educators ; each needs the
other's aid. Much less reason is there why the northern
men who have been working since the war for the up
lifting of the negroes should fail to honor the glorious
company of southern men whose eyes are open to the
ethical principles involved int. our most serious social
questku}, and who are setting their faces steadily toward
the only goal which American civilization can keep in
view. "The thinking men and women of this section,"
says Professor Woodward, "are ready to grant to the
negro opportunity to win, as he may be able, full citizen-

376, RECOLLECTIONS
ship and aU it implies, educationaUy and pohticaUy.
But this opinion is not generaUy influential as yet, what
ever strength it may win in the future." No; it is not
generaUy influential yet ; but it is the opinion that must
prevail, because this is a moral universe. The words
which I have quoted from these southern men are true
words ; the breath of God is in them ; they ring with the
accent of conviction. They are not going to be taken
back. They cannot be gainsaid. They wiU force the
assent of honest men, here and there, who wiU take them
up and repeat them. They wiU form, httle by httle,
a body of opinion at the South which wUl assert and
maintain the right of the negro to be a man, with al}
that that implies.

CHAPTER XXV
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold !
Oh, make Thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law :
And, cast in some diviner mould,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
John Greenleaf Whitlier.
Let me turn back and gather up a few memories of
the fortunes of the nation during the days since I found
my home in Columbus. The disappearance of politics
from this narrative at about the time of the removal
of the narrator to Ohio would be a phenomenon needing
explanation. It might, indeed, be attributed by scoffers
to the fact that an over-supply of pohtical pabulum
furnished by Ohio had caused a surfeiting of the appe
tite for pohtics. The absence from the Mosaic hterature
of aU reference to the future hfe has been by some critics
explained as the reaction of Moses against the excessive
other-worldliness of Egypt ; and some similar inference
might be drawn from the omission of pohtics from these
Recollections since 1883. I must, therefore, make haste

378 RECOLLECTIONS
to disavow such an imputation against my Ohio neigh
bors. We are, indeed, in this commonwealth, some
what actively concerned about pohtics ; next to basebaU
it is, perhaps, the most engrossing interest of our hves,
and the nation will admit that the Ohio pohticians have
made good. The strenuosity of pohtical aUegiance in
this neighborhood seemed at first, I confess, somewhat
excessive. I had worn, rather loosely, the party uni
form, in Massachusetts; but Republicanism had never
been a religion with me, and I had never felt that a
refusal to vote for an unfit Republican could be counted
as apostasy. When I found that Ohio Repubhcanism
was inclined to put that construction upon independent
action, I saw that I must not pretend to be a Republican.
In the campaign of 1884, when my parishioners dis
covered that I did not intend to vote for Mr. Blaine,
some of them were concerned about my soul ; but most
of them learned, before long, to let me pass as a proba
ble recipient of uncovenanted mercies. I ought then to
have voted for Mr. Cleveland, and it has always been a
matter of sincere regret to me that I did not ; the mis
giving with respect to his moral soundness which then
withheld me was not justified. The behavior of the man
in that ordeal should have reassured me. His entire
subsequent career won for me the heartiest conviction
of the essential integrity and greatness of his character.
Few men in public life have inspired a more profound
confidence in their ruling purposes.
The non-partisan attitude which from this time for
ward I was constrained to maintain has sometimes
caused me inconvenience ; there have been times when

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 379
I should have been glad to belong to a party, but, on
the whole, I am inclined to think that, for me, it has
been the right attitude. There are decided advantages
in not being a member of any pohtical party.
Once I was asked to serve as one of the four election
judges of my voting precinct, and, as a citizen who
wishes to do his share of the hard work, I promptly
accepted. When, however, I came to qualify, I found
difficulty. The law required that not more than two of
the judges should be members of any one pohtical party.
Two Democratic judges and one Republican judge had
been sworn in, and the document presented to me to
sign made me state that I was a citizen of the state and
of the precinct, and that I was a Republican. "But I
cannot sign that," I said. "Are you not a Republican ?"
asked the official. "No." "Are you a Democrat?"
"No." "WUl you swear that you are not?" "Cer
tainly." "Very weU." So the words "he is a Repubh
can" were erased from the certificate of appointment,
and the words "he is not a Democrat " were written in.
This seemed to fulfiU all righteousness, and I was per
mitted to serve the state in the capacity of an election
judge by solemnly swearing that I was not a Democrat.
Let me here recall a later experience in practical poli
tics which may have interest for amateur politicians.
In the late winter of 1903 we were confronting the
municipal election, and, in view of conditions then exist
ing in the city, the decent people were "under convic
tion," and were saying among themselves as they are
wont to say periodicaUy, "Men and brethren, what shall
we do ?" There was a proposition that the men's clubs

380 RECOLLECTIONS
in the churches form a federation to take part hi the
campaign. Such a suggestion was made in our own
men's club, but it was not cordiaUy received ; the im
pression was that any combination of the churches
as such would be inadvisable. After the meetmg of
the club had adjourned, three or four of us tarried and
formed a plan of operations. Each was to invite three
or four men, whose names were agreed upon, to meet on
a subsequent evening at a room in one of the busi
ness houses. About fifteen men came together, and a
pledge was framed by which the signers agreed to vote
in the coming election for candidates selected from the
nominees of the two leading parties by a committee
of twenty of their own number, — this committee to be
equally divided between the two pohtical parties. The
pledge was not to be pubhshed, and the canvass was
to be quietly made ; no one was to be invited to sign
whose name had not been approved at our meetings.
We wished the signatures of no active pohticians, and
sought only the cooperation of those who would stand
together in the fulfillment of our non-partisan pledge.
The attendance upon our weekly meetings increased,
but our lists grew much more rapidly ; before the news
papers got wind of our scheme, we had nearly" two thou
sand men pledged to vote for the ticket which we should
recommend. This was before the nominating conven
tions, and while the party machinists were discussing
candidates. As soon as the nature of our operations
became known, we were beset by intending candidates,
who wished to secure our indorsement before their
nomination ; but we positively refused to commit our-

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 381
selves to any of them, insisting that our selection must
be made from the actual nominees. The fact that
twenty-five hundred men were pledged to ignore party
ties and to vote sohdly in this election for candidates
selected by themselves from the two tickets was a fact
of some significance to the managers of the two ma
chines, and gave us, no doubt, a better hst of candidates
to select from than we should have had otherwise.
It appeared to most of us beforehand that the pinch
of the problem would come in the selection of our com
mittee of twenty, and in the ability of that committee,
if it could be chosen, to agree upon their selection of
candidates. Greatly to our surprise, neither of these
difficulties proved serious. We easily found twenty
men who agreed to serve, and they were men whose
names would carry weight in the community. The only
question that was raised in this selection concerned
myself. I declined to serve for the obvious reason that
I was not a member of either party. But here again my
non-partisan attitude failed to protect me, and the
Republicans insisted on electing me, probably on the
ground that I was "not a Democrat." The committee
was composed of business men, professional men, one
or two university professors, two clergymen, and two
sensible workingmen.
I have rarely participated in a more interesting task
than that which was presented to this committee. We
canvassed fuUy and amicably every candidate named
on the two tickets, looking up the record of every one ;
in a few cases, where there was httle choice, we indorsed
both candidates, and, in every case, we reached a unani-

382 RECOLLECTIONS
mous decision. An address was prepared, signed by aU
of us, and published in the newspapers, submitting our
list of recommendations, explaining that twenty-five
hundred men had pledged themselves to disregard their
party connections and vote for these candidates, and
asking others to do the same. The result was the election
of aU our candidates with the exception of one consta
ble, and generally by heavy majorities.
The organization, which styled itself "The Municipal
Voters' League," had no permanent officers except this
"Committee of Twenty," which was by vote continued
in office, and authorized to fill its own vacancies and to
proceed along the same lines whenever occasion might
serve. That committee, or the nucleus of it, is stiU in
existence, but the time seems never to have come for
calling it together; that time may, however, arrive at
no distant day. There seems to be no good reason why
such a committee, hke the famous Municipal Voters'
League of Chicago, might not perform for any commu
nity a most valuable service. Its usefulness and per
manence would depend, of course, on the honesty and
thoroughness with which its work was done. If it could
gain the confidence of the community, so that intelli
gent voters felt that they could safely foUow its recom
mendations, it could largely control municipal elections ;
for there is an increasing number of voters who are
ready to ignore party in municipal affairs and only
wish to be guided in their choice of the best men.
As an indication of the growth of independency, the
story of our League is significant. It is not a local con
dition, either. Ohio, which is strongly Repubhcan in

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 383
national elections, has twice elected Democratic gov
ernors; Minnesota offers a stiU more striking illustra
tion, and aU over the land the day of the independent
voter seems to have arrived.
One finds, in a survey of the political progress of the
last twenty-five years, much that is reassuring. The
pohtical morality of the present decade, as compared
with that of the Cleveland and Harrison administra
tions, is clearly of a higher grade. This judgment ap
plies to the executive departments; anything more
immoral than the general attitude of the national
legislature as displayed in the tariff debate of 1909, it
would be difficult to imagine.
It was during the administration of Mr. Harrison, in
1890, that Mr. McKinley succeeded in carrying through
Congress the tariff biU which bears his name. No one
who knew Major McKinley can doubt that he beheved
this measure to be fraught with blessings to the Ameri
can workingman ; it was his ambition to create in this
country an aristocracy of labor. He was not a profound
thinker, and these intricate problems of economics were
sometimes beyond his grasp ; the naivete of his reason
ings upon them was frequently more engaging than
convincing. There must, however, have dawned upon
his mind, now and then, as he was trying to adjust the
schedules, a suspicion that some other motives besides
the good of the country were finding expression in the
scramble for rates that should be prohibitory. But
Major McKinley's simple faith and superficial logic
strongly appealed to the multitude, his tariff measures

384 RECOLLECTIONS
gave him the leadership of his party, and, when he was
defeated for Congress in 1891, made him the Governor
of Ohio.
We had him in Columbus for four years, and he com
mended himself to all our citizens by the benignity and
grace of his deportment, and the sweetness and nobihty
of his personal character. The Governor of Ohio, at that
time, was not an important factor in the hfe of the com
monwealth. He had not the veto power, and the legis
lature was not in the habit of seriously considering his
recommendations. There was a httle petty patronage
at his disposal, and Governor McKinley appeared to be
making the most of this in the way of strengthening
his hold on the pohtical machine, evidently with his
eye upon the future.
Certain scandalous raids were made by some of the
great corporations upon the legislature about this time,
engineered by some of our great statesmen, and while
the Governor had no power to prevent this, he did not,
so far as I remember, exert that positive moral influence
against it which might weU have been expected of him.
On the whole, I must confess that Mr. McKinley's career
as Governor did not inspire me with high expectations1
of his success as an administrator of national affairs,
and in this, I own, I was happily disappointed. WUham
McKinley, as President of the United States, was a
much larger figure than Wilham McKinley as Governor
of Ohio. When the heavy responsibilities fell upon
his shoulders, he stood up under them with a firmness
and a dignity that many who had watched his career
in the lower position hardly expected of him. The

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 385
men whom he gathered about him were, as a rule, men
of great abihty and high character, — John Sherman,
John Hay, John D. Long, Wilham H. Moody, Elihu
Root, E. A. Hitchcock, James WUson; no President
could be suspected of selfish or sinister purposes who
called into his Cabinet such men as these.
One sometimes wonders whether a httle stiffer fibre
in McKinley's wiU might not have averted the Spanish
War. To those who now read over the documents which
detaU the negotiations with Spain regarding Cuban af
fairs, it seems clear that the Spanish government was
ready to concede aU that we had a right to demand. But
the clamor for war, from the beginning of the incident,
was fierce and brutal ; there was a powerful' sentiment,
much of it outside the President's party, for war at any
price. One shudders to recaU the temper of the time as
it found expression in the newspapers, and in Congres
sional oratory. I heard an eminent statesman saying in
the streets of Columbus that it was time we had another
war ; it would give to many of our young men the oppor
tunity of a career which they were never hkely to find
in the walks of peace. I wonder if we have not moved
forward a httle since that day; it seems to me that a
sentiment as atrocious as that could hardly be ven
tured in these times by persons claiming to be civilized.
Doubtless there was much in the conduct of Spain
which ought to have kindled indignation ; and when the
tragedy of the Maine occurred, it was hard to restrain
the popular wrath. StiU, the action of Spain regarding
this, as we now know, was all that we could have desired,
and the hot haste with which our Congress insisted on

386 RECOLLECTIONS
making ready for war was, to say the least, unseemly.
It is clear that Mr. McKinley did his best to restrain the
rampant jingoism of Congress, and but for the report of
Mr. Proctor upon the condition of the reconcentrados in
Cuba, he might have succeeded. But that testimony of
a sober-minded man concerning the enormities of the
Spanish administration in Cuba swept away the ethical
restraints and let the elemental passions loose.
There was food for much reflection in the movement
of the popular mind in that series of events. AU kinds
of motives mingle to produce effective public opinion;
the ferocity of the brute, the greed of the trader, the
ambition of the self-seeker, the narrow patriotism of the
jingo, the antipathies of race, the bigotries of religion,
the passion for freedom, the hatred of cruelty, the senti
ment of humanity, — all these were seething together
in the pubhc mind in those early days of 1898.
I am sure that the baser passions would not have
prevailed in that hour ; that the final word for war was
spoken by the impulse of humanity. Yet I do not think'
that those who uttered that word were so fuUy ac
quainted as they should have been with the attitude of
the Spanish government ; and I have doubted whether
President McKinley gave the people all the information
they ought to have had in that critical moment.
It was the parting of the ways with this nation. From
that hour she has been constrained to be a world-power.
Her intervention on behalf of Cuba launched her upon a
new career. From this destiny she had steadily drawn
back, but it is now inevitable, and she has no right to
shrink from it. The weU-being of the world is to be

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 387
settled, more and more, by consultation and cooperation
among the world-powers, and this nation must take her
share of the responsibihty. Into this august busmess ,
Mr. McKinley introduced us. It was good judgment and
good fortune that guided him to the choice of John Hay,
first as ambassador to England, and then as Secretary of
State. Nothing finer in the way of diplomacy has ever
been recorded than Hay's management of the Chinese
question. What worlds of confusion and misery might
have been let loose in the far East, during the last ten
years, if it had not been for that far-sighted intervention !
And what a glorious new note it is that we hear resound
ing in Hay's state papers — that the Golden Rule is and
must be the foundation of international law !
We must give Mr. McKinley's administration due
credit for these great achievements. And while its record
is not flawless, and sinister forces were gaining strength
here and there, yet the President's grasp upon affairs
seemed to be strengthening, and his last utterance,
his speech on reciprocity, the day before his assassina
tion, was by far the most convincing word that he had
ever spoken. What a tragedy it was that he should be
stricken down at the moment of his life when his outlook
was widest and his purpose strongest ! And what a piti
ful commentary it is upon the blindness of the insurrec
tionary elements in our society, that they should select
for slaughter such a man as Wilham McKinley, — a man
whose deepest sympathies were with the lowliest classes,
and who could not, intentionally, have added a straw
to the burden that any poor man was bearing ! Some
things are so horrible that they are simply absurd.

388 RECOLLECTIONS
With the passing of President McKinley there moves
promptly to the centre of the stage the most forceful
figure yet seen in our national history. I believe that I
can trust myself to speak soberly of Theodore Roose
velt, for, though my admiration and affeetion for him
are deep and large, I am not unconscious of his limitaT
tions, and, in some things, I find myself in sharp dis
agreement with him. With his eagerness to increase our
armament I have no sympathy ; I believe that the day
of disarmament is nigh, even at the doors, and that our
nation is called of God to take the initiative in it. We
are not in danger of aggression from any power under
the sun ; and it is perfectly safe for us to stop our ship
building and hft up the standards of peace before aU the
nations. The peoples everywhere wUl respond to that
call with a mighty enthusiasm, and they wiU compel their
governments to give heed to it. When the British For
eign Secretary declares that the increase of armaments^
within the past ten years, is a satire upon civilization ;
when the whole world sees that the mere dread of war
is driving all the great nations into extravagances pf
expenditure that are crippling industry everywhere and
threatening national bankruptcy, it is time that some
great nation should pause in this mad race to ruin and
call a halt to the rest. Our nation is the one that can
speak with most commanding voice. It is her manifest
destmy to lead the nations in the paths of peace, and her
opportunity is here, for peace has aheady become not
merely a possibility, but a stern economic necessity.
In his strenuous insistence upon multiplying the big
ships, Mr. Roosevelt seems to me, therefore, to be setting

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 389
himself against the things that he most strongly stands
for. I hke it not, any more than I hke his present pas
times in Africa : these exhibitions seem to me something .
other than his best self. His best self appears in that
glorious deed by which he put an end to the war between
Russia and Japan ; in the return of the indemnity money
to China ; in the convention with Japan, negotiated by
Mr. Root, but giving expression to Mr. Roosevelt's good
wiU. No man has ever done so much to promote peace
on earth. And this is the kind of work he is going to do
for the world in the days that are left to him.
It would not be difficult to name a number of things
in which Mr. Roosevelt has faUen below himself, in the
seven years of his pubhc service. But I wonder whether
any man with such tremendous energies, always in full
play, ever made fewer mistakes. And certainly no man
since Lincoln has poured into the life of this nation
such a stream of vitalizing influence.
My interest in Mr. Roosevelt began a long time ago.
On the night of Mr. McKinley's first election, a little
group of men, waiting in our church parlors for returns,
balloted for the next President. When the votes were
counted, there was one for Theodore Roosevelt, which
was plausibly charged to me. When he was pohce com
missioner in New York, something that I had said or
done drew from him a friendly letter, which opened the
way for me to meet him, on my next visit to the metrop
olis, and the acquaintance then begun has been of great
profit to me. He came once, at my invitation, to Colum
bus, and spoke to our citizens on the problem of the city ;
and while I have never belonged to the inner circle of

390 RECOLLECTIONS
his intimate advisers, I have known him well enough to
feel sure of his ruling motives.
In one of my early conversations with him he spoke
of the insecurity of his tenure of office, saying : "I don't
know how long I shall be in pubUc hfe. The pohticians
may not continue to want me ; and they have effectual
ways of getting rid of a man when they are done with
him ; but I shall try to do what I think right, and when
they are through with me, I think that I can get a living
for my children with my pen, or in some other honest
way." My answer was: "Nothing can keep you from
going much further but your own default, and you are
not a defaulter." Yet those who knew him best could
hardly have dreamed that he would so soon be at the
top of the world.
The essential loyalty of the man was at once revealed
when he reappointed aU the members of McKinley's
Cabinet, and announced his purpose of carrying into
effect, just so far as he could do so, the pohcy of his
predecessor. It was a fine sense of honor which thus
constrained him; the other Vice-Presidents who have
been promoted by death have recognized no such ob
ligation. The fidelity with which he kept this virtual
trust has never been questioned.
For myself, I must confess that the elevation of this
man to the place of power, just at this juncture, was
a reason for profound thankfulness. That critical times
had come upon this nation was evident enough. Vast
combinations of capital were exerting a power of oppres
sion such as no aristocracy of the Old World would dare
to attempt; the railway managers were their thraUs;

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 391
some of the necessaries of life were largely under their
control; by daring ventures in finance they had con
trived to estabhsh enormous "vested rights" in the
form of inflated capital of public-service companies;
every year they were finding new ways of creating gi
gantic debts, the interest of which would be a perpetual
charge upon the producing classes. The extent to which
this exploitation of the whole population had been car
ried by "big business " was something fearful. The pro
cess went on noiselessly ; silken toils were silently spun
and woven about the limbs of the workers in their sleep,
and there were few who knew why their progress was
impeded. That the burdens thus imposed would at
length become intolerable, and that revolution would be
the issue, was plain to all who could discern the signs of
the times, but their voices fell on deaf ears. Fortunate
it was for this country that the arrival of Theodore
Roosevelt at the head of the nation was no longer de
ferred. Here was a man with eyes to see the extent and
the enormity of this veiled injustice, with words to de
scribe it, and with an arm to smite it. The service which
he has rendered to this nation in bringing into the hght
these furtive plunderings, in awakening the conscience
of the land against them, and in setting the machinery
of the law in motion for their prevention and punish
ment, is one of the greatest services that it has ever
faUen to any man to render. He has not wrought alone ;
a multitude of others, some of them wisely and effect
ively and some noisily and passionately, have been ex
posing these injustices ; but no one else has done a hun
dredth part of what Mr. Roosevelt has done to enlighten

392 RECOLLECTIONS
the people with regard to them, and to put them in the
way of extinction. To his mind, it is entirely clear that
the robbery which is effected by a rebate arrangement,
or by the watering of the stock of a street railway, is just
as heinous as that perpetrated by a burglar or a foot
pad, and far more dangerous to the peace of society;
and he has contrived to get that idea into the minds of
a great many Americans, — of so many that it is going
to be increasingly unhealthy to carry on that kind of
business in this country in the future.
The social conditions which Mr. Roosevelt confronted
were such as had never before appeared. The ascend
ency of commercialism had assumed new and overshad
owing proportions; the physical development of the
continent had created conditions not clearly covered by
statutory regulation, in which human greed found a
large opportunity.
The great mass of wealth [says Professor Cooley] is
accumulated by solid qualities — energy, tenacity,
shrewdness, and the Hke — which may co-exist with
great moral refinement or with the opposite. As a group,
hpwever, [men of wealth] are hable to moral deficiencies.
. . . There is, especiaUy, a certain moral irresponsibility
which is natural to those who have broken away from
customary limitatipns and restraints, and are cpursing at
will pver an unfenced territory. I mean that business
enterprise, like military enterprise, deals largely with
relations as to which there are no settled rules of morality,
no constraining law or public opinion. Such conditions
breed in the actor a MachiaveUian opportunism. Since
it is hard to say what is just and honest in the vast and
abstract operations of finance, human nature is apt to

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 393
cease looking for a standard and to seize booty wherever
and however it safely can. Hence the truly piratical
character of many of our great transactions. And, in
smaller matters also, as in escaping taxation, it is often
fatally easy for the rich to steal. It must be allowed that
such ascendency as the capitalist class has rests, in part
at least, upon service. That is to say, its members have
had an important function to perform, and in perform
ing that function have found themselves in a position
to grasp wealth. ... At the same time, it is plain that
a large part of the accumulation of wealth — hard, un
fortunately, to distinguish from other parts — is accom
plished not by social service, but, as just intimated, by
something akin to piracy. This is not so much the pecul
iar wickedness of a predatory class as a tendency in all of
us to abuse power when not under definite legal or moral
control. The vast transactions associated with modern
industry have come very httle under such control, and
offer a field for freebooting such as the world has never
seen.1 Such were the conditions which Mr. Roosevelt faced,
at the beginning of his administration. Vast combina
tions of wealth, created by the law and endowed with
superhuman powers, were using these powers for pur
poses of spoliation — plundering the many for the
enrichment of the few. To disentangle this piratical
business from honest business, to protect legitimate en
terprise and prevent and punish predatory schemes, —
this was the task set before him. Clearly, this must
somehow be done ; unless it could be, democratic gov
ernment was a failure. And Mr. Roosevelt addressed
1 Social Organization, pp. 259-261.

394 RECOLLECTIONS
himself to this Herculean task with a courage, a de
termination, and an enthusiasm which have won for
him the admiration of the world.
The men who have been making enormous fortunes by
piratical methods, and those who have wished to do so,
have been greatly enraged by Mr. Roosevelt's activity;
they hate him with a perfect hatred, and with honest
cause ; they have done what they could to discredit and
destroy him. But the people know that he has made no
war on honest industry; that he has only sought to put
an end to plunder and to give every man a fair chance.
The Roosevelt policies are fairly weU understood by the
people, and any attempt to recede from them will pro
voke a reaction which wiU not be profitable to the oppos
ing interests. The Roosevelt pohcies mean simply hon
esty, justice, fair play ; and any business which is too big
to learn these lessons is too big to hve in this country.
Even some of those on whom the heavy hand of the
government has fallen seem to recognize the justice of
the punishment. The New York Central Railroad has
had, I believe, some drastic fines to pay for rebating,
but the president of that railroad — a recently elected
president — is now heard saying: "One of the crying
evils of railway management in the past (and nothing
but the strong arm of the law would ever have stopped
it) was the practice of discrimination in favor of large
shippers as against those that shipped httle, the giving
of rebates, and the distribution of passes to secure the
business. We know better now. We know that the man
who ships httle, no matter how little, must have the same
unit price, whether by the hundred pounds or by the

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 395
carload, as the man who ships much, no matter how
much." Yes, some of us do know better. And we shall
not forget who taught us. For though we had laws
enough to prevent all these robberies, they were prac
tically a dead letter ; it was the will of Theodore Roose
velt that gave them hfe and power.
To one episode in the administration of Mr. Roosevelt
I wiU venture to refer, as it has a special interest for me.
The strike of the anthracite coal-miners, in the summer
of 1902, brought anxiety to aU of us. It was the first
thoroughly organized struggle of the miners of that re
gion for improved conditions; their leaders seemed to
have their forces well in hand, and on the other side the
temper of the raUway presidents appeared to be excep
tionally obdurate. Their positive statement that there
could be no arbitration was a defiance which the men
could scarcely decline, and the entire army of bitumi
nous miners stood behind the anthracite men with strong
assurances of support. The terrible consequences of the
prolongation of this struggle to the poor of the eastern
cities made the outlook most disquieting. That some
thing must be done to break the deadlock was evident,
and aU hearts naturally turned toward President Roose
velt as the one man who could undertake, most hope-
fuUy, this work of mediation. The editor of the "Cin
cinnati Post," a daily newspaper circulating largely
among the working-classes, came to Columbus to con
sult with me about this. He wished to circulate, widely,
a petition to the President, asking him to intervene, and
he desired me to frame the petition. Realizing that
much depended on the way in which this appeal was

396 RECOLLECTIONS
made, I shrank from taking this responsibihty. There
was a question, too, whether the President would under
take such a task; and it might embarrass him to put
upon him the necessity of refusing it. If he should under
take it and should fail in it, that would be unfortunate
for him. I asked the editor to let me think about it an
hour, at the end of which time I found myself convinced
that Mr. Roosevelt would neither refuse the task nor
fail in it; and that a strong demand laid on him by
the people might enable him to do what he would not
feel hke doing on his own initiative. I therefore wrote
this petition : —
To His Excellency Theodore Roosevelt, President
of the United States :
We whose names are underwritten, citizens of the
United States, most earnestly ask you to use your good
offices in bringing to an end the unhappy strife now
prevailing in the coal regions.
Some of us are men and women who work with our
hands; some of us are earning our livelihood in other
ways; many of us are losers now by this conflict; all of
us are appalled by the prospect of suffering before the
country if it be not speedily terminated ; and we feel that
we have a right to caU upon you as our representative to
see what yeu can dp tp make peace.
We do not ask you to use any official power in the mat
ter, for you have none to use ; we only ask you as the
first citizen of this nation to mediate between these con
tending parties.
You can speak as no one else can speak for the plain
people of the country. Every workingman knows that
you are his friend; no capitalist of common sense can

A POLITICAL RETROSPECT 397
imagine that you are his enemy. The fact that others
have spoken without effect does not shake our faith that
your words of counsel and persuasion would be heeded.
We want no injustice done to either party in this con
flict. We want no coercion to be used or threatened.
Coercion is the game both sides are now playing ; we want
them to stop that, and reason together. No question of
this kind is ever settled rightly or finally by coercion.
We recognize the fact that you would hesitate to inter
pose, even in the interests of peace and good will, lest
you should seem to be exceeding your prerogative. But
if the voices of hundreds of thousands of your fellow
citizens should summon you to such a task, you would
not, we are persuaded, shrink from undertaking it.
This is not business, Mr. President, it is not politics ; it
is something much higher and finer. May God help you
to render this great service to your country, and crown
you with the blessing that belongs to the peacemakers.
I have put this petition on record here because it is
part of the history of the time. The newspaper which
suggested it printed and circulated widely the peti
tion; many church congregations and other assembhes
adopted it ; large numbers of copies of it went to Wash
ington. Many other appeals were made to the President ;
this was one of numerous influences which induced him
to take up this task, the successful performance of which
fiUs one of the bright pages in a great record of patriotic
service.

CHAPTER XXVI
PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS
Shall not that Western Goth, of whom we spoke,
So fiercely practical, so keen of eye,
Find out, some day, that nothing pays but God,
Served whether on the smoke-shut battle-field,
In work obscure done honestly, or vote
For truth unpopular, or faith maintained
To ruinous convictions, or good deeds
Wrought for good's sake, mindless of heaven or hell?
Shall he not learn that all prosperity,
Whose bases stretch not deeper than the sense,
Is but a trick of this world's atmosphere,
A desert-born mirage of spire and dome,
Or find too late, the Past's long lesson missed,
That dust the prophets shake from off their feet
Grows heavy to drag down both tower and wall?
James Russell Lowell.
I am often inquired of respecting the behefs and
practices of "the Congregational Church." I can only
answer by asking another question: "Which Congre
gational church?" At the last account there were 5989
Congregational churches in the United States, each of
which is free to frame its own creed, and organize its
work in its own way. There is no such body as "The
Congregational Church of the United States," as there is
a Presbyterian Church of the United States, or a Meth
odist Episcopal Church of the United States. The Con
gregational churches cooperate in many ways for mis
sionary and philanthropic purposes ; they give and take
advice, through councils caUed for the purpose ; but they

PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS 399
have no central government with authority to make
laws for them or impose creeds upon them. There is not,
and cannot be, as I have explained on a former page,
any uniform creed to which aU Congregationalists must
subscribe. There is, however, a general agreement in
teaching, and a good measure of uniformity in practice ;
and there has always been a large cooperation in Chris
tian work. About the middle of the nineteenth century
the need of a closer affiliation of these churches began
to be strongly felt, and in 1871 "The National CouncU
of the Congregational Churches" (not of the Congrega
tional Church) was formed, its object being to bring
the churches into closer feUowship, and to give greater
efficiency to the enterprises of evangehzation and phi
lanthropy which they were prosecuting together. That
CouncU meets every three years ; it brings together about
five hundred representatives of the churches ; it consults
respecting our various missionary enterprises ; it studies
the ethical and social problems with which the churches
are grappling; it considers how friendship and helpful
relations may be promoted between Congregational
Christians and Christians of other names. It has no
power whatever ; it cannot ordain or depose a minister,
it cannot establish or dissolve a church, it cannot define
or punish heresy, it can only recommend to the churches
and the benevolent societies represented in its organiza
tion such measures as seem good to the majority of its
members. Such moral influence as this has been found
to be adequate for aU the purposes of a Christian organi
zation. It is about all that any ecclesiastical body pos
sesses in this day and age ; not many churches are seek-

400 RECOLLECTIONS
ing to enforce their decrees or their dogmas by guns or
clubs. The National CouncU has done much to promote
the solidarity of our feUowship; it has enabled us to
value more highly the things we have in common; it
has brought some of us almost to the point of being
willing to caU our communion the American Congre
gational Church.
The presiding officer of this body bears the ancient
title of Moderator, and to this office I had the great
honor to be chosen, at the meeting in Des Moines, Iowa,
in October, 1904. The office is one in which no power
is vested, and to which no emoluments are attached.
The moderator presides over the meeting at which he is
chosen ; becomes, ex officio, a member of the Standing
Committee of the CouncU for the next three years ; calls
the next meeting of the Council to order, and presides
until his successor is chosen ; and on the first evening of
that meeting, delivers an address. This has generaUy
been regarded as the extent of his function. But my
predecessor, the Reverend Dr. Bradford, of New Jersey,
had ventured to enlarge this function. He had visited,
by invitation, the churches in many locahties, had
spoken at various Congregational assemblies, and had
done much to strengthen the bonds of feUowship among
the churches. So grateful had this service been that the
CouncU which elected me by resolution requested me to
continue the same kind of work, exercising a kind of
ministry at large, as opportunities might be given me.
That proved to be a large order. Such opportunities
were numerous, and the next three years were busy
years. The care of my church could not, of course, be re-

PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS 401
linquished, and I managed to be in my own pulpit most of
the Sundays; but if to be "in journeyings often" is the
proof of an apostolate, mine was well established. My
itinerancy took me to twenty-five states of the Union,
led me four times across the continent, — going and
coming, — each time by a different route, and caUed
on me for many addresses before state and local asso
ciations, conferences, and clubs. It was a laborious,
but a delightful service ; the moderator, as the symbol
of the unity of the denomination, and a witness to a
desire to draw the churches into a closer feUowship,
was welcomed everywhere with great cordiality.
It was not, of course, the business of the moderator
to meddle with the business of the various assembhes
which he was caUed to address, or to attempt to exer
cise any influence in local affairs ; aU that he could do
was to discuss the larger interests which were common
to aU the churches, and to point out as best he could
the lines in which the Spirit was leading them.
In the early spring of 1905 our churches were sur
prised by the announcement that a gift of one hundred
thousand dollars had been made to our Foreign Mission
Board by the president of the Standard Oil Company.
The donor was not a member of our communion. The
first statements respecting the gift conveyed the im
pression that it had not been sohcited, that the only
agency of the Board in the matter had been that of
a passive recipient of a gift brought to its doors. The
explanations of the authorities, and aU the earher news
paper comments, assumed that this was so. It was
admitted by some of these apologists that it would not

402 RECOLLECTIONS
have been right for the Board to seek contributions from
such a source ; but that when they were freely offered,
they could not be rationaUy refused. These representa
tions and admissions clearly indicated some uneasiness
of mind on the part of the recipients, and made it plain
that the nature of the alliance into which they had
entered was not altogether satisfactory to them.
For there had come, very promptly, an emphatic
declaration against the acceptance of money from this
source. As soon as the gift was announced, I wrote a
letter to the "Congregationalist," protesting against
the action by which the Mission Board was drawing our
churches into a dishonorable alliance ; declaring that the
money thus bestowed had been iniquitously gained, and
that we could not accept it without being partakers of
the iniquity. Similar protests came from a considerable
number of the best men in our denomination. A strong
group of ministers in the vicinity of Boston took up
the matter with vigor and united in a dignified and
temperate memorial to the Board against the reception
of the gift. Presently, however, it transpired that the
money had been paid over and most of it expended
before any announcement was made ; the protest against
the acceptance was therefore futUe. That the money
should be returned was the clear dictate of sound moral
ity, but of that there seemed httle hope. The practical
question concerned the future action of this Board, and
of our other missionary organizations. That a great
wrong had been done and a serious injury inflicted upon
the churches represented in this society seemed to some
of us very clear; that wrong must be confessed with

PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS 403
shame ; the question was whether it should be repeated.
On that question there arose a debate in which the
whole country was enlisted. It must be said that the
debate revealed a widespread need of elementary in
struction in the first principles of ethics. It exhibited, in
a startling manner, the extent to which the moral per
ceptions even of leaders in the church have been blunted ,
and confused by the worship of money. So much have
we all become accustomed to think and say, in our
religious, educational, and phUanthropic enterprises, —
"The one thing that we need is more money," — that
it has become quite too easy to subordinate many of the
higher considerations for the sake of getting money.
The prompt answer of many amateur moralists to
our protest was that money has no moral character;
that one man's doUar is as good as another man's —
wUl buy as many Bibles, pay as many missionary sal
aries, do as much good. When we rephed to this by
asking whether money contributed by highwaymen
and pirates — booty which they were known to have
taken from their victims — should be received with
thanks by churches and missionary societies, it was gen
eraUy admitted that that would be inadvisable. Even
the law would discourage this kind of benevolence.
The plea was then made that money to which the
owner had a clear legal title must be taken without
questioning. But there is much to which there is a
clear legal title which differs but httle, when weighed
in the scales of a sound morality, from stolen money;
and the proposal to stand on a bare legahty did not
commend itself to sensitive consciences.

404 RECOLLECTIONS
It was then asserted that a good share of the money
contributed for religious and charitable purposes has
been obtained by doubtful means, and that it is impos
sible for us to make discriminations. To this, the answer
was that we proposed no quixotic inquisition into the
character of the offerings which are thrown upon the
contribution plate ; we would assume that ah these are
honest doUars unless we knew the contrary. Moreover,
when any man makes an offering in a wholly imper
sonal way, without calling attention to his gift or seek
ing recognition for it, we have no caU to investigate
his motives or his character. The case in which the
moral difficulty arises is that of a man who is known
to have accumulated his wealth by unsocial or flagitious
methods, and who, in bestowing it, wishes the grateful
recognition of those who receive it.
The real question which emerged from aU this haze is
simply this : What is the right relation between moral
teachers and the possessors of predatory wealth? It is
impossible to deny the existence of a considerable class
of persons who have obtained great wealth by predatory
methods, by evasion and defiance of law, by the practice
of vast extortions, by getting unfair and generaUy un
lawful advantages over their neighbors, by secret agree
ments, and the manipulation of raUway and government
officials ; by such violations of law as have been brought
to light in thousands of indictments in the rebate cases ;
by the use of trust funds for private gain ; by manifold
arts that tend to corrupt the character and destroy the
foundations of the social order. The national govern
ment has been expending much of its strength, during

PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS 405
the past three years, in the detection and punishment of
crimes of this character. And it is a notorious fact that
some of those who have gained great wealth by such
methods have been diligently and in many cases success-
fuUy seeking to estabhsh close relations between them
selves and the moral teachers of the country. The
question is what these moral teachers ought to do about
it. What attitude should they maintain toward such
men as those whom our government has, for the last
three years, been persistently endeavoring to convict
and punish? Ought they to go into partnership with
them in the business of religion or of education or of
plulanthropy? To the suggestion of partnership those thus chal
lenged are apt to demur. "We have proposed no such
thing as partnership," they protest. But what else shall
it be called ? K you persuade a man to invest one hun
dred thousand doUars of his capital in your business,
is he not, to all intents and purposes, a partner in your
business? WUl he not be, in his own eyes, and in yours,
and in the eyes of the whole community, associated
with you in your busmess? And can the moral teachers
of the community afford thus to associate themselves
with men who are setting the laws at defiance, and
trampling on all the prmciples of justice and humanity
in their ruthless pursuit of gain?
It would seem that if the churches and the coUeges
of the land have any clear calling, it is that of making
abhorrent and detestable, in the sight of the youth,
the conduct of men who are amassing great wealth by
methods which tend to the overthrow of free govern-

406 RECOLLECTIONS
ment and the destruction of the social order. They will
not fulfill this calling by building churches or endowing
mission boards with money contributed by such men,
or by erecting coUege haUs that bear their names. No
amount of money that such givers can contribute can
compensate for the lowering of ideals and the blurring
of consciences which this kind of partnership involves.
Is it reaUy very wonderful that such a moral cataclysm
as that which appeared in the insurance investigation
should have taken place in our American society?
Such were the convictions which led to the protest
against the acceptance by our Mission Board of Mr.
Rockefeller's gift. The question was debated, at the
beginning, as I have said, on the understanding that
it was a voluntary gift; but it afterward transpired
that such was not its character. Mr. RockefeUer had
not thrust his offering upon the Board, and he naturaUy
declined to have the case so represented ; it was at his
demand that an explicit and extended statement was
finally made, showing that the officers of the Board had
been engaged for more than two years in soliciting this
gift. This exhibit disclosed some lack of ingenuousness
in the previous conduct of the discussion. If this fact
had been clearly stated at the outset, the attitude of
many minds toward the transaction would have been
different. The question now before the churches was
whether this policy should be commended and contin
ued. In answer to this question I gave early notice that
a resolution would be offered, at the annual meeting
of the Board at Seattle, in October, to this effect:
"Resolved, that the officers of this Board should neither

PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS 407
invite nor soficit donations to its funds from persons
whose gains have been made by methods moraUy
reprehensible or socially injurious."
At the meeting in Seattle this resolution, and the
" Statement of Prmciples " made by the officers of the
Board in defending its action, were submitted together.
The address which I made in support of my resolution,
upon the question, "Shall Ul-Gotten Gains be sought
for Christian Purposes?" is pubhshed in the volume
entitled "The New Idolatry." The debate was not a
protracted one. The "Principles" submitted were not,
apparently, such as the corporate members present
cared to defend. Yet they were not ready to adopt my
resolution, with its practical reproof of the conduct of
their officers. To vote it down, and thus officially con
sent that iU-gotten gains should be solicited by their
officers was more than they thought it prudent to do,
and therefore the knot was cut by laying the resolution
and the "Principles" on the table together. The issue
was dodged. The officers of the Board were not re
proved for what they had done, and they were not au
thorized to continue their practice. So far as the action
of the corporate members was concerned, it was a drawn
battle. But there was no question about the verdict of
the people. The great audience that listened to the dis
cussion spoke its mind most emphaticaUy. The news
papers of the region, some of which had sneered at the
protest before the meeting, were united and enthusiastic
in their testimony that it was a righteous protest and
ought to be heeded.
I had no expectation, when I went to Seattle, that

408 RECOLLECTIONS
I could get my resolution adopted ; I knew that the
majority of the corporate members who would be pre
sent were committed against it, and the last words of my
speech were these : " Some of you have been kind enough
to assure me that I am in a very insignificant minority.
That may be ; I do not know about that ; I leave that to
be decided by you. It will not be the first time that I
have been in a very smaU minority, even in this Board ;
but I have seen such smaU minorities, in a very few
years, grow to overwhelming majorities. 'The safe ap
peal of truth to time ' is one on which I have learned to
rest with hope, and I therefore commit with confidence
what I have said to you, and to the people of the Con
gregational churches, and to the kindly judgment of aU
honorable men." Within three months after the meet
ing, the officers of the Board, though taking no pubhc
action in the matter, were ready to give assurances that
the spirit of my resolution would govern their future
conduct. The protest was justified and the battle was
won. There can be no doubt that this discussion has
cleared the air. Even the man in the street is able to
see that the alliance of churches and coUeges with pubhc
enemies is not a good thing ; that one man's money is
decidedly not as good as another man's — when the
acceptance of the money involves partnership with evU-
doers or condonation of nefarious conduct. Even the
politicians are able to see the point. A society was
formed in Cincinnati, not long ago, for the protection
of the ballot ; and George B. Cox, of that city, sent the
managers his check for five hundred doUars. They sent

PARTNERSHIP WITH PLUNDERERS 409
it back. Why? Was not George Cox's money as good
as any other man's money? The treasurer of the Na
tional Republican Committee, in the campaign of 1908,
announced that contributions from corporations would
not be received, and that those which had been sent
in would be returned. Why? Is not a corporation's
money as good as the money of a private person? Is
there any justification for these scruples? Probably
there is. Probably there are compromising relations
here that had better be avoided. The politicians are
becoming sensitive about such matters. I have no
doubt the churches and the coUeges will be more so,
one of these days.
The response of the people to this protest was one that
touched me deeply. Letters from all parts of the Union
literally poured in upon me, for months. One could
never have guessed that such an issue would stir the
people so profoundly. Among these hundreds of stran
gers who wrote to express their approval were men and
women of aU ranks and classes, but the testimony that
was most grateful came from those outside the church,
who had been repelled from it by its seeming subser
viency to Mammon, and who were glad to welcome any
signs of the breaking of that yoke. I could not reply
to all those friendly letters, but I have kept them aU ;
and I trust that some of those who then stretched
forth to me a kind hand may read these words and find
in them some sense of my gratitude for their words of
comfort and good cheer.

CHAPTER XXVII
OCTOBER SUNSHINE
Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath,
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! Oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks,
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.
William Cullen Bryant.
I am writing these words at the end of May, in the
year nineteen hundred and nine. The record of the
family Bible and the reflection of gray hairs in the
looking-glass would make out that with me it is late
October; but the tingle in my blood and the scenery of
the garden and the heart insist that it is "the high tide
of the year." It seems a good time to gather up a sheaf
of miscellaneous memories and reflections for which no
place has been found in the discussions of larger affairs
on preceding pages.
I should not hke to leave on any mind the impression
that the energies of my life have been wholly or mainly
given to literature or politics or social reform. I have

OCTOBER SUNSHINE 411
been — but for the four years of journalistic service —
a Christian pastor; my interests have been centred in
the churches I have been serving, and the life that I
have shared with my parishioners and my neighbors
has been the fife best worth living.
I have often been asked how I have managed to do
so much literary work. The easy answer is that I have
done very httle work of this kind outside of my pre
paration for my pulpit. Of the thirty-one volumes of
which the encyclopaedias accuse me, all but six have
gone through my pulpit, and are printed as they were
preached, with almost no revision. A number of these
volumes are courses of Sunday evening lectures, origi
nally prepared and preached with no thought of pub
lication. "Did you ever hear me preach?" asked
Coleridge of Charles Lamb. "N-n-never heard you do
anything else," answered Charles. My friends are quite
entitled to say the same thing about me, and I do not
wish from them any other verdict. Only I insist that
the pulpit in these days has a wide field open to it, and
that everything which helps to prepare the Kingdom
for which we pray is within the purview of the preacher.
Furthermore, I maintain that good sermons may be and
ought to be good hterature ; that the free, direct, con
versational handlmg of a theme in the presence of an
audience makes good reading in a book. If I am per
mitted to judge my own work, I should say that the
best of my books, as hterature, is the book of sermons,
— "Where Does the Sky Begin ?" My Sunday morning
sermons have usually been devoted to the themes of
personal religion, but in the evenings I have chosen to

412 RECOLLECTIONS
deal with wider interests, always, however, keeping the
discussion close to the issues of life and character. I
have steadily declined to go into the show busmess on
Sunday nights, whether with music or with pictures,
holding that amusement is not the crying need of any
class in our city populations, and that the pulpit ought
to maintain its dignity as a teaching function. These
Sunday evening sermons and lectures have cost me,
therefore, a great deal; I think that I have expended on
them twice as much labor as on my morning sermons,
though I have not meant to shght these.
Several of these courses of Sunday evening discussions
have been given to rehgious themes, — the two books
entitled, "Who Wrote the Bible?" and "Seven Puzzling
Bible Books," the two volumes entitled, "Burning
Questions," and "How Much is Left of the Old Doc
trines?" the two little manuals, "Being a Christian,"
and "The Christian Way," and a number of smaller
publications. There are several unpublished series of
similar character. The social question in aU its phases
has been a constant theme, the effort being to present
the Christian solution of such problems as they arise.
Biographical studies have opened many productive
fields ; there is no more effective or convincing presenta
tion of saving truth than that which is given in the hfe
of a good man or woman, and nothing is more pro
foundly interesting to any sort of audience. I remember
being invited by a minister in a neighboring town to
give a lecture to his congregation, which was composed
of unhterary people, and I offered him one that I had
been giving in the coUeges, on Thomas Carlyle. He ob-

OCTOBER SUNSHINE 413
jected, on the ground that his people would not care for
it, but I insisted ; and he afterward owned that I could
have given them nothing that would have held their
attention more successfuUy. Ethical themes of every
variety, questions of conduct, problems of hfe, have been
considered ; the lessons of the great novels and the great
poems have been studied. One course dealt with " Some
Saintly Heretics," and one with the poets as preachers.
To poetry as the expression of the hfe of the Spirit,
I have devoted much attention in my teaching. For
several years I have given, in our chapel, on Friday
afternoons in Lent, devotional readings from the poets,
— readings with almost no comment ; and these exer
cises have come to be regarded with much favor. From
MUton and Wordsworth and Coleridge and the Brown
ings, from Tennyson and Matthew Arnold and Edwin
Arnold and Jean Ingelow and Adelaide Procter and
Christina Rossetti, from Bryant and LongfeUow and
Emerson and Whittier and LoweU and Sidney Lanier
and Richard Watson Gilder and many other seers and
singers, messages have come to us that opened the gates
of heaven and made plainer the paths that lead thither.
It wUl be fifty years next January since I began my
work as a Christian minister, and I wish to bear testi
mony that I am not yet tired of my work, and have not
begun to doubt whether it is worth while. Save for that
brief episode in journalism, I have kept steadUy at it ;
and that was hardly an interval, for I was preach
ing nearly every Sunday, andj for almost two of those
years I had much of the care of a parish. I have been
sometimes tempted by coUege work. In the spring of

414 RECOLLECTIONS
1886 the presidency of Western Reserve University was
vacant, and a friend of mine, on the board of trustees,
was solicitous that I should consider a call to that posi
tion. Other members of the board were also interested,
and it was settled that a delegation would visit Colum
bus for consultation. Just at this juncture the invitation
came to speak at Cleveland, at that joint meeting of
employers and workingmen to which I have referred
in a previous chapter. When I told my friend of the
invitation, he shook his head: "You had better not
go," he said. "Why not?" "Well, I would rather you
would not raise such questions, just now." "Just now
is exactly the time to raise them," I answered. "It is
better that everybody should know just now where I
stand on this issue." So I went to Cleveland, and heard
no more from that board of trustees.
In the early spring of 1893 ex-President Hayes, who
was then the president of the trustees of the Ohio- State
University, had several interviews with me, in Which he
informed me that the board wished to elect me to the
presidency of that institution, but desired to wait until
the legislature should remove the limitation upon the
amount of the president's salary. In June of that year
I was invited to make the Commencement Address
at the Illinois State University, whose presidency was
then vacant ; and, shortly thereafter, was surprised by
the notification that I had been elected to that office.
Such an offer had to be respectfuUy considered, and I
visited Champaign and looked over the field, but con
cluded that I would rather remain in Ohio. During this
summer the anti-Catholic eruption broke out, and I

OCTOBER SUNSHINE 415
made no delay in freeing my mind about it. The next
legislature, as I have explained, was dominated by this
proscriptive organization, and notice was promptly
served upon the university trustees that they could get
no appropriations without the guaranty that nobody
in Columbus should be made president of the institution}
The appropriations were secured, and I was not ma<$6
president. Free speech, it is clear, is sometimes a costly
luxury to those who indulge in it ; but it is worth all it
costs. Such martyrdom as this is not worth whimpering
over. I should have been a caitiff if I had hesitated to
speak my mind freely on either of these occasions, and
any promotion which silence would have purchased
would have been degradation.
Several other propositions to enter upon college work
came later, but they had ceased to interest me. I began
to prize the freedom of my pulpit. There was some
misgiving about the kind of work which would be re
quired of a college president, and about the kind of
restraints which would be laid upon him. This misgiving
has never arisen to the height of apprehension indicated
by the remark of President Andrew D. White, of Cornell,
to my friend, Professor Moses Coit Tyler: "Moses, if
any man ever offers you a college presidency, shoot him
on the spot ! " But there has been enough of it to make
me, on the whole, rather thankful for the fortunes that
have shut me into the calling to which my hfe has been
given. I do not beheve that there is any place of influence
in the world in which a man can be as free as in the
Christian pulpit. There are churches, no doubt, in

416 RECOLLECTIONS
which limitations would be imposed upon the preacher,
if the preacher would submit to them, and there are
preachers who habituaUy wear the halter and are wait
ing to be told what they must not say. Unquestionably
there is cowardice and subserviency in the pulpit, as
^everywhere else. But there need not be. A minister
TJgjth a clear sense of his vocation, and with a fair amount
of common sense, who can make aUowances for differ
ences of opinion, and discuss critical issues with a rea
sonable degree of moderation, can speak his mind more
freely than most moral teachers. I have been saying
things, with no sense of restraint, during the last fifty
years, that I should not have been so hkely to say if I
had been a journalist or a coUege professor. I have not
always commanded the assent of all my auditors, but
they have recognized my right to speak, and have never
sought to muzzle me. I doubt if any other kind of work,
in which a living was to be made, would have given me
so large an opportunity as my churches in North Adams
and Springfield and Columbus have given me to speak
my deepest thought.
But it has not all been criticism or controversy. How
far from it ! The great themes of the ideal hfe are, after
all, the supreme interests. The insights, the aspirations,
the consolations, the convictions, the hopes, the pur
poses which flow into our hves from the realms about
us and above us — how much our peace and our strength
depend upon them ! These things of the Spirit are the
great realities. The existence of that world in which
our higher nature dwells and from which we draw our
inspirations is not a matter of conjecture. Herbert

OCTOBER SUNSHINE 417
Spencer himself , the great agnostic, declares that we are
more sure of the Unknown Reahty, out of which all
physical forces and laws proceed, than we are of our own
existence. By our scientific logic we cannot define it, but
we cannot think without assuming it. And that which
our scientific logic cannot define is made known to
us in our religious experience. It is with these realities
of the unseen realm that our faith makes us acquainted.
And these, after all, are "the fountain light of all our
day, the master hght of all our seeing." It is in the light
of them that everything else gets value and significance.
They are the only certainties. Everything else is fleeting
and iUusory. Continents subside and mountains explode
and crumble, but no moment can ever come when truth
wUl not be better than falsehood, and fidelity than
treachery, and trust than suspicion. How much better?
Infinitely better. No measurements can express the
difference. Thus we know ourselves to be children of
the Infinite ; elements enter into our lives which lift us
out of the realms of time and space, and reveal to us our
larger parentage. It is only as we are able to draw into
our life these great elements, to transfigure our human
relationships and duties with the light that never was
on sea or land, that hfe becomes significant and precious.
Nothing can save our social morahty but a constant
infusion of this idealism. Where it is wanting, trade
becomes piracy and politics plunder, the walls of the
home collapse, and the state rests upon a volcano.
I wonder if any one thinks that these things which
the eye cannot see and the ear cannot hear are any less
essential to human hfe to-day than they were in a

418 RECOLLECTIONS
former generation. I wonder if any one imagines that
any scheme of social reconstruction can be devised
which will enable us to dispense with faith and hope and
love, with the things that we think of when we pray.
For my own part, I have no such expectation. These
things are much more real to me, much closer to my
life, than they were fifty years ago. It never before
seemed to me so well worth while to try to make men
see them. Religion, at the beginning, was largely a
matter of tradition ; to-day I am resting in what I have
verified. Of some things I am much less sure than once
I was, but what Jesus has taught us about the Father
vin heaven and the Brother on the earth looms large. I
want to get to understand it and to do it. The things
that men have said about him concern me less and less;
the things that he himself has said concern me more and
more. A correct theory of his person is of much less con
sequence than obedience to his words. Has he not told
us so? "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the
things which I say?" The only way to find out what
he is, is to obey his commandments. "If any man will
do his wiU, he shall know of the doctrine." Yet there
are millions who are deeply exercised over metaphysi
cal theories of his nature, but who are utterly skeptical
concerning his explicit counsels about living together.
There is much earnest questioning in these days
respecting the alleged decadence of the church. Such
an exhibit as that which Mr. Ray Stannard Baker has
just made of the religious conditions in New York city
is not comforting. Nor is this state of things wholly
'exceptional. What is the matter with the church ? The

OCTOBER SUNSHINE 419
matter is that it has concentrated its energies upon
believing things about Christ, and has ceased believ
ing him. It has forgotten its commission: "Go ye and
make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I commanded you." If the church
would dare to teach and to practice the things which
Jesus Christ has commanded, she would soon regain her
lost power.
It is the behef, the assurance, that the church must
return to the simphcity that is in Christ, must begin to
take his teachings seriously, must learn what he meant
by seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteous
ness, that has made the preaching of the gospel such
an intensely interesting business to me, during the last
quarter of a century. It begins to be evident that the
church is envisaging her own failure, and is inquiring
with contrition and solicitude, what it means. I cannot
help hoping that she wiU be able to see, before long, that
the way of Jesus is the way of hfe for the individual^
for the church, for the industrial order, for the com
monwealth, and that she wiU find a way to enforce that
truth upon the thought of mankind. j
All the signs indicate that modern society is being
forced by the disastrous failure of the methods of strife
to entertain the possibility of^cooperation as the funda
mental social la^k The multiplication of armaments has
become not only an enormity, but a howling farce ; it is
impossible that the nations should go on making fools of
themselves after this fashion. The industrial conflict is
no whit less irrational. And the terrible coUapses in big
business during the last decade have reduced to ab-

420 RECOLLECTIONS
surdity the scheme of the graspers. Who wants to chmb
to their bad eminence? If there are still many who do,
there is certainly an increasing number of those who feel
that such success is a dismal failure. And the conviction
grows that the Golden Rule is, after all, the only work
able rule of life ; that we must learn how to live by it.
This is the sign of promise. Is He really coming to his
Kingdom ? One would like to hve fifty years longer just
to see.
I wish that I might draw the attention of some of the
young men who will five through this period of fifty
years, and who are cherishing the purpose of service,
to the work of the Christian ministry. I am far enough
from thinking that the church is perfect, or from ima
gining that all the work of the Kingdom is done by
;the church. But the church has been, and in increasing
measure wUl be, the vitalizing and inspiring agency in
| the social movement. Unless the ideas and forces which
the church stands for are at the heart of that movement,
it will come to naught ; and it will not come to naught.
There is no place in which a man can get nearer to the
heart of that movement than in the Christian pulpit. It
is sometimes supposed to be a narrow place, but, as a
rule, it is as wide as the man who stands in it chooses to
make it. And I know no other position in which a man
has so many chances to serve the community ; in which
he is brought into such close and helpful relations with
so many kinds of people. The field of the church, under
the right kind of leadership, is as wide as the world, and
the force of the church is more responsive to-day than
ever before to the right kind of leadership. There are,

OCTOBER SUNSHINE 421
it is true, too many churches which are sponges rather
than springs of influence, — which devote their energies
to building themselves up out of the community instead
of pouring themselves into the community in streams of
service; which have not learned that it is as true of
churches as of men, that they who would save their lives
lose them. But it is quite possible for a brave and warm
hearted leader to put a new spirit into such a church as
this, and a conversion of that sort makes joy among the
angels. And the man who gets the confidence and affec
tion of a group of people who are enlisted in such work
as properly belongs to a church of Jesus Christ ; who
can hve among them, for a generation or two, shar
ing their fortunes, giving and receiving comfort and
inspiration and courage and hope, leading them in such
enterprises of good will as are always inviting them,
has got about as good a thing as any man can pray
for.

CHAPTER XXVIII
LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD
The airs of heaven blow o'er me ;
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be, —
Pure, generous, brave, and free.
Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples !
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own!
Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.
I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving. John Greenleaf Whittier.
I find myself, as I approach the close of this record,
meditating on the words of the old prophet : "Go thou
thy way till the end be : for thou shalt rest, and stand in
thy lot at the end of the days." I am not, indeed, dis
posed to admit that my work is all done ; these Recollec
tions have been written while my life is in full vigor,
because I did not wish them to reflect the judgments of
decrepitude. When a man is seventy-three years old, it is
natural for him to feel that the time has come to take in
sail. Yet that feehng may be too freely indulged. The
Psalmist's estimate may have been reasonable for his

LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD 423
time ; but since that day the average term of human life
has been greatly prolonged. That recent impressive
exhibit of the work done by the master minds of the cen
turies after the seventieth milestone has been passed,
is full of encouragement. I beheve that when we shall
have learned how to live, centenarians will be dwelling
on every street, and septuagenarians will be counted
as hardly past their prime. I am not, then, concerning
myself greatly about the future; I only hope that I
may be able to stand in my lot until the end of the days,
working as long as I can help, and ready to step aside
as soon as I begin to be in the way.
There is some interest, however, to me in a backward
look from the point which I have now reached, over the
years whose experiences I have been trying to trace. It
is not the verdict of egotism which makes them fruitful
and memorable years.
Since my life began, the entire face of the world has
been changed. Africa, which, seventy years ago, was,
but for a fringe along the Mediterranean and a tassel at
the southern cape, cloaked in densest darkness, has been
invaded from every side by the forces of civilization,
and now promises to be, within the present century, the
scene of vast industries and mighty transformations;
Asia is quaking in the throes of great overtumings ; but
it is the map of Europe on which the most marvelous
changes have been recorded. The boundaries of most of
the states have been moved again and again since I
began to study geography, and the entire fabric of poht
ical society has been reconstructed.
In England, four years before my hfe began, the Re-

424 RECOLLECTIONS
form Bill had enfranchised a considerable portion of the
population, but a vast majority of the people were still
without the suffrage; in successive reform measures I
have seen this right extended to one section after an
other of the English people, until now the suffrage is
practically universal, and England is about as near to
being a true democracy as any country in the world.
France, in 1836, was under the milk-and-water monar
chy of Louis Philippe ; I remember well the downfall of
that Orleans dynasty, in 1848, and the blare of trumpets
that proclaimed the flamboyant and short-lived Second
Republic, whose house of cards was so soon toppled over
by the cynical usurper who vaulted into the saddle and
rode ruthlessly over the liberties of Europe for twenty
years. The bursting of the bubble of the Second Empire
and the rise and steady progress of the Third French
Republic, which now bids fair to give France enduring
peace with freedom, are among the great historic events
of my recollection.
In the meantime the disjecta membra of the German
states have been erected into a mighty empire ; Italy, so
long a group of quarreling principalities, has become a
people with a national consciousness ; Spain has dwin
dled to a third-class power ; Bulgaria has come to her
own ; Russia, the last stronghold of absolutism, stands
dazed and helpless in the presence of that populace on
whose necks her autocracy has so long been standing;
and the Sick Man of the Bosphorus is taking the medi
cine which promises to save his life.
What a gallery of portraits might be drawn, if one had
time and skUl, of the men who have been marching

LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD 425
across the map of Europe during the last seventy years,
— of Peel and O'ConneU and Cobden and Bright and
Disraeh and Gladstone ; of Louis Blanc and Thiers and
Gambetta; of Garibaldi and Mazzini and Cavour; of
Castelar and Prim and Serrano ; of Bismarck and Von
Moltke; of Menshikoff and Gortchakoff, — not to speak
of those poets and painters and sculptors and musicians
who have hfted into the hght the real and enduring
things, — the things of the Spirit.
The changes in the world of thought which have taken
place during the past seven decades have been more
radical and more momentous than any which have taken
place in the industrial or the pohtical realm. What goes
on in the outer world, in truth, only registers the move
ments of mind. The astounding progress in the practical
arts is the result of scientific discovery, and science
belongs to the world of thought, not to the world of
things. Civilization is a spiritual, not a physical fact.
It was the emancipation given to the hfe of the Spirit
by the great masters of modern philosophy, Kant and
Fichte and Hegel, that set men to thinking about the
hfe of mankind,, that led to explorations into old records
of humanity's earher experiences, that developed the
historical sense, that showed the present to be the child
of the past, that prepared the way for that doctrine of
development which was to revolutionize human thought.
LyeU's geological researches, which showed that the
earth's crust had been slowly modified by age-long pro
cesses, first brought home to the popular mind the sig
nificance of this new theory. It would be difficult for the
younger generation to understand with what amaze-

426 RECOLLECTIONS
ment, yea, what indignation, this new teaching was re
ceived. The outcry against the Higher Criticism has
been feeble compared with the denunciations hurled
against the geologists from pulpit and sanctum and plat
form. Soon, however, it began to be evident to all who
could think, that the records plainly written on the
rocks by the Creator Himself can be no less veracious
than those written upon parchment by human hands;
that science gives us the word of God no less authori
tatively than revelation ; that the infidelity which dis
putes the truth that God has revealed in his works is
quite as heinous as that which questions the truth of a
statement in a holy book.
Thus, little by little, the truth began to be dimly ap
prehended — it is not yet, by any means, fully under
stood — that God is in his world to-day as really as He
ever was ; that the work of creation is not yet finished,
and never will be. The work of creation is a continuous
process, and so is the work of revelation. AU that we
call Nature is but the constant manifestation of the di
vine power; and the Spirit in whose image our spirits
are fashioned, and with whom we are made for fellow
ship, is here, all the while, as close to us as He ever was
to any men in any age ; as ready to give inspiration and
wisdom to us as He has ever been to any of his children.
This is the truth which is slowly breaking through the
mists of tradition, and is beginning to hght up the world
with a new sense of the nearness and the reahty of the
living God.
Good men are sometimes anxious lest we should lose
our religion. It looks as though we were going to lose the

LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD 427
husk of it and find the kernel ; to lose the chrysalis and
win the butterfly. The trouble has been that our labori
ous thinking has put our God far away from us. "He
was working here once," we have said, "in the morning
of the Creation, but He finished his work then and went
away ; since then He has only appeared now and then to
work a miracle ; aU we know of Him in Nature is through
the report that comes to us from those far-off times. He
was speaking here, once, in the days of prophets and
apostles, but He finished what He had to say and sealed
the book ; since then there is no open vision, no authori
tative word."
AU this puts Him far away. Our religion, whatever
we caU it, becomes mainly a tradition. We are climbingl
to heaven by ladders of testimony to bring God down,
we are descending into the abyss by our chains of logic
to draw Him forth, when in very truth He is near us, in
the very breath of our hfe, in the thriU of our nerves, in
the pulsations of our hearts, in the movements of our
minds, living and working in us and manifesting Himself
in every natural force, in every law of hfe. This is the
truth which the world is beginning to understand, the
truth of the immanent God ; and when it gets to be a
reahty we shaU not be afraid of losing our religion.
We hear people, in these days, denying the supernat
ural. It is a httle as if the planets should proclaim that
there is no such thing as space, or as if the rivers should
declare that there is no such thing as water. We cannot
lay our hand on hfe anywhere without feehng the thrill
of that Something More which underlies aU law and
eludes aU physical analysis.

428 RECOLLECTIONS
It is toward this larger faith that the movements of
thought have been leading on through aU the years of
my pUgrimage. It is a far cry from those old legal and
mechanical conceptions of the relation of God to the
world which prevailed in my youth, to this vital faith in
a living God of which I have been trying to teU, and it
must not be supposed that the whole church has arrived
at these convictions. I have shown where the head of
the column is marching ; the rest of it is moving along.
These changes in the underlying phUosophy of religion
are not so obvious to the multitude, but the changes in
the popular teaching of the church are evident to all.
The message which is spoken to-day fom the most or
thodox pulpits is a very different message from that to
which I was accustomed to listen in my boyhood. The
motive of fear, of terror, was then the leading motive ;
this motive is not employed now as it was then. It is not
a moral motive. It does not appeal to human reason, or
human freedom, or human affection; it seeks to over
power the human will. We have found a more exceUent
way. Mr. Moody was not an advanced thinker, but his
appeal had little to do with the old terrorism ; love was
the motive on which he rehed : " by the cords of a man "
he drew men to God.
Another change of not less significance is that by
which the emphasis is placed more and more upon the
altruistic motive. It begins to be evident that that is
the strongest motive. When I was a boy, the main rea
son urged for being a Christian was a selfish reason. It
was insurance against loss; it was the personal gain, the
personal happiness, the future blessedness of which it

LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD 429
put you in possession, that were constantly kept before
your mind. That motive has been steadily retreating
into the background ; the motive of unselfish service has
been increasingly emphasized. Because the Christian life
is the noblest life ; because it is more blessed to give than
to receive, and better to minister than to be ministered
unto ; because the good of hfe is not found by separating
yourself from your feUows, but by identifying yourself
with them, — therefore let us be Christians JThis is what
it means to follow Christ to-day) as the wisest preachers
explain it ; and this is an appeal which, when we learn
how to use it, will have convincing power.
I am fain to beheve that the time is drawing near
when the Christian church will be able to discern and
declare the simple truth that Religion is nothing but
Friendship ; friendship with God and with men. I have
been thinking much about it in these last days, and I
cannot make it mean anything else ; so far as I can see,
this is aU there is to it. Religion is friendship — friend
ship first with the great Companion, of whom Jesus told
us, who is always nearer to us than we are to ourselves,
and whose inspiration and help is the greatest fact of
human experience. To be in harmony with his purposes,
to be open to his suggestions, to be in conscious fellow
ship with Him, — this is religion on its Godward side.
Then, turning manward, friendship sums it all up. To
be friends with everybody ; to fill every human relation
with the spirit of friendship ; is there anything more than
this that the wisest and best of men can hope to do ?
If the church could accept this truth — Religion is
Friendship — and binld its own life upon it, and make it

430 RECOLLECTIONS
central and organic in all its teaching, should we not see
a great revival of religion?
I have thus, in a few words, tried to trace the path
of rehgious progress through the seven decades of my
recollections; it would be an equal pleasure to foUow
the growth of philanthropic sentiment and activity, the
marvelous development of the aesthetic side of hfe, the
progress of educational ideals and methods, and many
others of the great human mterests. For that there is
now no room. But I should hke to bear witness that the
retrospect, from this point, confirms the remembered
verdict of the years as they have been going by, that it
is a good thing to five. There may be better worlds; but
I should like to be guaranteed another seventy years in
just such a world as this. There would be suffering and
sorrow, struggle and privation, hard knocks and tough
luck ; they have not missed me, and if I had to go over
the track again, I would not ask to be protected from
them ; I know that all this has been good for me. It is
good for any man who wiU hold up his head and keep
a trusting heart.
Of this I am sure : if it was ever worth while to hve, it
is worth while to live to-day. No better day than this
day has ever dawned on this continent. Sometimes it
may have seemed as if the foundations were crumbling
under our feet, — the exposures of perfidy and dishonor
have been so shocking. But the thing to fix the thought
upon is the mighty revulsion of public sentiment against
this rottenness and rascahty. It is the sound and clear
moral judgment of the nation which makes aU this ini
quity seem so horrible. The blackness of the shadow

LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD 431
proves the intensity of the light. The annals of the fu
ture will mark these days as an epoch in the ethical
awakening of the American people.
We turn our faces to the future with good hope in our
hearts. There are great industrial problems before us,
but we shaU work them out ; there are battles to fight,
but we shaU win them. With aU those who believe in
justice and the square deal, in kindness and good will, in
a free field and a fair chance for every man, the stars in
their courses are fighting, and their victory is sure.

BOOKS BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN
Plain Thoughts on the Art of Living. Ticknor & Fields,
1868; Porter & Coates.
From the Hub to the Hudson. New England News Co.,
1869.
Workingmen and their Employers. Lockwood, Brooks
& Co., 1876; Funk & WagnaUs, 1885.
Being a Christian: What it Means and How to Begin.
Congregational Publishing Society, 1876.
The Christian Way. Dodd, Mead & Co., 1877.
The Lord's Prayer. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1880.
The Christian League of Connecticut. The Century
Company, 1883.
Things New and Old. A. H. Smythe, 1884.
The Young Men and the Churches. Congregational Pub
lishing Society, 1885.
Applied Christianity. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1887.
Parish Problems (edited and compiled). The Century
Company, 1888.
Burning Questions. James Clarke & Co., London, 1889;
The Century Company.
Santa Claus on a Lark. The Century Company, 1890.
Who Wrote the Bible ? Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891.
Tools and the Man: Property and Industry under the
Christian Law. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893.
The Cosmopolis City Club. The Century Company, 1893.
The Church and the Kingdom. F. H. Revell & Co. , 1894.
Ruhng Ideas of the Present Age. Houghtpn, Mifflin &
Co., 1895.

434 BOOKS BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN
Seven Puzzling Bible Books. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1897.
' Social Facts and Forces. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897.
Art and Morality. W. F. Ketchum, 1897.
The Christian Pastor. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898.
How Much is Left of the Old Doctrines? Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1899.
Straight Shots at Young Men. T. Y. CroweU, 1900.
Social Salvation. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901.
The Practice of Immortality. The Pilgrim Press, 1901.
Witnesses of the Light. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1903.
Where Does the Sky Begin ? Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1904.
Christianity and Socialism. Methodist Pubhshing House,
1905.
The New Idolatry. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1905.
The Church and Modern Life. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1908.
RecoUections. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909.

INDEX

INDEX

Abolitionism, 47.
Adams, Charles Francis, 210.
Advertisements, disguised, 233.
Alden, Henry M., 77, 184.
Allon, Reverend Henry, 355.
Allston, Washington, 353.
Amending the Ohio Constitution,
317, 318.
American Board of Missions,
and the second probation
question, 289; the question of
gifts from plunderers, 401 ;
is it partnership? 405; meeting
at Seattle, 407.
American social life, in 1836-
44, 12 ff.
Ames, Mary Clemmer, 191.
Amusements, controversy about,
168-171.
Anderson, Major Robert, 109.
Andrew, Governor John A., 179.
Andrews, Horace Lee, 29, 30.
Anthracite strike, 305.
Antietam, battle of, 128.
Anti-Slavery reform, 62.
"A. P. A.," 359, 365, 415.
"Applied Christianity," 297.
Arkansas, in 1837, 13.
Arthur, President Chester A.,
280.
"Atlantic Monthly," 78.
Atonement, moral theory of,
266.
"Autocrat of the Breakfast-Ta
ble," 78.

Babcock, General O. E., 220.
Bacon, Reverend Leonard Wool-
sey, 190.
Baptism as a subject of contro
versy, 57.
Bartlett, Reverend William Al-
vin, 89, 98.
Bascom, Professor John, 74.
Beecher, Henry Ward, 58, 63,
89 ; Thanksgiving sermon,
1860,99-102; 199, 214.
Beecher, Thomas K., 86.
"Being a Christian," 38, 257,
412.
Belknap, General W. W., 220.
Bermuda Hundred, 139.
Biblical revision and criticism,
259 ff.
Biography in the pulpit, 412.
Blaine, J. G., 316, 378.
Blair, Governor Austin, 210.
Bonner, Robert, 123.
Bowen, Henry C, 182.
Bowles, Samuel, 82, 240-248.
Boys in politics, 51.
Bradford, Reverend Amory H.,
400.
Briggs, Charles F., 186.
Bristol, R. I., 3.
Brooklyn, N. Y., 89-91, 183,
214.
Brooks, Bishop Phillips, 325.
Browning, Robert, 316.
Bryant, William Cullen, 328, 410.
Buchanan's administration, 91.

438

INDEX

Buckley, Reverend James M.,
215.
Bull Run, the first battle of, 117.
Burchard, Reverend Jedediah,
56.
"Burning Questions," 323, 412.
Burnside, General A. E., 124.
Bushnell, Reverend Horace, 119,
164-168.
Butler, General B. F., 220.
Cairnes, John Eliot, 256.
"Century Magazine," 174, 274.
Chadbourne, Professor Paul A.,
73.
Chancellors ville, battle of, 129.
Chattanooga, battle of, 136.
Cheever, Reverend George B., 63.
Chicago, 13.
Chicago convention, 91.
Chickamauga, battle of, 136.
Chinese in North Adams, 171-
173.
Christian Commission, 141, 142.
"Christian League of Connecti
cut," 274.
Christian rule of life, 299.
" Christian Way, The," 412.
" Christian World, The," of Lon
don, 323, 357.
"Christianity and Socialism,"
324.
Church life at the middle of the
19th century, 57.
Church services in Owego, 33,34.
Church work in city and coun
try, 161, 162.
City, the problem of the, 90.
City Club of New York, 330.
City Point, Va., 139.
Civic Federation, 306, 330.
Civil Service Reform, rising de
mand for, 195; Grant's atti

tude toward, 195; first com
mission, 196; Curtis resigns,
219.
Classical studies, 64.
Clay and the tariff, 22.
Cleveland, President Grover, 316,
378.
Coal-miners, strike of, 29 ff.
Coan, Titus Munson, 188.
Cohoon, Jennie O., 98.
Cold Harbor, battle of, 136.
Colfax, Schuyler, 189, 214.
Columbian Exposition, 359.
Columbus, Ohio, 283, 284 ff, 286.
" Come-outers, and Stay-inners,"
271.
Committee of Seventy on the
Tweed ring, 206.
Compromise, the Clay, 31.
Compromise, Missouri, 48, 54.
Conferences of employers and
employees, 304.
Congregational Churches, the,
398 ff.
" Congregational Quarterly,"
266.
Connecticut Valley Theological
Club, 272.
Connolly, Richard B., 197, 200,
207.
Cooley, Professor Charles H.,
392.
Cornell University, 324.
Corporations, the first, 14.
Corporations and legislation, 219.
"Cosmopolis City Club," 329.
Cox, General J. D., 113, 194, 195,
210.
Creation, continuous, 426.
Credit Mobilier, 217.
Creed of 1883, 287 ff.
Crosby, Reverend Howard, 215.
Curtis, George William, 121, 196.

INDEX

439

Custom House scandals, 220.
Cuyler, Reverend T. L., 89.
Daniels, Ebenezer, 23.
Davis, Noah, 210.
Democracy in New England,
159-161.
Dickinson, Miss Anna E., 121.
Discipline by defamation, 268.
Disguised advertisements, 233.
Dodge, William E., 199.
Douglas, Stephen A., 48.
Draft riots in New York, 131-
135.
Drew Theological Seminary, 324.
Eggleston, Edward, 182, 184.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 121,
122, 232, 366.
England, visits to, 353-358; in
the 19th century, 425.
Erie Canal in 1844, 21.
Eternal punishment as a motive,
58.
Evarts, William M., 199.
Farrar, Archdeacon F. W., 354.
Federal plan of city government,
334.
Fish, Hamilton, 194.
Foss, Bishop Cyrus D., 215.
Foundations of belief, 322.
France in the 19th century,
424.
Fraudulent politics, 220.
Fredericksburg, battle of, 129.
Free Soil party, 54.
Fremantle, Reverend W. H., 357.
Fremont, John C, 66.
Friendship, the essence of reli
gion, 429.
Fugitive Slave Law, debate on,
32; 45, 46.

"Gail Hamilton," 191.
Garfield, President James A., 73,
76, 113 ; election of, 278; assas
sination of, 279.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 191.
Gavazzi, Father, 279.
Geological discoveries, 425.
Germany in the 19th century,
424.
Gettysburg, battle of, 130.
Gilder, Richard Watson, 118, 136,
184.
Gladden, Amanda Daniels, 7, 12.
Gladden, Solomon, birth and
education, 3; removes to New
York and Pennsylvania, 4;
letters, 4-6; religious life, 10;
death, 1 1 ; souvenirs in South
ampton, 18.
Gladden, Washington, birth, 8;
early education, 9 ; removal to
Owego, 12; journey to Massa
chusetts, 20 ; life on the farm,
23 ff; country school, 27 ff;
early religious life, 32 ff; in
the printing-office, 40 ff; in
practical politics, 51 ; begins
preparation for college, 57;
enters Williams College, 67;
is graduated, 84; begins teach
ing in Owego, 85; licensed to
pi each, 86; service in Le
Raysville, Pa., 88; call to
Brooklyn, 89; ordination, 97;
removal to Morrisania, 115;
hospital work with the Army
of the Potomac, 137 ff ; call to
North Adams, Mass., 158;
installation there, 166-168;
on the staff of the New York
"Independent," 187 ff.; re
moval to Springfield, Mass.,
239; edits "Sunday After-

440

INDEX

noon," 272; call to Columbus,
Ohio, 283 ; service at Harvard
University, 324; in the city
council, 336; Moderator of
Congregational Council, 400.
Gladding, Azariah, 2.
Gladstone, William E., 354.
"God in Christ," Bushnell's, 119.
Good Templars, 50.
Good will, the social law, 310 ff.
Grant, General Ulysses S., 131,
136, 142, 143, 151, 177, 193,
194, 210, 214, 216.
Greeley, Horace, 125, 126, 210-
213.
Green, Andrew H., 207.
Guiteau, Charles J., 279.
Hall, A. Oakey, Mayor of New
York, 197.
Hampton Institute, 373. -
Harper, Fletcher, 200.
"Harper's Weekly," 200.
Harrison's Landing, Va., 138.
Harte, F. Bret, 191.
Hastings, Reverend Thomas S.,
215.
Havemeyer, William F., 199.
Haven, Reverend Gilbert, 189.
Hay, John, 385, 387.
Hayes, President Rutherford B.,
276, 277; 281, 414.
Hayes-Tilden contest, 275, 276.
"Herald," New York, 68, 110,
111.
Higher criticism, 318.
Hitchcock, Secretary E. A., 385.
Hitchcock, Professor Roswell
D., 118.
Hoadley, Governor George, 210.
Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood, 194.
Holland, Josiah Gilbert, 82, 174,
240, 274.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 67.
Hooker, General Joseph, 124.
Hoosac Tunnel, 174.
Hopkins, Professor Albert,
73.
Hopkins, President Mark, 71, 72,
86, 167, 265.
"How Much is Left of the Old
Doctrines?" 412.
Howard University, 324.
Howells, William D., 44.
Hughes, Archbishop John, 112.
Hunt, Helen, 191.
Illinois State University, 414.
Immanence of God, 427.
Impeachment of Andrew John
son, 180.
"Independent," New York, 63,
163, 182, 192.
Indian Orchard Council, 262 ff.
Industrial revolution, 294.
Industrial society, its founda
tion, 299.
International Council at London,
357.
Invasion of Pennsylvania, 130.
Iowa, 13.
Iowa College, 324.
"Is it Peace or War?" 301.
Jackson, Andrew, 14.
Jerusalem Chamber, 355.
Johnson, Andrew, 150, 154, 176,
180.
Jones, George, editor New York
" Times," 200-202.
Kansas, 50, 65.
Kingsley, Charles, 176.
Knapp, Reverend Jacob, 59.
Know-Nothings, 52.
Know-Somethings, 52.

INDEX

441

Laissez faire, as a social theory,
295, 313.
Lanier, Sidney, 258.
Le Raysville, Pa., 88.
Leavitt, Reverend Joshua, 128,
185.
Lee, General Robert E., 129;
surrender of, 145; 177.
Lenten services, 413.
Lewisburg, Pa., 10, 11.
Liberal Republican movement,
210.
Liberty party, birth of, 22.
Lincoln, Abraham, debate with
Douglas, 90; nomination to
the presidency, 91; election,
94 ; departure for Washington,
106; passes down Broadway,
New York, 107; first inaugural
address, 108; defense of Fort
Sumter, 109; first call for
troops, 109; advocates com
pensated emancipation, 124;
answers Greeley's " Prayer of
Twenty Millions," 125; issues
Emancipation Proclamation,
128; at Petersburg, in 1864,
143; his attitude toward the
Confederate leaders, 148; his
assassination, 150; funeral ser
vices, 152.
Lincoln, Professor Isaac N., 74.
Long, Governor John D., 385.
Low, Seth, 329, 331.
Lowell, James Russell, 99, 109,
197, 209, 399.
Lyman Beecher lectures, 324.
McCarthy, Justin, 182.
McClellan, General George B.,
124, 125.
MacDonald, George, 85.
McDowell, General Irvin, 117.

Mackenzie, Commodore Alex
ander Slidell, 76.
Mackenzie, General Ranald Sli
dell, 76.
McKinley, President William,
383 ff.
McVickar, Bishop, 215.
Maine prohibitory law, 50.
Mansfield College, Oxford, 324.
Manufactures, domestic, 14.
Martineau, Reverend James, 357.
Matthews, Stanley, 210.
Meade, General George G., 130.
Meadville Theological School,
324.
Merriam, Reverend James F.,
261.
Michigan, 13.
Mill, John Stuart, 256.
Miller and Millerism, 59, 60.
Miller, Joaquin, 191.
Ministerial function, the, 416 ff.
Missionaries, as theological re
formers, 290.
Missouri, 13.
Monopolies must be owned by
the people, 309, 31*4, 345.
Moody, Dwight L., 428.
Moody, Secretary W. H., 385.
Moral theology, demand for,
223 ff.
Morrisania, N. Y., in 1861, 115.
Mount Tom, Mass., 3, 18, 240.
" Mountains, The," college song,
81.
Munger, Reverend T. T., 119,
265.
Mumcipal problem, the, 328 ff. ;
boards and commissions, 331;
Galveston and Des Moines
plan, 333 ; English system, 333 ;
city transportation, 340 ; natu
ral gas supply, 343; electric

442

INDEX

lighting, 344; public service
industries, 346; the spoils
system, 348; water-supply,
349.
Municipal Voters' League, 379-
383.
National Council of Congrega
tional Churches, 399 ff.
National Municipal League, 330.
Nast, Thomas, 200-202; 212.
Nebraska Bill, 49, 50, 65.
Negro problem, the, 366 ff. ; the
American Missionary Associa
tion, 366; southern schools
and colleges for negroes, 367;
Southern Education Board,
368; testimonies of southern
white men, 369 ff. ; the negro
needs a complete education,
334.
New Britain, Conn., 21.
"New Idolatry, The," 407.
New School Calvinists, 58.
New York city, 13, 67, 68, 110,
131-135.
Newspaper ethics, 234 ff.
North Adams, Mass., 68; life in,
158-173; amusement contro
versy in, 168 ff.; Chinese
labor in, 171-173; ecclesiastical
council in, 265.
Norwich, Conn., 3.
O'Brien, James, 200.
O'Conor, Charles, 207.
Ohio constitution, amending the,
317, 318.
Ohio State University, 323.
Oneida Community, 186.
"On to Richmond," 116.
"Outlook, The," 323.
Owego, N. Y., 4;40ff.

Owego Academy, 64.
Owego "Gazette," 40.
Page, William, 186.
Palmer, Governor John M., 210.
Parliament of Religions, 359.
Patton, Reverend Francis L.,
225 ff.
Perry, Professor Arthur L., 74.
Petersburg, Va., invested, in
1864, 139.
Phillips, Professor John L. T.,
74.
Pierce, President Franklin, 45.
"Plain Thoughts on the Art of
Living," 173.
Piatt, Thomas C, 66.
Plymouth, Mass., 3.
Poetry, its spiritual uses, 413.
Poland's Committee on Credit
Mobilier, 218.
Polk and annexation, 22.
Pope, General John, 124.
Popular hysteria, 155-157.
Porter, General Horace, 143.
Porter, President Noah, of Yale,
265.
Porter, Colonel Peter A., 140.
Pottsgrove, Pa., 1, 7.
Predatory wealth and public
teachers, 404; and politicians,
408, 409.
Printing-office, a country, 42-44.
Proctor, Lincoln Redfield, 385.
Progress in philosophy, 425.
Prohibitory liquor laws, 50.
Prostitution of the press, 236.
Public service industries, 309,
346.
Pulpit, the, and the labor ques
tion, 150 ff.; the freedom of,
415, 416; social leadership in,
420.

INDEX

443

Railways, the first, 13; railway
journey in 1844, 20, 21.
Reading aloud, 24 ff.
Rebels and traitors, 178.
Reconstruction, the foolishness
of, 176 ff.
Religion is friendship, 429.
Republican Party, origin of, 22 ;
organization of, 66.
"Republican," Springfield, 49,
82, 83, 173, 242-245.
Rhodes, James F., quoted, 134,
143, 146, 148, 181, 192, 201.
Richardson, Charles F., 215.
Riis, Jacob, 1.
Robertson, Reverend Frederick
W., 119.
Robinson, Reverend Charles S.,
215.
Robinson, Governor George D.,
303.
Rockefeller, John D., 401, 406.
Roman Catholic Church, 52, 359-
365.
Roosevelt, President Theodore,
330; his naval policy, 388;
his work as a peacemaker, 389 ;
his accession to the presidency,
390; his attitude toward pre
datory wealth, 391-395; the
anthracite coal strike, 395 ff.
Root, Secretary Elihu, 385, 389.
Roscher, Wilhelm, 297.
Ryder Lectures in Chicago, 324.
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 134.
"Salary Grab," 220.
Sanitary Commission, 141.
Schofield, General J. A., 144.
School, a country district, 27, 30.
School district libraries, in New
York, 22.
Schurz, Carl, 1, 213.

Scientific progress, 425.
Scott, General Winfield, 45, 104.
"Scribner's Monthly," 174.
Scudder, Horace E., 77, 297.
Secession threatened, 97; peace
able, as a policy, 103-106.
Second probation, debate about,
290.
Secret societies in politics, 53, 54 ;
359-365.
"Seven Puzzling Bible Books,"
412.
Seventh Regiment, New York,
112.
Seward, William H., 92, 128.
Seymour, Horatio, 130, 133.
Shaler, Professor N. S., 109.
Shaw, Colonel Robert G., 134.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 282.
Sheridan, General Philip H., 145.
Sherman, John, 385.
Sherman, General W. T., 144.
"Sigma Chi," a Clerical Club,
215.
Sixth Massachusetts Infantry,
111.
Slidell, John, 77.
Smith, Gerrit, 62.
Smith, Professor Henry B., 118.
Smith, Robertson, 319.
Smith, Roswell, 174, 274, 283.
Social changes, 16.
" Social Facts and Forces," 324.
"Social Salvation," 324.
Socialism, 306 ff.
"Something about manhood,"
266.
Souls that need saving, 253.
South Carolina and Secession,
97, 102.
Southampton, Mass., 3; rural
life in, in 1843, 18-20.
Spain in the 19th century, 424.

444

INDEX

Spanish War, the, 385 ff.
Spear, Reverend Samuel T., 187.
Spencer, John C, 77.
Spottsylvania, battle of, 136.
Springfield, Mass., 83; home in,
239; character of, 241, 242;
industrial depression in, 248;
lectures to workingmen, 250.
Springfield " Republican." See
"Republican."
Standard Oil Company, 401.
Steamboats, the first, 13.
Stedman, Edmund C, 191.
Stevens, Thaddeus, 176.
Stoddard, Richard H., 191.
Stone River, battle of, 129.
Storrs, Reverend Richard S., 89,
98, 214.
Story, Joseph, 182.
Strike of coal-miners in the
Hocking Valley, 29 ff.
Students in college, 325-327.
Sumner, Charles, 176, 213.
"Sun," New York, 213.
"Sunday Afternoon," a maga
zine, 272.
Supernatural, domestication of,
427.
Sweeney, Peter B., 197.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 40.
Swing, Reverend David, trial for
heresy, 223 ff. ; resigns from
the Presbyterian ministry, 227 ;
his subsequent career, 230.
Swollen fortunes, 315.
Symonds, John Addington, 294.
Talmage, Reverend T. De Witt,
214.
Tatlock, Professor John, 73.
Taylor, Bayard, 121, 122.
Taylor, Reverend William M.,
215.

Texas, annexation of, 22.
Thomas, General George H., 144.
Thompson, Reverend J. P., 63.
Thurman, Senator A. G., 293.
Ticknor, George, 109.
Tilton, Theodore, 180, 182, 183.
"Times," New York, and the
Tweed Ring, 198-204.
Todd, Reverend John, 167.
"Tools and the Man," 324.
Toynbee, Arnold, 95, 96.
Tracy, Secretary Benjamin F.,
31, 50, 51.
Tremont Temple meeting, 303.
"Tribune," New York, 24, 31,
68, 94, 103, 112, 116, 126,
133.
Trumbull, Lyman, 210.
Tuskegee Institute, 373.
Tweed Ring, the, 197 ff.
Tyler, Professor Moses Coit, 86,
96, 415.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," 45.
Union meeting in Cleveland, 301.
Union Relief Association of
Springfield, 248.
Universalists, 37.
Van Dyke, Reverend Henry J.,
93.
Vermont resolutions, 268.
Vicksburg, capture of, 130.
Wagner, Adolf, 297.
Walker, Francis A., 297.
War, its natural fruit, 221.
War prices, 124.
Ward, William Hayes, 182, 184.
Washington, Booker T., 1, 375.
Washingtonville, Pa., 9.
Western Reserve University, 414.
Westminster Abbey, 355.

INDEX

445

"Where Does the Sky Begin?"
411.
Whiskey Ring, 220.
White, Andrew D., 199, 415.
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 40,
223, 239, 353, 422.
"Who Wrote the Bible?" 320,
412.
"Wide-awake" movement, 92.
Wilderness, battle of, 136.
Williams College, in 1856, 69;
" its curriculum, 68-70 ; its in
structors, 70-75; undergradu
ates in, 76-78; music in, 80,
81.
"Williams Quarterly," 79.
Williamstown, Mass., 68, 158.

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 42.
Wilson, Henry, 189, 214, 216.
Wilson, Secretary James, 385.
Wilson, President Woodrow, 14,
48, 52.
Winthrop, Theodore, 112.
Wisconsin, 13.
"Witnesses of the Light," 324.
Wood, Fernando, 110.
Wool, General John E., 133.
Woolsey, Sarah C, 191.
Wordsworth, William, 1, 17,
158.
"Workingmen and their Em
ployers," 250 ff.
World's Missionary Conference,
354.

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