¦«1KfiSfflfflf«SK!S Ccinn j'ffi"'iffHl ' '¦.|i.jil,;l;'.'i. . I • 1 'i i"' r l' i 'i ';• ¦"•¦iirli'i'ii-v:!:' '¦',''¦' :'; I '. ¦ ¦. ¦¦",.'¦'. ii'iii'i'i' . 1 , ' ¦ '¦ " ii. 'i 1 1 ! ^MMmm,,'?^ MASS. ^, //r.Cl .>7 i^U MEMOIR HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. PREPARED AGREEABLY TO A RESOLUTION MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. BY REV. JAMES WALKER, D.D. BOSTON: PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 5, Water Street. 1863. MEMOIR HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. William White carae to this country from Norfolk County, Eng., in 1635; establishing himself first at Ipswich, after wards at Newbury, and finally at Haverhill. He was present at the purchase of the land of the last-mentioned town from the Indians : and his name appears as one of the grantees on the deed of sale, bearing date Nov. 15, 1642. From him has descended a numerous posterity, connected by marriage with some of the leading families in New England, and many of them noted in their day for character and influence. Daniel Appleton White, a sketch of whose life we are about to write, was of this lineage, iu the sixth generation. His parents, John and Elizabeth (Haynes) White, originally of Haverhill, had removed to Methuen about four years before his birth, which took place June 7, 1776. He was the eleventh in a family of seventeen children, six of whom were by a former mother, and thirteen of whom lived to have families of their own. The father was a farmer in easy circumstances, well con nected and hospitable, — a good representative of the New- England country gentleman of that time. His house stood upon a broad plain, nearly equidistant from the Merrimack on the south, and the Spicket on the north. His farm, reach- 4 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. ing from river to river, consisted of nearly three hundred acres ; presenting a great variety of rural scenery, and afford ing more than usual opportunity for rural sports. All is now changed ; for this part of Methuen has become the centre of the new manufacturing city of Lawrence. But we speak of things as they were, when the subject of this Memoir was growing up into life. In a manuscript account of his early days,* prepared by himself some years before his death, for the use of his children, he says of this period, — " Perhaps there were never more circumstances combined to make a happy boyhood from external nature than I enjoyed; and the freedom allowed me by my parents, especially on Sundays, before and after public worship, to ramble over the fields, added to the pleasures they were calculated to afford. My grandfather Haynes had written against the common strict notion of the sabbath, contending that it was a sort of Jewish superstition to observe the day with such strictness.f * This narrative, from which we shall borrow largely, was written during the winter of 1836-7. It fills two hundred and fifty pages, terminating with his college life in 1797. Much of it is little more than an expansion of a journal which he seems to have kept, with more or less regularity, from his schoolboy-days. t The title of this pamphlet reads thus: " Some Farraginous Remarks upon an Act for the Due Observation of the Lord's Day. By a Lover of the Truth. Printed by E. Eussell, at Concord, for J. Haynes of Haverhill. 1793." To indicate its spirit, we give a single passage: "Not many of the people know but they are keeping the Jewish sabbath still ; nor do they desire to know : and it seems that the clergy does not desire that they should know. And it seems as though some of the clergy don't know it them selves, and may think that ignorance is the best mother of devotion, and brings to them the most gain : and the people seem to be afraid that they shall know more than their teachers; and, when any one attempts to inform them, they are offended. So, it seems, these remarks can't be popular." — p. 18. The following is from a manuscript note by Judge White : " Upon the passage of the act of the General Court respecting the sabbath, in 1792, my grandfather, then almost eighty years old, was greatly excited, and set about writing these strictures, which sufficiently show his views on the subject. I was then just entering college; and well remember, that, upon my frequent visits to him, the burden of his conversation was about the ' pharisaical General Court,' as proved by their notions of the sabbath, — a Jewish sabbath, as he maintained." He speaks of him, in the same note, as "a venerable and excellent relative; a man of great integrity and benevolence." This Joseph Haynes was a malleus hereticorum in his way. Nearly forty years before, he had written against his own minister, the Rev. Samuel Bacheller, and his clerical abetters, a bulky pamphlet, entitled "A Discourse in order to confute the Heresy dehvered, and much contended for, in the West Parish in Haverhill and countenanced by many of the Ministers of the Neighboring Parishes; viz., that the MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 5 My father and mother partook of his sentiments, and held us to nothing more on the sabbath than reading the Bible and going to meeting, with ample indulgence between whiles to walk over the farm, pick berries, look after birds' nests, and the like ; but amusements, such as fishing, &c., and work of all kinds, were not allowed. This early indulgence on the sabbath is probably the reason of the delight which has ever been associated in my mind with this sacred day, — a day which has always been the most interesting to me of the whole week.'' That his Sunday duty, so far as it consisted in reading the Bible, was never neglected, appears from the same autho rity : — " I remember I had read the whole Bible through in course before I was eight, and three times before I was fourteen, besides different portions of it numberless times more. I have still a lively remem brance of the fascination and tears with which I perused, over and over, the affecting story of Joseph and his brethren, and the narrative of our Lord's trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, as well as some other parts of the sacred histories in the Old and New Testament. This famili arity with the Scriptures, especially the Gospels, in my early days, however crude some of my notions were, I have ever considered as having a most propitious influence upon my whole life. It is remark able how little my impressions, as then received, of Jesus and his disciples, have been changed by subsequent reading and reflection. Their images as then stamped upon my mind, and the most interesting associations then formed, still remain without material alteration.'' Other causes were, however, at work to make religion a source of one of the greatest of his youthful troubles. His father and mother were strict Baptists, and also " New Lights," as the followers of Whitefield were then called. Blood and Water which came from Christ when the Soldier pierced his Side, his Laying in his Grave, and his Resurrection, was no part of Redemption, and that his Laying in the Grave was no part of his Humiliation." An answer by one of the ministers led to a rejoinder by Haynes, — another pamphlet of eighty-two pages. What a question to break up the peace of a country congregation ! what a satire on much which passes for theological controversy ! Mr. Haynes, in his last days, was a Baptist. Though without any grammatical learning, as his writings show, he was evidently a shrewd, sincere, and fearless man, and quite a reader and thinker. 6 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. The boy's reverence for his parents, to which indeed they would seem to have been eminently entitled by their general excellence of character, together with the conversation and preaching he listened to and most of the books he read, all conspired to convince him that this was the only true religion, and that the whole must begin in a sudden and miraculous " change of heart." Hence his passionate longing for this change, mingled, as was natural, with many childish fancies and terrors. " My distress at times was great, and not less for being kept within my own knowledge. Often would I wander in the fields alone, and in some secret place throw myself on my knees, and pour out my soul in prayer to God for a new heart, — for the change, the conversion, which his sovereign grace alone could effect. But my state of feeling remained the same ; my imagination kept cool : I could perceive no sign that my prayers were heard. How long these trials continued, I cannot say ; but I believe, in a greater or less degree, for several years. I at length became calm and easy ; without, however, any change in my opinions as to the necessity of conversion and regeneration in the New- Light sense." Afterwards, referring to the same subject, he observes, — " The religious sentiments imbibed under the influence of the ' New Lights ' followed me to college, as I well remember taking Whitefield's ' Journal ' with me the first term ; but they did not long abide with me. I hardly know what might not have been the fate of my Christian faith, had I not found a satisfactory substitute for them. Priestley's works were open to me there ; and such was my veneration for him as a philosopher, and such was the strength as well as simplicity of his faith, and such were the clearness and force with which he illustrated it, while he most ably vindicated the truth of Christianity itself, that, without embracing all his views, I was led to beheve them substantially correct, and happy to find in them a refuge for my religious faith from the fanaticism which had threatened it, and from the gloomy doctrine which had so long haunted and distressed me." It was a happy day for Daniel, when the family counsels resulted in the determination that he should go to college. MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 7 In June, 1792, he was sent to Atkinson Academy, then under the instruction of Mr. Silas Dinsmore, in order to pursue the preparatory studies. What these were at that time, may be gathered from the following entry made in his journal not long before he left the school : — " Under his [Mr. Dinsmore's] tuition I have been about eleven months, and have recited to him the Lady's Accidence, and parsed English ; then, in course, the Latin Accidence [old Master Cheever's], and part of Corderius and Eutropius ; the whole of the ^neid, Bucolics, and Georgics of Virgil ; all the small Tully ; all the Greek Testament, after having studied the Greek Grammar ; also all Clarke's Introduc tion to making Latin, and the Rules of Scanning ; and now think myself qualified to enter Harvard College. In getting thus qualified, it took me, after I began to study Latin, exclusive of vacations and lost time, about seven and a half months, according to my computation." While at the academy, he seems to have been very happy and very assiduous ; often giving from fourteen to fifteen hours a day to study. The only thing he afterwards had occasion to regret, in looking back on this period, was, that he did not spare more time for exercise in the open air, — a neglect from which his health suffered for many years. With the preparation above mentioned, he found no diffi culty in passing his examinations at. the ensuing Commence ment, 1793. He gives a minute account of his journey to Cambridge for that purpose, and of his first impressions of the place. He arrived there at seven o'clock in the morning, and found the Common covered with tents and vehicles, as was then usual on Commencement Day. The whole scene, toge ther with the throng and bustle, was sufficiently novel and exciting. Still, the external appearance of the college and its appurtenances hardly came up to his expectations. This he accounts for by observing that there were at that time but four public buildings, — Massachusetts, Harvard, and Hollis Halls, and Holden Chapel ; that the last, for some reason, was in a dilapidated state, and not used ; and that the others, as 8 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. well as the college-yard, remained just as they were when occupied as barracks by the soldiers in the Revolutionary War. We may add, that his anticipated connection with the university made him more alive to what he heard than to what he saw. Accordingly he says, — " I have more distinct impressions of the parts, the performers, and the sentiments uttered on this Commencement, than of those of any subsequent one, not excepting my own. I have now a clear view of Judge Jackson, as he then appeared delivering his concluding oration on ' Liberality of Sentiment,' and of Dr. Pierce delivering his on 'Astronomy.' In the afternoon, too, we had Josiah Quincy, with his Master's Oration, on ' The Ideal Superiority of the Present Age.' I still see him, with his craped cushion rising above his forehead, stepping about the stage with the air and confidence of one who felt, as he really might, that he had something to deliver worth hearing, and that he meant the manner should be worthy of the matter." The manuscript memoir, from which I have already bor rowed so freely, is very full and circumstantial in its details of college-life, such as it was near the close of the last century. It is a satisfaction to know, on the evidence of so trustworthy a document, much of which is copied from a journal kept at the time, that here at least there has been some improvement, and this, too, not more in scholarship than in order and good conduct. The writer says, — " When I entered college, the French Revolution had broken up the foundations of religion and morals, as well as of government, and continued to rage for some years with its utmost fury, spreading its disastrous influence throughout the civilized world, and pouring in upon our country, more especially, a flood of infidel and licentious principles ; and I have no doubt, that to these, and the pernicious books embodying them, much of the disorderly conduct, and most of the infidel and irreligious spirit, which prevailed at that period among the students at Cambridge, may be imputed. The patrons and governors of the college made efforts to counteract the effect of these fatal principles, by exhortation and preaching and prayers, as well as by the publication and distribution of good books and pamphlets. Watson's ' Apology for the Bible,' in answer to Paine's ' Age of Reason,' I well remember, was MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 9 presented, at the instance and expense of the corporation, to every student. Yet so deeply and so generally had the French mania seized upon the popular mind in this country, and so susceptible of its fiery influence were the ardent spirits of young men, all alive to freedom of thought and action and indulgence, that reason and argument and persuasion had for some time no power against it." Other causes were co-operating at that time to corrupt the public morals. Among the rest, the growing prosperity of the country had begun to open the door to self-indulgence of every kind ; and the way in which the governors of the college thought to withstand this tendency of things was neither wise nor firm. "An early code of the college-laws had taken the proper ground, by providing that ' no distilled spirits, or any such mixed drinks as flip or punch, should be used by any residents at college in entertaining one another or strangers,' Had this provision been strictly enforced till made an established custom, a vast deal of mischief and vice might have been avoided. But the customs of society prevailed against it ; and the college authorities so far relaxed the rule, as to allow of punch, ' it being, as then generally made [so says the amended code], not an intoxicating drink.' Then there was the Buttery, kept by a graduate in a room in Massachusetts, with a salary from the college-government, for recording exits from town, fines, &c., with the privilege of keeping wines and other liquors, as well as certain eatables and various other accommodations, for the students. The design of this was, probably, to prevent the students from resorting to the shops and taverns in the vicinity for such articles ; but it was perverted in practice, and, so far from preventing them in the use of wines and liquors, rather encouraged them in excessive indulgence, by bringing the means within the immediate reach of every one within the college." As a natural consequence, the record before us abounds in notices of college disturbances, and of the measures taken by the ofScers to repress them. The disturbances, it would seem, were much more frequent than is now usual in the New-England colleges ; and also more serious, as they often took the form, not of mere frolic or mischief, but of open and organized opposition to the college authorities. The change 2 10 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. is doubtless owing, in part, to the higher tone of manners among the students; but something is due likewise to im proved methods of academical study and discipline, and especially to what may be called a better preventive police. Merely by the discontinuance of Commons and Evening Prayers, more than half of the occasions and opportunities of college disorder have been effectually and for. ever removed. There is also evidence of improvement in administrative skill. What college, at the present day, would think to suspend its regular work for days, and even weeks, while investigations were going on? or call up offenders for sentence in the chapel before all the students ? Yet these things appear to have been matters of course seventy years ago. As might have been expected, the public arraignment of the real or supposed wrong-doers often led to astounding indecorums. Take a single instance : — " Friday, Dec. 6, 1793. — The Government all assembled at morning prayers. , sophomore, was ordered to stand forth in the aisle, and, for offences stated, rusticated. This put him into a violent passion ; and, seizing a large cane which he had been ordered to lay aside, he swung it round his head, and exclaimed, ' It is all a damned He ! You are a pack of devils, and I despise you ! ' Immediately thereon, one of the officers made a motion for his expulsion from college ; which, being put by the President, passed unanimously on the spot.'' Whatever may have been the dangers of the times or the place, the subject of this Memoir was effectually protected against them by his religious education, by his love of learn ing, by his virtuous friendships, by the thoughtfulness, pru dence, and self-control which distinguished him from youth to old age. Of the literary advantages afforded by the college, such as they were, he availed himself to the utmost ; here, as at school, the only gi-ound of apprehension being, that he would overwork a constitution never robust. Among his teachers, he mentions with special regard Mr. (afterwards President) Kirkland, who was his class tutor for the Fresh- MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 1 1 man year ; Professor Pearson, described as being " an admi rable private lecturer in his department ; " and Professor Tappan, whose public lectures would seem to have been the only ones listened to with much interest by the students. His strong social inclinations led him also to make much of college-clubs, and to be concerned in instituting several, one of which still survives, and under its old name. An authentic account of its humble beginnings may be of use to the college antiquary. After referring to a Coffee Club, which was not transmitted, he goes on : — " Besides this association, there was another which sprung up in our class this term very accidentally, but which had a more permanent existence, and proved full of interest and enjoyment to its original members. I allude to the Hasty-pudding Club. A few of my class, who were fond of hasty-pudding, engaged a woman near the college to make it for them every Saturday evening. A number of others, including myself, soon joined them, and formed ourselves into a society ; at first, simply taking our pudding and milk ; passing an hour or two together ; and concluding with a hymn, sung to the tune of St. Martin's, as appropriate to the evening. At length, -and by degrees, our exer cises and enjoyments increased, and assumed a more literary and interesting character. We had debates and discussions ; and sometimes held mock-courts, and went through the forms of trials, with judges, juries, and advocates, constituted by the society. These were often amusing to us, and not entirely without benefit and improvement. Our first celebration was on Washington's birthday, Feb. 22, 1796. I was honored with the appointment of orator for the occasion." We have seen that his religious opinions took their final direction, if not a perfect and consistent form, while he was an under-graduate. The same maybe also said of his political views. We give the statement in his own words : — " In the next chamber to ours, we had a pleasant neighbor in Mr. Sales, the present [1837] teacher of Spanish and French in the university, — ¦ then a young man, recently from France, and full of enthusiasm for liberty and equality, I recollect his saying he would object to being in heaven, if they had not a republican government there. I know not but he might have awakened in us, by force of sympathy. 12 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. something of a feehng for the French ; for we took the ' Independent Chronicle,' then a violent newspaper on that side, for a few months, but afterwards exchanged it for the ' Columbian Centinel.' This was my initiation into politics, I did not cease to be Freshman, before my eyes were opened to the fury and madness of French liberty, and the extravagances of American democracy acting in sympathy with it. The wisdom of the framers of the Federal Constitution, then in suc cessful operation under Washington, and of the conductors of his administration, appeared manifest to me ; their policy and measures being pursued with singular uprightness and true patriotism, and calculated to secure liberty with order, and to advance the best interests and welfare of the country, its true honor and dignity, and to inspire the people with a love of public and private virtue and the spirit of real patriotism. I was, of course, a firm and hearty Federalist ; and have never since, for a single moment, seen reason to doubt, or felt hesitation in declaring, the soundness and purity of the principles of Federalism, the principles of Washington and Hamilton." His class was a large one for that time, including the Hon. Horace Binney of Philadelphia, Samuel Farrar, Esq,, of Ando ver, and the Rev. Dr. Jenks of Boston, who still (1863) survive ; also, among the dead, Dr. John C, Warren of Boston, the Hon, James Richardson of Dedham, Chief-Justice Richardson of New Hampshire, and Professor Asahel Stearns of the Law School at Cambridge. Their Commencement took place July 19, 1797, with the usual number, and more than the usual variety, of exercises, — among the rest, three poems, a dialogue in French, and a Hebrew oration. Binney and White had long been candidates for the highest honors of the day. To show how little ground there is for the fears sometimes expressed as to the moral effect of college rivalries, we cannot refrain from mentioning, that the latter always deemed it " an unmerited distinction " that these honors were finally awarded to him ; and that neither this circumstance, nor any thing else, ever disturbed for a moment the mutual affection and regard of the two friends. Mr. White delivered the principal English oration ; taking for his subject " The MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 13 Reign of Prejudice," and closing, as was then the custom, with a commemoration of the benefactors of the university. Looking back in advanced life on his whole academic course, Judge White bears this testimony : — " The five years which I passed, from my entrance into Atkinson Academy to my leaving Harvard College, were among the happiest of my life. I have ever regarded them, too, as unquestionably among the most important. My education at Cambridge, together with the asso ciations connected with it and the friendships growing out of it, have certainly been the source of many of my richest enjoyments, if not of my principal qualifications for being useful to others." * In choosing a profession, he was troubled by difficulties from without and from within. Naturally of a serious and devotional turn of mind, and with all his prevailing tastes in favor of a literary and quiet life, it may seem strange that he did not enter at once on the study of divinity. We give the explanation in his own words : — " I should probably have selected this profession, for neither of the others had any attraction in my view, had it not been for the peculiar state of my own mind in respect to religious doctrines, and the strong * For statistical purposes connected with the relative expenses of living at dif ferent periods, it may be well to mention, that his proper college charges for the four years amounted to four hundred and eighty dollars ; and that the whole cost of his education at Cambridge, " including clothes, books, travelling-expenses, pocket-money, &c.," did- not exceed eight hundred dollars. Still further to illustrate economic changes, we copy the following from the manu script autobiography, giving a glimpse of country life at that period: "You, my dear William and Henry, who have little more to do than speak to a tailor or shoemaker when you have occasion for the products of either, can have no idea of what I had sometimes to go through in supplying myself with such necessary articles. I had, this vacation, a suit of college-gray, made of homespun, which I had to take to the clothier's to be draped ; then after it a number of times, generally, before it could be had ; then to Haverhill for a tailor, in vain; then to Andover, with better success. So, likewise, I had to get of the currier leather, and take to the shoemaker; who kept no stock for his customers, but merely afforded his work. I find I had to ride no less than four times, and as many miles too, to a currier, for a pair of boot-legs; which were then pre pared in a particular manner, so as to stretch, to let the heel through; and then shrink, to set snug to the leg, — the great beauty of the boot at that time. I succeeded, at last, in getting a pair which I oould put on; and found myself in boots, for the first time, on the last day of January, 1794." 14 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. opinions and feelings of my father and mother as to the awful responsi bility of entering this profession without conversion and a divine call. To neither of these could I make any pretension ; and therefore could not become a preacher without deeply wounding the hearts of those whom I loved and revered. But, besides this objection, my own mind was not then in a proper state for undertaliing the duties of the sacred office. Calvinism, which I had mistaken for Christianity, had lost its hold on my mind and affections ; and though I clung to the Christian faith, yet I was too much perplexed with doubts, and too unsettled in my religious opinions, to allow myself to think of becoming an expounder of Christianity to others." That these reasons did not entirely reconcile him to the abandonment of the course he would otherwise have pursued, appears from a letter written to one of his most intimate friends, even after he he had begun his legal studies. He there says, " For my own part, I have sometimes, of late, almost regretted that I could not have studied divinity. I feel convinced it is a more peaceful and happy profession than that of the law." Though he had decided upon his profession at the time of graduating, it was several years before he began to prepare himself for it, except at leisure hours, to be spared from his proper business as an instructor. Two of those years were passed at Medford, as teacher of the public Grammar School, While there, he occasionally, in writing to his friends, be moaned the necessity he was under of giving so many of his best days to an occupation not likely to advance his main object in life. Still he was neither inactive nor unhappy. He kept up many of his college intimacies ; he entered freely into society; above all, he laid the foundation of a lasting friendship with Dr. Osgood, the distinguished clergyman of the place, for whom he always entertained great affection and reverence. Neither Medford influences, nor the temper of the times, were of a nature to moderate his political partialities. Ac- MEMOIR OP HON, DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 15 cordingly, his letters at this period abound in allusions to what he considered the outrageous conduct of the " Jacobins," as they were then called. Thus, under date of March 18, 1799, we have his account of the judicial proceedings against a political offender of that party, which sounds strangely in our ears : — " Since my last, I have attended the trial of one of the ' Chronicle ' printers, indicted at common law for a libel upon our State Legislature, occasioned by their decision upon the Virginia Resolutions. His defence was managed by G. Blake and B. Whitman, — the latter a strong Federalist. They endeavored to show that the common law of England, as to libels, is unreasonable, contradicting the maxim that law is ' the perfection of reason ; ' and contradictory in itself, being different in different reigns. They urged the impropriety of admitting it into our courts of justice, as the genius of the country and the nature of our government and institutions are so different from those of England, and all opposed to it. They dwelt much, too, upon the freedom of the press, and the danger of beginning to restrain it. Whitman acknow ledged that the publication in question was bad enough, — so bad, indeed, that it ' out- Chronicled the Chronicle ; ' yet he did not think it would justify the court in establishing a precedent for cramping the press. This, you will remember, is the first instance of a prosecution here for a libel upon the Government. The Attorney- General, Sullivan, replied in a very able manner, and agreeably disappointed some, who had felt suspicious of him on account of his political biases. He clearly showed the uniform practical necessity of admitting the common law of England in our country ; that it is consistent and reasonable ; that there is a manifest difference between the liberty and the licen tiousness of the press ; that the ' Chronicle ' cried aloud for a cheek, transcending all bounds of decency ; in fine, that nothing could be found in the publications during our Revolution equal to the calumnies of that paper. He was sustained by the whole force of the Bench ; and the verdict of the jury, though containing several democrats, was, Guilty." In August, 1799, Mr. White returned to Cambridge, with a view to give himself exclusively to his professional studies. But his inclination for an academic life broke up tliis purpose, and induced him, in the following November, to accept the 16 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. appointment of Latin tutor in the college, — a place which he held for nearly four years. In a letter to a classmate abroad, dated Nov. 12, 1800, be gives us to understand how the tutors of that day passed their time : — " We have a good opportunity for attending to books, with a rich portion of social comfort ; being together every day, more or less, and free to interchange our thoughts and feelings as they arise. Politics, you know, in all free countries, is the prevailing topic of conversation. When all people are at liberty to speak their thoughts upon the mea sures of government, various parties and opinions will spring up, and produce animated discussions. We hear a great deal of this at our colloquial meetings. While the question was Jacobin or Fede ral, most men of intelligence and honesty here were of one side ; but since, among the latter, the Essex Junto, so called and imagined, has made a new distinction, even we tutors — alias the ' ragged regiment,' as Tutor Barron styled them — are not always agreed. I believe I have mentioned before the mission to France, the disbanding the army, the dismission of Pickering, the pardon of Fries, &c, ; and that these proceedings of President Adams had created dissatisfaction, and pro duced a division among the Federalists, At the head of the new party opposed to the President stands General Hamilton, who has written and published, at least for his political friends, a severe letter against Adams, in which every thing is adduced of an unfavorable character which could be collected from the whole of liis public and private life, his writings and conversation, yet all amounting to little in the eye of candor," He also mentions, in the same letter, a literary enterprise on the part of the Cambridge scholars, in the success of which he seems to have been much interested. " The Phi Beta Kappa Society, at the last Commencement, formed the plan of a ' Literary Review and Miscellany,' to be published by them quarterly.* The committee in charge of the same has since connected it with a magazine to be published monthly in * Professor Willard must have been mistaken in thinking that this vote was passed in 1803. It seems tliat he had to trust to his memory alone; for, on asking permission to search the records of the society, they were not to be found. — See his " Memories of Youth and Manhood," vol. ii. pp. 133, 156. MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 17 Boston ; the communications of the society to be printed at the end, and paged by themselves, so as to admit of being separately bound. I hope you will send us over something for it while you are in England." This plan was not carried into effect ; at least, not immediately, nor in the form here proposed : but the " Literary Miscellany," which first ap peared in July, 1804, grew out of the movement. No allusion is made to the Phi Beta Kappa in the prospectus of the " Miscellany," probably from prudential reasons, as the prejudice was strong at that time against all secret associa tions ; but the members of the society, as Professor Willard tells us, " were expected to be its special patrons." It was a quarterly publication, which struggled on for two years, and then expired, being supplanted by its more successful rival, the " Monthly Anthology." It had among its contributors John Quincy Adams, John Thornton Kirkland, Joseph Stevens Buckminster, and Andrews Norton. Mr. White contributed a paper entitled " Remarks on Memoirs of Solomon Gessner," and probably others. The college, in the time of Mr, White's connection with the Immediate Government, the name then given to the Faculty, was much more dependent on the tutors, both for instruction and discipline, than at present. Teaching, more over, had not as yet become a distinct profession ; so that the tutorships were seldom filled, as they often are now, by persons ambitious to qualify themselves for higher distinc tions in the same calling. Almost without exception, they were students in divinity or law, seldom holding the place more than a single year ; with their minds and hearts intent, meanwhile, on other pursuits and prospects. Under these circumstances, Mr. White's longer residence, together with his decided academic tastes and aptitudes, and his earnest support of a wise and firm rule, made his influence to be felt in college affairs in an unusual degree, and on the right side. Still, as may be gathered from his own statements, things 3 18 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. were managed in a loose way. Referring, in his correspond ence, to the assignment of parts for Commencement in 1802, he observes, " We have taken great pains, and spent ten or twelve evenings, with one afternoon, in adjusting and settling them. The arrangement, on the whole, pleases me, though in some instances I was in the minority on the question for deciding them." Under the present system, the same work would be done for a class twice as large in a quarter of an hour, with as much substantial justice, to say the least, and with infinitely less dissatisfaction and heart-burning. At length, though not, as it would seem, without some im portunity on the part of his friends, he resigned his tutorship. The following passage, in a letter written when he was on the eve of leaving Cambridge, shows that Blackstone, and Coke on Littleton, had not, thus far, succeeded in banishing the classics : — " I have not yet made any positive engagements for the next year. Indeed, I have been quite a recluse at home in study ; not, however, in law, but in Latin. I can truly say, that from no reading have I ever derived more satisfaction and amusement than from TuUy's hterary and philosophical works. He appears to have been a man of as fine feelings as talents. His essays on Old Age and Friendship are supe rior to any thing I ever met with elsewhere on those subjects. I had supposed his ideas on friendship extravagant and romantic ; but I believe he has said nothing which you could not accede to in practice, as I do in theory. His treatise ' De Oratore ' is the groundwork of every thing excellent since produced on the subject ; and as to liis work, ' De Officiis,' nothing exceeds the wisdom and purity of its moral precepts but Christ's Sermon on the Momit." Having decided to finish his legal studies with Mr. (after wards Judge) Putnam in Salem, he removed to that place in September, 1803.* Here he began his intimacy and friend- * From the time of his return to Cambridge, in the summer of 1799, his name had been in an office there, — first in Mr. Joseph Bartlett's, afterwards in Mr. Francis Dana Channing's. In making up the term of study then required for admission to the Bar, these four years were counted for a little more than two. MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 19 ship with Mr. John Pickering, whom he found, to use his own language, " most valuable as a fellow-student in the same office, and altogether delightful as a social and literary com panion." Both were bent on keeping up their scholarly tastes and habits. This appears from the fact, that they had been together but a few months before they accepted a proposition on the part of Cushing and Appleton, publishers in Salem, to edit a new edition of Sallust. It was the earliest, or one of the earliest attempts of the kind in the country; and therefore, as a matter of literary history, deserves more than a passing notice. The text was carefully revised, and collated with three of the best editions of the author, and the most important of the various readings are given. The notes are chiefly selected from the Delphine Sallust; but these are often modified and abridged, and many are inserted from other sources. Un wearied pains were also taken in correcting the press; so that, in this respect, it will bear comparison with the best editions of the classics published here or abroad, Mr. White, in a letter to Mr. Ticknor, gives the following account of the manner in which the editors proceeded with their work : — • "After undertaking the task, we pursued our labors very faithfully together at Mr. Putnam's office ; generally devoting to it several hours of every afternoon. It was to me an exceedingly interesting occu pation, and was rendered altogether delightful from having such a companion in the work. Mr. Pickering was, of course, the arbiter in all our deliberations pertaining to the text and other matters of criticism. What he chiefly expected of me was the selection of notes, especially those to be taken from the Delphine edition ; and I think also my particular attention in regard to the punctuation. In fact, I was but his assistant, and really wished to refer every thing to him ; though, from his habitual modesty, he would seem to refer all to me. In July, 1804, I removed to Newburyport, before our joint undertaking was finished ; and did little more afterwards than to mark the notes selected from the Delphine edition, to look over the proof-sheets which Mr. Pickering sent to me, and to advise about questions which he would 20 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. still insist upon submitting to me. He wrote the Latin preface, and also the English notice in the ' Literary Miscellany ; ' sending both to me for revision, which neither needed. Of the former, he thus speaks in his letter to me : 'I enclose a paper which I am almost ashamed you should see, — a draught of the preface to be prefixed to the Sallust. I beg you, as the responsibility will fall wholly upon you, to look it through with attention, and expunge and alter without mercy.' In another letter, he proposed expunging from our edition the sentence in Marius's speech (near the close) — ' turpissimse parti corporis ' — in the Jugurthine War ; asking me to ' weigh the thing with some attention,' and send my answer. Both of us, indeed, kept in view the benefit of learners, more than the approbation of the learned; and our editorial labors, the entire responsibility of which Mr. Pickering could not escape, ought to be judged accordingly." * Meanwhile, matters more proper to his profession were not neglected. It is interesting to read an account of the impressions made on a young law-student, at the time, by the forensic eloquence and skill of two men whose fame is fast becoming matter of tradition or histor}'. Writing to his classmate Kimball, May 5, 1804, he says, — " I have passed two days at court, and had the satisfaction of hear ing Parsons and Dexter in the Crowninshield case. Each of them delivered a most learned and ingenious argument. Dexter had the weaker side, and therefore made greater exertions, and took up more time ; but, as the case turned on points of law rather than facts, Parsons appeared more eminently to advantage as a lawyer. He is indeed a wonderful man. Perfectly at home in all sorts of law, as well as of other knowledge and learning, he appears to be incapable of surprise or embarrassment ; whereas Dexter, from his deficiency in some of the sciences, and perhaps in some branches of the law, is exposed to both : but his astonishing presence of mind, and his intuitive perception and penetration, secure him a safe and honorable retreat * The titlepage of this edition reads thus: " C. Crispi Sallustii Belli Catilinarii et Jugurthini Historite. Editio emendatior juxta Editiones optimas diligentissime inter secoUatas; illustrata Notis seleotis : cum Indico copioso. Salem, Massachusettensium: Exoudebat Josua Cushing, impensis T. C. Cushing et J. S. Appleton. MDCCCV." Nearly the whole impression was destroyed by fire; and the publishers lost so much otherwise by that calamity, that they had no courage to undertake a second edition. MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 21 from every difficulty. These two men I believe to be the greatest among the lawyers of New England ; yet they are very different. Both are subtle, ingenious, and powerful in argument : but, in the one, it seems to proceed from native strength, and quickness of genius ; and in the other, from a long and labored culture of his genius and logical powers. On subjects of equity, and in addresses to the feelings, or discussions of general policy. Dexter may be superior ; but nowhere else. Parsons is the greater lawyer, — perhaps the greater man. He is certainly the safer model." Mr. White was admitted to the Bar, June 26, 1804 ; and soon afterwards took up his residence and opened an office in Newburyport. Here he won early success as a lawyer : still, the profession never so far engrossed his thoughts as to make him indifferent to other things. The public mind at this time was profoundly agitated by the death of Alexander Hamilton ; and Mr. White's allusions to the event itself, and to the notices of it, are not without interest. They show, what indeed might have been ex pected from his residence in the county and from his principal associations, that he had now become a zealous member of that section of the Federal party known under the sobriquet of " the Essex Junto." Writing to a young friend, Aug. 16, he says, ^ — " The day I left you at Cambridge, I regretted you could not accompany me to Boston, and hear the eulogy on Hamilton. It would have added much to my pleasure, and I think you would have found the performances interesting. The prayer, by Dr. Kirkland, was a sublime and most- affecting devotional exercise. I could not refrain from wishing that all the duties of the day had devolved on him. Mr. Otis, however, gave a clear and full view of the life and services of the illustrious deceased; and, doing this, his eulogy could not fail deeply to interest and gratify his hearers. But it did not rise to that dignity, and pathos of eloquence, which the occasion demanded. His own feel ings did not seem to have been powerfully excited either in the writing or delivery of it ; nor were his expressions always chosen with taste, or a due regard to the moral sublimity of his subject. In some parts of his discourse, however, he was quite happy, as in his apostrophe to 22 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. ' the ministers and warriors of imperial France ; ' but his long apostro phe to 'insatiable Death' might have been spared. A far more masterly delineation of the character of Hamilton has appeared in Dr, Park's ' Repertory,' — a delineation bearing the strong marks of genius and sensibihty. The more you read this fine sketch, the more you will admire it. It is truly original, discriminating, and appropriate. The allusion to Hercules and Hector convey most forcibly and beautifully to our feelings the reasons we have for perpetually deploring the loss of Hamilton. It is not that he was the ornament, so much as that he was the defence, of the country. It is not that he was a man of genius, a scholar and civilian of the highest order, that we so deeply lament him ; but because he had been, and always would have been, the fearless and able advocate of the public interests and rights, — the heroic champion of the Constitution and of the country, in every exigency." In writing to another correspondent, a month later, he expresses himself in still stronger terms. We make room for a brief extract, carrying us back to the time when Massachusetts and South Carolina could think and feel together : — " The subject of your last letter was, as you may well judge from your own feelings, extremely interestmg to me ; nor can it ever cease to be so. My heart is full of it, and running over. Every scrap I find relating to Hamilton, I as eagerly seize as at the first moment of the terrible tidings of his death. Not ten minutes since, I accidentally took up a paper at the insurance-office, which contained a bold, brilliant, and animated sketch of the inimitable man, from the clear head and warm heart of the editor of the Charleston ' Courier.' It was full of pathos. I felt obliged to retreat, in my weakness, to my office. Mr. Carpenter pronounces Hamilton's death the greatest loss this country has heretofore sustained, or can possibly sustain, in the death of any individual. The death of Washington, he thinks, bears no compaiison to it as a national loss.'' The interest which Mr. White took in his friends, and his views of the offices of friendship, were such as would have satisfied Cicero. Indeed, his character in this respect, both in its simplicity and intensity, seemed cast in an antique mould. His friendships were like those we read of in the MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 23 classics and in the Old Testament ; with this difference only, that they were penetrated and informed by a Christian spirit. Of this, the narrative of his life, in the first winter after his settlement at Newburj'port, supplies a striking illustration. His classmate Kimball — his chum while an under-graduate, and a fellow-tutor afterwards — was very dear to him. Mr. Kimball gave but a single year to his tutorship, and there fore was three years in advance of Mr. White in his profession; having already made a beginning of much promise. But a cloud had come over his prospects. The lady to whom he was about to be married had died ; and the symptoms of a fatal malady had begun to menace his own life. It is inter esting to read the correspondence of the two young men at this time ; literally sharing each other's hopes and fears, joys and griefs. As Mr. Kimball's decline became more and more manifest, the tone of his friend's letters becomes almost painfully sympathetic. No mother could betray more anxiety or solicitude, no sister could express it more tenderly ; and, when the inevitable hour drew nigh, every thing but the most pressing duties was forgotten, that he might be at his side. Writing from Haverhill in December, he says, — '¦ My time is now divided between this place and Newburyport. Our friend Kimball is now on the bed, taking a short repose ; too feeble to sit up all the day, and unable to speak except in whispers. I have been with him since Friday last, and find him much weaker than when I was here about a fortnight ago. His cough is very distressing ; and, if not relieved, must bring on a dissolution before many weeks. As to recovering, neither he nor any of his friends have the least hope of it. He has ' set his house in order,' and seems prepared to leave us. He appears a marvel of fortitude and patient resignation. God grant him peace and consolation while he remains, and Christian resolution and hope to sustain his spirit, under all his trials, in a manner worthy of himself! I have long been preparing my mind for the afflictive event which must prove to me so severe a loss ; and I hope I shall be resigned to the will of Heaven.'' 24 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. March 19, 1805, he writes again: — " Our most worthy and beloved friend is no more ! He lost the power of speech between four and five o'clock, and became apparently very easy ; his breath gradually losing its power till it was imperceptibly exhausted. Such is the end of human strength and human greatness. While by his bedside, and watching the last beat of his pulse, I felt, more forcibly than at any moment of my life before, the vanity, the nothingness, of human life, without the solace and prospects of religion. Without religion, every thing is a mystery. This alone enables us to comprehend ourselves ; to feel our httleness, and, at the same time, to understand our importance ; to sustain our afilictions and pains ; and to become worthy of enjoying, in a future life, blessings which we are allowed only to imagine in this.'' After the funeral, seriously affected in his spirits and in his health, he returned home.* But Mr. White's affections were far from being shut up in the narrow circle of his private friendships and intimacies. An address delivered by him before the Merrimack Humane Society, Sept. 3, 1805, contains an earnest plea for a life of public usefulness and Christian philanthropy, f And what he preached he practised. He was one of the founders of the Merrimack Bible Society ; a trustee for many years of Dummer Academy ; an active member of the Committee for obtaining Relief for the Sufferers by the Great Fire in Newburyport. Indeed, so long as he continued to reside in that place, there seems to have been no important movement in the town or vicinity, having for its object the good of the community, with which his name is not connected. * See "A Discourse, delivered in Haverhill, March 22, 1805, at the Funeral of Jabez Kimball, A.M., who died March 19, ast. 33. To which is added a Short Memoir of his Life. By John Snelling Popkin, Minister of Newbury." Mr. White was a great admirer of Dr. Popkin, and his parishioner wliile he continued at Newbury, — thechui-ch not being far from Newburyport. The " Short Memoir," though purporting to come from the author of the discourse, was evidently prepared, at least in substance, by Mr. White. t It is evidence of the favor with which this address was received, that it passed through several editions; the copy before us being of the third. MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 25 Meanwhile, there was no abatement of his interest in the college. He entered eagerly into the controversy raised by Dr. Morse on the election of Dr. Ware, in 1805, to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity ; insisting that there was nothing in the conditions imposed by the founder making it necessary that the election should turn on sectarian grounds. He was also very solicitous about the course which the corporation might take in filling the vacancy occasioned by the dpath of President Willard. It will be remembered that Fisher Ames had just declined the appointment, and the place was still open. In a letter to Mr. White from one of the tutors, dated Feb. 12, 1806, we have a glimpse of college politics in those days : — " Who will be President of Harvard College ? or when the office will be filled ? are questions too difficult to be resolved at present. I hope, with you, that another election wiU not be made before it is ascer tained whether the candidate would accept. It must mortify the pride of every son of Harvard to see his Alma Mater begging for a husband. Dr. Pearson and Dr. Kirkland are principally talked of in this neigh borhood as candidates for the office. The chances in favor of the former I think somewhat less, and for the latter greater, than they were six months ago ; but some other person must be set up before the public opinion will be concentrated. I wonder Mr. Ware, the divinity professor, has not been more canvassed. I think he possesses many qualifications for the office, and shall not be surprised should he eventu ally obtain it. The corporation is pressed on every side to make a second choice immediately ; but that body is not easily impelled to act. You ask what I think of Judge Davis. I have heard very httle said of him, of late, with reference to that office. I believe he told the corporation, about a year since, that he would not consent to be viewed as a candidate. As to his quaUfications, I am not perfectly satisfied. I have not the honor of an intimate acquaintance with him. I, however, esteem him very highly, though not on account of presidential qualities. If my opinion of his character be not erroneous, he had rather read his books than attend to business ; he would sooner second the motion of another, than make one himself; and perhaps would relinquish an object, rather than contend strenuously to gain it. ' His reputation as a 4 26 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. scholar and a gentleman are sufficiently elevated to give the college some celebrity abroad ; but, in discharging the duties of the office, I fear he would be found deficient. He would have more of the suaviter in modo than of the fortiter in re; both which quahties are equally essential in a president." It is hardly necessary to add, that the choice, in this instance, did not fall on either of the candidates mentioned above, but on Professor Webber. Mr. White was married May 24, 1807, to Mrs. Mary van Schalkwyck, daughter of Dr. Josiah Wilder of Lancaster, in this State, who graduated at Yale College in 1767, and died in 1788. The marriage took place at the house of her step father. Dr. Isaac Hurd of Concord. She must have been a lady of uncommon gifts and attractions. Mr. White's letters and private papers, at the time and afterwards, abound in allusions to her, and always in terms overflowing with the tenderest affection and respect. But the connection which promised so much happiness was not to last long. Her failing health soon warned him of this ; without, however, preparing him for it. She died June 29, 1811 ; leaving him with the care of two daughters. This care, from the new interest it awakened and from the spirit in which he entered upon it, was perhaps his best solace. Yet three years after wards, 11 reply to inquiries of a correspondent respecting his loss, he writes : — " I cannot deny that I feel an invincible reluctance at speaking on the subject, though it daily mingles in my thoughts and feelings, and occasionally with the poignancy of renewed grief At times, I feel a sorrow, a desolateness, a heart-sinking regret, of which I could have had no conception without this experience. She was indeed all my heart could wish, and more than I expected to realize in any human being." Prom 1810 to 1815, Mr. White was a member of the Massachusetts Senate. In that day, for so young a man, this was a high political distinction ; but it seems to have had few MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 27 attractions in his view, except the prospect of serving the public. Indeed, in the beginning, there was one circum stance which made the appointment positively irksome : it drew him away from his family, when they stood most in need of his presence and care ; and this apparently to but little purpose, as the government of the State had just passed into the hands of the Democratic party, leaving him in a helpless minority on all the great questions at issue. Party rancor was also then at the highest pitch, — wotse even, in some respects, than if parties had been bounded by sectional or geographical lines. It was hostility between neighbor and neighbor ; social, and, in some cases, family inter course was broken up by it ; differences flamed up into hatred ; almost every considerable man in the country was denounced as " bought by British gold," or as a " tool of French influence," according as he belonged to one side or the other. It was the time of the Embargo and Non-inter course, of the Gerrymander and John Henry, of " Madison's War" and the Hartford Convention. In those days, the newspaper reports of the debates in the Legislature, even on the most exciting topics, were meagre and unsatisfactory: often not so much as the names of the speakers are given. But we learn from other sources, that Mr. White was an active and influential member of the Senate. As a debater, he conducted himself, we are told, " with great dig nity and parliamentary decorum; but when occasion called for it, and his adversary exposed himself by arrogance or inconsistency, or by blunders combined with both, his rebukes were worded with peculiar aptness, and sustained with great power and pungency : " * and when the State returned, as it soon did, to Federalism, the conspicuous place assigned him * Willard's "Memories of Youth and Manhood," vol. ii. p. 111. Professor Willard was one of Judge White's cotemporaries at college, and kept up his friendship and intimacj' to the last. 28 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. on some of the most important committees shows that he was looked up to by his party as a prudent and safe leader. In February, 1814, he was chairman of a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, to which were referred the memorials and remonstrances from a large number of towns in the Commonwealth, protesting against the course of the national administration, and recommending a Congress of Delegates " for the purpose of devising proper measures to procure the united efforts of the commercial States to procure such amendments and explanations of the Consti tution as will secure them against future evils." The committee, in their report, insist on " the right, and think the Legislature ought to vindicate it, of acting in concert with other States, in order to produce a powerful, and, if possible, an irresistible claim for such alterations as will tend to preserve the Union and restore violated privileges; yet they consider that there are reasons which render it inexpe dient, at the present moment, to exercise this power." But the popular uneasiness, occasioned by the unequal pressure of the hardships of the war, went on increasing; making it necessary for Governor Strong to convoke in October an extra session of the General Court. At this session, the scheme of concerted action, by means of a convention of delegates, now limited to New England, was revived and adopted ; and the convention itself was soon afterwards held at Hartford, in Connecticut. Its proceedings were laid before the Massachusetts Legislature in January of the next year, and referred to a joint committee, Mr. White being again the chairman. In their report, they say, — " The expediency of having invited a convention of delegates from the New-England States is fully proved by the result of their labors, communicated with his Excellency's message. The committee entertain a high sense of the wisdom and ability with which this convention have discharged their arduous trust ; and while they maintain the principle of State sovereignty, and of the duties which citizens owe to their MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 29 respective State governments, they give the most satisfactory proofs of attachment to the Constitution of the United States and to the national Union." Room will always be left for difference of opinion as to the wisdom and propriety of calling the Hartford Convention; but we owe it to the memory of the thoughtful and patriotic men whose names are connected with this step, to protest against the absurdity of construing it into a precedent of secession or rebellion. Their purpose was, not to excite the popular discontent, — for this existed already to an alarming degree, — but to temper and direct it. The professed object — and they have never been convicted of any other — was to effect certain reforms, as a means of saving the Union ; and this, too, by a course strictly within the spirit and letter of the Federal Constitution. Mr. White was in correspondence with Mr. Webster during this critical period of the public affairs ; and both concurred in the doctrine thus stated by the latter in a confidential note : " In truth, sir, I think you can do no more than the people compel you, and go no farther than they force you. Whatever is done should be done by the people." Many years afterwards, in an entry in his journal, made at the time of that great statesman's death, Judge White returns to this topic. As his testimony respect ing the whole subject is full and decisive, we introduce it here : — " I am sorry to see it stated in one of the Boston newspapers, that Mr. Webster, ' although classed as a Federalist, stood aloof from the famous Hartford Convention ; ' thus giving an impression that he was not a Federalist of the Hartford-Convention stamp : contrary to the truth, and what is due to him. I was induced, on seeing this, to look up some letters received from Mr. Webster in 1814, when I was ini the Massa chusetts Senate and taking an active part in the politics of the day. The greatest excitement then prevailed in Massachusetts, in conse quence of the war, embargoi, &c. Governor Strong, Mr. Otis, and others, with whom I cordially agreed, were intent upon devising some plan which might satisfy the people, without coming in conflict with the 30 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. General Government ; indeed, without committing any act of nullifica tion, as afterwards called. Governor Strong, the most experienced and sagacious among us at that time in the General Court, was the father of the Hartford Convention. I had many talks with him on the subject, and well remember the grounds on which he recommended such a convention. He said it was perfectly constitutional, and familiar to the people during our Revolutionary struggle ; that it would serve to quiet the minds of the people, and prevent any illegal outbreak, while it afibrded time for consideration of the best means of relief to the people from the intolerable burdens of which they so bitterly com plained," In November, 1814, Mr, White was elected representative in Congress by an almost unanimous vote of the people of his district. He was duly commissioned, and in the act of pre paring to attend an expected extra session of the new Congress in the following spring, when the appointment of Judge of Probate for the County of Essex was offered him. The two offices being incompatible, he concluded, after some hesitation, to resign the former, and accept the latter. Many of his friends regarded this decisiomas a mistake : they held, that he sacrificed to an undue love of leisure and quiet the most flattering professional and political prospects. Looking at wealth and distinction alone, and from their point of view, they were probably right. But we must remember that public life, in itself considered, had no charms for him ; and also that the cares and responsibilities of a lawyer in large practice were positively distasteful. A few days after having been admitted to the Bar, he had written to a young friend, " Last week I took the attorney's oaths, and was admitted into a profession, the chicanery and drudgeiy of which I abhor, and fear I always shall." Accordingly, we cannot wonder at his accepting a situation which was, beyond question, the most congenial to his nature and habits the law could afford. If his success, or the extent of his usefulness, was restricted thereby, the blame should be carried back to his long service MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 31 as tutor at college, where he acquired an invincible prefer ence for a life among books, over one in the noisy and active world. Still, though Mr. White was never fond of the business of a lawyer and advocate, and retired from the Bar before he was fort}'^, he was under great obligations to the profession. It had brought him into notice ; it had been sufficiently remu nerative ; it had trained his faculties to greater precision and vigor and practical efficiency ; it had introduced him into the society and intimacy of some of the most eminent men in the Commonwealth. And as for its moral influences, he had found that these depend not so much on the profession itself as on the character of those who fill it; indeed, that the upright and Christian lawyer has peculiar opportunities and facilities for exposing the abuses of law, for dissuading and repressing a litigious spirit, and for becoming, in other ways, the wise friend, the judicious and kind neighbor. In the early years of his residence in Newburyport, " Lord Timothy Dexter," so called, was one of the notabilities of the place. His Will is almost the only respectable thing recorded of him ; making it more than probable, that for this we are indebted, in part at least, to Mr, White, who was his legal adviser, and drew it up. At any rate, the satisfaction the latter takes in flnding something to approve in so absurd and vainglorious a life deserves mention, as highly characteristic. He thus writes to a friend : — ¦ " Since my last, our ' greatest man in the East ' has breathed his last, and left, perhaps, as good a moral as most great men who have preceded him. I always thought him, you know, a singular and curious modifi cation of human nature ; and, in this view, worthy of the contemplation of the metaphysician and philosopher. His mind and manners were original in their way, and the religious and philosophical opinions he avowed were a most ingenious burlesque upon the absurdities and inconsistencies of some of the brightest philosophizing of modern times. His most ludicrous display of riches, and the truly ridiculous light in 32 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. which it placed him, seem designed by Providence to exemplify the real value of wealth without virtue or talent ; while the disposition of his property at death affords a lesson of humanity and wisdom to the greatest and best rich men among us. His WUl is, I believe, the most generous and judicious ever known in this town. Beside a proper family arrangement of his estate, he has given two thousand dollars to his native town for the support of the gospel ; as much more to this town for the support of the poor ; a liberal legacy to a poor lame boy ; with other benevolent legacies. This, I think, ought to consecrate his memory, and tinge with a blush the face of many a sordid son of Mammon, whose amusement is to laugh at Dexter's follies and images." We may add, that Mr. White's professional reputation, and the confidence inspired thereby, extended beyond his own State. At the June session of the New-Hampshire Legisla ture, in 1815, he was appointed chairman of a committee, consisting of himself, the Hon. Nathaniel A. Haven of Ports mouth, and the Rev. Ephraim P. Bradford of New Boston, to inquire into the difficulties which had arisen between Presi dent Wheelock of Dartmouth College and its trustees. The committee met at Hanover in August ; and, after the parties had been heard, a report was drawn up, giving a carefully prepared statement of the facts in the case, as far as they could be ascertained. It was printed, but never made the ground of legislative action. The State underwent, at this time, a political revolution ; and the party coming into power, instead of trying to adjust the dispute which had grown up among the friends of the college, chose to turn it into an occasion for " amending," that is to say, invading, the college charter. The report is a document of importance to those who would understand the history of the famous " Dartmouth- College case " from the beginning. Mr. White, after his appointment as Judge of Probate, continued to reside at Newburyport until Jan. 3, 1817. He then returned to Salem, where he passed the remainder of MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 33 his days. The Salem of forty or fifty years ago brings up to our recollections the names of Bowditch and Story and Pick ering and Pickman and Silsbie and Saltonstall and Crownin shield, and a multitude of others hardly less worthy of note. The men who bore these names, and made them distinguished, were all living there at that time, and gave tone to society. Happily, also, the political dissensions, which had once im- bittered it more or less, were fast giving way to a new con stitution of parties, which began with the return of peace. Under these circumstances, to one fond of books and quiet, and equally so of frequent intercourse with cultivated and refined persons of both sexes, there could hardly have been a more eligible place of residence. To complete his happiness, he was married, Aug. 1, 1819, to Mrs. Eliza Wetmore, only daughter of William Orne, Esq,, one of the eminent merchants of Salem. This lady brought a handsome accession to his fortune. She also brought per sonal qualities which made her to be universally respected and beloved, and which were especially fitted to secure and grace a refined, hospitable, and Christian home. He now closed his law-office, and took his books and papers to his house in Court Street, formerly the residence of his wife's father, where an apartment had been fitted up as a library to receive them. The house and library he continued to occupy to the last ; but the marriage which led to these changes, and which promised so much happiness, was of brief duration. His second wife was, like his first, of a delicate constitution. The tender solicitude with which he watched over her health, and sought to lighten her cares, was of no avail. To his inexpressible grief, she died March 27, 1821, soon after having given birth to a son. The terms in which the newspapers of the day, in Boston as well as Salem, speak of this event, show that the early death of a person of so much modesty and worth, and of such active benevolence, was felt to be a public loss. 5 34 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. For some years previous to the resignation of Judge White's predecessor, it was generally expected that whoever should succeed him would find it to be his duty to introduce important changes in the mode of conducting the probate business of the county. Judge White accepted the office with this express understanding, and soon afterward began and carried into effect the necessary reforms ; his object being "to render the new system of practice as simple as possible, consistently with the main design of securing a legal and correct course of proceedings, as well on the part of the court as of those who act under its authority." The principal changes consisted in requiring that important judicial acts, which had often been by parol only, should always be in writing, and matter of record ; in a more scrupulous care, on the part of the judge, never to confer or advise with parties out of court, and not in the presence of each other, concerning matters subject to his judicial determination ; and in ordering due notice to parties adversely interested, whenever it seemed to be required, either by statute provisions or by the general rules of law. To persons unacquainted with the law, and unable to appreciate the use and necessity of legal forms, the delays and expense thus occasioned were simply annoying. There is also reason to suspect that old political grudges had something to do with the discontent. This state of feeling gave rise to a memorial, addressed to the House of Representatives at the summer session of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1821, representing that com plaints had been made, by people having business in the Probate Court of the County of Essex, that the Judge allowed the Register to demand unauthorized fees ; and that both Judge and Register refused to give applicants the usual and necessary information in the settlement of estates. The memorial was referred to a special committee, by whom an inquiry was instituted ; in the course of which, such witnesses only were examined as were named by and in behalf of the MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 35 memorialists. The result of the inquiry, even in the one sided and distorted view of an ex--parte hearing, was such as to induce the committee to recommend that no further action should be taken in the premises ; and their report was accept ed without a dissenting voice.* Here ended these vexatious proceedings. But Judge White was determined that the world should know precisely what he had done, and his reasons for doing it. Accordingly, early in the following year, he published a pamphlet of one hundred and forty-eight pages, entitled " A View of the Jurisdic tion and Proceedings of the Courts of Probate in Massachu setts, with Particular Reference to the County of Essex," The pamphlet begins with an historical sketch of the progress of probate law and jurisdiction from the first settlement of the country. Then follows a full account of the former prac tice of the Essex Probate Court, and of the changes he had introduced; every one of the, latter being abundantly justi fied by citations from the statutes and judicial reports of the Commonwealth. The whole concludes with some observations on the course taken by the House of Representatives respect ing the memorial. And here he does not object to the investigation : his complaint is, that the House forgot that it was an ex-parte investigation, and therefore not to be used at all, except as ground of proceeding against the accused by form of impeachment. They had a right to bring him to trial, where he would be heard in his own defence ; but, declining to do this, they had no right to assume the truth of an ex- parle statement of facts, and to enter it upon their records as such, with the comments of the committee, partly favorable * The only surviving member of this committee, Hon. James Savage, informs us that it was this investigation which led to a very important and beneficial change in the Probate Courts, — the substituting of "moderate but competent salaries " in the place of fees. He adds, " I suppose that the opinions of the complainants and witnesses to the charges against those Essex-County officers became unanimous in concurrence with the committee." 36 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. and partly unfavorable, on his alleged conduct. His own words are, — "As the grand inquest of the Commonwealth, the power of the House of Representatives seems to be hmited to making inquisition in the manner of a grand jury, and presenting, if they find sufficient cause, for a hearing and trial before the proper tribunal. If so, the power of exhibiting the facts resulting from any such inquisition, with their opinion upon them as a definitive verdict, must be wholly as sumed ; and, when exercised against those who have no opportunity for defence or justification, it may become alike unconstitutional and unjust." For several years. Judge White's household was presided over with singular judgment and grace by a niece, after wards the wife of the Rev. Dr. Peabody of Springfield. This state of things continued until Jan. 22, 1824; when he was married to Mrs. Ruth Rogers, daughter of Joseph Hurd, Esq., of Charlestown, a successful and highly respected mer chant. Happy in his domestic relations ; with abundant leisure for reading and study ; interested in all the great questions of the day ; troubled by no " hope to rise, or fear to fall," — his life flowed tranquilly on ; leaving little else to record but his opinions on passing events, and his efforts to promote what he conceived to be important public objects. Among the latter. Harvard College continued to hold the foremost place, espe cially its theological department. What, in his view, recom mended the Divinity School at Cambridge, more than any thing else, was the fundamental principle of its constitution, which reads thus : " It being understood, that every encou ragement be given to the serious, impartial, and unbiased investigation of Christian truth, and that no assent to the peculiarities of any denomination of Christians be required of the students or professors or instructors." As far back as 1816, "A Society for the Promotion of Theological Education in Harvard College " was instituted, of which he was a MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 37 director. The object of this association was " to provide funds for assisting meritorious students in divinity, of limited means, to reside at Cambridge while preparing for the min istry." This society was reconstituted in 1824, with much larger scope and powers. Divinity Hall was erected under its auspices, and the general management of the affairs of the school was intrusted to it. In 1826, with the knowledge and consent of the corporation of the college, an act of incor poration was obtained, guaranteeing to the directors of the new society a legal existence, and a concurrent jurisdiction with the proper academic authorities in the administration of the school and its funds. But the corporation suddenly changed its policy, and refused assent to the act ; thus render ing it null: whereupon the whole project was abandoned, and the property owned by the society was made over to the col lege. Judge White, who, as the only lawyer among the directors, had been chiefly relied on in drawing up the papers and forwarding the measure, was never reconciled to the course finally taken by the corporation. To the last, he maintained that this plan for the support and conduct of the school, after having been mutually agreed upon by both par ties, ought to have been carried out. He also believed that it promised to be the best and most satisfactory adjustment of the difficulties growing out of the connection between the school and the college which has ever been suggested. The old Revolutionary patriots were now rapidly passing away; and no one regretted the loss of their society and influence more thp,n he. Writing to his brother-in-law, Samuel Orne, Esq., of Springfield, Feb. 2, 1829, he says, — '' Colonel Pickering's funeral was om Saturday ; intended by the fa mUy to be as private as possible, agreeably to his well-known opinions on the subject. Still, a large concourse of our most respectable people assembled at the house, and followed his remams to the tomb, which is directly opposite the old Pickering Mansion, where he was born, and but a few rods from it. As I left the place, it was a soothing reflection. 38 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. that, after all his hazards and suffering and toU, he had returned at last to repose in peace with his fathers. He was one of the rare number, mentioned by Mr. Ames in his ' Eulogy on Washington,' ' who were born, and who acted through life as if they were born, not for them selves, but for their country and mankind.' He was more truly and more entirely devoted to the service of the public, to the neglect of private interests, and more ready to give his exertions to advance any good object or general interest, and more eflicient in his labors for the purpose, than any man I ever knew. He was a true republican, in the best sense of the term, and a lover of liberty throughout the world, ¦ — ¦ as much opposed to the Holy Alhance as to Bonaparte, and as zealous for the poor Greeks as he always had been for the hberties of his own country." About this time, lyceums were growing into favor. Asso ciations under this name had been organized in some of the southern towns of Worcester County as early as the autumn of 1826, in imitation, doubtless, of the mechanics' institutes in England, which Lord Brougham and the Edinburgh Re view had done so much to bring into notice. In 1829, they had made such progress in the Commonwealth, that a public meeting was held in Boston, consisting of members of the Legislature and other gentlemen, with a view to give form and system to the movement by means of state and county institutions. In a scheme like this, promising to become an effective instrument for the diffusion of useful knowledge among the people. Judge White could not fail to take a lead ing part. He was the first president of the Salem Lyceum, one of the largest and best conducted in the State ; and also of the Essex-County Lyceum. Before the latter, at Ipswich, May 5, 1830, he delivered the introductory address ; in which he explains the purpose of lyceums, answers the common objections, and endeavors to impress on the whole movement a practical and wise direction. Many persons were under stood to fear, that a general diffusion of knowledge would unfit the laboring-classes for their proper work, or make them discontented with it. This objection, originating, consciously MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 39 or unconsciously, in an aristocratic spirit, and entirely out of place under a government like ours, is met by him with cha racteristic plainness of speech : " Upon the same principle, the slaveholder, in a land of liberty, would shut out from the mind of his slave every ray of light which might disclose to him higher duties than implicit submission to his earthly mas ter. Thanks to our fathers, who have transmitted^ to us the blessings of freedom and knowledge, we live und'er institu tions which recognize no distinctions but what our Creator has made, or enabled us to make for ourselves." A pamphlet was published in 1832, entitled " Correspond ence between the First Church and the Tabernacle Church in Salem ; in which the Duties of Churches are discussed, and the rights of Conscience vindicated." This correspondence grew out of a refusal on the part of the Tabernacle Church to give the usual letter of dismission and recommendation to one of its members, who wished to become connected with the First Church ; the principal reason assigned for the refu sal being an alleged defection on the part of the latter from the great doctrines of Christianity. What was local and per sonal in the controversy is of little interest now, and may as well be forgotten ; but there is one letter in the collection, written by Judge White, and filling one hundred and twenty- seven pages, which is of permanent value. It is an elaborate defence of Protestant and Congregational liberty, remarkable for the array of authorities, mostly Orthodox, by which every position is illustrated and confirmed. It is also important as a reflection of the writer's own mind and character. Judge White was a consistent Protestant Christian, if there ever was one. He asserted the right to interpret the Scriptures for himself, without the forfeiture of the Christian name or Chris tian privileges. And he did not stop there. He respected and vindicated this right in others, — not only in those who believe more, which is easy enough ; but also in those who be lieve less, which is one of the hardest trials to which our 40 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. humility and sincerity are ever put. He spoke from the bot tom of his heart when he said, — " Strange, indeed, that Christians, whose very profession constitutes a bond of union, whose divine Master has taught them that their love to one another wiU be the test of their discipleship to him, and whose religion inculcates the spirit of love and charity as an indispensable qualification for heaven, should yet deliberately act from an opposite spirit, — judging, censuring, avoiding, and reviling one another ; and this, too, on account of religious opinions which all have an equal right to form for themselves, and none the least authority to control in others ! Strange to astonishment, indeed, that those should persist in this fatal error who glory in being reformed from it ; that Protestants, in the full light and liberty of the gospel, avowing the equal right of all to free inquiry, private judgment, and honest profession, and, conse quently, their own obligation to receive all as brethren who conscienti ously manifest their Christian faith, should thus trample on the laws of brotherly love in the face of their own declared principles ! " There was something in Judge White's personal character, as well as in the nature of his friendships and intimacies, which seemed to mark him out as a fit person to speak of the dead. Even when an undergraduate, he was selected to pro nounce a funeral discourse on his classmate Wellington, — a young man of much promise, who was drowned in Fresh Pond early in his senior year. While tutor, he was called upon to perform a like service on occasion of the death of Samuel Shapleigh, the librarian. Again: in the national mourning which followed the death of Washington, he deli vered the eulogy before the people of his native town, at their earnest request. As he advanced in life, there were also other reasons for looking to him on such occasions ; espe cially the terms of confidence and familiarity on which he had lived with many distinguished men of the past generation, even though greatly his seniors, and the extent to which he could avail himself of personal reminiscences. The conse quence was, that for many years before his death, if a biogra phy or commemorative discourse was to be written, he was MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 41 almost sure to be consulted. This is sometimes acknowledged by the publication of his letters, or extracts from them, in answer to such applications ; as in the memoirs of Professor Frisbie;* and, at still greater length, in those of Profes sor Popkin, of Dr, Channing, and of Chief-Justice Parsons, Important and carefully prepared obituary notices from his pen were likewise given from time to time in the newspapers of the day, — mostly in the Salem Gazette. When, therefore. Dr. Bowditch died, March 16, 1838, and the city of Salem resolved to notice the event by a public discourse on his life and character, the service was assigned , almost as a matter of course, to Judge White. The eulogy is an admirable one in all respects, and particularlj'- for the force he gives to the example of that remarkable man by dweUing on his early struggles and triumphs. The description of the last interview on earth between the two friends is full of instruction : ¦ — • " It was my privilege to visit him the week before he died ; and my mind irresistibly turns to the sublime and affecting scene, which will never fade from my memory. I found him seated in his library, more emaciated than I had ever seen any one before. The frame of his noble head, with his lofty forehead, never appeared in so striking a view ; while his penetrating eye had all its wonted lustre, and his whole aspect was unearthly and sublimely impressive. His voice, though feeble, was clear and distinct; and his words flowed with their accus tomed rapidity. Being deeply affected by his whole appearance and conversation, and absorbed in the feelings which these produced, I could not retain much of the language which he uttered, though the general impression of what he said is indelibly fixed in my mind. I recollect, however, his expressions in speaking of his early and deep sense of religious truth and accountabihty. ' I cannot remember,' he said, ' when I had not this feeling, and when I did not act from it, or endeavor to. In my boyish days, when some of my companions, who had become * The " Extract from a Letter to the Editor," constituting a considerable part of the biographical notice prefixed to Professor Frisbie's "Miscellaneous Writings," and there given anonymously, was by him. 6 42 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. infected with Tom Piiine's infidelity, broached his notions in conversa tion with me, I battled it with them stoutly, not exactly with the logic you would get from Locke, but with the logic I found liere (pointing to his breast) ; and here it has always been, — my guide and support. It is my support still,' " Harvard College had conferred on Judge White, in 1837, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. At the Commencement in 1844, he delivered the Address before the Alumni. It abounds in expressions of love and reverence for his Alma Mater, and of his solicitude for her moral safety and progress. While dwelling on the last-mentioned topic, he is led to say, " Let the next foundation laid here in aid of education be a Profes sorship of the Philosophy of the Heart and the Moral Life." These words attracted the attention of his friend. Miss Caro line Plummer ; and the college is understood to be indebted to them for the foundation of the Plummer Professorship of Christian Morals. Two years afterward, though then seventy, he consented to deliver the eulogy on his friend John Pickering before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Here again he dilates, some indeed may think disproportionately, on the early life and studies of the subject of the address ; but it is that he may exhibit him " as the model scholar." He thus speaks of his own intimacy with Mr. Pickering, which began, as before stated, when they were law-students in the same office : — " While he had been abroad, expanding his views of men as well as books, I had been confined to a didactic sphere within the waUs of col lege. On emerging into the world, nothing could have been more wel come to me than such a companion. His society was alike instructive and delightful : it brightened the whole time I was with him, and made it one of the sunniest spots of my life. From that moment, I was for many years a close observer of him in public and in private ; at the Bar, and among his friends ; in his walks, and amid his studies ; in the bosom of his family, and at my own fireside : and, to my view, his whole path of life was luminous with truth and goodness, — never ob- MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 43 scured, no, not for a moment, by the slightest shade of obliquity in him. To the eye of reflecting age, truth and goodness are every thing ; mere genius and fame, nothing, — in the comparison, absolutely nothing." Mr. Pickering's " genius and fame," however, are not for gotten. Brief notices are given of his numerous and valuable contributions to law and letters, and especially of what he did for classical literature and comparative philology, where he had few if any equals, and no superiors, in this country. For the last forty years of Judge White's life, much of his time was passed among his books, of which he had a large and various collection. He had been a book-collector from an early period. This he takes occasion to regret, at times, in words like the following : — " My enumeration of books, closed to-day, has impressed me afresh with the inexpediency of accumulating such a number. With me the desire to collect books arose from peculiar circumstances, and increased as it was gratified. The class of 1802, on leaving college, presented me with one hundred dollars' worth of books. The class of 1806, when I left as tutor in 1803, did the same. Habit has made the purchase of books a pleasure, and the distribution of them a greater pleasure than any other kind of donation. Several thousand volumes, I beheve, have passed through my hands to others." It is not unlikely, that, in one respect, he had a right to look on his library as an evil, or at least as a temptation. Its miscellaneous character, in which it is hard to say whether law, divinity, history, or classical literature, predominated, fostered a natural tendency to general and desultorj^ reading. His journal shows, however, that he knew how to speak with great affection of his mute friends : — " Alone this evening. Solitude, for a time, not unpleasant. Indeed, in the midst of my books, I feel, for the most part, ' never less alone than when alone.' Books are excellent company, and choice and fa miliar books are dear friends, and their company always sweet and delightful ; at the same time, instructive and useful, — ready to impart any sort of information, to answer any inquiries, solve any doubts on 44 MEMOIR OF HON, DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. any subject in the whole range of literature, history, and science ; full of curious learning, wit, and pleasantry ; and freely communicating their rich stores of intelligence, without weariness or impatience, however importunately, or even impertinently, inquiries may be made of them. With such companions, one never need feel alone, and may well feel justified in prizing their society above any other. Yet few have more reason to bless God for their family and accustomed society than I have : those who have just left me alone will be most affectionately welcomed on their return." No father ever bestowed more thought or care on the edu cation of his children. As he was determined to leave no part of this duty undone, it is well that he entered upon it with the Mase precaution, that there is also danger in over- doi7ig. The spontaneous life, in its time and place, is as sacred as the reflective and moral life. Writing to a lady respecting his daughters, when they were quite young and under his sole care, he says, " My little girls are in fine health and spirits, and appear to have acquired nothing bad. My ' plans of education ' have as yet scarcely extended beyond these objects : so you will perceive I need ' enlightening ' on the subject." Even in respect to morals and religion, he holds that " excess of regulation and discipline is probably as perni cious as the opposite extreme of indulgence. Both are bad enough. Our aim should be, to pursue a middle course ; allowing Nature free scope in unfolding and maturing all her generous feelings and principles, without indulging the growth of any bad ones ; correcting what is wrong, and stimulating by kindness what is right; checking vicious, but cherishing virtuous propensities ; preventing bad habits and unkindly associations, and promoting the reverse ; giving, in fact, to our children the benefit of our superior wisdom and experience, without subjecting them to the perverting influ ence of our caprice, passions, or excessive fondness." On one point, however, he shows himself to be inflexibly of the old school. Thus, in another letter to the same correspond- MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 45 ent, he writes : " Your ideas of discipline in early education appear to me perfectly just ; more so, indeed, than I had a right to expect. So much heresy on this subject prevails among some of the best people in the higher ranks, that I did not know whether you had wholly escaped it. But, if expe rience has settled any thing in education, it is the necessity of implicit obedience. This once established, the foundation of character, as you observe, may be considered as laid." Yet this implicit obedience was not looked for as the result of physical or moral constraint. He did not think to govern his children against their will, but through their will. They grew up under the impression that what he required of them was not for his own ease or profit, nor yet for the order or credit of the family, but because it was right and for their good. The leading qualitites of his mind and character, though not in other respects particularly attractive to the young, were of a nature to inspire confidence in an eminent degree as to the singleness and integrity of his aims ; and this is what children, by a sort of instinct, are the first to see and appreciate. To his children, therefore, his authority was not so much an arbitrary will as an external conscience, which they were to obey spontaneously as a condition of freedom and safety. Such a father, when his children left home for school, was not likely to feel that he had hired other persons to relieve him of his parental responsibilities. By frequent correspond ence, and other acts of kindness and attention, he took care that the best influences of home should follow them wherever they went. His letters to his eldest son alone exceed six hundred. These letters are not, of course, for the public eye ; but they abound in wisdom, in tenderness, in sympathy, without falling into the error, so common with anxious parents, of overdoing the matter of good advice. A single specimen will show how natural and real was the intercourse between father and son ; in short, that there was mutual 46 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. respect as well as mutual love. The son had just joined his class at college. " In the haste of your departure in the morning, I forgot to answer your question, ' Who said he would not read the Scriptures, for fear of spoiling his style ? ' Turning to Blackwall's ' Sacred Classics,' I had found, before you left, that it was Cardinal Bembo, a Venetian noble man, secretary of Pope Leo X., and made cardinal to reward his ser vices to the Holy See, Avithout much regard to his faith. But the reference by Blackwall proves only that Bembo advised a friend not to read St. Paul's Epistles, if he loved elegance of style. This, too, was the remark of another as to what he said ; not a quotation from Bembo himself. Altogether, it is but one instance out of a milUon of the growth of charges and errors from little or nothing, and their transmission from writer to writer, crescentes eundo, where there is a party or sectarian feeling to be gratified by it, or a taste for the mar vellous to be indulged. " I have also been struck by another sort of historical uncertainty, upon looking into several accounts of Alexandria, in consequence of Mr. Buckingham's stating, in the lecture we heard together, that its principal street was a thousand feet wide ; a statement which appeared to me incredible. The ' Universal History ' had represented it to be a hundred feet. Gillies, in his ' History of the World,' states it to be a little over a hundred. But the ' Encyclopasdia Britannica ' and Rees's ' Cyclopaedia,' probably from Savary's ' Letters on Egypt,' make it two thousand feet. What Savary's authority was for such a vast common of sand, I cannot imagine, any more than I can Buckingham's for his thousand feet, which I find nowhere else mentioned. Sa- vary refers to ancient authorities generally, and particularly Strabo. If this author is accessible to you, I wish you would look over the seventeenth book, and see what he says of Alexandria, and especiaUy of the width of the principal streets. Diodorus Siculus, as you will see in a passage from him in the ' Greek Reader,' states the width to be a hundred feet; a better authority, I should think, than Strabo, except when the latter speaks upon his own knowledge and observa tion. " But enough of that. Mr. Young seemed to regard Mr. Bucking ham as somewhat of a charlatan, or, at least, bent upon money-making by his lectures, and not always well informed on subjects where he is most confident. He mentioned a ludicrous instance of this ignorance MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 47 in his allusion to bricks he had seen in Egypt, — the walls of Zoan, — made ' without straw,' under Pharaoh's cruel order to that effect ; whereas the order was, that they should not be furnished with straw, but get it for themselves." We have referred more than once to Judge White's diary, begun in early life, but kept for many years without much method or regularity. From January, 1841, he seems to have paid more attention to it ; his daily entries becoming an important record of passing events, as well as of his own reading and thoughts. This portion of the journal opens thus : — " New Year's Day much as usual : all rejoicing with devout grati tude in the mercies of the past year to all the members of our family, to our friends, our city, and indeed the whole country ; more especially in regard to the propitious political changes it has brought, and the brightening prospects for the future." The " brightening prospects " here mentioned were due to the recent election of General Harrison as President, so soon to be clouded over by his untimely death. Already a ques tion, menacing the integrity of the Union, had begun seriously to trouble thoughtful minds. As far back as 1837, Judge White had written a letter to vindicate a neighboring clergy man against aspersions cast upon him for alleged proslavery leanings, in which he uses these words: — " If the Immediate Abolitionists would study practical good, instead of raving and romancing upon theories of human liberty, they might at least be harmless in their movements. As it is, there is great dan ger that they wUl do much, by exciting the passions and fears of the South, to hasten the destruction of the Union; which, whenever it takes place, wUl be found to be the most awful political event that can happen. But I need not, perhaps, anticipate it. I pray it may not arrive in even your day : I have httle fear that it will in mine. It ought not to be thought of for a moment, as a remedy for any pubKc evUs, by any American who lays claim to a spark of wisdom or patriotism," 48 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. From this time, it is instructive to mark the influence which the overbearing and aggressive conduct of the South had on a mind strongly opposed, in the beginning, to anti- slavery agitation, and anxious that the compromises of the Constitution should be strictly maintained. One of the first outrages committed by the slave-power, which had the effect to open his eyes to its lawless and desperate character, was the treatment which his friend Mr. Hoar received at Charles ton in 1844, We find in his diary the substance of a con versation which he had with Mr. Hoar soon after his return ; from which we take the following : — " I asked him if he had anticipated any such violent opposition as he had encountered in Charleston, He said, Not at all. He supposed he might have legal and technical difficulties thrown in the way of any suit he might bring to test the constitutionality of the South-Carolina law for imprisoning our free blacks, but thought not of personal abuse and outrage. He was, however, identified at once with our Abolition ists, and considered as coming to carry out their views. I asked, if they could not be made to understand that he came to settle, or attempt to settle, a question of abstract right, as respected our own citizens, without reference to their slaves. He replied, that one might as well reason with the tempests as with their excited passions ; that the people and the Legislature inflamed each other as the cars passed to and fro between Charleston and the seat of government. He became the object of mob fury ; and to save the city from disgrace, however little they might regard his life, the better sort took him and his daughter to the boat." In another entiy, under date of March 7, 1850, we see him beginning to apprehend the whole extent of the evil : — " Read a full-length report of Calhoun's speech, in which he calls for an amendment of the Constitution to restore to the South its equili brium in the Government. As if the South had not always had the preponderance. By thus requiring an impossibility as the means of saving the Union, he shows his desire to lose it ; but he wiU find him self no nearer his wish by disclosing it in so barefaced a manner,'' MEMOIR OP HON, DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 49 After South Carolina had voted to secede, and only a few weeks before his own death, he thus wrote to a much-re spected friend, the Rev. Dr. Sprague of Albany : — " Trouble we may expect, — perhaps bloodshed ; but I cannot allow myself to doubt that a discreet and firm perseverance on the part of the National Government in enforcing the laws — just and constitu tional laws — will prove effectual, and preserve the Union, and ulti mately the peace and continued prosperity of the wliole people. What an astounding fact it would be in history to all posterity, that the American Union and glorious Constitution of Government — the result of seven years of brave struggles, and as many more of anxious and wise deliberation ; a Government under which the nation has enjoyed _ unparaUeled prosperity for more than seventy years, and the original number of States been increased threefold — should be broken up by a faction, without a single grievance to urge against the Government, or pretence of grievance ; but merely from the result of a fair constitu tional election, and the apprehension of evil therefrom to the institution of slavery ! " In politics. Judge White began by being, as we have seen, a high-toned Federalist. After the dissolution of the old Federal party, he became a Whig, and continued faithful until that party was also very generally given up. At the time of his death, he was a Republican; having voted for Fremont and Lincoln at the last two presidential elections.* He did not consider that these nominal changes involved a real change of principles. Whenever the conversation turned on the old issues, he was still a Federalist ; not bating one jot of his admiration of Hamilton, or of his antipathy to Jeffer son. But old principles were now to be applied to new exigencies ; calling, as he conceived, for new combinations * That he belonged to what is called " the conservative wing " of the Republican party, is evident from the following statement in his journal : " Bell and Everett would satisfy me, were not their election utterly hopeless." And again: " called for subscription to pay Brown's counsel, &c. Decline, and express my utter reprobation of the motive and object of Brown in the Harper's-Ferry aflFair; tending, so far as we justify him, to place us in the wrong, and weaken our defence against the wrongs of the slave-power." 7 50 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. and a new policy. In all this, however, he insisted, again and again, there was no inconsistency, no defection, no going over to the enemy. His sensitiveness and jealousy on this point are seen in what he says in his diary of Dr. Channing's " Memoirs : " — " Delightful reading ; confirming all my old, deep impressions of Dr. Channing's unsurpassed excellence of heart and life and character. The author, perhaps, has shown his uncle's union with the Abolition party in too prominent a light, and given an erroneous impression as to his change of political doctrines, or forsaking his early Federalism. This, as it seems to me, he never did ; though, in the progress of the spirit of reform, he appeared to approach true Democracy, — which really was the spirit of the founders of the Federal Constitution and of Federalism, — against the anti-Federalists, who afterwards assumed the name of Democrats, and with whom Dr. Channing had no sympa thy at any period of his life." In religion, his mind, after being once made up, underwent as little change of any kind as it well could. He never for got his obligations to Priestley for saving him, when he first turned his attention seriously to the subject, from scepticism. Priestley's writings did not make him a Materialist or a Necessitarian ; but they convinced him of two things, in which he never afterwards wavered : in the first place, that Christianity, rightly understood, is entirely reasonable and credible ; and, secondly, that there is satisfactory evidence of its supernatural origin and divine authority. Like Professor Norton, he built but little on what is cafled natural religion ; that is to say, on men's unassisted reasonings or alleged intuitions respecting God and a future state. On these high themes, the speculations of philosophers did not seem to him to be worth much. They settled nothing. Accordingly, whatever he expected or hoped for in heavenly things was " through Christ," The interpretation of the message, as it has come down to us, should be as free as the air ; but he did not see how its authority could be questioned without MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 51 destroying its chief value. With these views, he wrote, April 9, 1848 : — "To my surprise, Theodore Parker appeared in our pulpit, and preached all day. In the forenoon, from Revelation: 'A voice from heaven, which said, Come up hither.' In the afternoon, on prayer: quite a good discourse; better than the morning, which was quite characteristic, containing some sneering, some inconsistencies. Was sorry that Mr. Stone thought it proper to exchange with him ; believ ing, as I do, that he rejects the divine autJim-ity of Christ : but I had no doubt that it was proper for me to hear him candidly, without sitting in judgment on him or Mr. Stone." The language here used by Judge White, in expressing his discontent, illustrates at once the strength and positive nature of his convictions, and the catholic temper in which they were held. After a careful and serious study of the Bible, not exceeded, perhaps, by that of any other layman in this country, he still adhered to Unitarianism, as the doctrine of the gospel, as the true meaning of God's word. He knew, however, that this was but one among several interpretations, all founded on the honest but fallible judgment of men, and all, therefore, standing, in this respect, on the same level. Hence he maintained, that a mere difference of interpreta tion ought not to exclude a man from the name and privileges of a Christian. But he could not be persuaded to put the question of interpretation and the question of authority on the same footing. Not that he was prepared to judge those even who denied the authority of the Christian revelation : they had as good a right to determine for themselves that question as any other. He merely thought such persons a little too exacting, when they demanded, not only to be allowed to hold and propagate their opinions, but also that the Church should afford them facilities for that purpose. He was a Unitarian : still he preferred to be considered, in his character, as a liberal Christian. He would never allow that he was a sectarian in the common or bad sense of that 52 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. term. " The Bible, and the Bible only," was his creed ; with the understanding that men would read it with different eyes. It was not for him to judge men's works by their faith, but their faith by their works. As for the fruits of the Christian faith, including a truly liberal and magnanimous spirit, he could see them in other denominations as well as in his own ; and, wherever he saw them, he delighted to acknowledge them. The most that he claimed for Unitarianism, on the score of a true Catholicism, was, that all its influences were in the right direction ; that in itself it was essentially catholic. Of course, he did not deny that a Unitarian could be a bigot ; but, if he were so, it must be from the narrow and despotic character of his own mind: he would look in vain for the shadow of a reason or apology for it in the principles he professed. It could not be said of him, what has so often been said of Christians of other persuasions, as mitigating the ofi'ence ; namely, that they were bigots and exolusionists, and sometimes persecutors, as a matter of consistency, and for conscience' sake. There is no topic to which he refers more frequently than to this. We give a single passage, selected the rather as it incidentally expresses his views on another subject concerning which he had thought much : — " March 6, 1846. — Wrote to Henry. Spoke at some length touching Harvard- College sectarianism ; agreeing with him that the term is not applicable to Christians of the most liberal sentiments, foUowing only Christ as Master, and united by no settled tenets, but upon the principle that each one is to exercise his own judgment and conscience, without interference or restraint from others, in finding the truth from the Scriptures. The more closely they adhere to this foundation principle, the more steadfastly they follow it out, the more anti-sectarian they thus become, and the less subject to be called ' sectarian.' This they can be justly called only in the broad sense of Christian sect, — the sect of which Paul was, when it was ' everywhere spoken against.' But the Orthodox who complain of sectarianism in Harvard College find this a popular string to harp upon. What their object would be, if they had MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 53 the power, is manifest from what they have done at Andover. That institution, as the Rev. Dr. Woods stated in a late anniversary dis course, took its rise from the election of Dr. "NFare as Hollis Professor in 1805 ; Samuel Abbot diverting, on account of that election, the large donation designed in his will for Cambridge to founding the institution at Andover. Had they got possession of Cambridge, would they not have wished to establish the same strict creed there which they did at Andover? Would not their consciences have worked alike in both places ? The true distinction between these different classes of pro fessing Christians is according to the spirit and principle actuating them, not according to opinions adopted ; that is, into liheral and exclusive. The former, hound to no particular opinions, admits all professing Christians to its communion : the latter excludes all who cannot subscribe to their particular opinions, — to the creed, or formula of faith, devised by them, or adopted or inherited by them. One class is indeed Uberal on principle ; the other sectarian, perhaps on princi ple too, doubtless in conscience, — all the more alarming for this, should they get the jsower over a literary institution." He was now beginning to feel the presence, if not the pressure, of old age. On the 7th of June of the last-men tioned year, he thus writes : — " My seventieth birthday ! — which excites most serious reflections, with most heartfelt thanksgiving for the mercies of God ; unmerited, indeed, but sure and great at this moment. iNIay my heart be full of gratitude, and my life (the small residue of it) better than ever before ! May 1 not forget that I have no promise but of ' labor and sorrow ' in the future, and be duly thankful and humble under whatever awaits me!" The " labor and sorrow " to which he here refers were spared him to a remarkable degree. Nearly fifteen years of life and health were still in reserve for him, during much of which he was as active, and during all of which he was as happy and useful, as at any former period. His seventh birthday from this time is thus noticed : — " At seven o'clock, this 7th of June, I am seventy-seven ! The figures almost frighten me; yet I feel not that they oppress me by 54 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. their number or the weight of years. Blessed be the merciful God, who has spared me so much strength, and capacity of thought and enjojinent ! How mysterious is life, is thought, is being itself! The mystery is greater and greater to the thoughtful mind as we approach the great change, when, if ever, it may be solved. Faith in God and in Christ increases, however, while the subordinate differences of opinion are vanishing into notliing, I think I feel a greater nearness to God the older I grow, and the nearer I approach the solemn period when I must appear before him. Oh ! may I rightly improve this grow ing consciousness of his presence, and be quickened in preparation to meet him, by fulfilling every duty ; trusting in his providence and mercy, and seeking to follow Christ in all things ! " He had sent in his resignation as Judge of Probate a few weeks before ; but it did not take effect until the following month. He had held the office thirty-eight years, — longer than any of his predecessors, and long enough to have most of the estates of the county pass under his supervision, and some of them several times. Few persons are aware how much the peace and comfort of families, and the rights of the most unprotected portion of the community, depend on a wise and humane administration of the probate-law. Often the applicants are in great anxiety and distress, ignorant alike of their just claims, and of the means of securing them; and watched, perhaps, by those who are willing to take advantage of their weakness and their mistakes. Under such circum stances, the personal fitness of the judge, and especially his sympathy for the weak and defenceless, and his jealousy of every thing that looks like a disposition to plot and overreach, are quite as necessary to the ends of justice as the law itself Here it was, as well as in a thorough know ledge of his own department of law, that Judge White stood among the foremost. Hence the murmurs raised against him at the outset soon died away. The people became convinced that the reforms introduced into his court were for the public good ; and he continued to preside there for more than a MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 55 whole generation, " not only," as we are told on high authori ty, " to entire acceptance, but in such manner as to attract a degree of veneration and affectionate confidence throughout the county." The following are his own reflections, suggest ed by a review of his official conduct : — " July 1, 1853, — This day closes my probate career, and I feel satis fied that I have done well in so ordering it ; for though I might have continued a httle longer to do as well in the office as I have ever done, yet I might fail in capacity, without being sensible of it, and so make a more ignoble close. Blessed be God, who has enabled me to continue so long in the enjoyment of health and strength ! In reviewing my official course, I have the comfort to think that I have cdways endea vored to do right. But I now regret that I did not regard, more than I have, the manner of doing it. I have no recollection of ever flunking oi manner or effect; but went on naturally, as I felt, without thinking of putting on dignity, or commending myself to approbation." Released from all official cares, he could now give himself more freely to such studies and thoughts as become and brighten the last days of a good man. We learn from inci dental notices in his diary, that even when, through illness, unable to attend to any thing else, he seldom allowed a day to pass without reading his chapter or two in the Greek New Testament. There is also among his papers a new translation of the Epistle to the Romans, written out by him with great care. The manuscript is of uncertain date. It evidently belongs to his advanced life ; and shows, if nothing more, how earnest and faithful he was in searching the Scriptures. Nor did he shut himself up in his librarj'. His friends were never more welcome, never more in his mind and heart. He also kept up his interest in public objects and events, and in all new literary and scientific questions ; and, being a member of the principal literary and philanthropic societies in Salem and Boston, he still continued to attend their meetings, often taking an active part. Least of all did he allow his zeal in behalf of the college to be chilled by age. He was one of 56 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. the overseers from 1842, until displaced by the new organiza tion of the Board in 1853 ; and afterwards served on one of the most important of the visiting committees until his death. Indeed, it was by exposure and fatigue, occasioned by a too faithful discharge of his duty in the last-mentioned capacity, that his death is supposed to have been hastened. In giving an account of one of his visits to the university, he says, " What pleased me at the examination public dinner yesterday was the total absence of all beverage but cold water ; it being the first time I ever witnessed such a specta cle on any occasion of the kind at Cambridge." At another time : " Yesterday, at the exhibition-dinner, I sat next to Mr. Abbott Lawrence. He told me, that, when minister at Lon don, he was near neighbor to Lord Wellington, who was very kind to him. His lordship lived very simply ; had long since given up wine, and never used tobacco in any of its forms." The diary abounds in statements and anecdotes to the same effect, showing how entirely he sympathized with some of the reformatory movements of the day ; and this sympathy grew stronger as he advanced in years. His temperament was not that of an agitator ; neither would his just and fair mind allow him to impose his conscience upon others. Still, so far as his own opinion and practice went, he became more and more decided that toted abstinence was the true doctrine in respect to tobacco and intoxicating drinks. He could not make the former to be as dangerous, in a moral point of view, as the latter ; but, under other aspects, it was even more inexcusable and offensive, and therefore incurred, per haps, his sharpest rebukes. In one instance, he speaks of writing a letter, filling two sheets, in order to encourage and. animate some new converts. At another time, half in despair, he thus bemoans the obstacles : — " But what can a feeble individual do to suppress an evil so deep- rooted, so wide-spread, so fascinating among all classes of society. MEMOIR OP HON, DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 57 clergy as well as laity, who will turn with contempt and ridicule from any single-handed opposition, even of the highest station ; as was the case when King .James blew his ' Counterblast'? Such an evil requires a union of the most influential in society, and the talents of the most gifted for argument, satire, ridicule, and sarcasm, to be exerted, without cessation and without mercy, for successive generations." With so strong a disposition to be useful while living, it was natural that he should wish to continue to be so after death, — an event which could not be far off. He had not large possessions to bestow ; but he could do something to cause himself to be remembered in the places where he had lived, as a friend to popular instruction, and as a believer in the power of Christian principles and in the worth of Chris tian character. His father's farm in Methuen, on which he was brought up, now makes, as before intimated, a central part of the manu facturing city of Lawrence, Of this farm, a reserved lot of about six acres was still held by him ; subject, however, to the restriction, that it could not be built upon without the consent of the Essex Companj', — the projectors of the new city. In this state of things, he submitted to the company a proposal, that this restriction should be taken off, and the land be con veyed to trustees, who should dispose of the same, and use the proceeds of the sales as a fund for the support of public lectures and a public library. The proposal was readily acceded to. In the deed of gift, bearing date Aug. 2-3, 1852, he makes the consideration to be, " his having at heart the welfare of his native place, and earnestly desiring to do some thing to promote the improvement and prosperity of its now numerous population." He also instructs the trustees " to have special reference to the wants of the young and of the in dustrial classes ; " and " constantly to bear in mind, that the great object intended to be promoted and accomplished is the education and training-up of the young in habits of indus try, morality, and piety, and in the exercise of true Christian 58 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, prniciples, both in thought and action." The trustees have already realized, from sales and accumulations, about ten thousand dollars, with full one-half the land still unsold. In the same spirit, and with the same general purpose. Judge White took an active part in founding and building up the Essex Institute in Salem. The institute was formed in 1848 by the union of the Essex Historical and the Essex- County Natural-History Societies ; the former organized in 1821, the latter in 1833. He had been a liberal patron of the old societies. Under the new organization, he was elected the first president, and unanimously re-elected to this office every year until his death. What did more than any thing else to interest him in the institute was its promise to be largely instrumental in diffusing useful knowledge among the people by means of lectures, discussions, scientific excursions, and a public library, — his favorite mode of doing good. To its library he became a munificent benefactor, transferring to its shelves the chief part of his own collection; his dona tions, in his lifetime and by will, amounting to over eight thousand volumes, and about ten thousand pamphlets. He did not lay down his pen until the last ; neither do his writings, even after he was eighty, betray the slightest falling- off in clearness and vigor. A letter from him, in the Boston Daily Advertiser, May 20, 1858, written when he was nearly eighty-two, reminds us of his best manner in his best days. The same remark applies to " A Brief Memoir of the Plummer Family," published the same year ; and also to his " New-Eng land Congregationalism in its Origin and Purity," which came from the press during his last sickness, and only a few days before he died. Of this last work, the most considerable that he gave to the pubhc, it will be proper to say a few words. It contains, in the first place, a full statement of the documentary evidence respecting the oldest extant covenant of the First Church in Salem; and, secondly, a copy of the records of this church MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 59 down to 1736, so far as they are of public interest or will help to illustrate its original constitution. Then follow three discussions : the first being a republication, with slight abridg ments, of a letter already referred to as making part of the " Correspondence between the First Church and the Tabernacle Church in Salem, in which the Duties of Churches are dis cussed, and the Rights of Conscience vindicated ; " the second contains the substance of a controversy between Judge White and the Rev, Dr. S, M. Worcester, which originally appeared in the Salem Gazette of 1854, having been suggested by Dr. Worcester's repeated averment, " that what has generally been printed for a hundred and fifty years, as the First CoVe- nant of the First Church, was not that covenant;" and the third. Judge White's re-assertion of the claims of the cove nant renewed in 1636 to be considered "the Confession of Faith and Covenant " adopted at the foundation of the church, with strictures on certain statements in Mr. Felt's " Ecclesi astical History of New England," and in the new edition of Morton's " Memorial," touching this subject. The appendix contains a reprint of notices of the First Church in Salem and its ministers, from 1629 to 1853, prepared by Judge White some years before, and first published as an appendix to the sermon preached at the ordination of its present pastor, the Rev. Dr. Briggs. It will be seen at once, that the volume just described is, for the most part, a compilation : still it was a work of much care and labor. On some accounts, we cannot help regretting that the last months of Judge White's life should have been occu pied, and perhaps wearied, by it. His motive, however, was most honorable, and felt by him to be imperative ; namely, to vindicate what he believed to be the truth of history, and one of the noblest distinctions of the founders of his own church and of New-England Congregationalism. Whatever may be thought of some of the side-issues, we consider the main position abundantly established. In our opinion, he has accu- 60 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. mulated proof upon proof, that what has passed for more than two centuries as the First Covenant of the First Church in Salem is really that covenant ; that it is the " instrument" some times called " a covenant," sometimes " a confession of faith," and sometimes "a confession of faith and covenant," which Hig ginson drew up " in Scripture language " for the constitution of the church "at their first beginning," and the whole of it. From this it follows, that the New-England Congregational churches, " in their origin and purity," were not founded on a test creed. In saying this, we do not mean that our Puritan ancestors were not Calvinists, or that they did not insist on Calvinism, but only that they forbore to organize it into the very consti tution of their churches. They were probably hindered from taking such a step by their earnest and consistent Protestant ism, and by their belief — a belief in which they had been instructed and confirmed by Robinson — in "the progress of Protestantism." That they soon relapsed into the ways of other churches, is but too well known ; but this only affords another illustration, if another was wanted, to show how apt all sects are to disappoint their early promise, and fall from consistency. We must not withhold Judge White's own ac count of the spirit with which he engaged in this polemic, as given in a letter to his eldest son : — " I expect no reward for my labor, and few thanks ; but I shall feel better satisfied with myself if I can accomplish the drudgery before I am caUed away from it. True religious freedom has been dear to my imagination from earliest recollection of my father's talk about it. I think this freedom of far higher importance than any doctrinal opinion. What I wish is, that all now should receive their religion as freely and directly from Christ and his apostles, without human interposition, as did the flrst believers." The frequent passing-away of the few that remained of his classmates and contemporaries had made him familiar with the thought of death. The loss of his daughter Mary, Mrs. Foote, —who died Dec. 24, 1857, in the midst of life and MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 61 usefulness, — was also a great affliction. She alone, of all his children, continued to reside in Salem ; and, by her almost daily presence, was still the light of his house. But, in his deepest sorrow, he had the hope " which entereth into that within the veil." To him, the dead were not dead, " It is with me," he writes to one of the family, " as you say it is with you, in regard to Mary. I see her almost constantly, and always in some pleasant attitude or conversation, just as she appeared in her happiest moments, — when entering the room with her cheering smile, or seated on the sofa gladdening her mother, or at the table delighting us all. Most of all comes to me the look with which she turned to me on Thanks giving Day (the last time I sat at table with her), and said that Ave had passed every Thanksgiving together, but one, since her earliest recollection. I see her, too, by my sick bed side, — a comforting angel, as she was. She will always be be such, in spirit, to me ; yet I sadly feel the loss of her pre sence in the body. May we all feel devoutly thankful for the rich blessing she has been to us for so many years ! " At length, his own time had come. On the 2d of Janu ary, 1861, he attended the annual meeting of the Committee of Examination for the Divinity School at Cambridge. He took all his usual interest in the occasion : he also made several visits, walking from place to place, and then returned home ; " feeling," to use his own expression, " that, of all comforts, rest was the sweetest." He had overtasked his remaining strength, and never recovered from the fatigue. For several weeks, he was still able to read and write, and go out occa sionally. He was, however, among the first to see that his end was near. The prospect had no effect upon him, except to make his manner more gentle and tender and cheerful. All the arrangements necessary to the final disposition of his worldly affairs were attended to without hurry and without delay. It was after he had relieved his mind, for the most part, of such cares, about a fortnight before his death, that 62 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. some one said to him, " How happy you look in your easy chair ! "¦ — " Well," he replied, " I am happy : I feel perfectly reconciled to the ways of Providence." A few days after wards, he said to his wife, " I have felt for some years past a more intimate communication with the spirit of God ; a feel ing of the Divine Presence, which seemed to be a shield, a security. I have always shrunk from speaking of my deepest feelings: none know of the intensity of my affections for the living and the dead." On Monday, March 25, his daughter read to him the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, containing the parable of the lord who forgave his servant the debt. He was, as usual, much moved in listening to it. His daughter said, " This was always a favorite portion of Scripture with you, as I remember ; " adding, after a pause, " And this is the spirit which you have always manifested all your life." He shook his head, and, gathering up his strength, spoke with un usual distinctness and fervor, as follows : " No man ever in the hour of death relied less upon any good acts performed than I do at this moment, and have done for many years. My re liance is upon the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, and my own repentance for sin, which I Imow I have felt for years ; and therefore I have perfect trust and peace." The death-bed of an intelligent, thoughtful, and sincere Christian — neither afraid to consider his situation, nor too much agitated by it — is always instructive and sublime. Such was that of the subject of this Memoir. He was in his usual dress, and able to see other friends besides the family, up to the last day of his life ; and, indeed, never seemed more happy in seeing them. Even on the last day (Saturday, March 30), he wished to rise and dress as before ; and would have attempted it, but for the advice of the phj^sician against it ; to which he yielded, with the same gentle submission he had manifested throughout his illness. Early in the morning, he had been more than usually affected bj^ the family devotions in the sick-chamber. Some time afterwards, he dictated a MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. '63 message to his son Henry, absent in the West. Being asked when it should be sent, he answered, " When all is over." As a grateful breath of air reached him, he observed, " Now there is nothing more but to catch the breezes as they pass." " To be wafted on," some one said. " Yes," he replied. About noon, his son said to him, " Father, here we are all round you : we shall go up with you to this side of the river ; and there are other friends waiting to receive you on the other side." He shook his head, " We know nothing about that: we know of the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, We are assured of a spiritual creation ; but in what it consists, we are not told." Soon after, his daughter asked, " Father, do you see me ? " He started with surprise at the question, and re plied, " See you ? — of course I do; but it is quite another question whether I am to see you in another world ; " and then added, with fervor, " All will be right; all will be right," So careful was he, in his beloved pastor's words, " to go down to the absolute grounds of trust." At one o'clock, a change came over him, affecting his ut terance, which he did not understand. Dr. Mack, who was in attendance, told him it was the effect of a slight paralysis ; and added, "You will soon be resting, sir." — "There is but one way," he replied. At a quarter-past one, Mr. Foote, his son-in-law, came in, and informed him that his friend Judge Shaw had died that morning. Startled by the announcement, he looked up inquiringly, and said, " Chief-Justice Shaw ? " On being told that it was, all his calmness returned, as he said, " It is a good time." A grand-daughter, who was present, re peated Mr, Norton's hymn, beginning, " My God, I thank thee." When she had ended, he spoke again, though with some difficulty : " That hymn has been on my tongue innume rable times ; " and then himself repeated the second stanza, — "Thy mercy bids all nature bloom; The sun shines bright, and man is gay: Thine equal mercy spreads the gloom That darkens o'er his little day;" — 64 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, going back, and repeating a second time, with emphasis, " Thine equal mercy." These were his last words, except to ask for water, which he drank from a glass, holding it in his own hand ; and soon afterwards quietly passed away, twenty- three minutes before two o'clock. Nothing could exceed the perfect serenity of his mind to the last. A tranquil smile remained on his countenance several hours after the spirit had returned to God who gave it. The following letter of condolence, received a few days after the funeral, was very grateful to the family, and will be read with profound respect by all : — ¦ " Mrs. R. H. White. " Dear Madam, — Permit me to trespass thus early on your afflic tions : I cannot refrain from yielding to the impulses of my heart. Your late husband, as you well know, was among the earliest, dearest, most truly valued and beloved, of all my friends. Our acquaintance commenced late in the last century, and our regard for each other was unabated and strengthened and deepened to the hour of his death. The consciousness of his friendship, of its truth, of its warmth, of its unceasing constancy, has been one of the choicest gratifications of my life ; and the memory of them will be a precious support and consola tion during the few years I may be permitted to survive him. It is not for me to attempt to enlarge upon his virtues. The circle in which he was beloved and honored embraced all who had the privUege of being acquainted with him ; for his heart was as capacious as it was all-attrac tive and pure. The public which he faitlifully served, the coUege which he honored and loved, the multitude of his friends in almost every class of life, will not permit his remembrance to pass away without tributes to his worth and his virtues, as full and truthful as they will be well deserved, " ]My grief is, in a feeble and humble degree, like your own. He was not, indeed, the companion of my life ; but for sixty years he has been an inmate in my heart. I would willingly shed tears ; but why, and for what ? A well-spent, useful, and universaUy honored life has closed. It has descended like an autumn sun, the brightness of liis meridian hour undiminished ; still radiant in its descent on the horizon. MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 65 — glowing with hope in respect to the world into which he was enter ing ; and leaving no just cause of regret, but rather a melancholy, soul- supporting joy in the bosom of friends in the world from which he was departing. What can we desire more ? what better ? " Your husband had that faith which ' is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen ; ' which is true in philo sophy as weU as in religion. Such faith is the substantial support of the mind in that hour which all of us are doomed to meet. Happy he, who, like your husband, can depart calm, content, and resigned, having nothing to fear, and every thing to hope ! He had been pennit- ted a length of existence sufficient for all the purposes of life. He had acted his part well, faithfuUy, and, to human sense, acceptably. He died with the consciousness of it ; and this supported him in the moment the soul departed. Who can regret such a separation, or wish its former union renewed ? He has gone to join the company of the good, the virtuous, and the wise, who were once his companions in life ; and, I trust and believe, of many whom he had only known by report, who lived and died, like him, in the enjoyment and conscious ness of useful, happy, and honored life, though they were not his con temporaries. This is a faith all ought to cultivate : it is ever and all supporting, even if (which Heaven forbid !) it should prove illusive. " Pardon, madam, this trespass upon your time and- your thoughts ; but I have given my heart to my pen, and will not withhold that to which it gives utterance. " With truest respect, I am your friend and servant, "Josiah Quinct. "Boston, 6th April, 1861." Judge White was born on the very day of the motion of Richard Henry Lee, in the American Congress, to declare the United Colonies independent ; and died just before the attack on Fort Sumpter. His life may therefore be said to have covered the whole of our proper unchallenged national exist ence. His principles and habits were also, in a remarkable degree, the product of our institutions, and of our institutions in their best days. In his tastes and manners and acquisi tions, he was a genuine New-England man : there was nothing foreign or exotic about him. And this was not all. From childhood, he had entertained a high, perhaps even an extra- 9 66 MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, vagant, conception of the character of the first settlers of Massachusetts : he had idealized this character, and made it, thus idealized, hi6 model. Even in religion, he always be lieved himself the heir of their principles, if not of their opinions ; of their method, if not of its results. Like them, a Protestant among Protestants, continually appealing from " traditions " to " the law and the testimony," he claimed the right to be numbered, not only among their warmest admirers, but also among their most faithful and consistent followers. Whether right or not, he felt the utmost confidence that he stood where they would have stood, if living now. Inter nally and externally, his character was of the Puritan type ; so much so, that to many of the present generation, who had only known him as an old man, he might almost seem like one of the Pilgrim Fathers living down into our times, — in man ner and expression, softened and modified ; in principle and substance, the same. The Puritan cast of his mind was seen even in its defects. His nature was neither artistic nor imaginative. He made no pretensions to brilliant or fascinating qualities, either as a writer or speaker. There was also an apparent coldness and constraint in his outward manner, as it struck the common observer, which did not invite familiarity ; and his way of maintaining what he believed to be true or right, however unpopular, was too persistent and too incisive for a so-called "man of the people," He could not have been a demagogue if he had tried. Still, had he continued in public life, there can be no reasonable doubt, as before stated, that he would have gained high place and exerted large influ ence. If incapable of the showy and facile arts of the mere politician, he had nevertheless, in a remarkable degree, those qualities of head and heart which command public confidence. Everybody knew where he was to be found. Everybody knew that he could not be coaxed and wheedled out of his principles ; that he could neither be intimidated nor bought ; MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 67 that he had no crotchets by which great public interests would be supplanted ; and still more, that, in a sound under standing and an unspotted life, he gave the best possible guaranty that any trusts, however sacred, would be safe in his hands. But, after all, the distinguishing trait of Judge White's character was what would hardly have been expected from his habitual caution and gravity, and the strongly ethical bias of his theology. We refer to the abounding affection- ateness of his nature. His heart was singularly impressible, and predisposed him to look on the favorable side of men and things. This appears in his fondness for society when a young man, — a fondness almost amounting to a passion. One of the most beloved and honored of his classmates writes, that he was " the most genial of them all." We should have inferred as much from the manner in which he frequently speaks of college-clubs ; ascribing to them an interest and importance which must surprise many who know what they were and are. It appears more clearly still in the multitude of his friendships, seldom intermitted except by death ; in his family affections, embracing his remotest ancestors and kin dred; and even in his attachments to particular communities and particular spots. His loyalty is also to be explained in the same way, — a loyalty which made him as sensitive and jealous for the national honor as for his own. With him, love of country was not a figure of speech : it was a real love, like the love for a common mother ; so much so, that when told of the great Rebellion, the beginnings of which darkened his last days, what affected him most was the strangeness, the cruelty, the unnaturalness of the crime.* Even his religion, * Had Judge White lived to witness the progress of the Rebellion, there is nothing which would have given him so much heartfelt satisfaction as the loyal and brave conduct of his grandchildren. Four of them, sons of William Dwight, Esq., were among the earliest to enter the army ; and have gained distinction for gallant service. 68 MEMOIR OP HON, DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. probably to a degree beyond what he himself suspected, was the cry of his heart. He was educated among Calvinists of the straitest sect, who were not likely to hold human affections in high regard ; neither did he gain much, in this respect, by going over from Calvin to Priestley. All that his theology taught him was " repentance and pardon : " his own heart unconsciously made up the rest. He talked of duty ; his life was love. What he was in his own house, and to those who witnessed his daily walk, we shall leave to be told by one who has a right to speak on this subject. "K.EENE, N.H., July 23, 1862. "Mt dear Sie, — You have encouraged me to feel that a few hints of my own reminiscences and impressions regarding my father might not be unacceptable to you in connection with the Memoir of his life which you are now preparing. " How weU I recall an incident occurring when I could not have been more than six years old ! — an incident which was fruitful, in later years, of more suggestions than many a long talk could have been. It was near evening as my father drove into the yard at home, after an absence of several days. I sprang to the door, exclaiming, ' What have you brought, father ? what have you brought for me ? ' — 'I have brought myself he said, as he threw open his arms to hold me. " WhUe careful of the respect due to liis authority, I cannot im agine, at the same time, a parent more ready to spend and be spent for his children. Even to the tying of a package, how unwearied he was, up to the time of his last sickness, in so anticipating our wants, as to make us feel that there was hardly the smallest thing that we could do for him ! But, after the approach of that illness, how he seemed to re joice, feeble though he was, in seeing his family around him ! It was an abounding consolation for that season of confinement, that we reaUy had at last the opportunity of doing something for him. When he was Colonel Wilder Dwight, whose opening prospects of eminence in the law his gi-andfather had contemplated with a just pride, fell at the battle of Antietam. Of the many young and valuable lives which have been nobly offered up iu this struggle, none has been felt to be a greater public or private loss. MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. 69 well, it often seemed, warm as his greeting was, that, with his books and customary avocations, he was more independent of children and friends than many people are ; but, in his last days, he seemed to hun ger for the faces of ' his own flesh.' " As regarded any thing like theological training, the listening to the parables of Jesus, as he read them, followed, morning after morning, by liis own fervent prayer, are all that I can remember on his part. I heard a disputation ' in the market-place ' once, in which he joined issue with a farmer upon the interpretation of the text, ' I and my Father are one ; ' and I believe that this was my first glimpse into the deep questions of the Bible. Nothing at home was ever said to jar with ' the simphcity that is in Christ.' We children were left wholly to the Bible ; and how much would my father have given, could all Christendom have been left wholly to that, without the intervention of any creeds of men's device ! " The pains he took with us, when away from his sight, may appear, when I state, that the number of his letters to myself alone reached the sum of six hundred. Criticisms upon the character of people in private life he sedulously discouraged on our part, both by precept and example. His spirit we can remember as being roused to vehemence as he engaged in discussion ; but it was in defence of what, with him, was principle. " As he walked the streets, a stranger might have thought that here possibly was a man who stood upon his dignity ; but the next moment he might be seen stooping to kiss some little child, or gambolling with some neighbor's boy as he met him in the first November's snowfall, tossing him upon his back, scattering the feathery flakes over him, and bidding him ' go to sleep.' " Through his life, he loved to trace back the lineage of his pious ancestry. It is now a pleasant thought, that, during the last few days of his life, his mind was refreshed with the long-sUent words of the friends of his boyhood and youth, as their letters (deposited in the same box in which, nearly sixty years before, he had found and kept the papers of his lamented college chum) were read aloud at his request. " When, at last, that aged form was wrapped in the habiliments of death, it seemed as if it were the face of some serene and majestic apostle upon which I gazed. The seal of his ministry seemed to have been set upon him. How truly had it been a ministry ! — that loving service to his own household, to the community, to institutions of learn ing, to the church of Christ; nay, to the spirits of the just, whose 70 MEMOIR OP HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE. earthly record he gave his latest breath to clear from what he regarded as the unwarrantable aspersions of less catholic minds in our own day. " Even now, it is a joy to feel that I have never seen the minister nor the man, in any denomination, who bore more evident traces of the ' hidden walk with God ' than he. I can recall nothing which dims this image of an upright, pure, consecrated beUever. " He never said a word which suggested the idea to me that he expected anybody would write a Memoir of him ; but the peculiar grati fication which he always derived from his feUowship with the Massa chusetts Historical Society, makes it to his family a soothing reflection, that these brethren have seen fit to pay his memory this honor, and that they have assigned it to one who so warmly shared his affection and confidence, '' I am, my dear sir, with sincere and affectionate respect, most truly yours, "William O. White. " Rev. James Walker, D.D., Cambridge, Mass." A List of Judge White's Publications. 1. A Eulogy on George Washington, who died at Mount Vernon, Dec. 14, 1799. Delivered, at the Request of the Inhabitants of Methuen, in the Meeting-house of the First Parish in that Town. HaverhUl, 1800. Svo, pp. 18. 2. An Address to the Members of the Merrimack Humane Society, at their Anniversary Meeting in Newburyport, Sept. 3, 1805. New buryport, 1805. Svo, pp. 38, 3. A View of the Jurisdiction and Proceedings of the Court of Probate in Massachusetts, with particular Reference to the County of Essex. Salem, 1822. Svo, pp. 158. 4. A Statement of Facts relating to the Claim of Major Moses White upon the United States, as Executor of the late General Moses Ilazen ; including some Consideration of its Merits, and an Exjiosition of the Report of a Committee on this Subject, made 28th February, 1820. Salem, 1827. Svo, pp. 15. MEMOIR OF HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, 71 5. An Address delivered at Ipswich before the Essex-County Lyceum, at their First Annual Meeting, May 5, 1830, Salem, 1830. Svo, pp. 60. 6. Correspondence between the First Church and the Tabernacle Church in Salem ; in which the Duties of Churches are discussed, and the Rights of Conscience vindicated. Salem, 1S32. Svo, pp. 176. 7. An Eulogy on the Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch, LL.D., F.R.S. Delivered, at the request of the Corporation of the City of Salem, May 24, 1838. Salem, 1838. Svo, pp. 72, 8. An Address delivered at the Consecration of the Harmony- Grove Cemetery, in Salem, June 14, 1840. With an Appendix. Salem, 1840. Svo, pp. 51. 9. An Address delivered before the Society of the Alumni of Harvard University, on their Anniversary, Aug. 27, 1844. Cam bridge, 1844. Svo, pp. 42. 10. Eulogy on John Pickering, LL.D., President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Delivered before the Academy, Oct. 28, 1846. Cambridge, 1847. Svo, pp. 106. 11. Notices of the First Church in Salem and its Ministers, 1629 to 1853. By a Member. Salem, 1853. Svo, pp. 30. 12. A Brief Sketch of a Lecture delivered before the Essex Insti tute, May 12, 1856, respecting the Founders of Salem and the First Church, Salem, 1856. Svo, pp. 14. 13. A Brief Memoir of the Plummer Family ; with Historical Notices relative to the Gift of Plummer Hall. Salem, 1858, Svo, pp. 36. 14. New-England Congregationalism, in its Origin and Purity ; illustrated by the Foundation and Early Records of the First Church in Salem, and various Discussions pertaining to the Subject. Salem, 1861. 8vo, pp. 319. CK'hS 600