Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1

Produced by An Anonymous volunteer

[Transcriber's notes:
Footnotes are at the end of the chapter.
The author's spelling of names has been retained.
A few commas have been deleted or moved for clarity.]

REMINISCENCES OF SIXTY YEARS IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS VOLUME I

[Frontispiece: v1.jpg] From a photograph by Purdy, of Boston. Copyright, 1896. [signature] Geo: S. Boutwell

Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs by George S. Boutwell Governor of Massachusetts, 1851-1852 Representative in Congress, 1863-1869 Secretary of the Treasury, 1869-1873 Senator from Massachusetts, 1873-1877 etc., etc.

Volume One

New York
McClure, Phillips & Co.
Mcmii

Copyright, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

Published May, 1902. N.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION PRELIMINARY NOTE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

I Incidents of my Early Life
II Life as a Store-boy and Clerk
III Changes and Progress
IV Schools and School-keeping
V Groton in 1835
VI Groton in 1835—Continued
VII Beginnings in Business
VIII First Experience in Politics
IX The Election of 1840
X Massachusetts Men in the Forties
XI The Election of 1842, and the Dorr Rebellion
XII The Legislature of 1847
XIII Legislative Session of 1848—Funeral of John Quincy Adams
XIV The Legislature of 1849
XV Massachusetts Politics and Massachusetts Politicians, 1850-51
and 1852
XVI Acton Monument
XVII Sudbury Monument
XVIII Louis Kossuth
XIX The Coalition and the State Constitutional Convention of 1853
XX The Year 1854
XXI Organization of the Republican Party in Massachusetts in 1855,
and the Events Preceding the War
XXII As Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education
XXIII Phi Beta Kappa Address at Cambridge
XXIV The Peace Convention of 1861
XXV The Opening of the War
XXVI The Military Commission of 1862 and General Fremont
XXVII Organization of the Internal Revenue System in the United States

INTRODUCTION

At the request of my daughter and my son and by the advice of my friends, the Honorable J. C. Bancroft Davis and the Honorable William A. Richardson, I am venturing upon the task of giving a sketch of my experiences in life during three fourths of a century. The wisdom of such an undertaking is not outside the realm of debate. A large part of my manhood has been spent in the politics of my native state, and in the politics of the country. For many years I have had the fortune to be associated with those in whose hands the chief powers were lodged. I have been a witness of, and in some cases an actor in, events that have changed the character of the institutions and affected the fortunes of the country. Those events and their consequences must in time disturb, if they do not change, the institutions of other countries.

In the course of this long period I have had opportunities to know some of the principal actors in those important events. In a few cases I am in possession of knowledge not now in the possession of any other person living. These considerations may in some degree justify my undertaking.

On the other hand I have not kept a record of events, and I have had occasion often, especially in the practice of my profession, to notice the imperfections of the human memory. Much that I shall write must depend upon the fidelity of that faculty, although in some cases my recollections may be verified or corrected by the public records.

The recollections of actors, when those recollections are reported in good faith, constitute quite as safe a basis for an historical judgment as do the diaries in which are noted present impressions. Usually the writer of a diary has only an imperfect knowledge of the subject to which the entries relate. If he is himself an actor in passing events he makes and leaves a record colored and perhaps tainted by the personal and political passions of the times. The teachings of experience and that more moderate view of events, which we sometimes call philosophy and sometimes the wisdom of age, may warrant the student and the historian in giving credence to mere recollections.

The writer of a diary takes little note of the importance of the events to which the entries relate. Persons and events become important or cease to be important by the progress of time, but the life of an individual is an adequate period usually for the formation of a judgment. I cannot assume that it will be my fortune to make a wise selection in all cases. Important events may be omitted, insignificant circumstances may be recorded.

I assume that my family and friends will take an interest in matters that are purely personal: therefore I shall record many incidents and events that do not concern the public.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

_PRELIMINARY NOTE

In the presence of some misgivings as to the propriety of my course, I have decided to print the article on my Life as a Lawyer, as it appears in the "Memoirs of the Judiciary and the Bar of New England" (for January, 1901), published by the Century Memorial Publishing Company, Boston, Mass.

Many of the facts were furnished by me. The article was written by W. Stanley Child, Esq., but it was not seen by me, nor was its existence known to me until it appeared in the published work. The paper in manuscript and in proof was read and passed by the editors, Messrs. Conrad Keno and Leonard A. Jones, Esquires. The words of commendation are not mine, and it is manifest that any change made by me would place the responsibility upon me for what might remain. Hence I reprint the paper with only two or three changes where I have observed errors in statements of facts._

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH [*]

George Sewall Boutwell, LL. D., Boston and Groton, the first commissioner of internal revenue, secretary of the treasury under President Grant, and for many years one of the leading international lawyers, is the son of Sewall and Rebecca (Marshall) Boutwell, and was born in Brookline, Mass., in what is now the old part of the Country Club house, January 28, 1818. He comes from old and respected Massachusetts stock, being a lineal descendant of James Boutwell, who was admitted a freeman in Lynn in 1638, and of John Marshall, who came to Boston in the shop Hopewell in 1634. The family has always represented the sterling qualities of typical New Englanders. Tradition asserts that one of his paternal ancestors received a grant of land for services in King Philip's War. His maternal grandfather, Jacob Marshall, was the inventor of the cotton press, an invention originally made, however, for pressing hops. His father, Sewall Boutwell, removed with his family in 1820 from Brookline to Lunenburg, Mass., where he held several town offices; he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1843 and 1844 and of the Constitutional Convention of 1853.

Mr. Boutwell attended in his early years a public school in Lunenburg, where he became a clerk in a general store at the age of thirteen, thus gaining a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge of affairs. Later he supplemented this experience by teaching school at Shirley. He also studied the classics, and in various ways improved every opportunity for advancement which limited circumstances afforded. In 1835 he went to Groton, Mass., as clerk in a store. But to be a lawyer was his dream before he had ever seen a lawyer. Endowed with unusual intellectual ability, which has been one of his chief characteristics from boyhood, he felt himself instinctively drawn to the legal profession, and as early as possible entered his name as a student at law.

In 1839 he was chosen a member of the Groton School Committee, and in 1840 he was an active Democrat, advocating the re-election of Martin Van Buren to the Presidency. In the meantime he delivered a number of important lectures and political speeches, his first lecture being given before the Groton Lyceum when he was nineteen, and he was now rapidly gaining a reputation in public affairs, in which he early took a deep interest. In January, 1842, he became a member of the lower House of the Massachusetts Legislature from Groton, and for ten years thereafter his law studies were neglected. He served during the sessions of 1842, 1843, 1844, 1847, 1848, 1849 and 1850, and was also at different times a railroad commissioner, a bank commissioner, and a member of various other commissions of the commonwealth.

As a member of the House he made many important arguments that were legal in name if not in fact. One related to the Act of the Legislature of 1843, by which the salaries of the judges were reduced, and another upon a bill for the amendment of the charter of Harvard College. On the latter question, which was in controversy for three years, his opponents were Judge Benjamin R. Curtis and Hon. Samuel Hoar.

Mr. Boutwell originated the movement for a change in the college government, which was effected by a compromise in 1851. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, a member of the corporation, wrote an answer to his argument. This led to Mr. Boutwell's appointment in 1851 as a member of the Harvard College Board of Overseers, which position he filled until 1860. In January, 1851, he became Governor of Massachusetts by a fusion of the Democratic and Free-soil members of the Legislature, and in 1852 was re-elected by the same body. He served in that capacity until January, 1853, a period of two years, and discharged the duties of the office with ability, dignity, and honor. As a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853, Mr. Boutwell had further and better opportunities to make the acquaintance and to observe the ways of the leading lawyers of the State.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1853, Governor Boutwell entered the law office of Joel Giles, who was engaged in practice under the patent laws, and who as a mechanic and lawyer was a well-equipped practitioner in Boston. As a counselor in patent cases Mr. Giles had few equals. It was then Mr. Boutwell's purpose to pursue the study and engage in the practice of the patent laws as a specialty, but in October, 1855, without any solicitation and indeed without the slightest knowledge on his part, he was chosen secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, of which he had been a member from 1853. With much uncertainty as to the wisdom of his action in accepting the place, he entered upon his duties and faithfully and efficiently discharged them until January 1, 1861, although he had tendered his resignation in 1859. His annual reports have always been regarded as models of preparation, and that of 1861—the twenty-fourth —contains a notable commentary on the school laws of the commonwealth. He continued as a member of the board until 1863.

After several years Mr. Boutwell severed his relations with Mr. Giles, and upon his admission to the Suffolk bar in January, 1862, on motion of the late Judge Josiah Gardner Abbott, he began active practice in Boston. His first jury case was before the late Judge Charles Allen, of Worcester, yet at that time he had never seen a jury trial from the opening to the close. Mr. Boutwell had scarcely entered upon his professional career when he was called to assume a most important place in national affairs, and one that was destined to keep him in close relations with the Federal Government at Washington for many years afterward.

Among the historical events, originating in the Civil War, was the passage of the act "to provide internal revenue to support the government and to pay interest on the public debt," approved July 1, 1862. Mr. Boutwell organized the Office of Internal Revenue and was the first internal revenue commissioner, receiving his appointment while at Cairo in the service of the War Department. He arrived in Washington July 16, and entered upon his duties the following day. Within a few days the Secretary of the Treasury assigned him a single clerk, then a second, and afterward a third, and the clerical force was increased from time to time until at his resignation of the office of commissioner on March 3, 1863, it numbered 140 persons. To him is due its organization upon a basis which has more than fulfilled the most cherished hopes and expectations of those who conceived the idea and which has furnished from the first a valuable source of revenue for the government with little hardship or unnecessary friction among the people at large. The stamp tax took effect nominally on the 1st of October, 1862, less than two and one-half months after Mr. Boutwell entered upon his duties as commissioner, yet before he resigned, five months later, he had the office so well established, and its work so thoroughly organized throughout the United States, that its usefulness was assured and it has continued to the present time practically the same lines that he laid down. In July, 1863, three months after he retired from the office, he published a volume of 500 pages, entitled "A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States," which included the act itself, the forms and regulations established by him, his decisions and rulings, extracts from the correspondence of the office, and much other valuable information bearing on the subject. This work has ever been accepted as authority, and still forms the basis of the government of the internal revenue system.

Before Mr. Boutwell was admitted to the bar he was retained by the county commissioners of Middlesex County to appear before a legislative committee of the years 1854 and 1855 against the division of that county and the erection of a new county to be called the county of Webster with Fitchburg for the shire. Emory Washburn appeared for Worcester County and Rufus Choate for Fitchburg and the new county. The application failed in 1855 and again in 1856. Mr. Boutwell's arguments on this petition, made March 25, 1855, and April 23, 1856, were remarkable for power and eloquence, and largely influenced the final result.

From 1862 to 1869 he was retained in many causes, the most important of which was the controversy over the contract between the commonwealth and Gen. Herman Haupt for the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel. The hearing before a legislative committee occupied about twenty days and ended in the annulment of the contract. For several years Mr. Boutwell was associated in Boston with J. Q. A. Griffin. Afterward he was in partnership with Henry F. French until 1869, when he became Secretary of the Treasury in the Cabinet of President Grant. He filled this position with great ability for four years, originating and promulgating, among other measures, the plan of refunding the public debt. During that period he made but one argument, when he appeared in the Supreme Court on the appeal by his client of a patent case, of which he had had charge from the beginning. From 1863 to 1869 he had been a member of the 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st Congresses, serving on the committees on the judiciary and on reconstruction, and being chairman for a time of the latter body. While representing his district in Congress Mr. Boutwell gained considerable experience in the proceedings against President Andrew Johnson, who was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and he was selected as one of the managers on the part of the House. In a remarkably brilliant speech before the House on December 5 and 6, 1867, he maintained the doctrine that the president and all other civil officers could be impeached for acts that were not indictable, although the contrary was held by many eminent lawyers, including President Dwight, of Columbia College, who wrote a treatise in support of his theory. But the House preferred articles that did not allege an indictable offence and the Senate sustained them by a vote of thirty-five to eighteen, one less than the number necessary for conviction. On April 22 and 23, 1868, Mr. Boutwell, on behalf of the managers, addressed the Senate, delivering one of the strongest and ablest arguments on record, and thus completing, as a lawyer, the most exhaustive labor he ever attempted. He was a member of the Committee of Fifteen which reported the Fourteenth Amendment, and while serving on the committee on the judiciary he reported and carried through the House the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

In 1873 Mr. Boutwell was chosen United States Senator from Massachusetts to fill the unexpired term of Hon. Henry Wilson, who had been elected Vice-President. He continued in the Senate until 1877, when he was appointed by President Hayes, through Gen. Charles Devens, then Attorney-General, commissioner to revise the statutes of the United States. That great work was completed and the volume was published in the autumn of 1878. Some idea of the labor involved in this undertaking may be gained from the index, which contains over 25,000 references. In 1878 Mr. Boutwell returned to Boston and resumed the practice of law. In 1880 William M. Evarts, then Secretary of State, and President Hayes, asked him to accept the position of counsel and agent for the United States before a Board of International Arbitrators created by a treaty ratified in June, 1880, between the United States and France, for the settlement of claims against each government by citizens of the other government. The claims of French citizens, 726 in number, arose from the operations of the Union armies in the South, principally in and around New Orleans, during the Civil War, and the consideration of them occupied four years. The counsel and the commissioners were called to the discussion of treaties, of international law, of citizenship, of the Legislation of France, of the rights of war, and of the conduct of military officers and military tribunals. The claims amounted to $35,000,000, including interest; the recoveries amount to about $625,000; the defence cost the Government about $500,000; the record is contained in ninety printed volumes of about one thousand pages each and the pleas and arguments of counsel for the two governments fill eight large volumes. Mr. Boutwell's own arguments cover more than 1,100 pages. Many of these cases rank as causes celebre, notably those of Archbishop Joseph Napoleon Perche, No. 3; Henri Dubos, No. 26; Joseph Bauillotte, No. 130; Bleze Motte, No. 131; Theodore Valade, No. 214; Pierre S. Wiltz, No. 313; Remy Jardel, No. 333; Etienne Derbee, No. 339; Arthur Vallon, No. 394; David Kuhnagel, No. 438; Dr. Denis Meng, No. 567; Azoline Gautherin, No. 590; Oscar Chopin, No. 592; S. Aruns Sorrel, No. 594, in which he probably made the best argument of his career; Jules Le More, No. 595; Athenais C. Le More, No. 598; Mary Ann Texier, No. 569; and Charles Heidsieck, No. 691. That of Theodore Valade, No. 214, was a full account of the battle of Donaldsonville, and those of Archbishop Perche, David Kuhnagel, and many other involved intricate and interesting questions of citizenship as well as damages for the destruction of property. On May 10, 1884, Mr. Boutwell made an exhaustive and final report on all these claims to the Secretary of State, Hon. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. Boutwell was one of the counsel for the government of Hayti in the celebrated case of Antonio Pelletier against that republic in 1885, and made a most interesting oral argument. This case was a romance of the sea as well as of international importance, involving a claim of $2,500,000 and questions of piracy and slave trading. In 1893-94 Mr. Boutwell was retained as counsel on the part of Chili to defend their government before an international commission created under a treaty with the United States signed August 7, 1892. About forty cases were presented, involving $26,300,000, and the final report was submitted April 30, 1894. Among the more important were those of Gilbert B. Borden, No. 9, and Frederick H. Lovett et al., No. 43, against the Republic of Chili. These as well as nearly all the others were argued by him with a brilliancy and eloquence that has marked his entire career at the bar. Of the five courts martial that were held in Washington between 1880 and 1892 for the trial of officers of the army and navy Mr. Boutwell was retained for the defence in four cases, in three of which the accused were convicted and in the other honorably acquitted. In 1886 he was retained by the Mormon Church to appear before the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives against the Edmunds bill, which was modified in particulars pointed out in the discussion. The same year he appeared before the House committee on foreign affairs for the government of Hawaii in opposition to the project for abrogating the treaty of 1875.

Mr. Boutwell's pleas and arguments have with few exceptions been published in book or pamphlet form, or both, and form of themselves a most valuable and interesting addition to legal literature. They bear evidence of a profound knowledge of the law, of vast research and of great literary ability. Among others may be mentioned those upon a petition to the Massachusetts Legislature for the removal of Joseph M. Day as judge of probate and insolvency for Barnstable County in March, 1881; in the matter of the Pacific National Bank of Boston before the banking and currency committee of the United State House of Representatives, March 22, 1884; and for the claimant in the case of the Berdan Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company of New York vs. the United States. He is the author of "Educational Topics and Institutions," 1859; "Speeches Relating to the Rebellion and the Overthrow of Slavery," collected and published in 1867; "Why I am a Republican," a history of the Republican Party to 1884, republished in 1888; "The Lawyer, Statesman and Soldier," 1887; and the "Constitution of the United States," embracing the substance of the leading decisions of the Supreme Court in which the several articles, sections and clauses have been examined, explained and interpreted, 1896. In 1888 he wrote a pamphlet on "Protection as a Public Policy," for the American Protective Tariff League; on April 2, 1889, he read a paper on "The Progress of American Independence," before the New York Historical Society; and in February, 1896, he published a pamphlet on "The Venezuelan Question and the Monroe Doctrine."

Mr. Boutwell has probably argued more cases involving international law than any other living man, and in this department ranks among the ablest and strongest that this country has ever produced. For more than forty years he was a prominent figure before the bar of the United States Courts at Washington, where he achieved eminence as an advocate of the highest ability. He was uniformly successful, and won a reputation which was not confined to this country. He is an authority on international and constitutional law. His published writings stamp him as a profound student of public questions and a man of rare literary culture and genius. He was a strong Abolitionist, and as lawyer, statesman and citizen he has faithfully and efficiently performed his duties and won the confidence of both friends and opponents. In politics he has been a leader of the Republican Party since its organization. He was a delegate to the Chicago Conventions of 1860 and 1880, and was chosen a delegate to the Baltimore Convention of 1864, but declined. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1857 and of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College in June, 1861, at which time he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration. In 1851 Harvard conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL. D., and in 1861 he was a member of the Peace Congress at Washington.

Mr. Boutwell was married July 8, 1841, to Sarah Adelia, daughter of
Nathan Thayer of Hollis, N. H.. Their children are Georgianna A., born
May 18, 1843, and Francis M., born February 26, 1847. Mr. Boutwell
resides in Groton, Mass.

The eighth day of July, 1891, Mr. Boutwell's family and friends celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his marriage with Sarah Adelia Thayer, daughter of Nathan and Hannah Jewett Thayer, of Hollis, N. H.; and on the eighth day of July, 1901, the family observed the sixtieth anniversary, but without ceremony, as Mrs. Boutwell was much impaired in health.

[* Copyright, 1900, by the Mason Publishing and Printing Co.]

REMINISCENCES OF SIXTY YEARS IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS VOLUME I

I INCIDENTS OF MY EARLY LIFE

My birthplace was at Brookline, Mass., near Boston, upon a farm in my father's charge, and then owned by a Dr. Spooner of Boston. The place has had many owners and it has been used for various purposes. In 1851 and 1852 it was owned by a Dr. Trowbridge, who had a fancy for fine horses. Upon my election to the office of Governor, and when he had learned that I was born upon his place, he insisted that I should use a large black stallion in the review of the troops at the annual parade. The animal was of fine figure but not so subdued as to be manageable. In one of those years General Wool came to Boston, upon an invitation to review the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company on Boston Common. I assigned the Trowbridge horse to General Wool. The General rode him for a minute or two, when he left the saddle and the reviewing officers went through the ceremony on foot. Since those days the Spooner place has been converted into a trotting course known as Clyde Park, and the house is now used as a clubhouse by an association known as the Country Club.

When I was about twenty-five years of age I was present at a temperance meeting at Lowell, held in an unfinished factory building called the Prescott Mills. After some speaking, in which I had taken a part, the Rev. Dr. Pierce, then a white-headed gentleman of seventy years, whom I had seen as an overseer of Harvard College, came to me, introduced himself, and after a little conversation he asked me where I was born. When I answered Brookline, on the Dr. Spooner place, he said: "Oh, yes, I remember when your father lived there, and I recall a circumstance to which I think I owe my good health. Dr. Spooner," said he, "resided in Boston in the winter and at Brookline in the summer. When he was at Brookline he had a child to be christened, and he preferred to have the city minister perform the ceremony. After the service we were invited to dine at Dr. Spooner's, and that minister ate so unmercifully of everything upon the table, that I then and there resolved that I would eat but one kind of meat at a meal, and I think my good health is due in a measure to that resolution." I made no resolution, but the circumstance produced an impression upon me, and in the main I have observed his rule. In seventy-seven years, within my recollection, I have lain in bed but seven days.

In April, 1820, when I was hardly more than two years of age, my father moved to Lunenburg, Worcester County, and settled upon a farm, a mile south-west of the village, which he had bought of Phinehas Carter, then an old man, who had been opulent as a farmer for the time and place, but whose estates had been wasted by a moderate sort of intemperance, by idleness, and family expenses. The house was large, well built for the times, finished with clear, unpainted white pine, with dado work in the front rooms below and in the chambers above. It was situated on the southern brow of a hill, and commanded a view of the Wachusett mountain, and the hills to the west, south and east over an expanse of twenty miles in every direction, except the northern half of the circle. At a distance of eighty or one hundred rods from the house lay the Whalom pond, a body of clear, deep spring water, of more than a hundred acres. The farm contained one hundred and thirteen acres of land, somewhat rocky, but in quality better than the average New England farms. At the time of the purchase one-half of the acres were woodland with heavy timber.

My father relied upon that timber to meet the debt of one thousand dollars which rested upon the place. In those days wood and timber were abundant and money was scarce. If the building of railroads could have been foreseen and the timber saved for twenty-five years it would have risen to twice the value of the farm at the time of the purchase. My father's anxiety to be relieved of the debt was so great that he made sales of wood and timber as he had the opportunity, but the proceeds, after much hard labor had been added, were very insignificant. As a result, the most valuable part of the timber was sold for ship-building, or to the coopers, or converted into boards and shingles, and a remnant of the debt remained for twenty years.

The farm yielded ample supplies of meat, milk, butter, cheese, grain, fruit, and vegetables, but groceries and clothing were difficult to procure after such supplies were had as could be obtained by barter. Once or twice, or possibly three times a year, my father drove an ox- team or a team of one pair of oxen and one horse to Boston with cider, apples, a hog or two, and poultry. The returns enabled him to pay his taxes, the interest on the debt, and perhaps something over.

Until the introduction of the cotton and woolen manufactures, and indeed, until the building of railways, the farmers of Massachusetts had only limited means of comfort. Their houses were destitute of furniture, except of the plainest sort. Of upholstered furniture they had none. Except a few school books for the children and the family Bible there was no reading matter, unless in favored neighborhoods, a weekly paper carried the news to two or three families that were joint subscribers. The mails were infrequent, and the postage on letters, based on the pieces of paper instead of weight, varied from six and one fourth cents for all distances within thirty miles to twenty-five cents for distances of four hundred miles or more. Intermediate rates were ten, twelve and a half, and eighteen and three fourths cents. These rates existed when mechanics could command only one dollar a day, and when ordinary laborers could earn only fifty cents or seventy-five cents—except in the haying season, when good mowers could command one dollar. Servant girls and nurses received from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents per week. At the same time every variety of clothing was much more expensive than it now is, unless shoes and hats are exceptions.

My father was the best farmer in the neighborhood. He had been employed in the nursery and vegetable gardening at Newton, and for five years he had had charge of the farm of Madam Coffin at Newton Corner, widow of the Hon. Peleg Coffin, who had been a member of Congress from Nantucket. In a few years we had a supply of cherries, peaches, and choice apples. As my father understood budding and grafting tress, his improved fruits were distributed to others. I acquired the art of budding when I could not have been more than ten years of age, and before I left home at the age of thirteen, I had practised the art in the village and on the trees of the neighbors.

Previous to 1830 the era of invention had not opened, and the articles by whose aid domestic comfort has been promoted were unknown. The only means of cooking were the open fire and the brick oven. Meat for roasting was suspended by a cord from a hook in the ceiling in front of the open fire and over a dripping pan. The children found amusement and became useful in twisting the cord and then allowing the weight of the meat to untwist it. Even fire in the summer was obtained and kept with difficulty. There were no friction matches and not infrequently a child was sent on a flying visit to a neighbor's house to borrow fire. Indeed, the habit of borrowing and lending extended to nearly every movable thing that any one possessed. Tools, food, especially fresh meat, the labor of men, oxen and horses were borrowed and lent. Farming tools were few in number and rude in construction. Many of them were made upon the farms, either by the farmers themselves, or by the help of poorly instructed mechanics. The modern plough was unknown. Hay and manure forks, scythes, hoes, were so rough, uncouth and heavy that they would now be rejected by the commonest laborer. As early as 1830 by father bought a cast-iron plough; it was the wonder of the neighborhood and the occasion of many prophecies that were to be falsified by events.

My father was a practical man and a gentleman by nature. With him civility was innate. He was a close observer and something of a philosopher. I recall his statement made in my childhood that matter was indestructible. He was of even temper, and of an imperturbable spirit. His paternal ancestor on this side of the Atlantic was made a freeman at Lynn in 1638. Of his arrival in the country there is no record. From that date there had been no marriage except into English families. My father was purely English. My mother, whose family name was Marshall, and who was a descendant of John Marshall who came in the Hopewell, Captain Babb, in 1635, was English also through all her ancestors from John Marshall.

My father enjoyed the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens and he held many of the offices of the town and for many years. In 1843 and 1844 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and in 1853 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention. I was also a member of the same bodies, and the association with my father under such peculiar circumstances is one of the pleasant recollections of my life.* My mother belonged to a family of unusual intellectual endowment, and of great rigidity of opinion. Her father, Jacob Marshall, was a student by tendency and habit, a stone mason and farmer by occupation, and the inventor of the press used for pressing hops and cotton in square bales. He lived to be more than eighty years of age, was twice married, and had a large family of children whom he educated and trained as well as children could be trained and educated at the close of the last century in a country town in northern Massachusetts.

For the last fifty years of his life he devoted himself to the study of the bible and such works of history as he could command. His knowledge of the bible was so great that he was an oracle in the town, although he departed from the popular faith and became a Universalist. He lived comfortably and without hard work, and in the later years of his life he became the owner of two farms in the northerly part of Lunenburg. As I recollect him and his farms he could not have been a good farmer. His crop was hops, and that crop always commanded money, at a time when it was unusual to realize money for farm produce.

As my father's house was a mile from the District School, and as there was a school within twenty or thirty rods of my grandfather's house, I was sent to my grandfather's for my first winter's schooling. I think it must have been the winter of 1823-4. The teacher was Ithamar Butters, called Dr. Butters from the circumstance that he had studied medicine for a time with Dr. Aaron Bard, a physician in the village. Of Dr. Butters as a teacher I remember little. He became a disbeliever in the Bible—an agnostic of those days. I recollect a remark of his made many years after: That he would prefer the worst hell to annihilation, which he believed would be his fate.

I learned to read by standing in front of my mother as she read the Bible. Of course all the letters were inverted, and the faculty of reading an inverted page, has remained.

I went to the District School summer and winter, until I was ten years of age, and to the winter school until I passed my seventeenth birthday, when my school life ended. My father and mother were scrupulous about my attendance, and I cannot recall that I was ever allowed to be absent during the school term either for work or pleasure.

When I reached the age of ten years I was kept on the farm during the summer months, until I left home in December, 1830. In those days farmers' boys did not enjoy the luxury of shoes in the summer, nor indeed in the autumn season. More than once I picked chestnuts bare- footed and often I have tended the oxen in the mowing field frosty mornings and warmed my feet by standing on a stone.

Once only during my home life did I go to Boston with my father. He carried poultry in a one-horse wagon. I accompanied him. The year may have been 1828, or '9 or '30. On our way he stopped at one of the Waltham cotton factories to see a niece of my father who was there at work. We lodged that night at the house of Madam Coffin. She was then already old in my sight. She seemed pleased with my father's visit, and the impression left upon my mind is that we were entertained with marked consideration. My father had managed her farm for about five years from 1809 to 1814, when he volunteered for service in the army, and for ninety days he was on the island then known as Fort Warren.

The next morning we reached Boston and stationed our wagon at the northwest corner of Quincy Market, where we sold our poultry. During the day my father had occasion to go to the store of Joseph Mead, at the corner of Lyman Place, and I was left in charge of the wagon. I had the fortune to sell some of the poultry. My father thought that the proceeds in money did not equal the decrease in stock, and so it proved—for the next Sunday morning when I dressed for meeting I found a two dollar bill in my trousers' pocket.

That night we spent with Captain Hyde, at Newton Corner. During the first year of my father's married life he had carried on a farm on the opposite side of the highway, and it was from Captain Hyde that he obtained his knowledge of budding and grafting, and some knowledge of the art of gardening. They always continued friends; Captain Hyde came to my father's, in after years, and supplied our farm with the best varieties of cherry, peach and apple trees.

The day following we went to Brighton where my father purchased the remnant of a drove of cattle that had been driven from the State of Maine—twenty-four in number. Of these nine were oxen and the rest were young animals between two and four years of age, and all were bought for the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars. My father was then the overseer of the almshouse, and the purchase was primarily for that establishment, but some of the animals were sold to the neighbors. The result of the purchase was to me a short experience as a drover.

As I recollect the experiences of my life on my father's farm, there were many amusements and relaxations mingled with the hardships. In the winter the house was cold, with only open fires for warming rooms. We had, however, an abundance of wood, and in the evenings a supply of cider, apples and nuts for ourselves and for the neighbors. There were always one or two poor families in the neighborhood who enjoyed the moderate comforts of our house. I recall one man, who after a visit would stop at the pile of wood, near the house, and carry a backload to his home. My father often saw the stealing, but the culprit never knew from any word or act that he had been discovered or suspected.

The ponds and brooks in the vicinity gave us a chance for fishing, and there was some shooting, especially of pigeons in the autumn. The oak forests had not then fallen, and the pigeons were abundant in September and until there were heavy night frosts, when they would leave for milder regions. For several years my father baited pigeons, and caught them in a net. To do this we were in the bough-house by daylight. A wicked advantage was taken by soaking the grain in anise-seed cordial, which made the birds noisy and active, thus attracting other pigeons to the stand. The device of taking pigeons in a net and wringing their necks is a brutal business, as is all slaughtering of animals.

From 1820 to 1830 religious controversies were violent and universal. No one of the towns in Massachusetts was free from them. Under the colonial system each town was a religious corporation as well as a political one. There was one church and one meetinghouse in each town, and the parochial expenses were paid from the municipal revenues. In 1780 when the constitution was adopted, some progress had been made, but by the Third Article of the Bill of Rights, every citizen was required to be a member of some religious society. As a result, new societies were formed, and in many instances there were so organized and managed as to avoid expenses. About the same time attacks were made upon the Third Article of the Bill of Rights, and after an excited controversy covering many years, the constitution was changed in that respect, by an amendment in the nature of a substitute, which was adopted by the people at an election held in the month of November, 1833. By that amendment each citizen was authorized to file a certificate of non-membership with the clerk of the society of which he was a member and thereafter he was free from any contract or obligation of such society thereafter made.

The little town of Lunenburg participated actively in the contest. My father advocated the amendment. At the ancient meetinghouse the ancient doctrines of future punishment were preached and the literal inspiration of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation was not questioned. Those who denied the one or doubted the other were denounced as infidels. Religious topics were the leading subjects of conversation, and the fruitful source of personal and neighborhood controversies. My father rejected the doctrine of physical punishment in another state of existence, and he came to regard the Bible as a record of events, and the expression of human thought and feeling, rather than as a message of the Divine will.

Perhaps as early as 1820 the Methodists had organized a church and secured a place of meeting in the north part of the town on a by-road. The building was not as good in quality or style as is a modern barn. My father separated himself from the old society and joined the Methodist society. In that organization each one paid what he chose. I recollect attending meetings in the old barn, but the distance was great and the inconveniences were numerous. The converts could endure the inconveniences, but as my father was not a convert nor a believer his interest was slight. Afterwards, however, the Methodists built a meetinghouse in the village, and for several years we had seats and attended the services. Once in two or three years the denomination held camp meetings in the autumn and the work of conversions would go on rapidly. The scenes were such as are now reported of the negro race in the states of the South. Young girls would shout, crying out that they had found Jesus, fall down, and lie senseless, or at least speechless, for many minutes. After brief periods of excitement many of the converts returned to their old ways of life, neither better nor worse.

During these years the Universalists held meetings at Shirley Village, quite eight miles away. My father attended occasionally, and not infrequently I went with him. I had therefore the opportunity to hear the great preachers of the denomination—Russell Streeter, Sebastian Streeter, brothers; Thomas Whittemore, the editor of the Trumpet, the organ of the sect, Hosea Ballou, Walter Balfour, and others whose names I do not recall. Balfour was a Scotchman, preaching with an accent, and rolling his scalp, from his eyes to the nape of his neck. The sermons had two peculiarities. First the text was examined carefully and so construed as to show that the author, whether Jesus, Peter, or Paul, taught the doctrine of universal salvation. Then came a process of reasoning designed to show that God could not punish his creatures in a lake of fire and brimstone. First, he was all-powerful; next, he was all-wise; then he was infinitely just, and finally his mercy was without limit. Could a being endowed with these attributes consign his children to unending misery? From the first I saw the defect in the process of reasoning. The premises were not faulty, but given a being with infinite faculties, could another being, with finite faculties only, forecast the result of the exercise or operation of the infinite?

The little town was made notorious by the career of the physician, Dr. Aaron Bard. He was born in Jaffrey, N. H., about the year 1770. He obtained his medical education in part at least, at Troy, N. Y., from which place he fled to avoid arrest upon the charge of robbing graves. His parents were rigid believers in the old faith, and in that faith they had trained the son. Against that faith the son rebelled, dropped the second "a" in his baptismal name, and rejected the Scriptures as not containing divine truth. As the mass of the people believed implicitly in the divine origin and plenary inspiration of the Bible, a disbeliever was denounced as an infidel and punished by social outlawry.

Bard was not a quiet doubter. He attacked the Bible, ridiculed much of the Old Testament, accepted controversies with the clergy, although he attended their families without charge. His reputation as a physician was considerable, and although his enemies, who were many, made repeated efforts to secure a competitor, the wary declined their invitations, and the credulous were soon driven away by poverty, or the fear of it. Bard was a bachelor, lived economically, never presented a bill, and when he died, about the year 1850, his books were free of charges. Before the repeal of the Third Article in the Bill of Rights, Bard organized a society which by some art of logic was so far recognized as a religious body as to exempt its members from taxation in the old parish. It flourished until the Third Article was annulled, when it disappeared. Bard purchased a Hebrew bible, lexicon and grammar, and proceed to translate parts of the Old Testament, especially the early chapters in Genesis, and in such manner as to throw doubt upon the received version. His Sundays were devoted to talks in his office, where were gathered a few hearers, some because they agreed with him, and others because they were interested in hearing what he had to offer.

He was of small size, hardy, ingenious, and free from meanness. He was economical and his ways of business forbade any extravagance. When he needed hay or grain for his horses or wood for his fire he called upon some of the farmers whose physician he was, and obtained a supply. Beyond this he made no demand for payment, though when it was offered he accepted it. Until he was about sixty years of age, he rode on horseback, and always without an overcoat. From my thirteenth to my seventeenth year I was boy and clerk in a store at a distance of less than five rods from Bard's office. I saw him constantly. His denunciations of Christianity were so violent and unreasonable that many persons would revolt at the thought of accepting his theories. He had followers, however, and the trial of Abner Kneeland for blasphemy promoted the spread of infidel opinions. I do not now recollect that I heard Bard express any opinion as to a future state of existence. In that particular he was probably an agnostic. When in later years I saw a plaster cast of the head of Voltaire at the Cambridge Museum of Comparative Anatomy, I was impressed with the resemblance between Bard's head and that cast.

His success as a physician was due probably to his ingenuity and keen powers of observation rather than to his learning. All his faculties were active, and he appreciated the importance of the laws of progress. When homeopathy had taken some hold upon public opinion, he said: "There is nothing in it, but then it has done a great deal of good. It has taught us not to give so much medicine. We killed a great many people with medicine, but it is several years now since I killed a man." This remark was made in 1842 or 1843.

In my boyhood the Rev. David Damon was the minister. He was a graduate of Harvard College, a man of learning, of good standing in the profession, and a satisfactory preacher. His temper was mild, and it was not easy for Bard to engage in bitter contests with him. Mr. Damon left Lunenburg about 1827, and settled in West Cambridge, where he died suddenly in the pulpit. Among the constant attendants upon Mr. Damon's Sunday services at Lunenburg was a blacksmith named Kimball, who was afflicted with deafness. From his trade perhaps he had come to be called Puffer Kimball. From a front seat in the meetinghouse he had ventured upon the pulpit stairs, and finally he had reached the position of standing on an upper stair, resting his arms upon the desk, and with his hand to his ear listening to the services from beginning to end. In the east part of the town was a farmer named James Gilchrist, a Scotch Irishman, weighing not less than two hundred and fifty pounds, and the father of four grown sons who where his equals in weight, and all of them of great strength. Gilchrist abandoned the Sunday meetings and when Mr. Damon asked him for his reason he said he wouldn't have his religion strained through old Puffer Kimball.

This same Gilchrist had had a controversy ending in a slander suit with Mr. Damon's predecessor, the Rev. Timothy Flint. Mr. Flint was a man of recognized ability, a good preacher, but erratic in his ways. For some purpose not well understood, he built a furnace in the cellar of his house. His friends maintained that he was engaged in scientific experiments, and such was his purpose, no doubt, but his enemies and the more ignorant of the community assumed that his plan was to coin money. One day, in a store kept by Mr. Cunningham (the grandfather or great-grandfather of Gen. James Cunningham,) Gilchrist exhibited a coin and said: "Here is a dollar that Tim Flint made." Flint returned the challenge with a suit, which I think was adjusted without a trial, but the controversy contributed to the dissolution of the settlement. Flint left the town to which he returned once in my boyhood and preached a sermon in the new meetinghouse, that had been substituted for the old one used in the days of Zabdiel Adams, of Timothy Flint, and David Damon.

After leaving Lunenburg Flint went with his family to the valley of the Mississippi, and led the life of a wanderer, floating down the river with his family and making his way back as best he might. In these expeditions children were born and children died. He wrote two romances founded on Western primitive life, and a history of the Mississippi Valley. Time may give to his works a value that they did not appear to possess when they were published. Flint was recognized in the town as a man of ability, but he failed to secure the affections or even the confidence of the people. He was a man of ready faculty, being able to write his sermons Saturday evening, with his children around him.

Parson Adams, a cousin of John Adams and the predecessor of Flint, had lived among his people as a chieftain. He was not only the spiritual teacher, he was supreme in most other matters. Unlike the Adams family generally, he had a rough wit and a sententious practical wisdom about common things not unlike the kindred conspicuous qualities in Dr. Franklin. If the traditions that existed in my boyhood were trustworthy, he said and did things that would have ruined an ordinary minister. Adams gave an earnest support to the Revolution, and one of his sermons delivered at the opening of the war contained a view of the coming greatness of the country that was truly prophetic.

Samuel Dexter studied law at Lunenburg. He was there married by the
Rev. Zabdiel Adams to a Miss Gordon, a daughter of an English lady.

The successor of Mr. Damon was the Rev. Joseph Hubbard, and during his ministry the old society that represented the town of former days came to an end. The first error was the scheme for erecting a new meeting- house. The larger part of the village is on the southern side of a hill, and the first meetinghouse was midway on the slope and facing south. The site was a triangular piece of land, of more than one hundred rods in extent, on which were shade trees planted in other days. If the whole town had been at command not another equally good site could have been selected. A spirit, called the spirit of progress, had seized the leaders and it was resolved to build a new meetinghouse on the top of the hill. The house was built, but in the meantime the society lost members. Following the dedication of the new house, there came complaints against Hubbard as a preacher. He made enemies, and his enemies promoted disturbances. Efforts were made to dissolve the connection. Hubbard having been settled for life, these efforts were ineffectual. Finally his salary was withheld and the house was closed against him. Sunday after Sunday, morning and afternoon, Hubbard would walk from the parsonage to the meetinghouse, try the doors and then return home. As long as the doors were open, I attended the services—the congregation diminishing until the pews were given up to the boys and those who attended from curiosity. One morning the seats of the singers were vacant, and Hubbard read the hymn commencing: "Let those refuse to sing, who never knew their God." That was the last, or near the last of his Sunday services.

As the controversy went on, the members of the parish withdrew, until the only one remaining who possessed any property was an uncle of mine, Timothy Marshall. He lived in the easterly part of the town, and he was a Universalist in opinion. He owned a small farm and a sawmill on the Mulpus Brook. His chief delights were reading, discussing political and religious questions, and gathering information in the department of the natural sciences. He associated a good deal with Dr. Bard, but he never accepted Bard's views of the Bible. He had continued with the old society from indisposition to disturb himself rather than from sympathy with its teachings, or regard for its interests. At the conclusion of the active controversy between Hubbard and the society, the unpaid salary amounted to several hundred dollars. Hubbard threatened suit, and he may have commenced one. In that juncture my uncle went over the town and gathered the signatures of those nominal members who had no property, who had not paid taxes, and whose eyes had not seen the inside of a meetinghouse. A parish meeting was called, composed by my uncle and his new adherents. At the end authority was given for the conveyance to Mr. Hubbard of the site of the old meetinghouse in full satisfaction of his claim. This spot was in the center of the village and in the view of the houses of the principal residents. Not their curiosity merely, but their fears were excited when they learned that their bitter enemy was to become the owner of the common in the center of the village. To be sure the bounds were indefinite, but there was a spot belonging to the parish, and it included all that was not highway.

My uncle had an understanding with Hubbard that the land was to be conveyed to Hubbard and the society released from all its liabilities under the contract. Then the land was to be conveyed to my uncle for the sum of six hundred dollars. This was done, and my uncle became the owner of the common. He was not a friend of the citizens of the village, and various uncomfortable surmises were set afloat. But my uncle had but little malice in his nature, and moreover he was too inert to indulge in the luxury of avenging any wrong either real or imaginary. The common was left to the use of stray cattle, the children of the neighborhood and of the school. After a time the school district decided to rebuild the school-house. The old site was small, indeed, only sufficient for the building. The citizens divided, but the advocates of the old site prevailed, and a brick building was erected. Still the contest went on, and after a year or two the majority of the district voted to erect a new house, and the upper part of the common was selected for the site where a second house, of wood, was built. Whether any title to the land was obtained from my uncle, I know not. The new house was used for a time, when it was sold, moved, and converted into a dwelling.

When my uncle died at the age of about eighty-five years, the common was unoccupied, and it had the appearance that property takes on when the owner is intemperate or absent, or when the heirs cannot agree to a division. The settlement of my uncle's estate was put into the hands of Mr. Ephraim Graham, whose brother had married my uncle's eldest daughter. My uncle's children were scattered, and apparently they inherited their father's indifference to property. Graham was unable to finish any business, and after ten or more years he died, leaving the estate unsettled. Finally, the ladies of the village took possession of the common, removed the rubbish, leveled the ground, and made the spot an agreeable feature of the town.

Of the teachers of the village school there are several that I remember with gratitude, and I cannot but think that some of them were very good teachers. My first teacher was Martha Putnam, afterwards Mrs. Nathaniel F. Cunningham. Of her as a teacher I can recall nothing. Her father, Major Daniel Putnam, was the principal trader in the village. For the time and place his accumulations were very large. Nancy Stearns, afterwards Mrs. Benjamin Snow, was the teacher of the summer school for many years. But beyond comparison Cyrus Kilburn was the best teacher of the town, and a person who would have ranked high among teachers at any period in the history of the State. He was not a learned man in a large sense, but his habit was to investigate the subjects within his scope, with great thoroughness. Grammar was his favorite study, and he devised a system of analysis in parsing quite in advance of the time. He had the faculty of putting questions and of changing them to meet the capacities of the pupils. He compelled thinking. I attended the winter school about ten terms, and of these not less than six terms were taught by Mr. Kilburn.

In later years we had Colburn's Sequel as the arithmetic. From this I passed to algebra and geometry, and during the last two terms I studied Latin Grammar. My school-going days ended in February, 1835, a month after my seventeenth birthday.

[* During the session of the Legislature of 1843 or 1844, I walked with my father on the ice from Boston to Fort Warren, a distance of about three miles. The authorities were then engaged in cutting a channel for the departure of a Cunard steamer.]

II LIFE AS A STORE-BOY AND CLERK

In the month of December, 1830, when I was about one month less than thirteen years of age, Mr. Simeon Heywood, the postmaster at Lunenburg and the owner of a small store, proposed to my father that I should go into his service to remain four years. An arrangement was made by which I was to receive my board and clothes, and the privilege of attending school during the winter months. I commenced my service the 26th of December, 1830, and I remained until December 1, 1834.

My life with Mr. Heywood was a peculiar one. The business of the store was largely in the sale of goods for hats made of palm leaf. The business was comparatively new at the time. For many previous years the women had been employed in braiding straw and making hats and bonnets for market. Gradually, work in palm leaf had taken the place of work in straw. The neighbor of Heywood, Major Daniel Putnam, was doing a large business in hats. The preparation of the palm leaves was not an easy business. The leaves were stripped on the folds by the hand, then bleached with sulphur in large boxes. The leaves were then split so as to produce straws from one twentieth to one eighth of an inch in width. The first process of stripping the leaves on the folds was paid for at the rate of ten cents per one hundred leaves. I devoted my leisure to the work, and thus earned a small sum of money. Heywood was a shoemaker by trade, and an end of the store was used as a shop. There one man and sometimes two men were employed. From much seeing I was able to make a pair of shoes for myself—rather for the amusement of the thing than from any advantage. While at Heywood's store, probably about 1834, I had a disagreeable experience, the recollection of which has often returned. A blacksmith, named Choate, died, and with another boy, whose name I do not recall, I was summoned to watch the body during a night. We occupied an adjoining room, and once an hour we were required to bathe the face of the corpse in spirits of camphor. To this day I have never been able to understand why two half-grown boys were put to such service.

Heywood was more of an inventor than a trader, and becoming interested in the manufacture of nail kegs he made an invention in connection with Dr. Bard for sawing staves concave on one side and convex on the other. In the year 1834 they obtained a patent for the invention. As a consequence the business of the store was neglected. The invention did not yield a large return in money, as it was soon superseded by other devices. The saw, a hoop-saw, was set up in a mill two miles away, and from time to time I tended the saw, and thus I began a training in mechanics which has been useful to me in my profession as a patent lawyer. Heywood also invented a wheel for bringing staves to a bevel and taper, for the construction of barrels systematically. Mr. Heywood remained in town eight or ten years, when he moved to Claremont, N. H., where he died at the age of eighty years or more. He was thoroughly upright, but he had too many schemes for a successful business man. During my term with Mr. Heywood, I had charge of the post-office, keeping the accounts, which were then cumbrous, and I made the returns once in three months.

During a part of the time a stagecoach ran from Lowell, through Tyngsboro, Pepperell, Townsend Harbor, Lunenburg and Fitchburg, and thence westward through Petersham and Belchertown to Springfield. The distance was about one hundred miles, and I was compelled to be ready to open the mail three mornings each week, at about two o'clock. The driver would sound his horn when he was eighty or one hundred rods away, and it was my duty to be ready to take the mail when the coach arrived at the door.

It was when so summoned that it was my fortune to see the shower of falling stars in November, 1833. From the time I arose until after daylight there was no part of the heavens that was not illuminated—not with one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The butcher of the town, Abijah Whitney, came out to commence preparations for his morning rounds, but conceiving that the day of judgment had come, he returned into the house and gave up business for the day. In the year 1901, I know of one other person only, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who witnessed that exhibition, and it has not been repeated.

During my term with Mr. Heywood, and for many previous years, and for a short period afterwards, the business of printing standard books, Bibles, spelling-books and dictionaries had been carried on at Lunenburg by Col. Edmund Cushing. The books were bound, and then sent by teams to Boston. The printing was on hand-presses, and upon stereotype plates. Deacon William Harrington carried on a small business as a bookbinder, and Messrs. William Greenough & Sons erected a building on the farm now owned by Mr. Brown on the Lancaster road, and introduced the business of stereotyping—business then new, I think. These various industries gave employment of a large number of workmen, mostly young men. The establishment of Colonel Cushing was near the store of Heywood, and it was at the bindery that I first saw Alvah Crocker, afterwards known in the politics of the State, and as the projector of the Fitchburg railroad. He was a maker of paper at Fitchburg, and he came with a one-horse wagon to Cushing's place and carried away the paper shavings produced in the bindery. Crocker was a lean and awkward man, remarkable for his voice, which could be heard over the larger part of the village. When in after years we were associated in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and boarded at the same hotel, the Hanover House, I was compelled to hear the same voice in constant advocacy of the Fitchburg railroad project.

Colonel Cushing was one of the foremost men in town, but his aristocratic ways made him unpopular, and therefore he failed to secure official recognition. He was the father of Luther S. Cushing, for many years clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, then reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court, afterwards a judge upon the bench of the Court of Common Pleas, and then the author of Cushing's Manual. Another of his sons, Edmund Cushing, Jr., was a member of the Supreme Court of the State of New Hampshire. Of his two other sons, one was a clergyman, and one a civil engineer. The sons were all my seniors, and my acquaintance with them was limited, but when I became a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in January, 1842, Luther S. Cushing, then the clerk, came to me, and after some words of congratulation, gave me this advice: "Never champion any private scheme, unless the parties are your constituents." Good advice, which I followed in all my legislative experience.

During the four winters of my term with Mr. Heywood, I attended the school, studying the usual branches with something of algebra, geometry, and Latin grammar. It was during these years that the teacher, Mr. Kilburn, created such an interest in his plans that he obtained a contribution of twenty-four dollars with which he purchased a twelve-inch celestial and a twelve-inch terrestrial globe. Several pleasant evenings were devoted to a study of the heavens with the aid of the celestial globe. I attended usually, and thus I gained a partial knowledge of the constellations, and an acquaintance with some of the stars by name and location. The post-office gave me access to several publications of the day, and in one or two instances I obtained a few subscribers to journals, and thus secured a free copy for myself. The Penny Magazine I obtained in that way for two years. In the cholera seasons of 1832-3 and 1834, the people were so alarmed that they hesitated to take letters and papers from the post-office. For a time gum-camphor was thought to be a preventive against the contagion.

Between 1830 and 1834 the ambition of the town was stimulated by the building of a new road from Fitchburg to Shirley. It was claimed that a shorter and more nearly level route to Boston from Fitchburg and the country above was thus secured. For a time the travel was considerable, but the teamsters preferred the old roads, the old taverns, and the old acquaintances. The construction of the Fitchburg railroad in 1844 ended the business from the country to Boston over the old highways.

In the month of November, 1834, I had a call from Mr. Joseph Hazen, of Shirley, who asked me to accept the post of teacher in the school at Pound Hill, half-way between Shirley Village and Shirley Centre. The pay was sixteen dollars per month in addition to board. After making an arrangement with Mr. Heywood, by which I was to pay him eight dollars for the twenty-six days in December, I accepted the invitation, and after an examination conducted by the Rev. Seth Chandler and the Rev. Hope Brown, I entered the school the first Monday of the month of December.

In the preceding June I had received my freedom suit of clothes—blue coat, bright buttons, black trousers, and buff vest. They were made by Daniel Cross, of Fitchburg, and, when in 1884, I visited that town, and found him still engaged in the business, I ordered a dress suit from his hand.

III CHANGES AND PROGRESS

As I pass in this record from my childhood and early youth to the responsibilities of life, I am led to some reflections upon the changes in opinions and the changes in the condition of the people in the more than half-century from 1835 to 1899. At the first period there was not a clergyman of any of the Protestant denominations who questioned the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, including the Old and New Testaments. The suggestion could not have safely been made in any New England pulpit that there were errors of translation, and yet the Christian world, outside the Catholic Church, now accepts a revision that changes the meaning of some passages and excludes others as interpolations. The account given in the first chapter of Genesis of the creation of the world and of man was accepted according to the meaning of the language used. At the present moment there is not a well-educated clergyman of any denomination who would not either treat the account as a legend, or else explain the days as periods of indefinite duration.

The claim of the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Old Testament is denied by many and doubted by others, and the volume is seen and treated by them as a compilation of works or books in which are recorded the thoughts and doings of men and tribes and nations that existed at different periods and flourished or suffered as is the fortune of mankind.

The early chapters of Genesis were then a faithful history; they are now a legend. The Book of Job was then an inspiration; it is now a poem. The reported interviews between Abraham and Jehovah were then thought to have been real; now they are treated as the visions of an excited brain. The ten commandments were then believed to have been delivered to Moses by the Supreme Being; now they are regarded as the work of a wise law-giver. Kings and Chronicles are now authentic histories written by honest men; then those records of events were attributed to the Supreme Ruler of the world.

The domain of prayer has been limited. Prayers for rain, for health, for mild winters and fruitful summers, were then made in all the churches. Now, with many exceptions no doubt, health is sought in obedience to the laws of our being, and the seasons find their quality in the operation of laws whose sources are in material organizations that cannot yield to human impulses.

The sources of knowledge have been multiplied almost indefinitely. In 1835 the daily newspaper was not often seen in country towns, and the circulation of the weekly paper was limited to a very small portion of the families. The postage was an important item. Relatively, the cost of papers was enormous. The mails were infrequent, and the people generally had not the means of paying the combined expenses. Many, perhaps most, of the papers, were sent upon credit, and it was not unusual to find subscribers several years in arrears. Many of the papers contained this notice: "No paper discontinued until all arrearages are paid," as though sending a paper to a subscriber in debt, would compel him to make payment. New books were rare. The farmers and laborers had no slight difficulty in meeting the demands for schoolbooks, and these and the Bible were the total stock in a majority of houses.

The means of domestic comfort were limited to a degree not now easily comprehended. The brick oven and the open fire were the only means of cooking, and the open fire was the only means of warming the houses. Soon after 1835, and even before that year possibly, cylinder stoves were introduced into shops and stores. Stoves of other varieties soon followed. Upholstered furniture and carpets were not found in the houses of well-to-do farmers even.

The construction of railways and the invention of the telegraphic system of communication have revolutionized business and changed the habits of the people, but only the beginnings of their power are yet seen. They have made it possible for great free governments to exist permanently. Except for differences of languages all Europe might become one state, if indeed, first, the individual states could over- throw all dynastic institutions in families, and all forms of hierarchy in the churches. These changes to be followed by the abolition of all forms of mortmain, by the free sale of land, by the distribution of the estates of deceased persons by operation of law, by compulsory education with moral training, and the exclusion of all dogmatic teaching touching the origin or destiny of man. This freedom and the aggregation of small states in vast governments, by the consent of all parties, would be security for the peace of the world. With general peace would come the abolition of great armies, freedom from public debts, and numerous freeholders. These are the conditions of domestic and social comfort, the chief and worthiest objects of the State organization.

In 1830 the movement against the use of intoxicating liquors began—or rather it was about that year that the movement was strong enough to lead a small number of country merchants to abandon the trade. When I went into Mr. Heywood's store, he had one hogshead of New England rum. That was sold, and there the business ended. As a general rule, the farmers used rum daily during the summer season, and drank freely of cider during the winter. On my father's farm, rum toddy was drunk three times a day during the haying season, which lasted from the 4th of July to the 1st of August, or a little later. There was no general use of liquors at any other season.

At old election*—the last Wednesday in May—at Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, and when my grandfather visited us—which seems now not to have been more than three or four times a year—a pitcher of West India rum toddy was made, seasoned with nutmeg and toasted crackers.

The poverty of farmers with respect of tools, made it almost impossible for farmers to prosper, except by cattle-raising and the cultivation of small grains. Farming is now an art, and the slavery of farm labor has in a degree disappeared. Formerly the business of farming was limited by the home product of manure, but the manufacture of phosphates has enabled the farmer to enlarge his operations in every direction that promises a return.

The railway system had driven the eastern farmer from the cultivation of wheat and corn, as it is not possible for him to compete with the new and fertile lands of the West. In these sixty years the wheat fields have moved from the East to the West. From 1820 to 1840 the valleys of the Mohawk and the Genesee furnished the finer flour for the cities of New York and New England. Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia supplied Baltimore and Philadelphia. Then Ohio became the chief source of supply. More recently the wheat region is the upper valley of the Mississippi, and the State of California. The time is not far distant when a return movement will begin. Domestic markets in the vicinity of the great wheat fields will create a demand for other products. With the exhaustion of the soil will come the necessity for the use of artificial manures. Thus will be established a permanent condition of comparative equality between the East and the West.

Already the process has commenced in the culture of Indian corn. For a time the farmers of New England were unable to raise corn, even for farm use, in competition with the West. The fodder of the corn has now become valuable to farmers who produce milk for market, and already they are finding it profitable to raise corn, even when the price at the door does not exceed fifty cents per bushel. Coincident with these changes the States of the East have increased in population, and the proportion who live in cities is increasing at a greater ratio even. The railway system and the system of protection to American industry have been the chief instruments in the augmentation of population generally, and of the gains to cities. These changes have inured to the benefit of the Eastern farmers.

[* Old election in Massachusetts was the last Wednesday in May, when, under the Constitution of 1780, the governor was inaugurated.]

IV SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-KEEPING

Of my pupils at Pound Hill an unusually large proportion were advanced in years.* Several of the boys were my seniors, and in size they had quite an advantage over me, although my weight was then about 165 pounds. That class gave me very little trouble. The unruly boys were those between ten and fifteen years of age. With a few exceptions the leading people of the town were well-to-do farmers, and nearly every week brought an invitation to a party at the house of some one of them. An attendance of more than fifty persons was not an uncommon occurrence. The term of the school was limited by the money, and either from the extra cost of firewood, or some other unusual expense, the school was brought to a close two or three days sooner than was expected. My father was to come for me on a day named, but when my school was over, and I was free, I concluded to walk home, a distance of about six miles, and return for my clothes when convenient.

Just at that time there had been a heavy, warm rain, and a melting of snow, which had raised the streams. When I reached the bridge at the brook on the west side of Flat Hill, the water was over the road to the depth of twelve inches or more. I concluded to wade across, which I did. My mother was frightened, but I escaped without any serious ill effect. My school-keeping days were over. My old teacher, Mr. Cyrus Kilburn, had charge of the village school and I took my seat among the pupils. I remained in the school about two weeks, and then my school- days were over. Altogether I had the training of six or seven summer terms in schools kept by women, supplemented two or three times by a private school of a few weeks by the same teacher, and ten or eleven winter terms. In reading, spelling and grammar I had had a good training. To those branches Mr. Kilburn devoted himself, and I recall his teaching of grammar with great satisfaction. He had no knowledge of object-teaching as applied to grammar, but he was skillful in analysis, and his training was methodical and exact. In fine, he was so much devoted to the work of teaching, that the discipline of the school was neglected. Of this there had been complaints for years. At that time I had a good command of arithmetic, I knew something of algebra, and geometry seemed easy from the start. In composition, so- called, I had had no experience. Once only during my school life was an attempt made by a teacher to introduce the exercise of writing, and that attempt I avoided. In Latin I had not gone beyond the study of the grammar, and the training that I had received was from persons poorly qualified to give instruction.

Once or twice the teacher had been a college undergraduate, and Kilburn's knowledge of the language was measured by his acquisitions at the Groton Academy. Of knowledge wholly useless to me I had learned to read the Hebrew alphabet from Dr. Bard's elementary Hebrew book. The reading-books, especially Scott's Lessons, contained extracts from good writers and speakers, with selections from the best of English poets, and these extracts and selections, I had read and had heard read so often that I could repeat many of them at full length. Worcester's Geography, and Whelpley's Compend of History were among the books used in the schools.

[* The Pound Hill schoolhouse has been sold to the owner of the Captain Parker place and converted into a shop and tool-house. A photograph has been taken of the venerable relic.]

V GROTON IN 1835

In the month of February, 1835, I read an advertisement in the Lowell Journal, asking for a clerk in a store, application to be made at the office. I at once wrote to Joseph S. Hubbard,* a former schoolmate, asking him to call at the office and get the name of the advertiser. This he did, and gave me the name of Benj. P. Dix of Groton. I wrote to Mr. Dix, and upon the receipt of an answer, I went with my father to see him. The result was an agreement to work for him for three years. Terms, board and one hundred dollars for the first year, one hundred and twelve dollars for the second year, one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the third year. I commenced my clerkship with Mr. Dix the fifth day of March, and in the month of September my contract was ended by his failure. His business was small, his manners were abrupt, his capital had been limited, and his family expenses, not extravagant, had exceeded his income, and bankruptcy in the end was inevitable. His sales were chiefly of boots, shoes, leather, and medicines, of which he kept the only stock in the village.

Mr. Dix was a man of exact ways of life. The sales made were entered each day at the close of business, the cash was carefully counted, and the cash-book was balanced. But these careful and businesslike ways did not save him, and in September he made an assignment of his property to his father Benj. Dix, and to Caleb Butler, for the benefit of his creditors according to the preferences specified in the assignment. Mr. Butler was not a creditor, but Mr. Dix, senior, was much the largest creditor. In fact he had furnished his son with the chief part of the means of doing business. He was a tanner by trade, and he had gradually enlarged his business by employing workmen to make boots and shoes. A portion of his product of leather and all his product of boots and shoes had been turned into the son's store.

The deficiency of means on the part of the son was represented at each settlement by an addition to the debt due to the father. The debts amounted to about five thousand dollars. Following the assignment Mr. Dix left home, and he did not return until the spring or summer of 1836. Imprisonment for debt in a modified form then existed. He and his family were proud, and he may have wished to avoid seeing his neighbors and acquaintances while his misfortune was fresh upon him. His wife was a granddaughter of General Ward, who had been the rival of General Washington for the command of the army at the opening of the War of the Revolution. Mrs. Dix was proud, very properly, of her paternity, and of her grandfather's association with General Washington, and neither from her, nor from either of two brothers whom I subsequently met, did I ever hear a word of criticism upon the wisdom of the selection of General Washington. Mrs. Dix had inherited many letters written by General Washington to her grandfather, and they were all written in a tone of sincere friendship.

Mrs. Dix's eldest brother, Mr. Nahum Ward, was one of the early settlers, if not one of the founders of Marietta, Ohio. Mr. Dix went to Marietta, where he was given some employment by Mr. Ward. Neither Mr. Butler nor Mr. Dix senior, had any knowledge of business, and I was employed by them at a small advance in my pay, to sell the stock of goods, and close the business of the store. After such sales as could be made, the remainder of the stock was sold at auction the 23d day of November. During the preceding night there was a fall of snow, and the company came to the village in sleighs. The winter was severe, and the snow continued to cover the ground until the 18th of April, when the stage coaches for the north went on runners for the last time. The summer of 1836 was so cold, that the corn crop was a failure. During the year following corn brought from New Jersey sold for $2.50 per bushel.

In 1835 the town of Groton was a place of much importance relatively.
It was the residence of several men of more than local fame. Timothy
Fuller, the father of Margaret, was living there. He was a lawyer of
considerable distinction, and he had held important public positions.
He had been a representative and senator in the Massachusetts
Legislature, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
and a member of Congress from the Cambridge district from 1817 to 1825.
He died in October, 1835.

Mr. Fuller was a man of careful and regular habits, indeed he belonged to a family noted for their devotion to the profession of law, and for their odd manners and styles of dress.

Mr. Fuller's eldest son, Eugene, was afterwards a student in the law office of George F. Farley. He was a good debater as a young man, but as a student rather irregular. He went to New Orleans to reside, became an editor of, or writer on, the Picayune, and on a return voyage from Boston he was lost overboard.

Margaret Fuller continued to reside in Groton with her mother and the other members of the family for several years—until about 1841, I think. In the meantime I met her frequently, although she was several years my senior. She was a teacher in the Sunday school, and at the Sunday-evening teachers' meetings she was accustomed to set forth her opinions with great frankness, and in a style which assumed that they were not open to debate. While she lived at Groton she contributed to the Dial.

In personal appearance Margaret Fuller was less attractive than one might imagine from the portraits and engravings now seen. Her ability was recognized, but the celebrity she attained finally was not anticipated, probably, by any of her town acquaintances. Her writings may justify the opinion that as a writer and thinker she is in the front rank of American women.

Samuel Dana, who had been a judge for many years, president of the Massachusetts Senate for three terms, and a member of Congress for one term, was also a resident of Groton. He had been an active politician on the Democratic or Jeffersonian side in politics, and for many years in early life he had been the competitor of Timothy Bigelow, who had been a resident of Groton and a leader in the Federal Party of the State. The town supported Bigelow and returned him to the House, where he became speaker for many sessions. Dana as a candidate for the Massachusetts Senate was elected by the county of Middlesex then Democratic, and for three terms he was president of the Senate. Judge Dana was interested in a small social library that was kept in a chamber over the store. It contained Josephus, Plutarch's Lives, Rollins' Ancient History, and some other standard works whose titles I do not now recall.

Judge Dana was also interested in the organization of a reading room club in a building connected with the store. As clerk in charge of the store I was custodian of the reading room and library. I found time to read Plutarch and Josephus, and I was skeptic enough to question in my own mind the passage in Josephus in regard to Jesus. Judge Dana died in the month of November, 1835, at the age of sixty. His hair was white and long, and his appearance was so venerable that it is now difficult for me to realize that he was not seventy-five years of age at least. His abilities were considerable, and his descendants, in more than one instance, have shown distinguished qualities.

Two other well-known lawyers, one of them a lawyer of eminence in the profession, were also residents of the town; Benj. M. Farley and George F. Farley, brothers. They were natives of the small town of Brookline, N. H. The elder, Benj. M., had practised in Hollis, N. H., where by economy and good care of his earnings he had acquired a competency. At Groton he made no effort to obtain business, and acted for the most part as an associate or aid to his brother, who was in the enjoyment of a large practice and income, for those days and parts.

With George F. Farley, whose age ran with the century, I was well acquainted from 1835 until his death in 1855. He was one of the small number of men that I have known who underestimated their powers. In one respect, perhaps, this was not true of Farley. He never appeared wanting in courage for any legal struggle with the leaders of the bar in New England. In the twenty years that I knew him he had for his antagonists Webster, Choate, Davis, Curtis, Franklin, Dexter, and others of eminence, and he never failed to sustain himself upon terms of equality. This was remarkable in presence of the fact that he was likely to be retained on the hard side of most cases. This was due, perhaps, to his reputation for shrewdness, and for a quality in practice which has been called the inventive faculty. When parties were not allowed to testify, there was a wide field for the imagination, and for the exercise of the inventive faculties on the part of an advocate. He had defended, successfully, the Ursuline Convent rioters, and he had been employed in many desperate cases on the civil side and on the criminal side of the courts.

In his later years he read very little either in law, history, or general literature. His law library was meager, although he had usually one or two students in his office. He preferred to discuss his cases with the loungers about the post-office and stores, getting thereby the benefit of the opinions of common men.

His manner in speaking was inartistic, and although he was a graduate of Harvard, he indulged himself in the use of country phrases and rustic pronunciation. His logic was unanswerable, and his faculty of cross-examination of witnesses was worthy of emulation.

He enjoyed a few books, the classics in the originals, but he seldom indulged in a quotation. Byron as a poet, and Locke as a logician he commended to me—the latter, Locke on the Human Understanding, with great earnestness. Under his advice I read it carefully, and for mental training he did not overvalue it. Farley commenced the practice of his profession at New Ipswich, N. H., and that town elected him once or twice to the Legislature of the State. Wishing for a wider field, he came to Groton. It was a day of small fees, and a good deal of the litigation grew out of the intemperate habits of the farmers.

In New Hampshire fees were even more moderate than in Massachusetts. If Farley had estimated his talents at their full value and had taken an office in Boston or New York, he could have gratified his love for money without disturbing his relations to his neighbors. In minor ways he was acquisitive and consequently there came to be a public sentiment which excluded him from public employments. His political course was not more erratic than that of many others, but his change of position was ascribed to policy and not to principle. In 1840 he was a Whig, in 1850 he was a Free-soiler, and in 1855 he was a Republican. In the autumn of the year 1855 he was elected a member of the State Convention of the Republican Party.

A day or two before the meeting of the convention I was passing by his premises where he was engaged apparently in examining a buggy which his man had been putting in order. The conversation turned upon politics, and I soon discovered that he wished for a nomination to the Legislature, and without admitting the fact, his remarks showed that he comprehended the nature of the obstacles in his way. At last he said: "When I began I thought the main thing was to get money; and I have got it; and it is very convenient to have it, but it isn't just what I thought it was when I began."

He went to the convention, took a cold which developed into a fever, and in a week he died.

[* When I became Secretary of the Treasury, in 1869, I appointed Hubbard to a minor office in the revenue service in the State of Kentucky, where he then lived.]

VI
GROTON IN 1835—(Continued)

There were two other lawyers in town, Caleb Butler, the postmaster, and Bradford Russell. Mr. Butler never appeared in court. He gave advice in small matters, wrote deeds and wills, surveyed lands, and served his neighbors in fiduciary ways. For many years he was a member, and a useful member, of the Board of Commissioners for the County of Middlesex. That body laid out highways, superintended the public buildings, and in a word did what no other authority in the county or State had a right to do. Mr. Butler was a Whig, and after a time his politics lost him the office of postmaster and the office of commissioner.

With Bradford Russell I commenced the study of law, or rather I entered my name with him and gave some night work to the study of books bearing upon the profession. His office was over the store in which I became a clerk in December, 1835. Russell was a graduate of Harvard, of the class of 1818. For many years two other members of that class resided at Groton—Dr. Joshua Green, and the Rev. Charles Robinson, pastor of the old society, then ranked as Unitarian. Mr. Russell had studied his profession with Judge James Prescott, who was impeached and removed from the office of Judge of Probate for the county of Middlesex in the year 1821. Judge Prescott, whom I never saw, was a good lawyer in his time, especially in the department of special pleading. That branch of the profession was then passing away, but there were lawyers who lived by their skill in preparing answers, rejoinders, sur-rejoinders, rebutters, and sur-rebutters. Russell had acquired a large amount of special learning in the law, but he had no capacity to comprehend principles, nor could he see the application of old decisions to new cases. In argument he was weak and inconclusive, but he was confident in his own powers, and favored as he was at times by the accidents and hazards of the profession, he gained some victories. In the final trials at the county court he usually secured the services of senior counsel who could meet Farley, his usual antagonist, upon an equality of standing. Most frequently he secured the services of Sam Mann of Lowell, as he was then called. The name of the town was affixed generally, as though the advocate had been so christened.

Mann was able, confident, and bold. He died young, after a brilliant career. In many cases Mann and Farley were associated. When this combination appeared, the opposing counsel were hard-pressed, usually. In those days a story was set afloat which, though false, gave voice to the popular notion. When the court was held at Cambridge, Farley and Mann boarded together at the Mansion House, Charlestown Square. It was said that when they were associated in a case, they were in the habit of examining and cross-examining the witnesses. On one of these occasions, as the story went, Mann conducted the examination, and Farley followed with the cross. Under his hand the witnesses went to pieces. After the witnesses left, Farley said, "We can never succeed if those are your witnesses." Mann replied: "Oh, those are the witnesses for the other side. To-morrow evening I will show you my witnesses." When the evening came, the same witnesses came also. They were again subject to examination and cross-examination, and proved impregnable under Farley's hand. An invention, no doubt, and yet the story had a run.

Although Russell was not a competitor in any sense with such antagonists as Farley and Mann, he was in the enjoyment of a practice that was sufficient for a living, and a prudent man would have made it the beginning of a moderate fortune. He had neither skill in money matters nor ordinary economy. Hence he was always in debt. At one term of the court he entered fifty-eight writs, and there were terms when he had from seventy to one hundred cases on the docket. Each of these cases gave him thirty-three and one third cents costs for every day of the term.

Russell held the office of Master in Chancery. In 1838 the Insolvent Law was enacted, and its administration was confided to Masters in Chancery. Russell soon gained a reputation for leniency in the matter of granting discharges to the insolvent debtors, and his business increased rapidly. His jurisdiction was the whole county, and although there were several masters in the county, his fame was such that petitions came from Lowell, Waltham and other places where masters had offices. I was appointed clerk in insolvency, at five dollars a day when a court was held. In this way I gained some needed income, acquired a knowledge of the Insolvent Law, and more than all, I gained the acquaintances of the leading lawyers of the county. As debtors and witnesses were examined, I may have gained something in practice. The Insolvent Law, amended, to be sure, has remained on the statute books of Massachusetts to this day, and the United States Bankrupt Law was modeled upon it. Indeed, there can never by any wide departure from the provisions of that statute, and from its principles no departure whatever can be made.

A leading man, and a character in the town, was Thomas A. Staples. He was a native of the neighboring town of Shirley. He was a man of large size, handsome figure, resolute in his purposes, and vindictive in his enmities. His chief business was that of stage proprietor, and mail contractor. He was always in debt, and tardy, of course, in his payments. He was involved in lawsuits, and many of his debts were paid upon executions. His mail contracts were so large that he sublet many of the routes, and he was always in debt to sub-contractors. He had a stage office in Boston for a time at the Hanover House, and after that at No. 9 Court Street. His office was the headquarters of country traders and others who patronized his lines of stages. In the year 1838 or later, I was in his office when Alvin Adams, the founder of the Adams Express Company, made his first trip to New York as an express messenger. Staples afterward stated in conversation that Adams had but one parcel, and that he loaned him five dollars to meet his expenses. At that time Harnden's express was in operation with an office at No. 8 Court Street. Harnden's company disappeared in a few years, and the Adams Express Company became an institution that has the appearance of perpetuity. At a time perhaps as late as 1850, I met Adams on Washington Street, when he expressed the opinion that his business was as profitable as any business in the country.

Staples was engaged also in paper making with mills upon the upper falls of the Squannacook River. This branch of his business was especially unfortunate, and in 1836 he assigned his property to Henry Woods, Daniel Shattuck, and Joshua B. Fowle. Mr. Woods was a trader in whose employment I then was, having let myself to him when I left the Dix store December 1, 1835, for my board and $150 a year. Agreement for one year. The assignees were all friends of Staples. The last named was Calvin Childs, a blacksmith, to whom Staples owed about two thousand dollars. The assignees proceeded to execute their trust, and as collections were made, payments were made until all the debts were paid except the debt to Childs. Mr. Woods died in 1841. Shattuck died in 1850, and the trust was not then executed. Fowle paid Childs six hundred dollars, but he made no settlement of the trust. In 1853 Childs applied to Russell for counsel and assistance. Russell filed a bill on the equity side of the court. A lawyer, named Fiske, of Boston, was retained by Fowle. Fiske answered. Russell employed the Hon. Charles R. Train to assist in the trial, but there was no hearing. In 1858 Train was elected to Congress. About 1860 Russell came to me for assistance and put into my hands a large bundle of papers relating to the case. At that time Russell was so impaired in health that he could not aid in the investigation. Upon an examination I found that the testimony of Staples was important. He then lived at Machias, Maine. By writing and interviews when I found him in Boston, I became satisfied that for a hidden reason he was resolved to have nothing to do with the case. As a last resort, I took out a commission and submitted interrogatories. The answers were evasive or valueless from loss of memory. Thus the case was delayed. In 1862 I was elected to Congress. Childs was an easy going man who made inquiries occasionally, but never complained. Upon my return from a session, about 1865, I resolved to bring the case to a close. I examined the papers carefully, and I found full material for a statement, although it cost labor to analyze the accounts. At that time Russell was dead and Fiske was dead. Mr. John Loring, a former partner of Fiske, took the case. Loring agreed to a hearing at Chambers. Chief Justice Chapman named a day. At the day named the clients and counsel appeared. I presented my statement in writing. Loring and Fowle said they knew nothing about the matter. My statement showed a balance of between $400 and $500 in Fowle's hands. I asked for interest. Fowle said he had been ready always to pay. I contended it was his duty long before to have rendered an account, and made payment. Judge Chapman, with less reason than courts have usually for their decisions, held that as he was always ready to pay, he was not justly chargeable with interest. I drew a decree, the judge signed it, Fowle paid, and Childs returned home that night. For ten years the case had been on the docket, when, if some one had made an examination of the papers it could have been disposed of in a day.

The controversy in New England between Trinitarians and Unitarians had culminated in Groton about the year 1825 in a division of the old town society and the organization of an orthodox church under the Rev. John Todd. His successor, a Mr. Kittredge, had charge of the Society in 1835, and for a short time afterwards. He was succeeded by Dudley Phelps, who was a man of ability and liberal in his religious opinions. From 1838 to 1841 the post-office was in my charge, although I held the office of postmaster only from February to April, 1841. Mr. Phelps was in the habit of sitting in the office and reading every sort of newspaper from the Trumpet to the Investigator. Although he was much my senior, and of differing opinions in politics and religion our relations were quite intimate. For several years we were joint subscribers for the four leading English reviews:—Edinburgh, North British, Quarterly and Westminster. My recollection is that he made the dedicatory prayer at the new cemetery, and that he was the first person buried in it. He was a man of talent and the father of two sons, who attained distinction at the bar in New York.

The Rev. Charles Robinson was the pastor of the old society then Unitarian, but without question as to the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. He was a graduate of Harvard, a man of learning, and a writer of good sermons. In the delivery he was faulty to the last stage of awkwardness. His perceptive faculties were dull to a degree without parallel in my experience.

In 1835 and for some time afterwards, there were four taverns and three stores at which intoxicating liquors were sold and the use of such liquors by farmers was greatly in excess of their use at the present time. In the early winter the country farmers from New Hampshire and Vermont going to Boston, with butter, cheese, pork and poultry, patronized the taverns, and gave the town an appearance of business which contrasts with the aspect of dullness that it now wears. The prices for entertainment at the taverns were moderate, and none of the proprietors accumulated property.

VII BEGINNINGS IN BUSINESS

In the autumn of 1837 as my second year with Mr. Woods was approaching a close, I informed him that I proposed to go to Exeter, N. H., attend the Academy, and then either enter college or proceed with the study of the law. At about the same time I corresponded with Mr. Abbott, the principal of the Academy, in regard to terms, board, etc.. Upon this notice Mr. Woods made me a proposition to continue with him and share the business. He offered to furnish the capital, to give me my board, and one fourth of the net profits. My means were very small, the business was quite sure to yield a profit, and the prospect of gaining a small amount of capital at the age of twenty-three, when the partnership was to end, controlled me and I accepted the proposition. The partnership began March 1, 1838, when I was two months over twenty years of age. I had then been in Groton three years, and I had formed the acquaintance of many young men in the Lyceum, in business and in social ways. In connection with the Lyceum I prepared papers which I read as lectures. One of these papers upon banking, signed B., appeared in the Bay State Democrat, edited by Lewis Josselyn, the publisher. Another upon Conservatism and Religion, was also printed in the Bay State Democrat. As I did not give my name to Mr. Josselyn, and as the letters were mailed at Groton, he came there and after inquiries, called upon me. I admitted the authorship. This acquaintance continued for many years, and for many years I was a contributor to his paper. He was elected secretary of the Senate in 1843 by the Democratic Party. A little later I wrote an article called "Gibbet Hill" in which I attempted to present the tradition concerning the hill in Groton which bears that name. That article was printed in the Yeoman's Gazette or the Concord Freeman. For several years beginning about the year 1836, I wrote one paper each year called a lecture. Several of these papers were printed in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine.

From 1835 to 1841 I occupied the store night and day and it was my custom to read and write until twelve, one or two o'clock in the morning. These were my years of hard study. Not infrequently, when a tendency to sleep was too heavy for study, I bathed my face and head in cold water and thus revived my faculties—a practice, however, that I cannot commend. Early in my residence in Groton, I formed the acquaintance and friendship of Dr. Amos B. Bancroft, a friendship which continued until his death in Italy in the year 1879. It was with Dr. Bancroft that I continued my studies in Latin. In 1835, he had finished his professional studies with Dr. Shattuck, of Boston, then an eminent physician. Dr. Shattuck had studied his profession with Dr. Amos Bancroft, the father of Amos B. Dr. Amos, as he was called, was a graduate of Harvard College in the class of Wendell Phillips, and at the close of his professional studies he was spoken of as the best educated physician who had entered the profession in Boston. At the time our acquaintance began, he was entering upon the practice of medicine, at Groton, in place of his father, who was then about sixty- five years of age, deaf, and not healthy in other respects, although he lived to the age of eighty years, and then died from an accident in State Street, Boston. Dr. Bancroft, Sr., lived in a house which stood about one hundred feet north of my present residence, and the office of Dr. Amos was on the spot now occupied by the front of my house. At the close of business for the day, nine o'clock in the evening, I was in the habit of going to the office and reciting my Latin lesson, after which we discussed other matters. Upon my return to the store, I prepared myself for the next evening's recitation. In this way I read Caesar and Virgil. In a closet in Bancroft's office there was a skeleton. That skeleton had a history, and possibly there may be a sequel to it. It was understood to have been the skeleton of a man named Jack Frost, who was tried, convicted and executed at Worcester for the crime of murder committed at or near Princeton. Dr. Bancroft, Sr., had been the owner of the skeleton. Oftentimes I rode Sundays with Dr. Amos. On the occasion of one of these drives, and after the death of Dr. Bancroft, Sr., we passed the house of a waggish old man named Asa Tarbell. After a little conversation Tarbell said, "I shall be over soon for Frost's skeleton." Dr. Amos, amazed, looked over and through his glasses, and said, at length: "Why, what do you mean?" Said Tarbell: "Some years ago, your father and I were playing, and I proposed to put my uncle Ben against your Frost. Your father agreed to the game, and I won. I told him I had no use for Frost at that time, and that he might keep him." Tarbell's Uncle Ben was a man of inferior size, hardly more than a dwarf, who had been a drummer boy in the Revolution.

I bought the Bancroft estate in 1873, and my foreman, Mr. William A. Chase informed me that he had found a skeleton, in a barrel in a shed, and that he had buried it on the place. If again found it may lead to the suspicion that it is the skeleton of a murdered man, and not that of a murderer.

From 1835 to 1841, I read Locke, Say's Political Economy, Smith's Wealth of Nations, Plutarch, Josephus, Herodotus, Lingard, Hume and Smollett, Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Pope, Byron, Shakespeare, Boswell's Johnson, Junius, The Tattler, The Rambler, the English Reviews, French from text-books without a teacher and Rhetoric (Blair's full edition). Much of Blair's Rhetoric I studied carefully and with great benefit. Some of my papers of those days were written and re- written four times. On the law side I read a few text-books: Blackstone, Story on the Constitution, The Federalist, De Lohme on the British Constitution, and some other works, probably, which I do not at once recall. If I gained some knowledge of the law as practised in the country, that knowledge was gained from an acquaintance with the lawyers and from my opportunities as Clerk of the Insolvency Court.

In the year 1836, July 4, an Act was passed by Congress, granting to a class of widows of soldiers of the War of the Revolution, a pension for a term of five years. The towns of Groton, Pepperell and Shirley had supplied a large number of soldiers, and there were many widows who were entitled to the benefits of the Act. My acquaintance as clerk was already large, and my studies with Russell had given me the faculty of preparing ordinary papers, and I at once commenced canvassing for the business. I obtained in all about fifty cases under the Act of 1836. Subsequently I obtained other cases under the Act of 1838. I sent the applications forward to Washington, and in a few cases certificates were received in return. In a majority of cases there was a delay. The women became anxious and their visits and importunities were annoying. In the month of January, 1839, I joined Gen. Staples and made a visit to Washington. Staples' object was to make mail contracts, or to arrange existing difficulties. My purpose was to obtain action on pension applications. Our journey was a slow one, if not tedious. From Groton to Boston by stage, and from Boston to Stonington, Conn., by rail; from Stonington to New York by steamboat; from New York to Perth Amboy by steamboat; from Perth Amboy by rail, I think, but possibly by stage to a town on the Delaware River, Franklin perhaps. From that point to Philadelphia, by steamboat. Our journey from Philadelphia to Washington was by rail in part and in part by stage. We passed the creeks between the Susquehanna and Baltimore upon a railroad.

We stopped overnight in New York, and went to the Park Theater.
Another night we spent in Philadelphia, and went to the Chestnut Street
Theater. Staples had a fondness for theaters, and on these occasions
I followed his example. I had been in a theater but one, when I saw
Forrest in Boston, in King Lear. At Philadelphia I bought a copy of
Byron for three dollars. That volume I have yet.

The Hon. William Parmenter, a Democrat, then represented the district in Congress, and I carried one or more letters to him—one from my employer Mr. Henry Woods, who was an active Democrat. Mr. Parmenter was then about fifty years of age, of heavy frame, swarthy in complexion, and a man of good natural abilities. He took me to Mr. Van Buren. We found him alone, well dressed, polite and rather gracious than otherwise. Quite early in my visit, Mr. Parmenter took me to the Pension Office, then presided over by Mr. Edwards. Mr. Parmenter stated his business, and immediately attention was given to my applications. In the course of a few days some of the cases were disposed of, and in a few weeks my docket was clear.

Caleb Butler was then postmaster at Groton. He had had the place, probably from the days of John Quincy Adams, for as he was a violent Whig, he could not have received his appointment from General Jackson. My employer, Mr. Woods, was an applicant for the post-office, he being the only Democrat in the street who had accommodations for the office. I carried papers in support of the application. Those I gave probably to Mr. Parmenter, as I have no recollection of any interview with any post-office official. Amos Kendall was then Postmaster-General. He was a native of Dunstable, and he had been a student at the Groton Academy when Mr. Butler was the preceptor. Naturally and properly he sustained his old teacher. The change however was made, and upon the express instructions of Mr. Van Buren it was said. Mr. Woods retained the office until his death in January, 1841, when I was appointed without any agency of my own, but by the agency as I supposed of Gen. Staples. Upon the election of General Harrison I was removed in the month of April, and Mr. Butler was reappointed, an act of which I never complained, nor had I any reason to complain.

At Washington we stopped at Gadsby's Hotel, now the National. There I met and had some acquaintance with Matthew L. Davis, "the Spy in Washington" as he called himself. He was a newspaper correspondent and the biographer of Aaron Burr. He was a great admirer of Burr. Davis wore very thin clothing, scouted overcoats, and boasted that he slept always in a room with open windows, and under very light bed clothing. He was old and conceited, and as a permanent companion, he could not have been otherwise than disagreeable.

At the Supreme Court I heard arguments by Webster and Crittenden, on opposite sides. In the Senate I heard Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and others in running debate, but not in prepared speeches. The Senate then contained many other men of note. Silas Wright, of New York; Preston, of South Carolina; Benton, of Missouri; Linn, of Missouri, more remarkable for personal beauty than talents. In the House Mr. Adams was then a chief figure. His contest over the right of petition had commended him to one portion of the country, and made him the object of hostility to another portion. I recall one Monday, when he had the right to present petitions, and although they were laid on the table without debate he was able to consume time by presenting them singly. As the supply in his hands and on the table seemed inexhaustible, a compromise was made finally, and the petitions went in in a mass. Of other speakers that I heard I recall Henry A. Wise, and Sergeant S. Prentiss. Of their style and quality I can say nothing. The reported speeches of Prentiss do not justify the reputation that he enjoyed as an orator when living.

The incident which produced the most lasting impression upon me, when in Washington, was an interview with a slave, a woman fifty years or more of age. I had then no love for the system of slavery. I had read Clarkson's and Wilberforce's writings, and I knew the history of the struggle in England for the abolition of the slave trade, and slavery in the British West Indies. I had also attended some anti-slavery meetings in Massachusetts, at which the leaders, Phillips, Garrison, Foster, Parker, and Pillsbury had denounced the institution. Groton was a center of anti-slavery operations in that part of the State. Several copies of the Liberator were taken in the town, and anti- slavery meetings were held not infrequently. The first speech that George Thompson made in America was made in Groton.

One Sunday morning I walked out towards what is now called the Island. The road was marked by a rail fence, but of buildings there were none. I went so far that I was near the slave pen, a building now standing and which I have visited within a few years. It was of brick, enclosed within a brick wall, and all of a dingy straw color. At a short distance from the building, I met a black woman walking slowly away from it. I said to her: "What building is that?" At once she was in tears, and she said: "That is the pen where the poor black people are kept who are going down to Louisiana." She had then been to visit her daughter, a girl of about eighteen years of age, according to the mother's statement, who was to leave the next morning. She was the last of a family of nine as the woman said, who had been sold and taken away from her. As I was leaving I said: "Who is your master?" She answered: "Mr. Blair, of the Globe." In the fourteen years of my manhood, that I acted with the Democratic party, I never said anything in favor of the system of slavery. If otherwise I might have done so, the interview with that old woman would have restrained me.

VIII FIRST EXPERIENCE IN POLITICS

At the spring election of Groton in 1839, I was chosen a member of the school committee. The other members had been in the service in previous years. They were the Rev. Charles Robinson, the Rev. Mr. Kittredge, Dr. Joshua Green, and Dr. George Stearns. In the early Colonial period the "minister" was often the schoolmaster also. Naturally he took an interest in the education of the children, and previous to the time when school committees were required by statute, he was the self-constituted guide of the teachers and schools. Indeed, the schools were parochial. Whenever the minister visited a school he made a prayer, and the morning exercise in reading was in the New Testament Scriptures—two verses by each pupil. In 1840 the entire board was rejected, and a board composed of school teachers and non- professional men was chosen.

In 1838 the Massachusetts Legislature passed what was known as the Fifteen-Gallon Law. The statute prohibited the sale of distilled spirits in "less quantity than fifteen gallons." It did not take effect immediately and the election of that year was not seriously disturbed, but before the autumn of 1839 the State was thoroughly aroused. A cry was raised that it was a law to oppress the poor who could not command means to purchase the quantity named, while the rich would enjoy the use of liquor notwithstanding the statute. The town of Groton was entitled to two members in the house of representatives. Both parties nominated candidates who favored the repeal of the Fifteen-Gallon Law. The temperance voters put a ticket in the field, the Rev. Amasa Sanderson, the minister of the Baptist Society, then a new organization, and feeble in numbers and wealth, and myself. At that time my associations were largely with Whigs, but I was opposed to a national bank, and in favor of free trade. With those views it was not possible for me to act with the Whig Party on national questions or in national contests. Mr. Sanderson and I received about seventy- six votes, and as none of the candidates had a majority, the town was unrepresented.

Edward Everett was Governor when the law was passed, and he was a candidate for re-election in 1839. I supported Mr. Everett on the temperance issue against Judge Marcus Morton, who was the candidate of the Democratic Party. Judge Morton had been on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court where he had the reputation of an able judge by the side of Shaw, Wilde and Putnam. At that time I had not seen Morton or Everett. In the year 1836 or 1837 I went to Boston to hear Alex. H. Everett deliver a Democratic Fourth of July oration. The effort was a disappointment to me. A. H. Everett had a reputation as an orator, but he was far inferior to his brother Edward. In later years I heard Edward Everett often. His genius in preparation and in the delivery of his orations and speeches was quite equal to anything we can imagine at Athens and by Athenian orators, excepting only the force of his argument.

In 1851 or 1852 I was present at an agricultural fair at Northampton and in company with Mr. Everett. After dinner speeches were made. When we rode to the fair grounds in the morning a dense river fog covered the valley but at ten o'clock it lifted, and the day became clear. At the dinner Mr. Everett in his speech described the morning, the dense fog, the lifting, the sun illuminating first the hills and then the valleys, revealing the spires of the churches, etc. For the moment I was deceived. But when he had concluded I saw him hand his manuscript to a reporter and the speech appeared the next morning, verbatim as he had delivered it. He knew the river towns, and he knew that every fair day in autumn was preceded by a dense fog, and the speech was written upon that theory. What alternative he had prepared in case of a rain, I know not.

As a judge, and at the same time the candidate of the Democratic Party for Governor for many years, the rank and file of the party came to regard Judge Morton as a man of fine abilities and sterling integrity. His abilities were sturdy rather than attractive. In this respect he was the opposite of Governor Everett. In the canvass of 1839 Morton was elected by one vote in a contest of unusual warmth. This election removed him from the bench, much to his regret, it was said, as under the circumstances he could hardly hope for a re-election. The House and Senate were controlled by the Whigs, and the Governor was surrounded by a council composed of Whigs. The Fifteen-Gallon Law was repealed and in other respects the government was not different from what it would have been had Mr. Everett been re-elected.

Governor Morton continued to be the Democratic candidate, and though defeated in 1840 and 1841 by John Davis, he was again elected in 1843 by the Legislature, there having been no choice by the people, a majority being required. The Senate was Democratic by a considerable majority. The House was equally divided at the opening of the session, and there were four abolitionists who held the balance of power. After several trials the Whigs succeeded in electing Daniel P. King of Danvers, by the help of one or more of the abolitionists. There were several contested seats, and when the house had been purged, as the process was called, the Democrats were in a majority. The session was a short one. A few political measures were passed, salaries were reduced, and much below a reasonable compensation for those days even. Governor Morton had a Democratic Council, but they were not agreed in policy and the administration lost strength even with Democrats. Its defeat in the autumn was inevitable, and Gov. Morton ceased to be a candidate for an office that he had sought in twenty elections and gained in two. With others I lost confidence in his ability, but that confidence I afterwards regained.

He was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853, and in that body his ability was conspicuous. His style was clear and logical, and his processes of reasoning were legal and judicial in character. In his speeches he avoided authorities and spurned notes. He prepared himself by reading and reflection, and the arrangement was dictated by the logic of the case. His speeches were the speeches of a strong man, and he was a dangerous antagonist in debate. His reasoning was faultless and he kept his argument free from all surplus matter.

In a conversation that I once had with him at his home in Taunton, he said that the best legal argument to which he had ever listened was made by Samuel Dexter. As Governor Morton had heard Pinckney, Wirt, Webster, Mason, Choate, Curtis and many others, the praise of Dexter was not faint praise.

IX THE ELECTION OF 1840

In the early summer of 1840 the great contest began, which ended in the defeat of Mr. Van Buren and the election of Gen. Harrison to the Presidency. The real issues were not much discussed—certainly not by the Whigs. In reality the results were due to the general prostration of business and the utter discredit that had fallen upon General Jackson's pet bank system. The Independent Treasury System, as it was termed by Democrats, or the Sub-Treasury System, as it was called by the Whigs, had not been tested.

The country was tired of experiments and all the evils, which were many, that then afflicted the people, were attributed to the experiments of General Jackson in vetoing the bills for the recharter of the United States Bank and for the institution of the pet bank system. In truth the country was wedded to the idea that the funds of the government should be so placed that they could be used to facilitate business. That idea and the practice arising from it were full of peril. In the infancy of a country, when the resources are inadequate, a national bank, assuming that it is managed honestly and wisely, may be an important aid, but time being given, it will inevitably become a political machine in a country, like the United States, where the political aspirations of the people are active and the temptations to seek the aid of the money power are always great. Even in modern time, with a surplus of millions in the banks of the city of New York, for which no proper use could be found, there are indications of a purpose to return to the pet bank system under another name.

Gen. Harrison, the nominee of the Whig Party, was then sixty-seven years of age by the record, but the public opinion credited him with several more years. His mental powers were not of superior quality, and his life had not been of a sort to develop his faculties. He had done good service in the Indian wars of the frontier and as commander in the battle of Tippecanoe he had won a reputation as a soldier. During the war of 1812, he commanded the army of the Northwest, and with honor. He had had a seat in each House of Congress, he had represented the government at the capital of a South American Republic, and all with credit, and all without distinction. His career had been sufficiently conspicuous to justify his friends in eulogies in the party papers and speeches; and neither as good policy nor just treatment should his opponents have been betrayed into criticisms of his military and civil life. The Democrats were unwise enough to raise an issue upon his military career, and the result was greatly to their loss. His frontier life in a log cabin was also the subject of ridicule at the opening of the campaign. The Whigs accepted the issue, built log cabins on wheels and drew them over the country from one mass meeting to another. The unfortunate remark was made by a writer or speaker that if Harrison had a log cabin and plenty of hard cider he would be content. A barrel became the emblem of the Whig Party. The log cabin was furnished with a cider barrel at the door, and the emblematic barrel was seen on cane heads and breast pins.

Mr. Webster struck a fatal blow at the error of the Democratic Party: —"Let him be the log cabin candidate. What you say in scorn we will shout with all our lungs. * * * It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; but my elder brother and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snow drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. * * * If ever I am ashamed of it, or if I ever fail in affectionate remembrance of him who reared it, and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and through the fire and blood of a seven years' Revolutionary war, shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice to save his country and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity be blotted forever from the memory of mankind."

John Tyler of Virginia, was placed on the Whig ticket as the candidate for Vice-President. Tyler had been a Democrat and the opinions of the States Rights wing of the Democratic Party were his opinions, notwithstanding his associations with the Whig Party. His nomination was due to the disposition to balance the ticket by selecting one of the candidates from each wing of the party—and there are always two wings to a party.

Of poetry the Whig writers furnished much more than was enjoyed by Democrats. An effort was made to stay the tide in favor of Harrison by poetry as well as by argument. The effort was fruitless. The contest of 1840 had its origin in the most distressing financial difficulties that ever rested upon the country, and it was conducted on the part of the Whigs by large expenditure of money, for those days, and with a degree of hilarity and good nature that it is difficult now to realize. This may have been due to general confidence, and to a consequent belief that a change of administration would be followed by general prosperity.

The Whigs were not under the necessity of submitting arguments to their followers, and the arguments of Democrats were of no avail. The Whig papers in all parts of the country contained lists of names of Democrats who were supporting General Harrison. Occasionally the Democratic papers could furnish a short list of Whigs who declared for Van Buren in preference to Harrison. The most absurd stories were told of the administration, and apparently they were accepted as truth. Charles J. Ogle, of Pennsylvania, delivered a speech in the House of Representatives in which he marshaled all the absurd stories that were afloat. He charged among other things that Van Buren had sets of gold spoons. The foundation for the statement was the fact that there were spoons in the Executive Mansion that were plated or washed with gold on the inside of the bowls. The spoons were there in General Grant's time, but so much like brass or copper in appearance that one would hesitate about using them. Another idle story believed by the masses was that the Navy bought wood in New Orleans at a cost of twenty-four dollars a cord and carried it to Florida for the use of the troops during the Seminole war of 1837-8. Isaac C. Morse, of Louisiana, was one of the Congressional bearers or mourners at the funeral of John Quincy Adams, in 1848. He was a Whig member and his district in 1840 was on the Texas frontier. At one of the evening sessions of mourning, while the Committee was in Boston, he gave an account of his campaign, and he recited a speech made by a young orator who went out with him as an aid. The speech opened thus: "Fellow Citizens; who is Daniel Webster? Daniel Webster is a man up in Massachusetts making a dictionary. Who is General Harrison? Everybody knows who General Harrison is. He is Tippecanoe and Tyler too. But who is Martin Van Bulen? Martin Van Bulen! He is the man who bought the wood in the Orleans, paid twenty-four dollars a cord for it, carried it round to Florida and had to cut down the trees to land it." A fellow in the crowd cried out, "Carrying coals to Newcastle." "Yes," said the speaker, "them coals he carried to Newcastle. I don't know so much about the coals, but about the wood I've got the documents."

The general public was not only disposed to accept every wild statement, but the average intelligence was much below the present standard, and the means of communication were poor. If, however, there had been no canvass, the overthrow of Van Buren would have occurred. The defeat of the United States Bank, and the failure of the pet bank system, had been attended by disorders in the finances, the ruin of manufactures, a reduction in wages, with all the incident evils. As these evils were coincident in time with the measures, the measures were treated as the guilty cause. Beyond question, Mr. Clay's tariff bill contributed to the troubles.

George Bancroft, the historian, was then collector of the port of
Boston. He took an active part in the canvass in Massachusetts.
On the evening of Saturday previous to the election in Massachusetts,
he spoke at Groton in a building afterwards known as Liberty Hall.*

Mr. Bancroft had a full House, but not an enthusiastic one. Many of his hearers were Whigs, who came from the country, but not to cheer the speaker. Moreover, the news of the New York election, then held the first three days of the week, was not encouraging to Democrats. After the meeting Mr. Bancroft was taken to the tavern, where a supper was served to him and to a small number of Democrats. Mr. Bancroft was excited, and walking the room he said:—"I do believe if General Harrison is elected, Divine Providence will interfere and prevent his ever becoming President of the United States." These words of disappointment seemed prophecy, when the death of Harrison occurred within thirty days after his inauguration.

In his address Mr. Bancroft spoke with great confidence of the vote of New York. There were some conscientious Democrats in his audience, who remembered the remarks, and it was with great reluctance that they gave him their votes when he was a candidate for Governor in 1844.

The more considerate members of the Democratic Party apprehended defeat from the opening of the canvass. As early as June 17, the Whigs had enormous mass meetings at Boston and Bunker Hill. The Democrats were not inert. The Governor of the State was a Democrat and there were those who had hopes of his re-election. In set-off of the great meeting of the 17th of June at Charlestown, the Democrats prepared for a similar meeting on Lexington Green, July 4. The concourse of people was large. Governor Morton was present and spoke. I there met William D. Kelley, who spoke to a portion of the crowd from a wagon. He was then employed in a jeweler's establishment in Boston.

Groton sent a company of volunteers for the day numbering about seventy-five men, under command of Captain William Shattuck, then a sturdy Democrat and afterwards an equally sturdy Republican. Shattuck was the grandson of Captain Job Shattuck, of Shays' Rebellion. Job Shattuck had been a captain in the War of the Revolution, and he was always an earnest patriot. He was also a man of wealth, having large possessions in land, and being wholly exempt from the pecuniary distresses that harassed the majority of men, from the close of the war to the close of the century. Job Shattuck's action was due to his sympathy for the sufferers and to his sense of justice. In every town there were traders and small capitalists who had supplied the families of soldiers who were absent in the service.

Either by mortgage or by executions, the creditors had secured liens upon the homesteads of the soldiers and from 1783 to 1789 the liens were enforced. Petitions went up to the General Court for a stay act. James Bowdoin was Governor. The General Court did not listen to the appeal. Daniel Shays and others organized forces for the suppression of the Courts. Shattuck was the leader in the county of Middlesex, and at the head of his force he broke up the Court at Concord. Finally he was arrested. Major Woods, who had been an officer in the war, was in command of the Government forces. Shattuck was secreted at the house of one Gregg, who lived near where the house of John Gilson now stands. The season was winter. It was believed that Gregg betrayed Shattuck. When Shattuck discovered his peril, he fled and made his way toward the Nashua River, which was then frozen. His pursuers followed, but at unequal pace. When he had crossed the river, he saw that the three men in sight were widely separated from each other. Shattuck turned, and for a time he became the pursuer. The first man ran, then the second, but finally Shattuck fell on the ice, with sword in hand. His pursuers seized him. Upon his refusal to surrender his sword, they cut the cords of his hand, and wounded him in the leg. He was tried, sentenced to be hanged, and confined in the jail at Concord.

The election of 1786 turned upon the questions at issue, and especially upon the execution of the persons under sentence. Bowdoin was the candidate of the "Law-and-Order Party," and John Hancock was nominated by the friends of the convicts. Hancock was elected by a vote of about nineteen thousand against less than six thousand for Bowdoin. The convicts were pardoned, and a stay law was passed. The demand of the Shays men was reasonable, and the Government was guilty of a criminal error in resisting it.

The Shays Rebellion was beneficial to Massachusetts, and it contributed to the argument in favor of the Constitution of the United States.

The town of Groton continued in the control of Shattuck and his friends for many years after the suppression of the Rebellion. During that period he was drawn as a juror. When his name was called the judge repeated it, and said, "Job Shattuck! He can't sit on the jury in this Court." As Shattuck came out of the seat limping he said: "I have broken up one Court here, and things won't be right, until I break up another."

Something of the spirit of Job Shattuck has been exhibited in the larger portion of his numerous descendants. They have been devoted to liberty and just in their dealings. These two qualities were conspicuous in his grandson, Captain William Shattuck.

I took part in the canvass of 1840 and made speeches in Groton and in several of the towns in the vicinity. I was also the candidate of the Democratic Party for a seat in the House of Representatives. There was no opposition for the nomination, although there were many Democrats who thought my defection the preceding year had prevented the election of the Democratic candidates. My temperance opinions were offensive to many, if not to a majority of the party. On the other hand there were a number of young members of the Whig Party whose votes I could command. As a final fact, the political feeling was then so strong that all considerations yielded to the chances and hopes of success.

My opponent, and the successful candidate, was Mr. John Boynton, afterward, and for a single year, a member of the senate. He was a native of the town, a blacksmith by trade, and the son of a blacksmith. He was a man of quiet ways, upright, and known to every voter. He had been in the office of town clerk for many years, he had been kind to everyone, and he had no enemies. Boynton was elected, but by a moderate majority. But for the excitement of the Presidential election, the contest would have been very close.

The death of General Harrison and the elevation of John Tyler to the Presidency wrought a great change in the fortunes of the Whig Party. Soon after the assembling of Congress at the extra session, called by President Harrison, a bill for a Fiscal Bank was passed by the two Houses, and vetoed by President Tyler. The veto message was so framed as to encourage the Whig leaders to pass a second bill in a form designed to avoid the objections of the President.

In the discussion upon the veto of the first bill, Mr. Clay assailed the President in such terms that a reconciliation was impossible. From that moment it was the purpose of the President to co-operate with the Democratic Party. A second bill was passed. That was also vetoed by the President. Early in September all the members of the Cabinet resigned except Mr. Webster. The outgoing members gave reasons to the public, and Mr. Webster gave reasons for not going. Caleb Cushing, Henry A. Wise, and a few other Whigs, called the Omnibus Party chose their part with Webster and Tyler. The Whig Party was divided, hopelessly.

Previous to the division, a bill had passed, which had been approved by the President, for the repeal of the Independent Treasury System. The ardor of its enemies was such that no substitute was provided. The expectation was that a Fiscal Bank, or Fiscal Agent, would be created. The failure of the bank bills left the Government without any lawful system of finance. The pet bank system was restored, in fact. The rupture in the Whig Party contributed to its defeat in Massachusetts at the election in 1842, but the party was so compact in 1841 that its triumph was assured. Mr. Webster defended his course, and with few exceptions his conduct was either approved or tolerated in Massachusetts.

[* It was then an unfinished building and stood where the Willow Dale road connects with Hollis Street. The building had been erected by a body of people who advocated the union of all the churches. They called themselves Unionists. Their leader was the Rev. Silas Hawley. He was a vigorous thinker, a close reasoner, and he displayed great knowledge of the Bible. His following became considerable. The excitement extended to the neighboring towns and for a time serious inroads were made upon the churches of the village.

The no-creed doctrine was accepted by some who never believed in any creed, and by others who had believed in creeds that they then thought were false. In the year 1838, Hawley convened a "World's Convention" at Liberty Hall, called by the wicked "Polliwog Chapel," to consider the subject of uniting all the churches in one church without a creed.

One afternoon early in the week of the session, I saw three men walking on the street towards Liberty Hall, with knapsacks buckled on their backs. One of these was Theodore Parker, one George Ripley, and the third, I think, was Charles A. Dana. In this I may be in error. Parker told me in after years when he had a wide-spread reputation, that his first public speech was made in that convention.]

X MASSACHUSETTS MEN IN THE FORTIES

In 1841 I was again a candidate for the House, and I was elected by the meager majority of one vote. As a member for the year 1842 I made the acquaintance of many persons, some of whom became distinguished in state and national politics. The leading members on the Democratic side were Samuel C. Allen of Northfield; Nathaniel Hinckley of Barnstable; Seth Whitmarsh, of Seekonk; Seth J. Thomas, Richard Frothingham of Charlestown; and James Russell, of West Cambridge. Allen was a son of the Samuel C. Allen who had been a member of Congress, a member of the old Republican Party of Jefferson, and the author of the saying: "Associated wealth is the dynasty of modern states." Another son was Elisha Allen, who was then a member of Congress from Maine, elected in 1840. He was afterwards our Commissioner to the Sandwich Islands, and subsequently he was Minister from the Islands to the United States.

Samuel C. Allen, Jr., was a vigorous, incisive debater. His speeches were brief, direct, and disagreeable to his opponents. He followed Mr. Webster's advice to the citizens of Boston—he "made no long orations" and in those days, he "drank no strong potations."

Thomas was an energetic, capable man, a ready debater, although of limited resources in learning. Whitmarsh was an unlearned country leader, whose speeches were better adapted to a neighborhood gathering of political supporters, than to the deliberations of an assembly charged with a share in the government of a state. Hinckley was an original thinker, with a hobby. His purpose was to secure the abolition of the rule which excluded from the witness-stand those who did not believe in a personal God. This he accomplished, and by the aid of the arguments that are formulated in Stuart Mill's Treatise on Liberty, but they are not there more clearly presented by Mill than they had been presented by Hinckley in the debates of 1842 and 1843 in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Hinckley was a bore, but the object was accomplished through his agency. Since that time such parties have been permitted to testify, and the day should come speedily when the laws should be so changed as to allow the husband and wife to testify in all cases where they happen to be jointly interested or opposed to each other.

In judicial investigations, all who know anything should be permitted to speak, and of their credibility the court and the jury should judge. No one should be kept from the witness-stand upon the ground of interest or feeling. Interest in a party or a cause may be a temptation to perjury. In a majority of contests, however, the truth will be told voluntarily even by interested or infamous persons, and in cases where the witness indulges in falsehood the skill of attorneys and the judgment of the court will enable the jury to reach a correct conclusion.

Frothingham was a student, a fair speaker, but destitute of the qualities of an orator and too timid for leadership. A parliamentary leader may, or may not, be a leader of opinion. Mr. Clay was both. Mr. Webster was a leader in opinion, and whatever leadership was accorded to him in the Senate of the United States was due to the recognized fact that he represented a constituency of opinion larger than his constituency as a senator. In the case of Mr. Sumner that was more conspicuously true. As a mere parliamentary leader, his standing was low. He was not fertile in resources; he was not ready in debate; his arguments rested upon authorities; and these he could not always command in season for the emergency. But it was admitted that he either represented a great body of American citizens in opinion, or that a great body of American citizens would accept his opinions whenever he made them known.

In competition with the leaders of the Democratic Party of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1842 it was not a hard task to acquire a fair standing, but in truth I never thought much of the results of my labors as they might affect my standing.

The Whig side of the House was at once more able and more numerous. The city of Boston was a Whig city by a large majority. Its members, about forty, were chosen on one ticket. The list was prepared by the city committee, and each year some young lawyers, merchants, and tradesmen, or mechanics, were brought forward. The vacancies that occurred enabled the committee to compliment a retired merchant, or successful mechanic, with a seat in the House. The attendance of members was not enforced, and it was quite irregular. A full House consisted of about three hundred and fifty members, but sixty was a quorum. It was common for merchants and lawyers to call at the House, look at the orders of the day, and then go to business. In an exigency they were sent for and brought in to vote.

The House was not a place for luxurious ease. The members sat on long seats without cushions, having only a narrow shelf on the back of the seat next in front on which with care a book might be laid or a memorandum written. A drawer under the seat for the documents constituted a member's outfit. There were four wood fires—one in each corner of the great hall. Members sat in their overcoats and hats, and in one of the rules it was declared that when "a member rises to speak, he shall take off his hat and address the speaker."

Boston sent John C. Gray, John C. Park, Charles Francis Adams, George
T. Bigelow (afterwards Chief Justice of the State), Edmund Dwight,
Charles P. Curtis, George T. Curtis, John G. Palfrey and others who
were men of mark.

From other parts of the State there were Alvah Crocker, of Fitchburg;
Henry Wilson, of Natick; Thomas Kinnicutt and Benjamin F. Thomas, of
Worcester; John P. Robinson and Daniel S. Richardson, of Lowell;
Samuel H. Walley, Jr., of Roxbury, and others.

Mr. Gray was the son of William Gray, the leading merchant of Boston at the close of the last century. Mr. Gray was kept in the House for many years. He was familiar with the rules and usages, and his influence within certain limits was considerable. His integrity was undisputed. Nobody suspected him of personal interests in anything. As chairman of the Committee on Finance, he guided the expenditures of the State with economy and rigid justice. As a speaker his powers were limited to a statement of the facts bearing upon the case. To argument in any high sense he did not aspire.

John C. Park was a good talker. His resources were at his command. His style was agreeable, his argument clear, his positions reasonable, and yet his influence was extremely limited. His experience as a lawyer was the same, substantially. He was not capable of carrying the mind of the hearer to conclusions from which there was no escape.

Of the Whig members, Charles Francis Adams was the one person of most note—due to his family and name. He was then thirty-five years of age. He was born into a family of culture, and from the first he enjoyed every advantage that could be derived from books and from the conversation of persons of superior intelligence.

If we include the earliest period of life, the majority of mankind acquire a larger share of knowledge from conversation than from reading or observation. Mr. Adams had had the best opportunities for development and improvement from each and all of the three great sources of knowledge. With all these advantages he could not have been included in the first ten on the Whig side of the House. His style of speaking was at once nervous and oracular. His voice and manner were not agreeable, and he had a peculiar violent jerk of the head, as though he would separate it from his body, whenever he became excited or bestowed special emphasis upon a remark. John Quincy Adams had the same peculiarity which I had observed in 1839 in his controversy for the right of petition. In political information Mr. Adams was the best instructed man in the House.

In those days the slavery question in some form was the topic of debate and of resolves by the two Houses. Among these the right of petition and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia were the most conspicuous. In these debates and proceedings Mr. Adams was the leader. When he became a member of the Thirty-sixth Congress and was appointed upon the committee of thirty-three, he accepted a surrender to the slave power, which would have given to slavery a perpetual lease of existence, if institutions and constitutions could have preserved it. The surrender to slavery, had it been accepted, would have burdened a race with perpetual servitude and consigned the Republic to lasting disgrace. It is to be said, however, that Mr. Adams but yielded to a public sentiment that was controlling in the city of Washington in the winter of 1860-61, and which was then formidable in all parts of the country. The concession or surrender was accepted by many Republicans, including Mr. Corwin of Ohio who was chairman of the committee of thirty-three.

From 1840 to 1850 I was a member of the Legislature for seven years. A large body of the people led by Robert Rantoul, Jr., William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were in favor of the abolition of capital punishment. Many of the clergy, especially of the orthodox clergy, opposed the change, and for support quoted the laws of Moses. Sermons were preached from the text: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." If this text is treated as a philosophical statement, based upon human nature, that those who resort to blood to avenge their wrongs will get a like return, then the proposition has wisdom in it; but it is the essence of a bloody code if it mean that either the State or the individual sufferer should take a human life either for revenge, punishment, or example.

At a session in the Forties the House was made indignant one morning by the introduction of a petition by Mr. Tolman, of Worcester, asking that the clergy who approved of capital punishment should be appointed hangman. A motion was made to reject the petition without reference. I interposed and called attention to the similarity between the position the House was thus taking and the position occupied by the National House of Representatives in regard to petitions upon the subject of slavery. The suggestion had no weight with the House. The petition was rejected without a reference.

The next morning the messenger said Mr. Garrison wished to see me in the lobby. I found Mr. Garrison, Wendell Phillips and William Jackson with bundles of petitions of the kind presented by Mr. Tolman. They assumed that as I had advocated the reference of the Tolman petition I would present others of a like character. I said, "Gentlemen, when petitions are presented by a member upon his personal responsibility I shall always favor a reference, but as to the presentation of petitions, I occupy a different position. I must judge of the wisdom of the prayer. In this case I must decline to take any responsibility." The petitions were presented by Mr. Tolman and the House retreated from the awkward position.

George T. Bigelow was one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, of the Whig leaders. His style of speech was plain, direct, and free from partisan feeling. His statements were usually within the limits of the facts and authorities. His temper was even and his judgment was free from feeling. He possessed those qualities which made him an acceptable judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and afterwards, when he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, gave him a conspicuous and almost eminent position as jurist.

George T. Curtis was fastidious, and sometimes he was supercilious, in his speeches to the House. His influence was exceedingly limited, and he carried on a constant but useless struggle in the hope of extending it.

Samuel H. Walley, Jr., of Roxbury, was for a time, chairman of the Committee on Finance, and one whose integrity and competence were never doubted by anyone. The revenues and expenditure of the State were then insignificant, relatively, in amount, but the people were poor as compared with their condition in 1880 and subsequently. Every appropriation was canvassed in every shop and on every farm. Mr. Walley maintained a strict economy and the expenses of the State were kept at the lowest point consistent with the wise administration of affairs.

Nevertheless the Democratic Party, acting in error, attacked the expenses, discussed the items in the canvass of 1842, and when they came to power in 1843 they made serious reductions, especially in the matter of salaries of public officers, and all, as I now think, unwisely.

In the sessions of 1842 and 1843 there came from the town of Woburn, Nathaniel A. Richardson. When elected he was only twenty-one years of age. His election was due to the local fame he had acquired as a speaker in the Lyceum of the town. His career was brief. Whether he had in him the elements of success cannot now be known, but it was manifest that he did not get beyond words in his speeches.

His speeches were lacking in information and his powers of argument were weak and limited. His most noted speech was in support of a resolution in favor of refunding to General Jackson the fine of one thousand dollars that had been imposed upon him by a New Orleans judge. Richardson's opening sentence was this: "I rise, Mr. Speaker, and throw myself into the crackling embers of this debate,"—from which, in the judgment of the House, he never emerged.

The Lyceum, as it existed from 1840 to 1850, has disappeared, and to the loss of young men who may be called to take part in public affairs. In many cases, however, it led to the development of a style of speaking that was not adapted to political discussion or to the profession of the law. Speaking and writing should be pursued at the same time, and study is an essential condition of success. In public assemblies, even in those that are composed of selected persons, there is always an opportunity for a well-trained man, who is also carefully and fully informed upon the subject under debate, to exert an influence and not infrequently he may succeed in securing the acceptance of his opinions.

But study alone will not make a good or even an acceptable speaker, unless there is added also a period of careful practice. There are many men of learning whose faculty for speaking is so limited that their awkwardness is more conspicuous than their knowledge. The Lyceum may be made a school of practice. The business should not be limited to topics that do not excite feeling. The contests of the world rest largely upon feeling, often degenerating into mere passion. Those who are to take part in such contests should learn at an early period of life to control their feelings and passions. Such benign results can be reached only by experience. Let the debates of the Lyceum deal with questions of living interest, and those who take part in such contests will learn to control their feelings and thus prepare themselves for the business of life.

John P. Robinson, of Lowell, was the best equipped member of the House of 1842. He was then in the prime of life in years, but already somewhat impaired. He was a thoroughly educated man, a trained lawyer, of considerable experience in country practice—a practice which renders the members of the profession more acute than the practice of cities. In the country the controversies are about small matters relatively, but the clients are deeply interested, the neighborhood is enlisted on one side or the other, and the attendance at court of the friends of the parties is often large. The counsel is tried quite as rigorously and critically as is the case. Such was the condition of things previous to 1848. Robinson was not only a good English scholar, but he was devoted to the classics, and especially to the Greek classics and history. Afterwards he became a resident of Athens where he lived for several years. He was a good speaker in a high sense of the phrase. In the sessions of 1842 and 1843 the system of corporations was in controversy. The Democrats were in opposition generally. The Whig Party favored the system. In the session of 1842 or 1843 citizens of Nantucket presented a petition for an Act of Incorporation as a "Camel Company." The town had been the chief port in the world for the whale-fishery business. Its insular position rendered it necessary to obtain supplies from the mainland and to transport the products of the fishery to the mainland. The fact that there was a bar across the harbor, which made it impossible to bring in vessels of the size of those engaged in the fishery was fast depriving it of its supremacy. New London was already a rival.

The scheme for relief was to build what was called "camels." They were vessels capable of receiving a whale-ship and floating it over the bar. They were to be made broad, of shallow draught, with air-tight compartments. These machines were to be taken outside the bar; the compartments were to be filled with water and the camels sunk. The whale ship was then to be floated over the camel and the water was then to be pumped out of the compartments when the camel would rise with the ship on its back and carry the whaler into the harbor.

The scheme seemed a wild one, but opinions were controlled by party feeling. The bill passed, the camels were built, and the scheme failed as a practical measure. Nantucket was doomed as a trading and commercial town. As a watering place it had a future. In one of the debates upon corporations Robinson took part, perhaps upon the Nantucket "camel" question, and made the best speech to which I have ever listened in defense of the system.

The corporation system has yielded larger returns to Massachusetts than she has received from any other feature of her domestic policy, excepting only her system of public instruction.

Robinson lived, probably, on the verge of insanity, to which end he came finally. When a member of the House, he was restless, almost constantly walking in the area or through the aisles, running his hands through his long black hair, engaged apparently in meditation upon topics outside of the business of the House.

He is immortalized in Lowell's "Biglow Papers,"

"John P. Robinson, he
Says he won't vote for Governor B."

The Governor B. was Governor George N. Briggs, with whom Robinson had a quarrel about the year 1845.

Henry Wilson, afterwards Senator and Vice-President of the United States, was a member of the House in 1842 and 1843. He had risen to notice in the campaign of 1840. He was engaged by the Whig Party as one of its speakers and announced as the "Natick Cobbler."

He had worked in the trade of a shoemaker, and as the shoe interest was already a large interest in the State, it was a matter of no slight importance to give distinction to a representative of the craft. Wilson's family were destitute of culture, and although he had had the advantage of training at an academy for a year, perhaps, his attainments were very limited. I recollect papers in his handwriting in which the rule requiring a sentence to commence with a capital letter was disregarded uniformly. His style of speaking was heavy and unattractive. This peculiarity remained to the end. In those days Wilson was known as an Anti-Slavery Whig. In some respects Wilson's political career was tortuous, but in all his windings he was true to the cause of human liberty.

Although I was acquainted with Wilson from 1842 to the time of his death, I could never so analyze the man as to understand the elements of the power which he possessed. It may have rested in the circumstance that he appeared to be important, if not essential, to every party with which he was identified. His acquaintance was extensive and it included classes of men with whom many persons in public life do not associate. He made the acquaintance of all the reporters and editors and publishers of papers wherever he went. He frequented saloons and restaurants to ascertain public sentiment. In political campaigns he was the prophet, foretelling results with unusual accuracy.

Benjamin F. Thomas of Worcester was a leading man in the Whig Party, a good speaker, saving only that he appeared to vociferate. He was afterwards a judge of the Supreme Court of the State and for a single term he was a member of Congress.

As a lawyer his rank was good, almost eminent, in the State, but his career in Congress was a failure. He was a member of the Thirty- seventh Congress, and he failed to realize the issues and to comprehend the duties of a public man in an hour of peril. In 1862 he abandoned the Republican Party, and joined himself to a temporary organization in the State, called the People's Party.

The party disappeared upon its defeat in November, 1862, and Judge
Thomas disappeared from politics.

Mr. Kinnicutt, the Speaker, in 1842, was a gentleman of agreeable manners, fair presence, and respectable, moderate abilities. He administered the office with entire fairness. His elevation to the post of Speaker, then thought to be one of great importance, may have been due to his residence at Worcester. In those days, as in these, Worcester was a center of political power and its leading men were able always to command consideration. When, in 1840, it was an urgency in party politics to defeat Governor Morton, John Davis, of Worcester, called "Honest John," was selected as the candidate, although he was then a member of the United States Senate.

In the sessions of 1843 and 1844, I originated three measures and introduced bills designed to give legal form to the measures.

1. A bill requiring cashiers of banks and treasurers of all other corporations to return to the assessors of each city and town the names of stockholders residing in each such city or town, the shares held by each and the par value of the shares. The bill was passed. The holders of stock who had theretofore escaped taxation were enraged, and a meeting to denounce the measure was held in Boston.

2. A bill to require the mortgagee to pay the tax on mortgaged real estate. The bill was then defeated, but recently the measure has become a law.

3. The reduction of the poll tax.

On each of the last two measures I made a speech which was reported in the Boston Post. Upon the revival of the question concerning the taxation of mortgaged real estate, my opinions were not as firmly in its favor as they had been in 1843, when I originated and advocated the measure.

The assessment of a poll-tax as a prerequisite to the exercise of the right to vote is a relic of the property qualification and it ought not any longer to find a place in the policy of free States. As persons without accumulated property enjoy the benefits of free schools, the use of roads and bridges, and the protection of the laws, there is a justification for the assessment of a capitation tax, but the right to vote should not be dependent upon its payment.

XI THE ELECTION OF 1842, AND THE DORR REBELLION

The election of 1842 was contested by the Democratic Party and successfully, upon the charge that the Whig Administration had unwisely and illegally aided the "law and order party" in Rhode Island in the controversy with Thomas W. Dorr, the leader of the party engaged in an attempt to change the form of government in that State. At that time the people of Rhode Island were living under the charter granted by Charles II. Its provisions were illiberal in the opinion of the majority of the people of Rhode Island, but the majority of the voters under the Charter thought otherwise. Mr. Dorr represented the popular opinion, and Governor King represented the dominant class. Governor King was a Whig and, naturally the Whig Party of Massachusetts sympathized with him. Gen. H. A. S. Dearborn, who had been an officer in the War of 1812, was then Adjutant-General of Massachusetts. In his haste to aid Governor King, he loaned to him quite a quantity of muskets from the State Arsenal. This act caused great criticism and contributed to the overthrow of the Whig Party in 1842, if it did not in fact cause it. Dorr had organized a government, under a constitution which had been ratified by such of the people of Rhode Island as chose to vote upon it. The Dorr legislature assembled, a military force was organized, and the State seemed to be on the eve of a bloody contest.

Governor King appealed for aid to President Tyler. The President recognized Governor King as the head of the lawful government of the State, and although the aid was not granted, the Dorr Rebellion came to an end. The courts followed the political department of the government, and the attempt of Dorr and his associates was a failure in fact and in law. The failure was followed, however, by the adoption of a constitution from which the most objectionable features of the Charter were removed.

In 1842 Massachusetts was living under the majority system. The Abolitionists placed a candidate in nomination. As a consequence there was no election of Governor by the people. The Democrats succeeded in obtaining a majority of the Senators elected. The House was about equally divided between the Whigs and the Democrats, and the balance of power was in the hands of four Abolitionists, who were led by one Lewis Williams of Easton. Williams was a sort of personage for ten or twelve days, when he disappeared from public view.

In the contest for Speaker the Democrats supported Seth J. Thomas, of Charlestown, and the Whigs nominated Thomas Kinnicutt, of Worcester, who had held the office of Speaker in 1842. The Abolitionists voted for Williams. The struggle continued for two days without a result. On the third day Mr. Kinnicutt withdrew his name, and his friends presented the name of Daniel P. King, of Danvers.

Mr. Thomas made a short speech in which he said that he was in the hands of his friends. The Democrats attempted to change front, and to secure the election of Williams. The attempt failed, and Mr. King was elected. Mr. King was a man of moderate abilities, but he had made himself acceptable to the voting element of the Anti-Slavery Party. His election as Speaker, was followed by his election to the Twenty- eighth Congress. The southern part of Essex County had been represented by Leverett Saltonstall, of Salem. He was the candidate of the Whig Party in 1842, but the votes of the Anti-Slavery men prevented his election. Mr. Saltonstall was a man of superior abilities and a perfect gentleman in bearing and conduct. He had been a Federalist and my impressions were adverse to him. In 1844 he came to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was appointed Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of which I was a member. All my prejudices were removed, and I came to admire his qualities as a man, and his capacity as a legislator.

Upon the organization of the House of Representatives, in 1843, the two Houses in convention, proceeded to the election of a Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Council, and heads of the several administrative bureaus. Marcus Morton, of Taunton, was elected Governor, Dr. Childs of Pittsfield (Henry H.) was chosen Lieutenant Governor, and of the subordinate officers all were Democrats.

The nomination of John A. Bolles, for the office of Secretary of the Commonwealth, gave rise to a singular episode in politics. John P. Bigelow, of Boston, had held that office for several years. He had performed the duties acceptably, and there was a difference of opinion in the Democratic Party as to the expediency of a change. The caucus decided to make a change. Upon the announcement of the nomination of Mr. Bolles, Nathaniel Wood, who had been elected a Senator in convention, from the county of Worcester, left the caucus and the next day he resigned his seat in the Senate. His peculiarities did not end with this act. In 1850 he was elected to the House for the year 1851, as a Coalition Democrat. He voted for Sumner, but he was greatly annoyed by the charge of the Whigs that there had been an unholy coalition between a portion of the Democratic Party and the Free- soilers. In replying to the allegations, he made the counter charge that there was a coalition between the Whigs and the "old hunker Democrats" as they were called. They were, in fact, the Democrats who would not vote for Sumner. A member called upon Wood for the evidence. This question he had not anticipated, and after staggering for a reply, he said—"I have seen them whispering together." As legal evidence the answer was faulty, but in a moral point of view it was not without force.

Governor Morton was a man of solid qualities. He had been upon the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court of the State for many years and in the fellowship of such jurists as Chief Justice Shaw, Judges Wilde, Putnam, Hubbard, and others, and he had borne himself with credit and perhaps even with distinction. He was a favorite of the Democratic Party and for many years he had been its candidate for Governor, and always without opposition. His election in 1839 was due to the public dissatisfaction with the Temperance Act passed in 1838 and known as the Fifteen-Gallon Law. He became Governor in the year 1840, but as his Council and the two Houses were controlled by the Whig Party neither his friends nor his enemies had any means of testing his quality as a political administrator. In 1843, however, the circumstances were different. His political friends were in power in every branch of the government. Party expectations were not realized, and Governor Morton's administration was not popular with the party generally. Early in the session, Benjamin F. Hallett, a member of the Executive Council, became alienated, and the spirit of harmony was banished from that branch of the government.

As the election had been carried upon the Dorr Rebellion, it was thought expedient to recognize the event by a dinner in Faneuil Hall. Dorr was then an exile, and the guest of Henry Hubbard, Democratic Governor of New Hampshire. Dorr was invited to the dinner, but he did not attend. It was asserted that he was given to understand that Governor Morton would by placed in an unpleasant position if Dorr were to come to Massachusetts from New Hampshire, and at the same time, a requisition should come from the Governor of Rhode Island for his delivery to answer in that State to an indictment for treason. The incident gave rise to a good deal of feeling, and finally, Governor Morton did not attend the banquet. Thus it happened that neither of the chiefs in whose honor the banquet was arranged, was in attendance on the occasion.

I was appointed Chairman of the Committee on Invitations. These were sent to leading Democrats in all parts of the country and especially were they sent to distinguished members of Congress. The answers contained only the most delicate and remote allusions to the object of the festival. The letters were turned over to the officers of the meeting. For myself, I retained only the envelope of the letter of Mr. Calhoun with his frank upon the right-hand corner. I had not previously seen a letter envelope.

Governor Morton's administration was a failure, and at the election in 1843 he was defeated by Governor Briggs. The State was a Whig State, and a Democratic administration for two successive years was an impossibility. My impressions of Governor Morton underwent several changes. Previous to his election in 1843 I had regarded him as one of the able men of the country. His lack of courage, and his apparent desertion of his friends in 1843 produced an unfavorable impression upon me both of his character and of his abilities. As to his character, my impressions remain. Of his abilities I can have no doubt.

With some exceptions the policy and measures of the Democratic Party in 1843 were crude and unwise. They demanded changes under the name of reforms. The chief measure was a bill to reduce the salaries of public officers, including the salaries of the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the judges of all the courts. The Whigs resisted the passage of the bill, upon the ground of its injustice to the persons in office, and of its unconstitutionality in respect to the salaries of the judges of the Supreme Judicial Court.

The bill became a law, and upon the return of the Whigs to power in 1844, the salaries of the judges of the Supreme Judicial Court were restored, and they were reimbursed for the loss sustained by the act of 1843. At the session of 1844 I made an argument upon the constitutional question, but it was of no avail. As I have not read my own argument since 1844 I am not prepared to say that it is unsound.

By the election of 1843 Governor Morton was defeated. George N. Briggs who had been for many years a member of Congress from the Berkshire District, was elected Governor, and with him a majority of his political friends in the two Houses. Governor Briggs held the office until January 1851. He was a man of fair, natural abilities, with a taste for politics. He had risen from a low condition of life but he was entirely free from the vices of the world. As a rigid temperance man and opponent to slavery, the middle classes of the State became his supporters without argument. He held the office for seven years, but he was defeated by the coalition of 1850.

Among the leading members of the House in 1844, was Joseph Bell, then recently from Hanover, N. H. He was named second on the Judiciary Committee, and to him was committed the conduct of the bill to restore the judges' salaries. He was a man of massive frame and of great vigor of body. His voice was loud, but it lacked those elements that come from cultivation. He had accumulated considerable wealth in the country and he had come to Boston for ease and comfort in age. His career was brief as he lived only a few years thereafter.

Of the affirmative measures of the Legislature of 1844 the most important perhaps was the statute requiring the registration of births, marriages, and deaths. Previous to that time there was no authoritative records of births, marriages, or deaths. The books of town clerks, the records of clergymen, and the entries in family Bibles were the sources of information. The information was never complete, and often that obtained was inaccurate. The promoters of the measure were Dr. Edward Jarvis of Dorchester and Lemuel Shattuck of Concord. They were both enthusiastic upon the subject and when they had created in me an interest, they furnished me with books and documents including reports of the English and French systems. The petition or memorial was referred to the Judiciary Committee and it fell to me to prepare the bill. This I did with the aid, and largely under the direction, of Shattuck and Jarvis. Then for the first time I had practical use for the small stock of knowledge that I had acquired of the French language. Previous to my election to the Legislature I had purchased a series of books on the French language, known as "French Without a Teacher." My study of the language had been limited to fragments of time that I could command while engaged in the business of the store. Upon my election to the Legislature I made the acquaintance of Count La Porte who had been a professor of the French language at Cambridge. I took lessons from him during the sessions of 1842 and 1843.

In the year 1844 I received from the Democratic Party the nomination for a seat in Congress. It was a barren honor. The district was in the hands of the Whig Party by a respectable majority. In the canvass of 1842 the Whigs had nominated John P. Robinson. He was not an acceptable candidate, and the candidate of the Abolitionists received a large vote. The Democratic candidate was Joseph W. Mansur of Lowell. In the first contest he was near an election by a majority. At the second trial his friends had high hopes of success. At the close of the contest it was found that he had lost votes. His friends charged that his loss was due to the secret opposition of Josiah G. Abbott, who was a rival to Mansur, in the city of Lowell. In 1844 Mansur retired from the field and Abbott became a candidate. Mansur's friends were opposed to the nomination of Abbott, and by their action the nomination came to me. The district was then hopeless. In 1842 the Dorr question was uppermost in the public mind. That had lost its power. In a Presidential contest Massachusetts was Whig by an immense majority. National questions were all-controlling. I was renominated for Congress in 1846 and 1848. I canvassed the district and made speeches in the principal places but as to success I never had any hope.

The 17th day of June, 1843, Mr. Webster delivered the address upon the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. President Tyler and some members of his Cabinet were present. The concourse of people was so great that experts were justified in estimating the number at one hundred thousand. This was the third opportunity that I had had to hear Mr. Webster speak. The first was in the Senate in January, 1839. A few days later I was present in the gallery of the Supreme Court room, and heard the argument in the case of Smith v. Richards.

Mr. Webster appeared for Smith and Mr. Crittenden for Richards. The subject was the sale of a gold mine in which fraud was alleged by Smith. The judgment was for Richards, three judges dissenting. For the first time I heard the word "denizen," used by Mr. Crittenden.

The election of 1844 was disastrous to the Democratic Party of Massachusetts. George Bancroft was its candidate for Governor. He was an enthusiastic leader, but not a popular candidate. I recall the circumstance that I met him during the canvass at the head of Hanover Street, Boston, when some news favorable to Polk had been received. He had a small cane in his hand which he whirled in the air, and shouted: "Glorious! Glorious!" until we were surrounded by a crowd of men and boys.

At the November election I was defeated by a majority of seventy-six, I think, in a vote of about four hundred. I had some political sins of my own that intensified the hostility of my Whig neighbors, and many Democrats voted the Whig ticket.

The act requiring the treasurers and cashiers of corporations to return the names of stockholders to the assessors of the cities and towns where the stockholders resided with the amount of stock held by each, could not be overlooked by those who had suffered. The recollection of my part in the business was still fresh in the minds of the victims. Next the scheme for the annexation of Texas was treated as a Democratic measure, and every Democrat suffered for the sin of the party. As to myself, I had spoken in the House against the scheme. I was a member of the Committee, of which Charles F. Adams was Chairman, that had made reports adverse to the measure. The circumstances, however, availed nothing. Mr. Clay's popularity was great, notwithstanding the indifference or concealed hostility of Mr. Webster. Indeed, Mr. Webster's popularity had suffered from his connection with John Tyler.

Mr. Polk had no strength in Massachusetts. He was the nominee of the Democratic Party, nothing more. Before the day of election came in Massachusetts the election of Polk was known and conceded. New York voted the Monday preceding the Monday of the election in Massachusetts, and the voting was not over until Wednesday night. There was a mass meeting at Pepperell, Thursday afternoon, at which Benjamin F. Hallett and myself spoke. Mr. Hallett was very confident of Polk's election. I was in doubt.

That evening I spoke at Chelmsford, and upon my return to Groton, I found several Whigs at Hoar's tavern, who were congratulating themselves upon a Whig victory in New York. Their authority was the Boston Atlas, an authority not universally accepted at that time. As I passed through the bar-room, after leaving my horse at the stable, I was rallied, and the assertion was made with great confidence that Mr. Clay was elected. I could only say in reply that they had better wait until they had some other authority for the claim. I went to my house, however, with many doubts as to the success of Polk.

At that time there was no railway communication between Boston and Groton. The first intelligence from abroad came from Lowell. My friends there sent to me a copy of the Vox Populi, printed during the night, and which contained the truthful returns from New York. At that time the Vox Populi was not in very good repute, and I thought it unwise to quote it to anyone. I thrust it into my desk without mentioning its contents.

Upon the arrival of the stage from Boston, I received a bundle of papers from my old friend General Staples, which confirmed the news furnished by the Vox Populi. These papers I also thrust into my desk, and went to the post-office. The outer room was filled with Whigs—not one Democrat present. The Whigs were still reposing upon the news printed in the Boston Atlas, but my statement that I had information more recent and that Polk had carried New York disturbed their composure.

At length the postmaster, Caleb Butler, opened the slide door, and passed out a copy of the Boston Courier. The receiver opened it. There were no capitals, no signs of exultation, and without waiting for the reading of the text, the assembly accepted the fact that Clay was defeated.

The Whigs of Massachusetts and indeed of the whole country were deeply grieved by the defeat of Mr. Clay. In many instances his popularity had ripened into personal friendship. His defeat came to many families as a real loss. Among the disappointed Whigs who had met at the post- office that morning was a neighbor and friend of mine, Mr. Aaron Perkins. In his excitement he said with an oath, "Next Monday we will give you a whipping." His declaration was verified. Many Democrats whose names were never disclosed to me voted for the Whig candidate, Deacon William Livermore, and he was elected by a majority of more than seventy votes. The next year he was re-elected by a diminished majority.

In 1846 the Whig Party nominated a new candidate, Edwin Coburn, a young lawyer then in the office of George F. Farley, with whom Coburn had studied his profession. Coburn was a man of good parts intellectually, a fair debater, and an intimate friend of mine. The town was canvassed thoroughly. Two ballots were taken during the first day. I received one hundred and ninety-six votes, and Coburn received one hundred and ninety-six votes at each ballot, and there were four scattering votes. The meeting was adjourned to the succeeding day. That night there was a rally of the absentees. The Democrats sent to Lowell, Manchester, N. H., and Boston, there being an absentee at each of those places. Upon the first ballot the second day I received two hundred and eleven votes and Coburn two hundred and seven. Of scattering votes there were none. From that time forward the town was Democratic. In all the previous contests I had contended against a Whig majority. My success had been due to the friendship of a number of Whig families, to my strength among the young men, and to a more perfect organization of the Democratic Party. The annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, had alienated the support of some, and to this fact was due the closeness of the contest of 1846.

XII THE LEGISLATURE OF 1847

At the meeting of the Legislature of 1847, some new members appeared. Caleb Cushing came from Newburyport, and Fletcher Webster, and J. Lothrop Motley from Boston. The Democrats of Boston and vicinity were then engaged in raising and equipping a regiment for Mexico. Cushing was Colonel of the regiment and Edward Webster, a brother of Fletcher, was the Captain of one of the companies. On the first day of the session Cushing introduced an order to appropriate twenty thousand dollars to aid in equipping the regiment for service. The order was referred to a special committee of which Cushing was made chairman. I was put upon the committee and the majority were friends of the measure.

Upon the report a discussion sprang up which was partisan with a few exceptions. Conspicuous among the exceptions was Fletcher Webster. Webster supported the appropriation in a speech of signal ability. His drawback was the disposition to compare him with his father. Fletcher was aware of this, and I recollect his remarks upon the subject at an accidental meeting on Warren Bridge. Fletcher was rather undersize, and he spoke of that fact as a hindrance to success in life, in addition to the disposition to compare him with his father. In his speech he made a remark not unlike the style of his father. Addressing himself to his Whig friends, he said that they would be required to explain their opposition to the measure, and added, "and explanations are always disagreeable." My acquaintance with Fletcher Webster, was the introduction to a limited acquaintance with his father, and it led to an act on the part of Mr. Webster which was of signal importance to me.

Mr. Cushing remained in the House until the loss of the appropriation, when he left for Washington. President Polk gave him a commission as a Brigadier-General, and he left for Mexico.

Motley was chairman of the Committee on Education, and as Chairman he reported a bill to divide a portion of the proceeds of the Maine lands, among the three colleges of the State. Theretofore they had been added to the Common School Fund. As a member of the committee, I opposed the measure, and the bill was lost. The subject is mentioned in Holmes' Life of Motley, and a letter of mine is printed therein. I had no idea at the time that Motley had any feeling on account of his defeat, but Mr. Hooper informed me that it led him to abandon politics. If so I may have been the unconscious cause of a success in literature which he might not have attained in public, political life.

At this session I inaugurated a movement for the reorganization of Harvard College. The contest was continued in 1848, '49 and '50. In 1851 I was elected Governor and the Legislature, under the lead of Caleb Cushing, passed a bill by which the overseers of the College were made elective by the Legislature. It was a compromise measure, and its immediate results were not favorable to the College. The lobby became influential in the selection of overseers and unemployed clergymen of various denominations were active in lobbying for themselves. After a few years' experience the election of overseers was transferred to the Alumni, with whom the power still remains. The bill which I introduced, the reports and arguments which I submitted to the House, aimed at the reorganization of the corporation and the election of the corporators by the Legislature.

In the years 1849 and 1850 the town of Concord was represented by the Hon. Samuel Hoar, and he led in the defence of the College. He was no ordinary antagonist. First and last I have been brought into competition with many men of ability, and I have not often met a more able reasoner. He spoke without notes, his only aid being his pocket knife which he held in his right hand and dropped by regular processes into his left hand, where he changed the ends of the knife and then resumed the automatic process.

My own argument I have not read for many years, but it is not unlikely that it contains as much ingenuity as can be found in any argument that I have ever made. The movement attracted a good deal of interest in the State. The College was in control of the Unitarians exclusively, and it was far from prosperous. The final change of the Board of Overseers gave a popular character to the institution, and it was one of the elements of its recent prosperity. For the moment the managers of the College were very hostile to me, but in the course of ten years all feeling had disappeared, and I enjoyed the friendship of Presidents Sparks, Felton, and Walker.

The College conferred upon me the degree of LL.D. in 1851. That honor had no significance as it was given to every person who was elected Governor and that without regard to his learning, attainments, or services.* Subsequently, however, I was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences by the votes of those who were controlling the College. In 1861 I was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration, and I was then made a member of the society. Since the opening of the war I have been at Cambridge on two or three occasions only, and my present acquaintance with the persons in power is very limited.

From 1844 to 1850 I received from Governor Briggs several appointments. In 1845 or '46 the Legislature passed an Act authorizing the appointment of railway commissioners. Governor Briggs sent me a commission, which I declined. The Board was never organized, and the act was soon repealed. I was also appointed a member of a commission on Boston Harbor. At the time the public were anxious about the fate of the harbor in consequence of the drainage into it by Charles River, and numerous minor channels. It was not then understood that all deposits by drainage could be removed by dredging. The members of the Commission were Judges Williams, Hopkinson, Cummins, the Hon. Chas. Hudson and myself. The three judges had then recently lost their offices by the abolition of the court of common pleas. Mr. Hudson had then recently left the United States House of Representatives, but whether voluntarily or upon compulsion I cannot say. He was a clergyman, a Universalist, but at an early age he had abandoned his profession for politics. After serving in the Massachusetts House, Senate and Council, he was elected to Congress from the Worcester district, for which he sat during four Congresses. He was a man of solid qualities without genius of any sort. He was distinguished in Congress as a Protectionist, and his speeches on the tariff question were widely circulated by the Whig Party. They were filled with statistics, and like all arguments based on statistics, they were subject to a good deal of criticism by the advocates of free trade.

The three judges were respectable, clear-headed gentlemen. Of Cummins the story is told that, when for the first time a plan of land was introduced in a real-estate case, he refused to consider the document, saying: "I will not allow a case to be won in my court by diagrams." Williams had been chief justice of the common pleas court and he was estimated as the superior among his associates upon the bench. Judge Hopkinson was from Lowell, where he had been a favorite of the ruling class in that city. He was a man of moderate ability. The work of the commission continued through several months, and some of its recommendations were adopted by the Legislature.

As the charters of all the banks in the State were to expire in 1850 or 1851, in the latter year, I think, the Legislature authorized the appointment of a board of commissioners for the examination of the banks. The Governor and Council appointed Solomon Lincoln, of Hingham, Joseph S. Cabot of Salem, and myself.

Mr. Lincoln was a kind, capable man of considerable learning, especially in Old Colony history and genealogy. His first question to bank officers often related to them personally, and when he found a man who traced his line to the Old Colony, he pressed him with questions until his whole history was disclosed. Mr. Cabot sometimes anticipated Mr. Lincoln, by saying at once, when we entered a bank, "Is there anybody here from the Old Colony?"

Mr. Cabot was a bachelor of fifty, and his ways were often odd, and occasionally they were disagreeable. He had a custom of never locking his sleeping-room door. Of this he often boasted. When we were at the American House, Worcester, Mr. Cabot said upon his appearance in the morning: "A very queer thing happened to me last night. When I got up my clothes were missing. At last I opened the door, and there they were in the hall. I supposed that I had been robbed. But I am all right," taking his wallet from his pocket. I said: "Have you looked in your wallet?" He opened it to find that the money had disappeared. We ventured to suggest that for a bank commissioner, he had not shown a great amount of shrewdness.

In the years 1849 and 1850 the commission examined all the banks in the State. Only one was found insolvent, a bank at Pawtucket on the Rhode Island line. The cashier, named Tillinghast, had been persuaded by a man named Marchant, of Rhode Island, to loan money without the knowledge of the officers of the bank. The loan, at the time of the discovery, amounted to sixty thousand dollars.

Upon the examination it appeared that there was a slight surplus of funds over the amount required by the statement. We insisted upon another examination. The cashier then reduced the balance by the statement that certain notes sent forward for collection had been discounted. It was impossible, however, to make the two sides of the account equal each other. At the end of the second day the cashier confessed the crime, and transferred his private property to the bank. Marchant did nothing. He came to the Rhode Island edge of the bridge, where we had some consultations with him, but without any result advantageous to the bank.

In 1847 I was a member of a joint committee to investigate the subject of insanity in the State, and to visit asylums in other States, the object being the erection of a second hospital for the care and treatment of the insane. At the time the only asylum under the control of the State was that at Worcester. There was a second at Somerville for the treatment of private patients. This was under the control of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The hospital at Worcester was under the management of Dr. Woodward, and each years for many years the reports had set it forth as a well organized and well managed institution. At the beginning of our labors we visited the Worcester Hospital. I was then ignorant of the treatment of the insane, but I was shocked by the sight of women in the cells in the basement, who had no bedding but straw, and some of whom had no clothing whatever.

The committee visited the McLean Asylum at Somerville; the Butler Hospital, Rhode Island; the Utica and Bloomingdale Asylums, New York; the Trenton Hospital, the Kirkbride Hospital, and the Philadelphia Alms House, and in none of these institutions did we find any person naked or confined in a cell. The furiously insane were dressed, the arms were tied so as to limit the use of the hands, and the hands were covered with padded mittens. The Worcester Hospital was the poorest institution of all. Our chairman, the Rev. Orin S. Fowler, afterwards a member of Congress, was very indignant, and his report to the Legislature aroused the State from its delusion in regard to the Worcester Hospital. We examined many sites for the contemplated new hospitals, but the Legislature postponed action.

During the year 1847 I was a member of a committee to examine and report upon the securities held by the State. These securities were chiefly the property of the Common School Fund, and they had been derived from the sales of public lands in Maine owned jointly with that State under the agreement made at the time of the separation. Among these securities was a mortgage upon the property of Nathaniel J. Wythe, at Fresh Pond. Mr. Wythe had been a trapper for John Jacob Astor, and he had published a pamphlet upon the region of the Rocky Mountains. Elisha H. Allen afterwards our Consul to Honolulu, and then Chief Justice of Hawaii, and more recently Minister from that country to the United States, was a member of the committee. Mr. Allen and myself were at Fresh Pond together and under the lead of Wythe we went to one of his large ice-houses. The month was August and the men were engaged in removing ice from the house for loading upon the railway cars. From the top of the house to the ground floor must have been sixty feet or more. The cakes of ice were sent down in a run, and by the side of the run there was a narrow foot track, over which the men passed. Mr. Wythe with a lantern led in going up the track to the height where the men were at work. Allen followed and I was behind Allen. When we had ascended about one third of the way, the men above sent down a cake of ice that seemed at first view to threaten the passengers on the side track. Allen stepped back and fell outside the track and disappeared in the darkness. The men were called and by the aid of lights Allen was found in a pit about ten or twelve feet in depth that had been made by removing ice. By the help of a ladder he was taken out, much frightened, but not injured seriously. Mr. Allen was the son of Sam. C. Allen of Northfield, formerly a member of Congress. Mr. Elisha H. Allen was elected to Congress in 1840 from the Bangor district, State of Maine. He went to Hawaii in 1849 and he returned in 1851 or 1852. Upon his return I had several interviews with him as he lived at the Adams House, Boston, for a time, where I was then living. From him I received the impression that he was authorized to say to the Secretary of State that the authorities of Hawaii were prepared to enter upon negotiations for the cession of the Island to the United States. I understood from Mr. Allen that Mr. Webster did not look with favor upon the scheme. In later years I renewed my acquaintance with Mr. Allen. He was a man of quick perceptions, of much general information, and as a debater in the Massachusetts House of Representatives his standing was always good. As to his integrity it was never brought into question.

[* I was elected a member of the American Academy on my birthday, 1857. J. Lothrop Motley and Charles Francis Adams were elected at the same time.]

XIII LEGISLATIVE SESSION OF 1848—FUNERAL OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

The chief incident of the Legislative session of 1848 was the funeral of John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams died in February, 1848. There were then twenty-four States in the Union and the House of Representatives selected one member from each State to accompany the remains of Mr. Adams to Massachusetts. Of these members I recall Talmadge of New York; Newell* of New Jersey; Kaufmann of Texas; Morse of Louisiana; Wentworth of Illinois; Bingham of Michigan; and Holmes of South Carolina. The Massachusetts Legislature appointed a committee of the same number to receive the Congressional Committee. Of that committee I was a member and George T. Bigelow was the chairman. Our first thought was of a hotel and the entertainment of the Committee.

The feeling in regard to temperance was active and we foresaw that the doings of the committee would be subject to criticism. Finally, Bigelow suggested that we should go to the Tremont House and say to the landlord that we wished him to provide suitable rooms and entertainment for the Congressional Committee. This we did, and nothing was said about wines. At the end we found that the bill was a large one, and that the item of wines was a very important item. It was paid by the Governor and Council, and as one member of the committee I was ignorant of the amount. The reporters made vain attempts to ascertain the facts. A portion of our committee met the Congressional Committee at Springfield. Many additions had then been made to the twenty-four. At Worcester, and perhaps at other places, speeches were made to the Committee by the local authorities and speeches in answer were delivered by members of the Committee. Mr. Holmes of South Carolina, was one of the speakers. He was an enthusiastic man, and he was endowed with a form of popular eloquence quite well adapted to the occasion.

I was assigned to the charge of Mr. Wentworth of Illinois. His height was such that he was already known as "Long John." We sat together in the train for Quincy on the day of the funeral. He was a good natured man, whose greatness was not altogether in the size of his body. His talents were far above mediocrity, indeed, nature had endowed him with powers of a high order, as I had the opportunity to learn when we were associated in Congress.

Two banquets were given to the Committee, one by the State at the Tremont House, and one by the City of Boston at the Revere House. The notable event at the Revere House was the speech of Harrison Gray Otis. Mr. Otis was then about eighty years of age. He was a well preserved gentleman, and in his deportment, dress and speech he gave evidence of culture and refinement. He had been a Federalist and of course he had been a bitter opponent of Mr. Adams. He seized the occasion to make a defence of Federalism, and of the Hartford Convention. While Mr. Adams was President, he had written a pamphlet in vindication of a charge he had made, in conversation with Mr. Jefferson, that, during the War of 1812 the Federalists of New England, had contemplated a dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a northern confederacy. This charge Mr. Otis denied and he then proceeded at length to vindicate the character of the old Federal Party. He was a gentleman of refinement of manners, but as I sat near him at the Revere House dinner, I overheard enough of his private conversation with Holmes of South Carolina, to satisfy me that he had a relish for coarse remarks, if they had in them a flavor of wit or humor.

The old controversy between John Quincy Adams, and the Federalists of Boston, once saved me, and helped me to escape from a position in which I found myself by an indiscretion in debate. In 1843 the office of Attorney-General was abolished, by the active efforts of the Democrats aided by the passiveness of the Whigs. The Democrats thought the office unnecessary, the Whigs were content to have it abolished, that the party might get rid of the incumbent, James T. Austin. At a subsequent session of the Judiciary Committee, of which George Lunt was a member, he reported a bill for the establishment of the office. Mr. Lunt was a poet, a lawyer, and a politician, and without excellence in either walk. In public life he was destitute of the ability to adapt himself to his surroundings. In those days the farmers constituted a majority of the House. They were generally men of intelligence, and they held about the same relation to the business of the House, that juries hold to the business of the Courts. They listened to the arguments, reasoned upon the case, and not infrequently the decision was made by them. Occasionally they gave a verdict upon a party question, adverse to the arguments of the leaders of the party in power. In his opening argument, Mr. Lunt was unwise, to a degree unusual even for him.