Accept for yourself my esteem
and affection, yours truly

John Kelly

THE
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
JOHN KELLY,
Tribune of the People.

BY
J. FAIRFAX McLAUGHLIN, A. M.
Author of “Sketches of Daniel Webster,” “A Life of A. H.
Stephens,” etc., etc.

“I regard John Kelly as the Ablest, Purest, and Truest Statesman
that I have ever met with from New York.”—Alexander H.
Stephens.

WITH PORTRAITS IN ARTOTYPE.
Taken at 35, 50, and 58 Years of Age.

NEW YORK:
THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY.
1885.

Copyright, 1885, by J. Fairfax McLaughlin.

All rights reserved.

Electrotyped and Printed
By the N. Y. Economical Printing Company,
New York.

PREFACE.

The life of John Kelly, written without partisan bias, and to promote no other object but the vindication of the truth of history, is presented to the reader in the following pages.

The narrative is associated with three great epochs in American history, in each of which John Kelly has acted a prominent and conservative part. If he appears in the foreground of the picture which the author has attempted to sketch of those epochs, it is because no true history of them can be written without according to him such a place. He was the champion of civil and religious liberty during the era of Know-Nothingism, and contributed as powerfully to the overthrow of the Know-Nothing party as any man in the United States, with the single exception of Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, who slew the monster outright.

In the fierce war between Barnburner and Hunker, and Hard Shell and Soft Shell Democrats, which broke out in 1848, and continued to rage throughout the State of New York with intense bitterness for eight years, John Kelly, in 1856, played the conspicuous part of pacificator both in the State and National Conventions of his party. The re-union which then took place between the Hards and Softs resulted in the nomination of Buchanan and Breckenridge at Cincinnati, who were elected President and Vice-President of the United States.

The third epoch covers the contest with the Tweed Ring, and the expulsion of the Ring from Tammany Hall in 1872, when the Reformers were led by John Kelly. Grand Sachem Tweed had to give place to Grand Sachem Augustus Schell; and Sachems Peter B. Sweeny, A. Oakey Hall, and Richard B. Connolly were succeeded by Sachems Horatio Seymour, Samuel J. Tilden and John Kelly. It was not merely a change, but a revolution.

To achieve the results reached in 1872, and in the few years immediately following, a leader of consummate power was necessary. Honesty, courage, and sagacity in the highest degree were required in that leader. A man of action—not a visionary in the closet, was what the times demanded. Upon John Kelly, who sought not the position, but had it thrust upon him, then devolved the leadership of the Democratic party in New York. The events of that period have passed into history, and although there were some who at the time called Kelly a dictator, posterity will be more apt to remember him as a benefactor.

For years the subject of this memoir has been the target of calumny and misrepresentation. His whole life from childhood to the present hour is here laid before the reader, as the best answer to his maligners.

J. F. McL.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS.

The author has been at much pains to procure good pictures of Mr. Kelly. The caricaturists have taken so many liberties with his face, and presented it in so many ridiculous lights, that public curiosity is felt in every part of the United States to know exactly how John Kelly does look in propria persona. To gratify this curiosity the book has been embellished by three excellent likenesses of Mr. Kelly, taken at the ages respectively of thirty-five, fifty, and fifty-eight. To Mr. Edward Bierstadt, whose picture of President Garfield has been much admired, the reproduction in artotype of the pictures for this volume was intrusted. Fine engravings were used to get the likeness, and the artotypist has executed his work with great success.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

John Kelly is the best abused man in America. Fifty or sixty years ago Andrew Jackson was subjected to similar treatment. The hero of New Orleans lived down the slanders which were hurled thick and fast upon him by political opponents. Mr. Kelly will do the same thing, for the people, though easily imposed upon for the moment by artful men, soon correct their own misconceptions, and invariably render justice to public characters. The malice which invents slanders is incapable of transmitting them into history.

Fugitive and imperfect sketches of John Kelly’s career have appeared from time to time in the newspapers. No detailed narrative of his life has hitherto been submitted to the public. The writer of these pages is conscious of the difficulty of portraying the character of a living man. Appreciation of merit should not run into panegyric; condemnation of faults should not be spared where faults are found. The advantages possessed by the present writer to discharge the task he has undertaken have been derived from an acquaintance with Mr. Kelly extending over thirty years, and from participation in public affairs in which that gentleman has been a conspicuous actor. Mr. Kelly has figured in transactions which will form an interesting chapter in the history of the present times. The testimony of a contemporary who preserves a distinct recollection of the events he describes will always be an aid to the historian of the next age, who must sift evidence in order to get at the truth, and who should reject whatever falls below that standard. There would not be so many fictions in American biography, if those who have participated in the scenes would record their honest recollection of them. The testimony of an eye-witness is in the nature of primary evidence, and the historian can have no more helpful auxiliary than such a reminiscent. The following pages are offered to the public as the contribution to American biography of one who has enjoyed unusual advantages of knowing the man he writes about.

Mr. Kelly is one of the few remarkable men the present political generation has produced. The public has read so much about him both of pure fiction and coarse abuse, that an outline sketch of his life will no doubt prove acceptable to candid readers, and furnish, at the same time, a corrective of current misrepresentations. It might seem strange to those who do not stop to consider the causes of it, that a life-long citizen of New York, who has acted a prominent part in its affairs, should have come to be misunderstood by so many people. But to those who look into the matter more closely the explanation is not difficult to find. Mr. Kelly is a man of very positive character. He has antagonized powerful men, and on several memorable occasions thwarted their schemes of ambition and self-aggrandizement. He has thus excited resentments, and in their disappointment his opponents have sought revenge. Some of these gentlemen control great combinations of corporate wealth, and possess enormous private fortunes. They have not found it difficult to enlist a large section of the press into a species of anti-Kelly crusade. The weapons of partisan warfare are not very choice, and this crusade has been carried on without much regard to the amenities of journalism, but with a resolute and persistent attention to the main idea, namely, the elimination of Mr. Kelly as a political leader, by proclaiming him to be the representative of one of the worst elements of American politics. But this mode of attack, while it may answer a temporary purpose, is always in the end a weak one. Intelligent people become interested to know more of a man who excites his opponents into storms of abuse, torrents of invective, and hurricanes, as it were, of rage. Is it all real, or does it cover a purpose? That becomes the question which the public soon ask, and its answer is always favorable to truth, and fatal to the manipulators of an artificial excitement, for intelligent people have an independent way of getting at the truth the moment they suspect it is being kept back, and get at it they will, and they do.

In this manner John Kelly’s political opponents have really done him a service. The universal gaze has been directed towards the man, and the monster painted by reckless partisans of other and rival politicians has been found to be no monster at all, but a plain, quiet man, honest and straightforward as old Nat. Macon himself—to whom he was once likened by the late Alexander H. Stephens—of very original and rugged order of mind, of powers of command scarcely equalled by any other statesmen in the United States to-day, a foe to humbug, a terror to corruptionists—one, in short, to inspire love and respect rather than hatred and ill-will in the minds of disinterested people.

The writer thinks he knows John Kelly intimately and thoroughly. His mind is powerful, without the acuteness of a Calhoun, or the imagination of a Webster, but as far as he sees his objects he sees with the eye of a statesman, and no judgment was ever sounder. Of ideas in their simplicity men in general have but a partial cognition, an apperception of consciousness, as philosophers term it, and not the clear perception. But the perceptive faculty is Mr. Kelly’s pre-eminent feature. He is deliberate in mental operation, trusting nothing to fancy or imagination, and not distinguished for impulsive celerity of action, but almost invariably sure in his conclusions. Thus it has been sometimes, that his plans, when suddenly deranged in action by unforeseen circumstances, were not rapidly reformed, and defeat came upon him. But when he is in rest, and left to himself to devise and map out movements, his judicious arrangement and skill in deciding upon what is best to do have proved almost faultless. Incapable of fear, he has seemed to some to go forward to his objects with blind obstinacy. But those who think so have a superficial knowledge of the man, for prudence is his controlling quality. Before he reaches a decision, every circumstance and consideration is maturely weighed, all suggestions are patiently heard, all doubts exert restraint upon him. Indeed, his prudence has exposed him to the charge by more hot-headed men of being a plodder, so carefully does he labor to mature plans. It is only when he has reached a decision that his purpose becomes fixed and immovable, and he goes through with it, no matter what obstacles beset his path, or what less courageous friends may advise to change his resolution. Mr. Kelly has, in fine, granite firmness, and there is a broad distinction between firmness and doggedness.

Nature has given him a high temper, but reflection and habits of self-command have reduced it to almost perfect subjection. If aroused, however, and goaded to passion, he is one of the most tremendous men in his wrath, and one of the most formidable in his mode of delivering battle. A man of warm affections and commanding presence, his personal magnetism is simply wonderful. His name, wherever he is well-known, is never mentioned at public meetings without storms of applause immediately breaking forth. His appearance at public gatherings is always the signal for hand clapping and expressions of welcome of that unmistakable sort only bestowed on a favorite. In this respect John Kelly almost rivals Henry Clay, and since the death of the illustrious Mill Boy of the Slashes no other man in America has had such an enthusiastic personal following.

While his liberality is great it is unpretentious. Publicity in well-doing is repulsive to his nature. His charity, which is almost ceaseless, is consequently always silent. The solidest kind of man in build and character, he delights in action more than words, and is known in New York as the safe leader. His natural ascendency over men is instinctively recognized. For these and kindred qualities his influence in American politics is as potent as that of any other statesman in public life, and the reader of the following pages will find, it is believed, that this influence has been always beneficially exerted.

CHAPTER II.

HIS PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE—SCHOOL DAYS—EMPLOYED BY JAMES GORDON BENNETT—APPRENTICED TO JACOB B. CREAMER—DAVID C. BRODERICK—KELLY, CAPTAIN OF EMMET GUARDS—ATHLETIC SPORTS—HIS FONDNESS FOR PRIVATE THEATRICALS—RELIGIOUS STRIFE—A BATTLE AT THE POLLS—KELLY AS LEADER—THE KNOW-NOTHING PARTY.

John Kelly was born in the city of New York, April 20, 1822. The home of his parents and spot of his nativity was in Hester Street near Mott, in the old Sixth, afterwards changed into the Fourteenth Ward, famous for its politicians. He springs from that stalwart race of men who have played so conspicuous a part in the history of the United States—Tyrone County Irishmen. From Tyrone County came Richard Montgomery, whom Bancroft places second only to Washington as the military genius of the Revolutionary War; thence also came Alexander Porter, the illustrious Louisiana statesman, and one of the great lights of the United States Senate in its palmiest days. Archbishop Hughes, who left his impress on the age in which he lived as one of its most remarkable men, and General James Shields, one of the heroes of two American wars, who enjoyed the unprecedented distinction of having been elected to the United States Senate at various times by three great States of the Union, were both emigrants from Tyrone County, Ireland. Out of this Milesian hive, seeking his fortunes in the New World in the early part of the present century, came Hugh Kelly, father of the subject of this memoir. He married Sarah Donnelly, of County Fermanagh, a small county adjoining Tyrone. The marriage took place in Ireland. There were seven children born to the parents, of whom John was the fourth. The others were five daughters and a son, the last named after the father, Hugh. Old New Yorkers, who were acquainted with the mother of John Kelly, have informed the writer of this memoir that she was a woman of remarkable force of character, a devout Christian, and a mother who brought up her children in the love and fear of God. The children were all vivacious, and very communicative among themselves in the family circle, with the exception of John, who was quiet and thoughtful, and a better listener than talker. On one occasion a neighbor paid a visit to the Kellys, and brought news of an excursion, a pic-nic, or some such affair, that pleased and greatly excited the little ones, each of whom, save John, had something to say about it. At length the neighbor looked over at John, who had remained a silent listener, and exclaimed, “Look at John there, with his big head, taking it all in, and not saying a word.” “Oh, yes,” said the mother, “that is his way; he thinks a great deal more than he talks, but be sure he is not dumb.” A New York newspaper once cynically characterized him as an ox, but the dumb ox, to use the figure of Albertus Magnus, has given a bellow which has been heard round the world. The devotion of Mrs. Kelly to her elder son was peculiarly tender. At one time, when he was a small boy, he had to cross the East River daily. The mother would often accompany him to the boat in the morning, and always went to meet him on his return in the afternoon. Other boys going and returning at the same time observed that young Kelly’s mother never failed to be at the landing in the afternoon to accompany her son home. The mischievous boys sometimes cracked jokes at his expense, and teased him about his mother’s apron strings. He stood the bantering well enough for a time, but at length grew tired of it. One of the tallest and strongest of the boys hearing that Kelly had threatened to thrash the next fellow that annoyed him on the subject, took it into his head to try his mettle. “Say, Kelly,” exclaimed this one, “how’s your mother? Boys, he’s got a good mother, sure. She won’t let him go running about the streets with the gang for fear he might learn something wicked, but comes for him and takes her little boy home every night. Come along, Johnny, and be tucked in your little bed. Bah!” A flushed face and clenched fist told that Kelly would stand no more raillery of that sort. A smart battle took place on the spot between the two youngsters, and ended in the discomfiture of the larger boy. Kelly’s victory made him a favorite among his companions, and they all soon came to look upon him as a sort of leader, although he would not loiter with the crowd at street corners of evenings, nor haunt the purlieus of the city where youth loses its innocence, and flaunting vice slopes the way to ruin. Such a mother is a guardian angel to her children, and Mrs. Kelly’s afternoon escort to her son provoked no more jibes at the expense of the latter. This incident affords an insight into the methods of his boyhood, and shows how, under the fostering hand of his mother, the character of the future man was moulded. The American sin of cursing and swearing is first picked up by children running idly about the streets into all sorts of company. John Kelly was never addicted to this bad habit, and it may be doubted whether his most intimate friend of to-day ever heard him utter a profane oath. The Psalmist’s aspiration to walk soberly and chastely in the day before the Divine Face should be the aim of the rising generation. With that object in view children should be kept out of temptation in the pitfalls of a great city. After awhile, when the habits of a promising youth are formed on the right side, temptation assails him in vain, and whether it be from the cot of poverty or the mansion of wealth, a hero steps forth for life’s battle, who may be depended upon to make his way, and render a good account of himself.

In the case of young Kelly, it was from the cot of poverty he emerged. His father’s and mother’s business of a small retail grocery store afforded the family a modest but comfortable living. But while John was still a small boy of eight years his father died, and the widow and her elder son had to become the bread-winners—the former managing the store, and the latter, when about ten years old, going out in quest of employment. John had attended for some two or three years the parochial school attached to old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Mott Street. Now he had to give up the school and go to work. It was a sore trial to him, for he was ambitious of book learning, and the dream of his life was to get a good education. But he started out with a brave resolution to seek employment. For a long time the search was tedious and unsuccessful. He had to take many surly replies from ill-bred people, and often went home tired at night after a fruitless day’s rounds, to begin the work over again in the morning. But he told his disappointments to no one, unless indeed to whisper them to the fond mother whose strong heart went out in such sympathy with his own, and whose sound practical sense helped him to form some new plan for the morrow. It is probable that the lesson he learned then of “man’s inhumanity to man” during his first humble trials to make his way in life was never forgotten. When the day came for himself to mount to power, and to be called upon by many young and old seeking a friendly hand to help them to their feet, John Kelly proved to be a real philanthropist, uttering the gentle word, cheering the drooping heart by the overflowing generosity and charity of his own, and never allowing a human being to pass out of his doorway without feeling better and stronger for having carried his sorrow to him.

One day John went into the Herald office, then in its infancy, and asked James Gordon Bennett whether he wanted an office boy. Mr. Bennett scanned the boy over from head to foot without making a reply. Seemingly satisfied with the first scrutiny, he began a conversation with him, which continued for five or ten minutes. There was no better judge of character than the elder Bennett, and he was always quick in making a decision. “Come in here, my lad, and take off your hat and get to work,” said he, and John Kelly found himself an employé forthwith of the great editor. No two men have ever made their mark more thoroughly in the metropolis of the United States than James Gordon Bennett and John Kelly. Did the editor descry in that first glance at the boy the latent powers which ultimately have made Kelly so distinguished? “It is said,” remarked the editor of the Utica Observer, in a notice of Mr. John Kelly in that paper, “that old James Gordon Bennett took a great fancy to him. This speaks much in his praise, for the founder of the Herald was quick to see the possibilities of greatness or usefulness in an undeveloped youth.”[1]

Evening schools then but recently had been established in New York, and the youth was quick to avail himself of the advantages they afforded to boys in his situation for acquiring an education. He became a regular attendant at one of those night schools, was a diligent and close student, and, like the great Sir Thomas More, “rather greedily devoured than leisurely chewed his grammar rules.” The editor of the Utica Observer, one of Mr. Kelly’s most energetic opponents and Governor Robinson’s ablest advocate in the press, during the celebrated New York gubernatorial struggle of 1879, declared of Kelly, in the heat of that campaign, and in an article containing an attack upon him, “that there is a great deal to admire in the character of John Kelly.” Of his education the editor added: “His thirst for learning had not been satisfied in his youth, and he proceeded by study to enlarge the scope of his understanding. He became a good scholar in French, as well as in English, and for twenty years he has devoted several hours of every day to the pursuit of literature and science. If anybody has imbibed the impression that Mr. Kelly is an ignorant man, he does not want to confront that delusion with an actual examination of Mr. Kelly’s acquirements. A Utica man who met him once in the presence of Prof. Bonamy Price, of Oxford, says that he held his own in a discussion on Political Economy with England’s foremost teacher of that science.”[2] He proved to be an excellent office-boy, was always at his post, and was as punctual as the clock in fulfilling engagements. He became a great favorite with Mr. Bennett, and when, at length, as he grew older he resolved to give up his employment in the Herald office in order to learn some regular business or trade, Mr. Bennett tried to dissuade him from his purpose, and offered additional compensation as an inducement for him to remain. But while greatly appreciating his employer’s kindness, young Kelly replied that his mother and her large family mainly looked to him, the elder brother, for support, and that it had always been his intention to go into business on his own account. The time had now come to carry out that purpose. Mr. Bennett, in his brusque but kindly Scotch voice, gave John some parting advice and wished him well, predicting that success awaited him in his future career. The boy now apprenticed himself to Jacob B. Creamer, a grate-setter and soap-stone cutter at 346 Broome Street, then on the corner of Broome and Elizabeth, and speedily learned that trade. He had grown to be a large boy, with the thews and sinews of a young Hercules, and although he was not quarrelsome, he was high spirited and courageous, and would brook no insult from anyone. In the factory where he worked there was another young man, three or four years older than himself, a dark complexioned powerful fellow, of a domineering temper, with a reputation for fisticuffs. One day this person got angry with Kelly and struck him. Kelly returned the blow. The men in the establishment separated them, but the blood of both was up, and a fight was agreed upon between them as soon as the bell should be rung for dinner. They went into the factory yard and prepared for battle. The hands about the establishment finding the boys meant to fight, undertook to secure fair play in the encounter. Kelly was much shorter than his antagonist, and no one supposed he had any chance to win. At it they went pell mell, with a lively interchange of heavy thuds. The older youth fought rapidly, and brought Kelly down several times with furious blows. Fighting was not allowed while either of the boys was on the ground, and in this way matters progressed for fifteen or twenty minutes, Kelly getting the worst of it all the time, but showing great endurance, and urging that no one should interfere. He had made thus far but very little impression on his antagonist. He observed, however, that one of his chance blows had caused the other to wince with pain. From that moment he took all the punishment the larger boy could inflict, and made the battle one of strategy, reserving himself to give a blow in the same place, which he found to be the other’s weak spot. The tide now began to turn, and it soon became evident to the onlookers that the big swarthy fellow was no match either in courage or endurance for Kelly. The latter, selecting the weak spot, laid his antagonist on his back several times by well-directed blows. The last time he fell both his strength and courage collapsed, and he bellowed out crying that he was whipped and would fight no more. One of the men who had witnessed the encounter with the closest attention from beginning to end, and saw that Kelly had won it by superior intelligence, now rushed up to him, and taking his hand exclaimed, “Well Johnny, my boy, you are a born general sure, and you will yet be a great general over men when you grow up to be a man yourself.” A few years ago an aged man entered Mr. Kelly’s crowded office at 117 Nassau street, and sent in his name with the rest. When his turn came he was admitted. “Do you not know me, Mr. Kelly?” said the old man. “No,” was the reply, “I do not recall you.” “Do you remember when you were a boy the fight you had with that big swarthy fellow in Creamer’s factory yard, when one of the men told you you would one day become a great general over men? Well, I was that very man, and didn’t I tell the truth, sir?” Mr. Kelly remembered the occurrence and his visitor too, immediately, whom he had not seen for many years, and laughed heartily over the reminiscence of his youth as he shook the old man’s hand.

He worked industriously at his new occupation, and is said to have displayed mechanical skill of no mean order. In due time he set up in business for himself, made friends rapidly, and secured an excellent line of custom. He became a prosperous young man, and was remarked upon for sobriety, modesty of deportment and attention to business. It was not long before he found himself able to branch out on a more extensive scale, for his friends were numerous and willing to lend him a helping hand when the needs of his business made it expedient to ask credit. While yet a very young man, his success was sufficiently assured to justify him in establishing a soap-stone and grate factory at 40 Elizabeth street, and he also opened an office where he took business orders, in a frame building on Broome street, next door to the church over which Dr. Maclay at that time presided, and of which Dr. Cohen, in subsequent years, became the pastor. Among his customers were Thomas O’Conor, father of Charles O’Conor, the lawyer; John A. Dix, afterward Governor of New York; Horace F. Clark, and many other influential people. John Kelly had now become a prosperous man. His first care was for the beloved mother who had shaped the days of his youth in the ways he should walk, but who departed this life in the most edifying sentiments of piety when he was quite a young man, scarcely twenty-one years of age. His next care was for his younger brother and five sisters, towards whom he acted as a father, and for whose education and welfare he was now able to provide in a suitable manner. His own early struggles for education had taught him to appreciate it highly in others, and he secured to his brother and sisters advantages which disciplined their youthful years and qualified them for the duties of after life. Later on he took his brother into partnership with him, but that brother and all his sisters, save one, Mrs. Thomas, who lives near Mexico, in Oswego County, New York, died many years ago. Mr. Kelly, as already mentioned, owed to his mother’s care the blessing of right training in his youth, and the consequent formation of his character in the practice of the Christian virtues. An old New Yorker who knew his mother, has told the writer she was a thorough disciplinarian, and taught her children to love the truth in all things, and that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. His mother died before her son’s brilliant success began; she who had equipped him for the battle stayed not to enjoy its triumphs.

At this period of his life John Kelly had not a dream of ever entering upon a political career. In this respect he resembled another distinguished New York statesman, the late Daniel S. Dickinson, who began life as a mechanic, became a woollen manufacturer, and, beyond being an earnest Democrat, passed several years with no inclination whatever for the field of politics. It was true, however, that even from his boyhood John Kelly displayed rare capacity to lead others, and he now found himself, in spite of preoccupation in the manufacturing business, constantly called on by neighbors seeking his advice and instinctively following him. He was once asked by a newspaper reporter if he ever sowed wild oats in his youth. “That may be called a leading question,” he replied; “I was in a gambling-house once in my life, but it was on business—not to gamble. And I never was in a house of assignation in my life. I don’t know what the inside of such a house is.” “It is charged against you,” the reporter said, “that you attend church very regularly, and that you do it for effect.” “Well,” Mr. Kelly said, “that’s a queer charge to make against any one. I had a good careful mother who sent me to the Sunday-school regularly. I have been to church regularly ever since. Under such training, no doubt, I ought to be a great deal better Christian than I am. I suppose I have been very wicked sometimes, and yet I can’t recall any time when I have been wilfully bad.”[3]

“During Tweed’s ascendancy in New York politics,” said the well informed Utica editor, in the article already quoted from, “Mr. Kelly retired from Tammany Hall. Between him and Tweed the bitterest hostility always existed. It is pleasant to believe that Kelly’s superior virtue made him distasteful to the burly champion of corruption. But that does not account for their feud. During the glow of his guilty glory, Tweed’s ambition was to secure the endorsement of men of unimpeachable character. By turning back a page in political history, we might show how well he succeeded. But he could not make terms with John Kelly, for Mr. Kelly would accept no position but that of ruler. William M. Tweed swore a solemn oath that John Kelly never should control Tammany Hall—and we all know what came of it.”

Shortly before his death, while he was a prisoner in Ludlow Street Jail, Tweed was interviewed by a New York Herald reporter, and gave with undeserved freedom his impressions of the leading men he had known in politics. “Whom,” said the reporter, “do you regard as the most successful city politician of New York in the thirty years of your experience?” “John Kelly,” said Tweed. “He was always a plodder—always saving something and learning something. He stood well with the Church—rather a high class man in the Church—and got his support there. I never did but one thing for him; twenty years ago I helped him beat Walsh for Congress.” “When you came to politics,” asked the reporter, “did you ever remotely entertain the idea of such proportions as the Ring afterwards assumed?” “No,” said Tweed. “The fact is, New York politics were always dishonest—long before my time. There never was a time when you couldn’t buy the Board of Aldermen, except now. If it wasn’t for John Kelly’s severity, you could buy them now.”[4]

The reporter of the World, with an odd sort of unconscious humor in his interview, not unlike Tweed’s commercial valuation of piety as an investment, so naively suggested by the words, “rather a high class man in the Church,” bluntly told Mr. Kelly that it was not only complained against him that he attended Church, but that he aggravated the matter by attending it very regularly. No wonder Kelly should have thought that a “queer charge” to make against him.

An old citizen of New York, acquainted with him from his youth, is authority for the statement that Kelly was as fully a leader of the young men of his neighborhood when he first grew up, as he became of the Tammany Democrats at a later day. He was of a social disposition, and while always temperate in his habits, he would go occasionally, after getting through with his day’s work, to the Ivy Green, a famous hostelry in those days in Elm street, kept by Malachi Fallon, who went to California in 1849, and which was afterward kept by John Lord. The Ivy Green, like Stonehall’s in Fulton Street, was a popular gathering place for politicians and their friends. John Clancy, Peter B. Sweeny, Matthew Brennan, David C. Broderick, and many other active young fellows, who afterwards became prominent in politics, were in the habit of visiting the Ivy Green, and John Kelly would sometimes call there for a chat with the boys. Less frequently, but once in a great while, Kelly and Broderick, the latter being a warm friend of Kelly’s, also dropped in at the Comet, another place of resort of the same kind, kept by Manus Kelly on Mott street, where they would meet the same jolly crowd that frequented the Ivy Green, and whither came quite often the celebrated Tom Hyer, Yankee Sullivan, and other champions of the manly art of self-defence. “But,” said the writer’s informant, “none of these fighting men ever intermeddled with Kelly or Broderick. The best of them would have had his hands full if he had done so.” Poor Broderick, who afterwards became a United States Senator from California, finally fell in a duel in that State.

Young Kelly was very fond of athletic sports. He was a good oarsman, was often on the water, and pulled a shell with the best. There was a crack company called the Emmet Guards in New York, when Kelly was a young man. He was first lieutenant of this company during the captaincy of James McGrath, upon whose death he was elected captain, and being fond of military matters, he brought his company to a high state of efficiency. Captain Kelly retained the command until he was elected Alderman in 1853. The Old Volunteer Fire Department was then in its zenith. He was a member of it, and one of its leading spirits. While he was in the Fire Department an incident occurred which has exercised a restraining influence over him through life. At a fireman’s parade, while he was in line of March, a burly truckman attempted to drive through the ranks. Kelly was near the horses and kept them back. The driver sprang to the ground, and made a furious attack on the young fire laddie. He received in return a blow from Kelly’s fist which ended the battle by rendering the truckman insensible. He was borne to a neighboring doctor’s office, and was resuscitated with much difficulty. For two or three days the truckman was disabled. Kelly, who had acted strictly on the defensive, nevertheless was greatly distressed for his antagonist. He had been unaware of the almost phenomenal force of his own blow, and his tremendous hitting power was first fully revealed to him by the effect of his fist on the truckman. To one of his intimate friends he declared that he deeply regretted this affair, but that, perhaps, it had served a good purpose, for he was now unalterably resolved never again as long as he lived to strike any man with all his force, no matter what the provocation might be.

His herculean strength and known courage have sometimes been seized upon by opponents for disparaging paragraphs in the newspapers, just as the combativeness of Andrew Jackson, in his earlier days, was often commented upon to his detriment. But as there was nothing mean or domineering in the temper of Jackson, any more than there is in Kelly, only the high and unconquerable spirit that felt “the rapture of the strife,” Old Hickory did not suffer in popular esteem on account of his early scrimmages. In 1828 Dr. James L. Armstrong, one of his old opponents in Tennessee, gathered up and published as a political nosegay a list of nearly one hundred pistol, sword and fist fights in which Jackson had been engaged between the ages of 23 and 60. Jackson replied to this by promising to cudgel Armstrong on sight. The courage of some men is so conspicuous that they are recognized at once as heroes. In his admirable life of Nelson, Southey relates many acts of apparently reckless intrepidity on the part of the hero of Trafalgar; but, as it was with Jackson, so was it with Nelson, his conduct was not the result of real recklessness; it was not the courage of the bull-dog, the maddened bull or the enraged lion, but rather the play of a spirit which rose with the occasion, the exhibition of a will not to be appalled by dangers common natures shrink from. It was such a courage the poet had in view when he made Brutus say—

“Set honor in one eye, and death i’ the other,

And I will look on both indifferently.”

On several occasions in his career John Kelly has exhibited this heroic quality. Through his agency, at a stormy political convention in New York, when several of the most notorious partisans of Tweed, while clutching to retain the power which had been wrested from their fallen chief, were beaten at every point, a resort to brute force was threatened, and several of the vilest desperadoes in the city were despatched from the hall to waylay Kelly and take his life as he passed along the street. Some of his friends divined the purpose of the would-be-assassins, and admonished Mr. Kelly of their movements. A carriage was sent for, and he was urged to get into it and be driven home, in order to avoid the bravos. Augustus Schell, Horace F. Clark, and several other friends tried to persuade him to enter the carriage. Mr. Kelly replied that he generally went home by a certain route, pointing to the street where the thugs were in hiding, and it was his intention to go that way then. If anybody wanted to kill him, the opportunity would be given, as he would neither seek nor avoid such miscreants. “My friends,” he quietly remarked, “if you run away from a dog, he will be very apt to bite you.” He went out of the hall and approached the corner, keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the sinister group gathered there like beasts of prey, passed on, and was not molested. Determined to take his life, but deterred by cowardice when Kelly confronted them, the villains made a plan to secrete themselves in a small unoccupied frame house on Lexington Avenue, between 33d and 34th streets, on the following morning, and to shoot him as he went down town to business. An old man living in the neighborhood, by the merest accident overheard a part of the muttered plot of the conspirators, and saw them early next morning enter the deserted house. He was a friend of Mr. Kelly, and suspected that he was to be attacked. He went out, and meeting Mr. Kelly, told him of his suspicion, and pointed out the house in which the men were concealed. John Kelly crossed the street, and proceeded deliberately to enter the house and room from which the Ring desperadoes in dumb astonishment watched his approach. Thinking they had been betrayed—for it must have flashed upon them that Kelly would not have the madness to do such a thing unless he had assistance at hand—the terrified assassins fled from the rear of the house as he entered at the front. He went into the room they had just quit, and saw four men running through a vacant lot as fast as their legs could carry them into the next street. Alone and absolutely unassisted, save by the cool judgment and unflinching courage which eminently distinguish his character, he adopted this hazardous line of conduct as the most effective way of confounding a gang of murderous ruffians, and stamping out their cowardly plots. He succeeded. The Ring men beset his path no more.

Those acquainted with John Kelly are aware that there is a humorous side to his character, and that he possesses mimic powers of a high order. It is not generally known, but it is a fact however, that when he first grew up to manhood he was one of the organizers of an Amateur Dramatic Association, which had its headquarters in a hall at the corner of Elm and Canal Streets, and which sent forth several professional actors who afterwards attained eminence on the stage. Charles Place, Samuel Truesdale, Mr. Godwin, John Kelly and other well known citizens of New York were members of this company; and several great tragedies, notably some of the now neglected ones of Shakespeare, were essayed by these aspiring youths. “Many of Mr. Kelly’s friends,” said a writer in September, 1880, in a New York weekly paper called The Hour, “will be surprised to learn that he once, in the character of Macbeth, sturdily challenged Macduff to ‘lay on’; that as the sable-clad Hamlet he was accustomed to win applause as he expressed the wish that his ‘too, too solid flesh would melt’; and that his passionate outbursts as the jealous Moor in ‘Othello’, were wont to bring down the house. Equally astonished will they be to hear that, in the versatility of his genius, he was as much a favorite in ‘Toodles’ and other of Burton’s eccentric comedy parts as in the higher walk of tragedy.”

In Kelly’s younger days religious persecution and hostility to foreigners had begun to be shown in not a few localities. This intolerant spirit, which had lain dormant in America from the days of Washington to the end of Monroe’s administration, broke forth with great fury in several parts of the country after the close of the “era of good feeling.” The fathers of the Republic were liberal men who kept this spirit at a distance. Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore, the friend of Washington, was chosen by a unanimous resolution of Congress, and in compliance with the desire of the clergy and laity of all denominations, to deliver the first anniversary address upon the father of his country after his death. The address was delivered February 22, 1800, and is still preserved. Bishop Cheverus of Boston, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, France, was the warm personal friend of John Adams, and when the Bishop was about to build a church in Boston, the first name on the list of his subscribers was that of President Adams. When Bishop Dubois, the friend of Lafayette, was driven into exile by the French Revolution, he found a place of refuge in Virginia, a home in the private residence of James Monroe, afterwards President, friends in his host and Patrick Henry, and, having no church of his own, a chapel in the capitol at Richmond which the legislature of Virginia placed at his disposal to be used for the offices of religion. These halcyon days of Christian charity and toleration in America were now about to be rudely interrupted. In 1831, the same Dubois, then Bishop of New York, had the mortification to see his church of St. Mary’s, in that city, set on fire by an incendiary and burned down. The first Catholic college in the State of New York was built in the neighborhood of Nyack, on the Hudson, in 1833, by this prelate. Religious bigotry incited by Rev. Dr. Brownlee and other enemies of the Catholics, soon applied the torch to the structure and reduced it to ashes. In 1834 the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown, Massachusetts, was burned and sacked. Two or three years later an anti-Catholic mob formed the design of burning St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. A pious churchman, Bishop Dubois was also a man of courage. If the civil authorities would not stay the fury of the mob, he determined to protect himself, and defend his church from destruction. John Kelly, then a well grown youth and a favorite of Bishop Dubois, was selected by him on account of his prudence and extraordinary courage as a sort of aid de-camp to Lawrence Langdon, the leader of a large body of citizens who assembled in the vicinity of the Cathedral for defense. The streets were torn up for a considerable distance; paving stones, wagons and omnibuses were used for barricades; armed men filled the Cathedral, and the walls of the adjoining grave-yard glistened with swords and bayonets. The Bishop enjoined the utmost forbearance upon his people, and gave them positive orders not to begin the assault, and to avoid collision with the mob until the Cathedral might be attacked. Conspicuous in carrying out the orders of the leader, and in directing the movements of the defending party, and maintaining constant communication between Langdon and his followers, was young John Kelly of the Fourteenth Ward. The mob approached through Broadway, a dense body extending for several blocks, marching in solid line and filling the street from one side to the other. They turned into Prince Street and approached the Cathedral. Kelly carried the order at this moment for the defenders to lie down in the grave-yard and keep perfectly quiet. It was night, and the mob marched on until stopped by the barricades, when they found the whole neighborhood in a state of siege. The ample preparations to receive them disconcerted the church-burners, and the silence of the defending party, of whose presence they had become aware, made the incendiaries wary and apprehensive. They faltered and lost heart, and slunk away in the direction of the Bowery, terrified from their wicked design by the intrepid courage of one old Bishop. They passed along the sidewalk adjoining the burial-ground in lines six deep, with frightful oaths upon their lips, while the men in the city of the dead remained as still and motionless as the tenants of the tombs below, but every finger was on a trigger, and every heart beat high with resolve to defend St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the graves of their fathers from sacrilege and desecration. Driven by cowardly fear from the church, the mob crossed to the Bowery, wrecking the houses of several Irishmen, and the tavern called the Green Dragon, on the way, and finally their fury was let loose on the private residence of Mr. Arthur Tappan, the famous abolitionist, whose windows and doors they broke, and otherwise injured his property. Thus by the prudence of the Cathedral defenders in avoiding collision with the mob, a terrible sacrifice of life was escaped, and young John Kelly, inspired by the counsel of the Bishop and his own coolness and sagacity, played a prominent part in preventing bloodshed and saving the Cathedral.

The prejudice against foreigners, an outgrowth of that aversion which the old Federal party leaders manifested towards Frenchmen, Germans and Irishmen, indeed to all foreigners except Englishmen, continued to increase in bitterness after the close of the “era of good feeling.” A political party was at last organized on a platform of disfranchisement of the Irish and “the Dutch,” the latter being a commonly used misnomer for the Germans. This party took the name of Native Americans. It advocated laws prohibiting Irish and German emigrants from landing on these shores, and practical denial of the right of suffrage, or of holding office, to those already here. For some years this unwise and unstatesmanlike policy of exclusion and proscription seriously checked the tide of emigration from Europe. Had the Native Americans prevailed, instead of the fifty odd millions of population in the United States to-day, there would have been less than twenty millions, and the wealth and greatness of the country would be diminished in like proportion. Instead of being, perhaps, the greatest nation in the world, the United States would occupy the position of a fourth or fifth-rate power, a little but not much ahead of Canada on the north, and the South American governments on the south.

As the greater number of the foreign population were Roman Catholics, a sectarian element was infused into the new party, and with bigotry superadded to a widespread jealousy of foreigners, the Native American party soon signalized itself by burning down Catholic churches and colleges, and by bloody chance-medleys and deliberate riots with German and Irish adopted citizens. In the year 1844 these disturbances reached a climax. A terrible riot occurred that year in Philadelphia, in which many lives were sacrificed, and the Catholic church of St. Augustine was laid in ashes by the mob. The scenes in that city bore resemblance to some of the godless excesses in Paris during the reign of terror. To be a foreigner was to brave death, to be a Catholic to court martyrdom in free America.

It was at this juncture the Native American party in the city of New York again threatened the destruction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The New York Courier and Enquirer, and Evening Express fanned the passions of the people to white heat by appeals to sectarian and race prejudices. But there was a man then at the head of the Catholic Church in New York who possessed many of the qualities for which Andrew Jackson was distinguished. Bishop Hughes belonged to the tribe of the lions. He perceived that it was the favorite policy of the Native Americans to make New York city an anti-foreign stronghold. There, Catholics and adopted citizens were powerful; crushed there, it would be an easy matter to prostrate them everywhere. In the month of May, 1844, the Native American leaders in New York, invited their brethren of Philadelphia, who had most distinguished themselves in the deplorable events in that city, to visit New York, and to bring with them emblems of the horrible scenes in Kensington at the time of the burning of the church of St. Augustine, the better to fire the New York heart. A delegation of Philadelphians promised to accept the invitation and carry on the emblems. A public reception, and a procession through the streets, were to take place. It became evident that the purpose of this sinister movement was to re-enact in New York the scenes which had just disgraced Philadelphia. Bishop Hughes took decisive action. He admonished Catholics to keep away from public meetings and unusual gatherings of the populace, and, to avoid in a special manner, all disturbers of the peace. That great man, in looking over the city for prudent and conservative persons to aid him in carrying out his policy of forbearance, found no one on whom he more implicitly relied, and who proved more effective in the emergency than John Kelly. Bishop Hughes and John Kelly’s father were natives of the same county and neighborhood in Ireland. Between the Bishop and his fellow countryman’s son a warm friendship existed. They were both endowed with minds of singular originality and power, both natural leaders of men, both possessed a remarkable hold on the respect and affections of the people. Among the Whigs, at this perilous juncture, Bishop Hughes also found several powerful supporters, chief among whom were William H. Seward, Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. As the time drew near for the Native American demonstration, popular excitement and fears of a terrible riot increased. Bishop Hughes now called on the Mayor of the city, Robert H. Morris, and advised him not to allow the demonstration to take place. “Are you afraid that some of your churches may be burned?” the Mayor asked. “No, sir, but I am afraid that some of yours will be burned,” the Bishop said; “we can protect our own. I came to warn you for your own good.” “Do you think, Bishop, that your people would attack the procession?” “I do not; but the Native Americans want to provoke a Catholic riot, and if they can do it in no other way, I believe they would not scruple to attack the procession themselves, for the sake of making it appear that the Catholics had assailed them.”

“What, then, would you have me do?” asked the Mayor. “I did not come to tell you what to do,” the Bishop said. “I am a Churchman, not the Mayor of New York; but if I were the Mayor, I would examine the laws of the State and see if there were not attached to the police force a battery of artillery, and a company or so of infantry, and a squadron of horse; and I think I should find that there were; and if so, I should call them out. Moreover, I should send to Mr. Harper, the Mayor-elect, who has been chosen by the votes of this party. I should remind him that these men are his supporters; I should warn him that if they carry out their designs there will be a riot; and I should urge him to use his influence in preventing the public reception of the delegates.”[5]

This characteristic stand of Bishop Hughes had its effect. No public reception of the church burners took place, but for nearly two weeks the Cathedral was guarded every night, and the mob which threatened its destruction was kept at bay. During those dark days Bishop Hughes found John Kelly to be one of the most prudent young men in the Cathedral parish, energetic in danger, conservative in conduct, and always responsive to the call of duty. His manly bearing then may be said to have laid the foundation of that enduring confidence in his judgment, and respect for his character, which the Bishop ever afterwards felt and expressed. Mr. Kelly was not a zealot, and there is not a tinge of bigotry in his nature. He was then, as he is now, a true liberal, and has always declared that religion and politics should be kept as wide apart as the poles. But he is the foe of intolerance, and while despising the arts of the demagogue, no man in New York has done more to uphold foreign citizens in their rights, and to emancipate the ballot-box from persecution on the one hand, and fraudulent voting on the other.

The Native American party finally developed into the notorious Know-Nothing movement, the party of grips, and signs, and dark-lanterns. In many of the election districts of New York no foreigner dared approach the polls. The primaries were even worse, and were conducted in defiant disregard of the election laws. In John Kelly’s ward, which was a fair illustration of every other ward in the city, any Irishman or German risked his life by going to the polls. Gangs of repeaters and thugs, as far as they could, kept all foreigners from the primaries. These tools of the Know-Nothing leaders would fill the room where the election was held, take possession of the line, crowd out their opponents by threats or violence, return again and again, force their way, after passing the spot where the votes were received, once more into the line, and repeat the farcical act of voting a second and third time, keeping up the villany until relieved by another squad of repeaters, who continued to enact the same scenes until the close of the polls. A friendly police force connived at these rascalities, and openly backed up the repeaters and ballot-box stuffers whenever a determined citizen, in the exercise of his rights, resisted expulsion from the line, or attempted to defend himself from assault. So great became the terror these law-breakers inspired, that opposition to them was practically at an end. This state of affairs was more humiliating, since the majority of voters in the Fourteenth Ward were known to be Democrats. John Kelly protested against these outrages as a private citizen, and at a meeting of Democrats declared his intention of attending the next primary election in the Fourteenth Ward, then near at hand, and exercising his right of voting at all hazards. Those who knew the man knew this was not an idle boast, but many tried to dissuade him from the rash attempt, which, if persisted in, would likely enough cost him his life.

The primary election was to take place in a hall, long since removed, in the march of the city, which then stood on the corner of Grand and Elizabeth Streets. The part of the room for the inspectors’ seats was protected by a high partition, and a box desk, like a bank teller’s window, with a hole only large enough for a voter’s hand to be put through in handing his ballot, to the receiving inspector, was placed at one side of the partition. A narrow path in the main room, fenced in by high rails, to allow but one voter to approach at a time, afforded the only means of access to the polls. When the voter handed in his ballot, that was the last he saw of it, as the partition effectually shut off observation from without. As a matter of fact it was the practice of the inspector to throw the vote into a waste basket, on the floor at his feet, if it was not of the approved sort. This mode of taking the vox populi had long been in practice, and was not only an open evasion of the statute, which provided for the presence of watchers for the several parties, whose legal right it was to see that all had a fair opportunity to vote, but it was adopted with the deliberate purpose of protecting the swindling inspectors from detection while engaged in the nefarious work of making way with legal ballots. On the day of the election John Kelly was early on the scene, and was accompanied by a large number of the lawful voters of the ward, who appointed him as their watcher at the polls. He and his friends forced their way into the hall, and as the black hole, behind which the frauds were practiced, was there in violation of the statute, it was straightway demolished, in order to secure at least a semblance of fairness to the voting about to take place. The Know-Nothings were at first struck dumb with astonishment at this bold step on the part of the Democrats. To defend themselves from violence was as much as the latter had previously attempted. Rage soon took the place of surprise, and a furious attack was made on those who had removed the box screen from about the inspectors’ desk. John Kelly, who had been recognized as a Democratic watcher, was also set upon by the gang of ballot-box stuffers. A fierce scuffle ensued. But the Democrats outnumbered the Know-Nothings, and drove them from the hall. The leaders of the latter party, uttering vows of vengeance, declared they would soon return with reinforcements, and make short work of Kelly and his party. They repaired to the ship-carpenters’ quarters at the foot of Delaney street, and soon the news of their discomfiture was spread abroad among the thousands of mechanics in that part of the city. These mechanics were, for the most part, engaged in ship building, for those were the days when New York’s famous clipper ships whitened the seas and brought back cargoes of commerce from all parts of the world. The ship carpenters constituted a formidable body of athletic men, whose influence at elections was cast on the side of the Know-Nothings. It was not long before a body of these mechanics, over a thousand in number, was drummed up in Delaney street and vicinity, and marshalled by notorious Know-Nothing bullies, the crowd started for the hall in Grand street to inflict condign punishment upon John Kelly and the Fourteenth Ward Democrats, who had shown the unprecedented audacity of interfering with the usual Know-Nothing methods of carrying elections in that ward. In the meantime the Democrats had not been idle, but had recruited their own ranks to prepare for the threatened attack. Soon the two parties came into collision, and a desperate encounter took place. But for a second time the victory remained with the Democrats. The Know-Nothings, unaccustomed to serious opposition, were not prepared for it now, and advanced in a promiscuous manner, expecting to bear down opposition and to have everything their own way. The Democrats presented a compact front, and fought in companies of ten each. The hall was cleared a second time of the assailing party. A great multitude was now gathered in the streets threatening to tear down or burn the building, when the Democrats suddenly sallied forth with the precision of veterans, and struck the Know-Nothing mob at a dozen different points simultaneously. The mob being gathered from all parts of the city greatly exceeded the Democrats in numbers, but the sub-divisions of tens on the part of the latter worked so well that their onslaught became irresistible. Soon the mob were flying in all directions, some seeking refuge in stores, others in private houses, and the rest were pursued into and through the Bowery with great impetuosity. “The hour was come and the man.” None knew it better than the Know-Nothing Dirk Hatteraicks of New York. The effect of that day’s work in the Fourteenth Ward was felt all over the city of New York for years afterwards, and its immediate consequence was to break the backbone of Know-Nothingism in the ward in which it occurred. Thereafter Democrats, whether native or foreign born, were not afraid to appear at election places. The moral effect was salutary. The timid were reassured, the indifferent were roused into interest in public affairs, and fair elections became more frequent in New York city. The one strong man who had worked this revolution was John Kelly. The Irish and German population looked upon him as their deliverer, and from that day forth the Know-Nothing power on the East side of the city dwindled into insignificance, and no further attempts to stifle the voice of the majority took place. Kelly became identified in the minds of the adopted citizens of all nationalities, but especially of the Irish, who were chiefly aimed at, as their champion. Henceforth it was not possible for this strong man, this born leader of his fellows, to follow the bent of his inclinations and remain in a private station. He was elected to the Board of Aldermen, and next to the Congress of the United States. The Know-Nothings, by their excesses in New York, had raised up an adversary to their oath-bound secret organization who was destined to accomplish as much in the Empire State for equal rights to all citizens, native and foreign-born, as Alexander H. Stephens, in a similar contest, wrought out in Georgia, and Henry A. Wise, by his great anti-Know-Nothing campaign accomplished in Virginia.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Utica Observer, Sept. 16, 1879.

[2] Utica Observer, Sept. 16, 1879.

[3] New York World, Oct. 18, 1875.

[4] New York Herald October 26, 1877.

[5] Clarke’s Lives of the Deceased Bishops, vol. ii., pp. 111-112.

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT COMMONER OF GEORGIA—SPEECH OF A. H. STEPHENS—HENRY A. WISE OF ACCOMAC—HENRY WINTER DAVIS—HIS CHARACTER—JOHN KELLY MEETS HIM IN DEBATE—KELLY’S STANDING IN CONGRESS—HIS CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY LEWIS CASS, BY A. H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT—THE ERA OF KNOW-NOTHINGISM—KELLY’S PART IN ITS OVERTHROW.

The future historian of the United States, when he comes to treat of that extraordinary movement in American politics called Know-Nothingism, will not do justice to the subject unless he assigns the post of honor in the work of its overthrow as a national organization to Stephens of Georgia, Wise of Virginia, and Kelly of New York. A glance at the great work accomplished by these three men is all that can be attempted in this memoir.

“True Americanism,” said Alexander H. Stephens in his memorable Anti-Know-Nothing contest in Georgia in 1855, “as I have learned it, is like true Christianity—disciples in neither are confined to any nation, clime or soil whatever. Americanism is not the product of the soil; it springs not from the land or the ground; it is not of the earth, or earthy; it emanates from the head and the heart; it looks upward, and onward and outward; its life and soul are those grand ideas of government which characterize our institutions, and distinguish us from all other people; and there are no two features in our system which so signally distinguish us from all other nations as free toleration of religion and the doctrine of expatriation—the right of a man to throw off his allegiance to any and every other State, prince or potentate whatsoever, and by naturalization to be incorporated as a citizen into our body politic. Both these principles are specially provided for and firmly established in our Constitution. But these American ideas which were proclaimed in 1789 by our ‘sires of ’76’ are by their ‘sons’ at this day derided and scoffed at. We are now told that ‘naturalization’ is a ‘humbug,’ and that it is an impossibility. So did not our fathers think. This ‘humbug’ and ‘impossibility’ they planted in the Constitution; and a vindication of the same principle was one of the causes of our second war of independence. Let no man, then, barely because he was born in America, presume to be imbued with real and true ‘Americanism,’ who either ignores the direct and positive obligations of the Constitution, or ignores this, one of its most striking characteristics. An Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, or Russian, can be as thoroughly American as if he had been born within the walls of the old Independence Hall itself. Which was the ‘true American,’ Arnold or Hamilton? The one was a native, the other an adopted son.”[6]

Mr. Stephens had declined to be a candidate for Congress in 1855, and the Know-Nothings taunted him with cowardice, because, they said, if he should run he knew he was doomed to defeat. His letter on Know-Nothingism to Judge Thomas, from which the preceding extract is quoted, was denounced furiously by the Know-Nothings, who loudly predicted that the letter would prove to be his political winding-sheet. These taunts were published throughout the country, and induced Mr. Stephens to change his mind, and re-enter the field as a candidate for the Thirty-fourth Congress. In a speech at Augusta, Georgia, in which he announced this purpose, he said: “I have heard that it has been said that I declined being a candidate, because a majority of the district were Know-Nothings, and I was afraid of being beaten. Now, to all men who entertain any such opinion of me, I wish to say that I was influenced by no such motive. I am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth, or under the earth, except to do wrong—the path of duty I shall ever endeavor to travel, ‘fearing no evil,’ and dreading no consequences. Let time-servers, and those whose whole object is to see and find out which way the popular current for the day and hour runs, that they may float upon it, fear or dread defeat if they please. I would rather be defeated in a good cause than to triumph in a bad one. I would not give a fig for a man who would shrink from the discharge of duty for fear of defeat. All is not gold that glitters, and there is no telling the pure from the base until it is submitted to the fiery ordeal of the crucible and the furnace. The best test of a man’s integrity and the soundness of his principles is the furnace of popular opinion, and the hotter the furnace the better the test. I have traveled from a distant part of the State, where I first heard these floating taunts of fear—as coming from this district—for the sole and express purpose of announcing to you, one and all, and in this most public way to announce to the other counties, without distinction of party, that I am again a candidate for Congress in this district. The announcement I now make. My name is hereby presented to the district; not by any convention under a majority or a two-third rule—but by myself.

“I know, fellow-citizens, that many of you differ with me upon those exciting questions which are now dividing—and most unhappily, too, as I conceive—dividing our people. It is easy to join the shouts of the multitude, but it is hard to say to a multitude that they are wrong. I would be willing to go into one of your Know-Nothing lodges or councils, where every man would be against me, if I could be admitted without first having to put myself under obligations never to tell what occurred therein, and there speak the same sentiments that I shall utter here this night. Bear with me, then, while I proceed.[7] It is to exhibit and hold up even to yourselves the great evils and dangers to be apprehended from this ‘new,’ and, I think, most vicious political ‘monster,’ that I would address you; and against the influences of which I would warn and guard you, as well as the rest of our people. While the specious outside title of the party is that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ when we come to look at its secret objects as they leak out, we find that one of its main purposes is, not that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ but that those of a particular religious faith, though as good Americans as any others, shall be ruled by the rest.

“But it is said the ‘proscription’ is not against a religious but a political enemy, and the Roman Church is a political party, dangerous and powerful. Was a bolder assertion, without one fact to rest upon, ever attempted to be palmed off upon a confiding people? The Roman Church a political party! Where are its candidates? How many do they number in our State Legislatures or in Congress? What dangers are they threatening, or what have they ever plotted? Let them be named. Was it when Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, established the colony of Maryland, and for the first time on this continent established the principle of free toleration in religious worship? Was it when Charles Carroll, a Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence? But it is said that great danger is to be apprehended from the Catholics because of a ‘secret order’ amongst them, known as Jesuits. ‘No one,’ says a Know-Nothing writer, ‘knows, or possibly can know, the extent of their influence in this country. One of them may eat at your table, instruct your children, and profess to be a good Protestant, and you never suspect him. Their great aim is to make their mark in America. Perjury to them is no sin, if the object of it be to spread Catholicism or acquire political influence in the country.’ Whether this be true of the Jesuits or not I cannot say. But I submit it to the consideration of candid minds how far it is true of the new order of Know-Nothings, which is now so strenuously endeavoring to make its mark in America, and to gain political influence in the country, not only by putting down all foreigners, and all native-born citizens who may be of Catholic faith, but also all other native-born citizens who will not take upon their necks the yoke of their power. Do not hundreds and thousands of them go about daily and hourly, denying that they belong to the order, or that they know anything about it? May they not, and do they not ‘eat at your table,’ attend your sick, and some of them preach from your pulpits, and yet deny that they know anything about that ‘order’ which they are making such efforts to spread in the land? I do not say all of them do this; but is it not common with the ‘order,’ thus by some sort of equivocation and slippery construction, to mislead and deceive those with whom they converse? There is nothing worse that can be said of any man or any people indicating a destruction of morals or personal degradation, than that ‘the truth is not in him.’ It is the life and soul of all the virtues, human or divine. Tell me not that any party will effect reformation of any sort, bad as we now are in this land, which brings into disrepute this principle upon which rests all our hopes on earth, and all our hopes for immortality. And my opinion is that the Protestant ministers of the Gospel in this country, instead of joining in this New England, puritanical, proscriptive crusade against Catholics, could not render a better service to their churches, as well as the State, in the present condition of morals amongst us, than to appoint a day for everyone of them to preach to their respective congregations from this text, ‘What is truth?’ Let it also be a day set aside for fasting, humiliation and prayer—for repentance in sackcloth and ashes—on account of the alarming prevalence of the enormous sin of lying! Was there ever such a state of general distrust between man and man before? Could it ever have been said of a Georgia gentleman, until within a few months past, that he says so and so, but I don’t know whether to believe him or not? Is it not bringing Protestantism, and Christianity itself, into disgrace when such remarks are daily made, and not without just cause, about Church communicants of all our Protestant denominations—and by one church member even about his fellow-member? Where is this state of things to lead to, or end, but in general deception, hypocrisy, knavery, and universal treachery?

“Was ever such tyranny heard of in any old party in this country as that which this new ‘order’ sets up? Every one of them knows, and whether they deny it or not, there is a secret monitor within that tells them that they have pledged themselves never to vote for any Roman Catholic to any office of profit or trust. They have thus pledged themselves to set up a religious test in qualifications for office against the express words of the Constitution of the United States. Their very organization is not only anti-American, anti-republican, but at war with the fundamental law of the Union, and, therefore, revolutionary in its character, thus silently and secretly to effect for all practical purposes a change in our form of government. And what is this but revolution? Not an open and manly rebellion, but a secret and covert attempt to undermine the very corner-stone of the temple of our liberties.

“Whenever any government denies to any class of its citizens an equal participation in the privileges, immunities, and honors enjoyed by all others, it parts with all just claim to their allegiance. Allegiance is due only so long as protection is extended; and protection necessarily implies an equality of right to stand or fall, according to merit, amongst all the members of society, or the citizens of the commonwealth. The best of men, after all, have enough of the old leaven of human nature left about them to fight when they feel aggrieved, outraged and trampled upon; and strange to say, where men get to fighting about religion they fight harder, and longer and more exterminatingly than upon any other subject. The history of the world teaches this. Already we see the spirit abroad which is to enkindle the fires and set the fagots a blazing—not by the Catholics, they are comparatively few and weak; their only safety is in the shield of the constitutional guarantee; minorities seldom assail majorities; and persecutions always begin with the larger numbers against the smaller. But this spirit is evinced by one of the numerous replies to my letter. The writer says: ‘We call upon the children of the Puritans of the North, and the Huguenots of the South, by the remembrance of the fires of Smithfield, and the bloody St. Bartholomew, to lay down for once all sectional difficulties,’ etc., and to join in this great American movement of proscribing Catholics. What is this but the tocsin of intestine strife? Why call up the remembrance of the fires of Smithfield but to whet the Protestant appetite for vengeance? Why stir up the quiet ashes of bloody St. Bartholomew, but for the hope, perhaps, of finding therein a slumbering spark from which new fires may be started? Why exhume the atrocities, cruelties, and barbarities of ages gone by from the repose in which they have been buried for hundreds of years, unless it be to reproduce the seed, and spread amongst us the same moral infection and loathsome contagion?—just as it is said the plague is sometimes occasioned in London by disentombing and exposing to the atmosphere the latent virus of the fell disease still lingering in the dusty bones of those who died of it centuries ago. Fellow citizens, Fellow Protestants, Fellow Americans—all who reverence the constitution of your country—I entreat you, and I envoke you to give no listening ear to such fanatical appeals.

“When the principles of the Constitution are disregarded, when those ‘checks and restraints,’ put in it as Mr. Madison has told us, for ‘a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions,’ are broken down and swept away, when the whole country shall have been brought under the influence of the third degree of this Know-Nothing order, if that time shall ever come, then, indeed may the days of this Republic, too, be considered as numbered.

“I wish to say something to you about this third degree, the union degree, as it is called. For under this specious title, name or guise, the arch-tempter again approaches us, quite as subtly as under the other of ‘Americans shall rule America.’ The obligation taken in this degree is ‘to uphold, maintain and defend’ the Union, without one word being said about the Constitution. Now, as much as we all, I trust, are devoted to the Union, who would have it without the Constitution? This is the life and soul of it—this is its animating spirit. It is this that gives it vitality, health, vigor, strength, growth, development and power. Without it the Union could never have been formed, and without it it cannot be maintained or held together. Where the animating principle of any living organism is extinguished, this is death, and dissolution is inevitable. You might just as well expect that the component parts of your bodies could be held together by some senseless incantations after the vital spark has departed, as that this Union can be held together by any Know-Nothing oaths when the Constitution is gone. Congress is to be done away with, except in so far as its members may be necessary, as the dumb instruments for registering the edicts of an invisible but all-powerful oligarchy. Our present Government is to be paralyzed by this boa-constrictor, which is now entwining its coils around it. It is to be supplanted and displaced by another self-constituted and secretly organized body to rise up in its stead, a political ‘monster,’ more terrible to contemplate than the seven-headed beast spoken of in the Apocalypse.

“I have seen it stated in the newspapers by some unknown writer, that my letter to Col. Thomas will be my political winding-sheet. If you and the other voters of the Eighth Congressional District so will it, so let it be; there is but one other I should prefer—and that is the Constitution of my country; let me be first wrapped in this, and then covered over with that letter, and the principles I have announced this night; and thus shrouded I shall be content to be laid away, when the time comes, in my last resting-place without asking any other epitaph but the simple inscription carved upon the headstone that marks the spot—‘Here sleep the remains of one who dared to tell the people they were wrong when he believed so, and who never intentionally deceived a friend, or betrayed even an enemy.’”[8]

Thus spoke Alexander H. Stephens, Georgia’s greatest statesman, of the pernicious tendencies of the Know-Nothing party. On that speech he ran for Congress and was elected by three thousand majority. Know-Nothingism was thus slain in Georgia. Since the death of Mr. Stephens some scribbler with a talent for forgery has taken the quotation marks from the paragraph about the Jesuits in the foregoing speech, affixed Mr. Stephens’s name to it, and sent it on its rounds through the press as the declared opinion of the dead statesman concerning the followers of Loyola. Mr. Stephens quoted the paragraph from a Know-Nothing writer, not to approve the attack on the Jesuits, but for the opposite purpose of showing it applied to the Know-Nothings themselves. No man in this country could use the weapon of retort with more effect than Alexander H. Stephens, and his remarks on the paragraph in question afford a favorable instance of his power in that line. That this stupid calumny on the great man who battled so nobly for the equal rights of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, foreign born and native Americans, should have been palmed off on the public, is less surprising than that it should have found its way into certain Catholic newspapers, in the columns of at least one of which the present writer read it shortly after the death of Mr. Stephens.

The ever memorable conflict in Virginia of 1855, between the Know-Nothings and Democrats, was led on the part of the latter by the gallant Henry A. Wise. That conflict was one of great national magnitude. If the Know-Nothings, theretofore victorious, had then succeeded, it is likely a civil war precipitated by religious fanaticism would have followed, not to be conducted between the States, as later unfortunately occurred, but between citizens of the same cities, and towns and neighborhoods throughout the Union, with a fury to make humanity shudder—in every sense of the word a civil war. The Virginia election of that year was, therefore, watched with intense interest by the whole American people, and a feeling of feverish excitement was everywhere visible. Henry A. Wise, the uncompromising enemy of the Know-Nothings, was named as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia. Never was such a canvass before. He went everywhere, pouring out fiery eloquence in the Western Mountains, in the Blue Ridge that milks the clouds, upon the Potomac, lovely River of Swans, on the Rappahannock, the Piankatank, Mob Jack Bay, James River, Elizabeth River, down to the North Carolina line; and wherever he went this second Patrick Henry stirred the people’s hearts as they had not been stirred before. One of the best stump speeches ever heard in this country was made by Mr. Wise at Alexandria. He had declared hostility to the Know-Nothings in a letter to a citizen of Virginia, written September 18, 1854.

In that letter he said: “I am a native Virginian; my ancestors on both sides for two hundred years were citizens of this country and this State—half English, half Scotch. I am a Protestant by birth, by baptism, by intellectual belief, and by education and by adoption. I am an American, in every fibre and in every feeling an American; yet in every character, in every relation, in every sense, with all my head and all my heart, and all my might, I protest against this secret organization of native Americans and of Protestants to proscribe Roman Catholic and naturalized citizens. As early as 1787 we established a great land ordinance, the most perfect system of eminent domain, of proprietary titles, and of territorial settlements, which the world had ever beheld to bless the homeless children of men. It had the very house-warming of hospitality in it. It wielded the logwood axe, and cleared a continent of forests. It made an exodus in the old world, and dotted the new with log-cabins, around the hearths of which the tears of the aged and the oppressed were wiped away, and cherub children were born to liberty, and sang its songs, and have grown up in its strength and might and majesty. It brought together foreigners of every country and clime—immigrants from Europe of every language and religion, and its most wonderful effect has been to assimilate all races. Irish and German, English and French, Scotch and Spaniard, have met on the Western prairies, in the Western woods, and have peopled villages and towns and cities—queen cities, rivalling the marts of Eastern commerce; and the Teutonic and Celtic and Anglo-Saxon races have in a day mingled into one undistinguishable mass—and that one is American. The children of all are crossed in blood in the first generation, so that ethnology can’t tell of what parentage they are—they all become brother and sister Jonathans. As in the colonies, as in the revolution, as in the last war, so have foreigners and immigrants of every religion and tongue contributed to build up the temple of American law and liberty until its spire reaches to heaven, whilst its shadow rests on earth. If there has been a turnpike road to be beaten out of the rocky metal, or a canal to be dug, foreigners and immigrants have been armed with the mattock and the spade and if a battle on sea and land had to be fought, foreigners and immigrants have been armed with the musket and the blade.

“We can name the very hour of our birth as a people. We need recur to no fable of a wolf to whelp us into existence. As a nation we are but seventy-eight years of age. Many persons are now living who were alive before this nation was born. And the ancestors of this people about two centuries only ago were foreigners, every one of them coming to the shores of this country to take it away from the aborigines, and to take possession of it by authority either directly or derivatively of Papal Power. His Holiness the Pope was the great grantor of all the new countries of North America. Foreigners in the name of the Pope and Mother Church took possession of North America, to have and to hold the same to their heirs against the heathen forever. And now already their descendants are for excluding foreigners, and the Pope’s followers from an equal enjoyment of this same possession. So strange is human history. Christopher Columbus! Ferdinand and Isabella! What would they have thought of this had they foreseen it when they touched a continent and called it theirs in the name of the Holy Trinity, by authority of the keeper of the keys of Heaven, and of the great grantor of the empire and domain of earth? What would have become of our national titles to northeastern and northwestern boundaries, but for the plea of this authority, valid of old among all Christian powers?”

Writing thus in September, 1854, Mr. Wise, although he had been a Whig years before, was nominated for Governor by the Democrats in December of the same year. In his famous Alexandria speech, before discussing Know-Nothingism, he told the people some practical truths explanatory of the decadence of the prosperity of Virginia, of the causes producing it, and the remedies to be applied. “You have,” he said, “the bowels of your Western mountains rich in iron, in copper, in coal, in salt, in gypsum, and the very earth is so rich in oil that it sets the rivers in flame. You have the line of the Alleghany, that beautiful Blue Ridge which stands placed there by the Almighty, not to obstruct the way of the people to market, but placed there in the very bounty of Providence to milk the clouds, to make the sweet springs which are the sources of your rivers. And at the head of every stream is the waterfall murmuring the very music of your power to put spindles in motion. And yet commerce has long ago spread her sails and sailed away from you; you have not as yet dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own hearths; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows worthy of gods in the iron foundries. You have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have had no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of agriculture; and such agriculture! Your sedge patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth has scarred the very bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed steer through the sedge patches to procure a tough beef-steak. You are in the habit of discussing Federal politics; and permit me to say to you, very honestly and very openly, that next to brandy, next to card playing, next to horse-racing, the thing that has done more harm to Virginia than any other in the course of her past history, has been her insatiable appetite for Federal politics. She has given all her great men to the Union. Her Washington, her Jefferson, her Madison, her Marshall, her galaxy of great men she has given to the Union. Richmond, instead of attending to Richmond’s business, has been too much in the habit of attending to the affairs of Washington city, when there are plenty there, God knows, to attend to them themselves. * * “Puritanism,” said Mr. Wise, has disappeared, and we have in place of it Unitarianism, Universalism, Fourierism, Millerism, Mormonism—all the odds and ends of isms—until at last you have a grand fusion of all those odds and ends of isms in the omnium gatherum of isms called Know-Nothingism. Having swept the North, the question was: How can this ism be wedged in in the South? And the devil was at the elbow of these preachers of ‘Christian politics’ to tell them precisely how.” [At this point Mr. Wise was interrupted by cat-calls, derisive cheers and other manifestations of the Know-Nothing element of the meeting.] “There were three elements in the South,” continued the speaker, “and in Virginia particularly, to which they might apply themselves. There is the religious element, the 103,000 Presbyterians, the 300,000 Baptists, the 300,000 Methodists of Virginia. Well, how were they to reach them? Why, just by raising a hell of a fuss about the Pope!

“Cæsar’s kingdom is political, is a carnal kingdom. And I tell you that if I stood alone in the State of Virginia, and if priestcraft—if the priests of my own Mother Church dared to lay their hands on the political power of our people, or to use their churches to wield political influence, I would stand, in feeble imitation it may be, but I would stand, even if I stood alone, as Patrick Henry stood in the Revolution, between the parsons and the people. These men, many of whom are neither Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Lutherans, nor what not—who are men of no religion, who have no church, who do not say their prayers, who do not read their Bible, who live God-defying lives every day of their existence, are now seen with faces as long as their dark-lanterns, with the whites of their eyes turned up in holy fear lest the Bible should be shut up by the Pope! You tell the people that Catholics never gave aid to civil liberty; that they never yet struck a blow for the freedom of mankind. Who gave you alliance against the crown of England? Who but that Catholic king, Louis XVI. He sent you from the Court of Versailles Lafayette, the boy of Washington’s camp, a foreigner who never was naturalized, but who bled at the redoubt of Yorktown, when Arnold, a native, like Absalom proved traitor.

“And, Sir, before George Washington was born, before Lafayette wielded the sword, or Charles Carroll the pen for his country, six hundred and forty years ago, on the 16th of June, 1214, there was another scene enacted on the face of the globe, when the general charter of all charters of freedom was gained, when one man, a man called Stephen Langton, swore the Barons of England for the people against the power of the King—swore the Barons on the high altar of the Catholic Church at St. Edmundsbury, that they would have Magna Charta or die for it. The charter which secures to every one of you to-day trial by jury, freedom of the press, freedom of the pen, the confronting of witnesses with the accused, and the opening of secret dungeons—that charter was obtained by Stephen Langton against the King of England, and if you Know-Nothings don’t know who Stephen Langton was, you know nothing sure enough. He was a Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. I come here not to praise the Catholics, but I come here to acknowledge historical truths, and to ask of Protestants—what has heretofore been the pride and boast of Protestants—tolerance of opinion in religious faith.

“All that I have to say to the Democracy is that you want active, earnest organization. Remember that if these Know-Nothings hold together they are sworn compact committees of vigilance. Go to work then. Organize actively everywhere. Appoint your vigilance committees, but take especial care that no Know-Nothings are secretly and unknown to you upon them. Be prepared. I have gone through most of Eastern Virginia, and in spite of their vaunting I defy them to defeat me. There are Indians in the bushes, but I’ll whack on the bayonet, and lunge at every shrub in the State till I drive them out. I tell them distinctly there shall be no compromise, no parley. I will come to no terms. They shall either crush me, or I will crush them in this State.”

Mr. Wise, though his health was impaired, conducted his campaign with extraordinary energy, travelling about 3000 miles, to every point in the State, and speaking fifty times before the election. He was triumphantly elected Governor of Virginia, receiving upwards of ten thousand majority over his Know-Nothing competitor. The impartial verdict of history is that Henry A. Wise did more to kill the Know-Nothing party than any other man in the United States.

Many Know-Nothings were elected to Congress from the Northern States, and a few from the Southern States. In the Senate and House of Representatives there were seventy-eight members of that party in 1855. Conspicuous among them all, on account of his prejudices no less than his ability, was Henry Winter Davis, a member of the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses from Baltimore.

The celebrated controversy upon the floor of Congress between Davis and John Kelly on the Know-Nothing question entitles the Know-Nothing leader to some notice here.

Henry Winter Davis was born at Annapolis, Maryland, August 16, 1817, and received his education at Kenyon College, Ohio, where he was graduated in 1837. His father was an Episcopalian minister. Young Davis was sent to the University of Virginia in 1839 by his aunt, a Miss Winter of Alexandria, Virginia, and entered upon his preparatory legal studies at that institution. He afterwards opened a law office at Alexandria, where he struggled with poverty for some years, making but little mark in that community, save as an occasional contributor of political essays to the Alexandria Gazette, but applying himself closely to his studies, and becoming an able lawyer. Reverdy Johnson recognized his talents and advised him to remove to Baltimore, where he would find a wider field for their display. Mr. Davis acted on this advice, and made Baltimore his home. He had married a Miss Cazenove of Alexandria, who soon died, and subsequently he married a daughter of John S. Morris, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Baltimore. Mr. Morris opposed the marriage on account of Davis’s peculiar political views.

Henry Winter Davis was a man of genius, with a natural bent for an opposition leader. In person he was handsome, in manners haughty and reserved, in demeanor elegant; and he possessed the gift of a fine oratory, both logical and persuasive. A morose temper and a cynical and cold nature served to heighten the picturesque effect of his character, and to make him delight in fomenting discord and violence. “The ignorant Dutch and infuriated Irish, let them beware lest they press the bosses of the buckler too far,” is said to have been a form of expression he applied to Germans and Irishmen in the course of one of his invectives on the stump in Baltimore. He soon became an acknowledged leader of the Know-Nothings, and no man knew better how to fire the rage and incite to acts of bloodshed the Plug Uglies of that city. Had Davis lived during the era of the Alien and Sedition Laws, his genius probably would have placed him at the head of that conspiracy, and his name would have become famous in history. He was a contemner of the sanctions of authority. The sacredness of institutions handed down from generation to generation unimpaired by the ravages of time, awakened no sense of reverence in the mind of this iconoclast. Burke’s beautiful allusion to the bulwarks of civil society which have been stamped with the “mysterious virtue of wax and parchment,” must have appeared to him only as a figure of rhetoric or a ridiculous fetich. How contemptuously he regarded the warning of Washington to his countrymen in the Farewell Address against entangling alliances with the nations of Europe is discovered in the following passage, found at page 367, of a book written by Mr. Davis, called “The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century.”

“They who stand with their backs to the future and their faces to the past, wise only after the event, and refusing to believe in dangers they have not felt, clamorously invoke the name of Washington in their protest against interference in the concerns of Europe. With such it is useless to argue till they learn the meaning of the language they repeat.”

With many similar sophistries he declared it would be wise policy on the part of the United States to take part in European controversies, and pretended to find warrant in the Monroe doctrine for this radical reversal of Washington’s maxim. But that Davis was a demagogue in the offensive sense of the word is evident from the fact that the very advice of General Washington against foreign influence, which he scouted at in his book, was soon after relied upon by the same Davis as his chief argument in Congress for the exclusion of foreigners from the rights and privileges of citizenship. In the course of a Know-Nothing speech, delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6th, 1857, he said: “Foreign allies have decided the government of the country. * * * * Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Recall the warnings of Washington against foreign influence, here in our midst, wielding part of our sovereignty; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and power.” The insincerity of Davis is further shown from his conduct in regard to the Republican party. He denounced that party in the speech above quoted from, saying, among other things, “the Republican party has nothing to do and can do nothing. It has no future. Why cumbers it the ground?” In the course of a few years he became a Republican, and notwithstanding his former denunciation of them, swallowing at a single breath the most ultra tenets of that party. Consistent only in his inconsistencies, he again prepared to bolt from the Republican organization shortly before his death, and was the author of the celebrated Wade-Davis Manifesto in 1864, against the renomination of Abraham Lincoln. Once having been invited by a literary society of the University of Virginia to deliver the annual address before that body, he took up some eccentric line of political conduct before the commencement day occurred, and compelled the society in self-respect to revoke its invitation. He affected the Byronic manner, and the contagion spread to other members of Congress. Roscoe Conkling, after he entered the House of Representatives, is said to have become a great admirer of Henry Winter Davis, and to have fallen into his peculiarities of style as a public speaker. Mr. Conkling’s famous parliamentary quarrel with Mr. Blaine soon after occurred.

Such was the man the Know-Nothings recognized as their leader in the House of Representatives when John Kelly entered that body. In the early part of 1857 Mr. Kelly replied to a sneering assault of Mr. Davis on the Irish Brigade, and in the debate which followed not only proved himself able to cope with the Know-Nothing leader, but in a running debate with Mr. Kennett of Missouri, Mr. Akers of the same State, and Mr. Campbell of Ohio, who entered the lists against him, Kelly established his reputation as one of the best off-hand debaters in Congress.

A few extracts from the speeches on the occasion, which are taken from the Congressional Globe, will furnish an idea of the style of the speakers, and the merits of the controversy. In referring to the Presidential election of 1856, and the victory of the Democrats, Mr. Davis said: “The Irish Brigade stood firm and saved the Democrats from annihilation, and the foreign recruits in Pennsylvania turned the fate of the day. They have elected, by these foreigners, by a minority of the American people, a President to represent their divisions. The first levee of President Buchanan will be a curious scene. He is a quiet, simple, fair-spoken gentleman, versed in the by-paths and indirect crooked ways whereby he met this crown, and he will soon know how uneasy it sits upon his head. Some future Walpole may detail the curious greetings, the unexpected meetings, the cross purposes and shocked prejudices of the gentlemen who cross that threshold. Some honest Democrat from the South will thank God for the Union preserved. A gentleman of the disunionist school will congratulate the President on the defeat of Mr. Fillmore. The Northern gentlemen will whisper ‘Buchanan, Breckenridge and Free Kansas’ in the presidential ear, and beg without scandal the confirmation of their hopes. * * But how to divide the spoils among this motley crew—ah! there’s the rub. Sir, I envy not the nice and delicate scales which must distribute the patronage amid the jarring elements of that conglomerate, as fierce against each other as clubs in cards are against spades. * * The clamors of the foreign legion will add to the interest of the scene. They may not be disregarded, for but for them Pennsylvania was lost, and with it the day. Yet what will satisfy these indispensable allies, now conscious of their power? That, Sir, is the exact condition of things which will be found in the ante-chamber—exorbitant demands, limited means, irreconcilable divisions, strife, disunion, dissolution—whenever the President shall have taken the solemn oath of office and darkened the doors of the White House.

“The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil against which the American party protested. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country—men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result.”

Mr. Kelly replied to the Know-Nothing leader. He said: “I rise for the purpose of submitting as briefly as I can a few remarks in reply to the very extraordinary speech of the honorable member from Baltimore city. In the great abundance of his zeal to assail the President of the United States, the gentlemen from Baltimore could not permit so good an occasion to pass without hurling his pointless invectives against my constituents, in terms and temper which demand a reply. * * * His ambition seems restless and insatiable, for he cannot conclude his speech without trying a bout with what he denominates the ‘Irish Brigade.’ What particular class of our fellow-citizens this fling was aimed at, I am at a loss to conjecture. There is a body known to history under that appellation—a body of historical reputation, whose deeds of bravery on every battle-field of Europe have long formed the glowing theme for the poet’s genius and the sculptor’s art. But, sir, they were too pure to be reached by the gentleman’s sarcasm—too patriotic to be measured by his well conned calculation of the ‘loaves and fishes’ which have unfortunately slipped through his fingers—too brave to be terrified by the menaces or insults of those who would justify brutal murder—the murder of defenceless women and helpless children—the sacking of dwellings and the burning of churches, under the insolent plea of ‘summary punishment.’ Sir, the Irish Brigade of history was composed of patriots whom oppression in the land of their birth had driven to foreign countries, to carve out a home and a name by their valor and their swords. The brightest page of the history of France is that which records the deeds and the names of the ‘Irish Brigade.’ France, however, was not the only country in which the Irish Brigade signalized its devotion to liberty, and its bravery in achieving it. Sir, the father of your own navy was one of that glorious band of heroes who shed lustre on the land of their birth, while they poured out their life-blood for the country of their adoption. John Barry was a member of the Irish Brigade in America—he, who when tempted by Lord Howe with gold to his heart’s content, and the command of a line-of-battle-ship, spurned the offer with these noble words: ‘I have devoted myself to the cause of my adopted country, and not the value or command of the whole British fleet could seduce me from it.’ He, who when hailed by the British frigates in the West Indies and asked the usual questions as to the ship and captain, answered: ‘The United States ship Alliance, saucy Jack Barry, half-Irishman, half-Yankee. Who are you?’ Sir, saucy Jack Barry, as he styled himself, was the first American officer that ever hoisted the Stars and Stripes of our country on board a vessel of war. So soon as the flag of the Union was agreed on, it floated from the mast-head of the Lexington, Captain John Barry. But Captain John Barry was not the only member of the ‘Irish Brigade’ whose name comes down to us with the story of the privations and bravery of our revolutionary struggle. Colonel John Fitzgerald was also a member of that immortal band. Of this member of the ‘Irish Brigade’ I will let the still living member of Washington’s own household, the eloquent and venerable Custis speak:

“‘Col. Fitzgerald,’ says G. W. P. Custis in his memoirs of Revolutionary Heroes, ‘was an Irish officer in the Blue and Buffs, the first volunteer company raised in the South, in the dawn of the Revolution, and commanded by Washington. In the campaign of 1778 and retreat through the Jerseys, Fitzgerald was appointed aid-de-camp to Washington. At the battle of Princeton occurred that touching scene, consecrated by history to everlasting remembrance. The American troops, worn down by hardships, exhausting marches and want of food, on the fall of their leader, that brave old Scotchman, General Mercer, recoiled before the bayonets of the veteran foe. Washington spurred his horse into the interval between the hostile lines, reigning up with the charger’s head to the foe, and calling to his soldiers, ‘Will you give up your General to the enemy?’ The appeal was not made in vain. The Americans faced about and the arms were leveled on both side—Washington between them—even as though he had been placed as a target for both. It was at this moment Colonel Fitzgerald returned from conveying an order to the rear—and here let us use the gallant veteran’s own words. He said: ‘On my return, I perceived the General immediately between our line and that of the enemy, both lines leveling for the decisive fire that was to decide the fortunes of the day. Instantly there was a roar of musketry followed by a shout. It was the shout of victory. On raising my eyes I discovered the enemy broken and flying, while dimly, amid the glimpses of the smoke, was seen Washington alive and unharmed, waving his hat and cheering his comrades to the pursuit. I dashed my rowels into my charger’s flanks and flew to his side, exclaiming, ‘Thank God, your Excellency’s safe.’ I wept like a child for joy.’”

“This is what history tells us of another member of the ‘Irish Brigade.’ Now, Sir, if the gentleman from Maryland will only suppress his horror, and listen with patience, I will tell him what tradition adds concerning this brave aid-de-camp of Washington—this bold and intrepid Irishman. After peace was proclaimed and our independence achieved—after the Constitution had been put in operation, and Washington filled the office of chief-magistrate of the nation—he sent for his old companion in arms, then living in Washington’s own county of Fairfax, and invited him to accept the lucrative office of collector of the customs for the port of Alexandria. This tradition will be found to correspond with the records of the Treasury Department, on which may be read the entry that Colonel John Fitzgerald was appointed collector of the customs at Alexandria, Virginia, by George Washington, President of the United States, April 12, 1792. Thus we find that the Father of his country, were he now living, would come under the denunciations of the gentleman from Maryland, and his Know-Nothing associates, for conferring office on one of the ‘Irish Brigade.’

“The gentleman from Baltimore city professes great devotion to the memory and fame of the illustrious Clay. He was the gentleman’s oracle while living. Hear his eloquent voice coming up to us as if from his honored grave. He, too, is speaking of the ‘Irish Brigade,’ and in his warm, honest and manly soul the only words which he can find sufficiently ardent to express his feelings are ‘bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.’ ‘That Ireland,’ exclaims the orator of America in a speech delivered as late as 1847, ‘which has been in all the vicissitudes of our national existence our friend, and has ever extended to us her warmest sympathy—those Irishmen who in every war in which we have been engaged, on every battle-field from Quebec to Monterey, have stood by us shoulder to shoulder and shared in all the perils and fortunes of the conflict.’ If anything, Mr. Chairman, were wanting after this to ennoble the ‘Irish Brigade,’ and give it its proper and constitutional position in the family of American freemen, it is the obloquy of His Excellency Henry J. Gardner of Massachusetts, and the Hon. Henry Winter Davis, of Baltimore.

“I now propose, Mr. Chairman, to address myself for a few moments to the honorable gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akers), who is, I learn, a minister of the gospel. While his friend from Baltimore city exhausts all his powers upon the ‘Irish Brigade,’ he, with an equal stretch of fancy, but a much vaster stride over space, obtrudes himself at a bound into the cabins of the Irish peasantry, far away across the Atlantic. Hailing from a State first settled by Catholics, whose chief city was named by its pious founders after the sainted crusader King of France, the gentleman from Missouri calls on you to hear the Irish priest beyond the Atlantic holding converse with his enslaved parishioners. Mr. Chairman, from boyhood to manhood, I have known more priests of native and foreign birth than Mr. Akers ever saw. I have seen them at the cradle of infancy; I have been with them at the death-bed of old age; but, sir, my ears are only those of a man; I never heard a word of the speeches the gentleman from Missouri puts into their lips. Is it not known, sir, to every candid and impartial traveler who has visited that beautiful but ill-fated Island that the only true, devoted, loyal, self-sacrificing friend that the Irish peasant has in the land of his birth is the Catholic priest? He stands between him and the oppression of his haughty, blood-stained rulers; and when he cannot ameliorate his condition he bears on his own shoulders his full share of the burden. In suffering and misfortune he administers to him the consolations of his religion and the counsel of a friend; he sympathizes with him in all his trials, and when the minister of a strange faith, armed with all the terrors of the law, sends his bailiffs and his minions to seize the very bed on which his sick wife is preparing to meet the God of her fathers—when under the maddening spectacle a momentary burning for revenge perhaps seizes upon his agonized soul—the priest is by his side whispering in his ear ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord’; takes him by the hand, provides with his last penny for the safe removal of the sick and the helpless, and leaves them not until the hour of their trial is passed—a trial that will continue to harrass and oppress the Irish Catholic so long as the national Church of England prolongs a life of debauchery and vice on the plunder and pillage of the Irish peasant.”

Mr. Kelly made a deep impression on the House. The Know-Nothing members held a consultation while he was speaking, and decided that he must be interrupted and overcome if possible by a running fire of cross-questions. Luther M. Kennett of Missouri, formerly Mayor of St. Louis, and Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, were selected to open fire upon him. Mr. Kennett began by saying, “Will the gentleman from New York allow me to interrupt him for a moment?”

Mr. Kelly: “Certainly, sir.”

Mr. Kennett: “I see, Mr. Chairman, that my colleague to whom the gentleman refers, is not in his seat. I will, therefore, with his permission, say that I think he has unintentionally misinterpreted my colleague’s remarks. The inference which I drew from the argument of my colleague on this floor was that he was opposed to the consolidation of political and religious questions and to the proscribing of any man on account of his religious belief—and such are the principles and policy of the American Party. My colleague said further that the American Party was the first party that ever introduced that principle in their political platform.”

Mr. Kelly: “I must insist, Mr. Chairman, with all deference to the gentleman from Missouri, that I have not misunderstood the remarks of his colleague. I listened to his speech, as I have already said, with attention, and read it very carefully as it is printed in the Globe, and as it now appears in that paper to speak for itself. While I admit an apparent effort on the part of the gentleman from Missouri to look liberal, I must be permitted to remark that he seems no way solicitous to talk liberal, and an unbiased perusal of the gross libel which he has published in the Globe concerning the Irish Catholic priesthood will lead his colleague, however reluctantly, to the same conclusion. But the gentleman only acts out the principles and ritual of the midnight order, which conceals all it can, and denies everything.”

Mr. Kennett: “I will answer the gentleman more fully in my own speech, and will here state that I am ready to answer any question he may propound.”

Mr. Kelly: “Then I ask the gentleman did he or does he now give his adhesion to the platform of principles adopted by the American Party in Philadelphia in February, 1856? If so, does not the gentleman by his own showing concur in the principle of proscribing Catholics because of their religious belief? I allude to the fifth article of the American platform.”

Mr. Kennett: “I will answer the gentlemen by referring him to the platform laid down by the American Party of my State which proscribes no man because of his religious belief. And now let me further say that the gentleman is in error when he asserts that this debate was commenced by my colleague. It was introduced by Mr. Bowie of Maryland, in his animadversions upon his colleague, Mr. Davis.”

Mr. Kelly: “The gentleman certainly is in error, for Mr. Davis himself in his wild foray against the ‘Foreign Brigade,’ unnecessarily and unfoundedly attributed the defeat of his party in the last election to the ‘religious influences’ which brought so many alien citizens to the polls. The gentleman has not, however, yet answered my question.”

Mr. Kennett: “I am sorry I cannot suit the gentleman in my reply. He says the Democratic party are a unit, that they everywhere fully endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska bill; I say they nevertheless claim the largest liberty in its construction, and that construction is notoriously different in different sections of the Union among brethren of the same political faith. Now, the American party also needed a platform for the Presidential canvass, and that of February last was put forth for that purpose. If it was not perfect, it was the best we could get, and we had to take it, those of us that it did not precisely suit, with the mercantile reservation, ‘Errors excepted.’ Was your President, the present occupant of the White House, elected by a majority of American-born citizens? On the contrary, without the foreign vote, which was cast for him almost unanimously, he never would have been elevated to the position he now occupies.”

Mr. Kelly: “Suppose he was not elected by American-born votes (which was very likely the case), were not the principles advocated by the party which elected Mr. Pierce national principles, without the benefit too of ‘Errors excepted’? Was there anything in the platform laid down at Baltimore by the convention which nominated him violative of the spirit or letter of the Constitution of the United States?”

Mr. Kennett: “I have not charged the contrary to be so. My point is that the foreign-born vote holds the balance of power in our country, that that vote is almost always on the Democratic side, and thus it shapes the policy and action of the Government. This I consider wrong.”

Mr. Kelly: “I will say to the gentleman that the illiberal and narrow policy parties have pursued in this country has contributed much to drive both native and foreign-born Catholics in self-defense into the Democratic party. That this is true is proved by the fact which you know full well, Mr. Chairman [Mr. Humphrey Marshall], that the large Catholic vote of Kentucky and Maryland had always been found with the Whig party, until the Know-Nothing monster and its protean brood of platforms drove them in self-respect as well as in self-defence into the ranks of the national Democracy, where they have found repose and peace under the broad shadows of the Constitution. I will add further, that with the exception of two terms the administration of this Government has been in the hands of the Democratic party. It appears to me, therefore, that the fact that the foreign-born population, in the exercise of the elective franchise being always found on the side of the dominant party, is rather doubtful evidence that they are not as loyal to the country as any other class of voters. The high state of prosperity which the country has attained under Democratic rule would, I should think, lead to quite a different conclusion.”

Mr. Kennett: “The Democratic party have been sharper and more successful hitherto in bidding for their votes than we. Not that we would not have won them too, had it been in our power. Office-seekers are all in love with German honesty and the ‘sweet Irish brogue.’”

Mr. Campbell, of Ohio: “I have no desire to interrupt the gentleman from Missouri, or to interfere with the very interesting colloquy between him and the gentleman from New York. I have had something to do with this matter of Americanism myself; something to do with the tariff, and, like the gentleman from Missouri, I have been a Whig. I think the greatest statesman of America was stricken down by a religious influence.”

Mr. Kelly: “To whom does the gentleman refer?”

Mr. Campbell: “I refer to Mr. Clay of Kentucky. I well remember when he was last a candidate—in 1844—that there was an individual on the ticket with him—a distinguished gentleman, Theodore Frelinghuysen and I know of my own personal knowledge that a priest of the Catholic Church said that because Theodore Frelinghuysen was placed on the ticket for Vice-President, therefore the influence of the Catholic Church of the United States would be exercised against the ticket.”

Mr. Kelly: “Supposing this to be so, does the gentleman mean to argue that because an individual Catholic priest used such a remark it is sufficient ground upon which to condemn and disfranchise the four millions of Catholics in this country?”

Mr. Campbell: “No, sir, by no means; nor would I interfere with their religion, even though it was true that they had done so. The point I make is this: That because Theodore Frelinghuysen was nominated on the ticket with Henry Clay, who was recognized as one of the greatest statesmen of his age, the influence of the Catholic Church—I mean especially that of the foreign Catholic Church, I do not include the American Catholic Church—was brought to bear against him; and wherever you find a foreign Catholic vote in referring to the election of 1844 you will find, particularly in your large cities where the power was wielded, that the power was exercised for the prostration of Harry of the West, for the reason, as admitted to me in person by a priest of your church, that Theodore Frelinghuysen was a leading Presbyterian and President of the American Protestant Bible Society; and it is against that spirit on the part of foreign Catholic influence in this country, which has sought to control, through the power of its Church, the destinies of this great nation that I make war.”

Mr. Kelly: “Allow me to say that I am a native-horn citizen of Irish parents; and I wish to say to this House, and to the country, that no such feelings actuate the Catholic Christians of this Republic. There may be individual cases, but I deny that such influences have anything to do with the Catholic population. And Mr. Clay himself, in writing a letter on this very subject in the canvass referred to, made a public acknowledgement that he had as much confidence in the Catholic people as he had in any other religious sect in this Union. That letter was published in a speech which I made in this House last session, and the gentleman from Ohio can find it in the records of the House. To convict the gentleman from Ohio, however, of misrepresenting Harry of the West in this matter, I will again quote the same extract from the letter referred to:

“‘Nor is my satisfaction diminished by the fact that we happen to be of different creeds; for I never have believed that that of the Catholic was anti-American and hostile to civil liberty. On the contrary, I have with great pleasure and with sincere conviction, on several public occasions, borne testimony to my perfect persuasion that Catholics were as much devoted to civil liberty, and as much animated by patriotism as those who belong to the Protestant creed.’”

“I have already quoted from Mr. Clay’s speech delivered in 1847, four years afterwards, enough to show that his views and sentiments in reference to foreign-born voters and religious creeds underwent no change. But it was ever Mr. Clay’s misfortune to be damaged by his friends. We have proof this evening that the fatality follows him to the grave.”

In this debate, Mr. Kelly, who was the only Catholic in Congress, sustained the concentrated charge of the leading Know-Nothing members, and in the estimation of the House had the best of the argument over them all. His speech was published and read throughout all parts of the Union, and was received with manifestations of approval and pride by Democrats generally, but especially by Catholics and adopted citizens.

In the celebrated Hayne-Webster debate in the Senate of the United States on the Foot Resolution in 1830, Andrew Jackson, then President, was so much pleased with Col. Hayne’s speech that he caused a number of copies to be struck off on satin, and placed one of them on the walls of his library in the White House.[9] The speech of John Kelly, from which the preceding extracts are taken, was also published on satin, and is still preserved in many households throughout the country as a souvenir of the dark days of Know-Nothingism, and of the gallant stand that was made in the House of Representatives against the proscriptionists by the future leader of the New York Democracy.

During another debate in Congress—that of May 5, 1858—on the bill for the admission of Minnesota into the Union, introduced by Alexander H. Stephens, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, Henry Winter Davis again attacked those he called “unnaturalized foreigners;” and Mr. John Sherman, then a member of the House, and at present a Senator from Ohio, and a recent aspirant for the Presidency, declared that “Ohio never did allow unnaturalized foreigners to vote, and never will.” Mr. Muscoe R. H. Garnett, of Virginia, made a fierce attack on the same class, designating them as the “outpourings of every foreign hive that cannot support its own citizens.” When these tirades were made, Mr. Kelly rose to address the House in reply, but so bitter was the native American feeling on the subject, and especially since his refutation of the sectarian and anti-foreign speech of Davis in the preceding year, that John Sherman resorted to every parliamentary quibble to cut off Kelly’s speech. “Gentlemen here,” Mr. Kelly said, “directed many of their arguments against emigration and against the naturalization of foreigners. I intend to confine my remarks to that particular branch of the subject.” At this point Mr. Sherman objected.

Mr. Sherman, of Ohio: “I rise to a question of order. The rule requires that the debate shall be pertinent to the question before the House. If the gentleman desires to make a speech upon the benefits of emigration I hope he will make it in Committee of the Whole. Such debate is not in order here.”

Mr. Kelly: “What I shall say will be pertinent to the issue before the House.”

Mr. Sherman: “I insist on my question of order. I would inquire whether the subject of emigration, which is manifestly the question which the gentleman intends to discuss, is debatable on this bill? I do not wish to embarrass the gentleman, but desire, if he wants to debate that subject, that he shall do it in the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union.” This objection by Mr. Sherman to Mr. Kelly’s continuing the discussion which he himself had just been indulging in, shows that Kelly’s method of handling the subject was not relished by the proscriptionists. Elihu B. Washburn, of Illinois, afterwards Minister to France, here interposed in favor of fair play.

Mr. Washburn: “I hope by unanimous consent the gentleman from New York will be permitted to continue his speech. He is upon the floor now, and the matter of naturalization is involved more or less in the merits of the question before the House.” But Mr. Sherman was ready with another quibble.

Mr. Sherman: “If unanimous consent be given, I am willing to go into Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union and allow the gentleman to speak, but I must object to it in the House.”

Mr. Wright, of Georgia: “I would remark that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Jenkins) introduced this particular subject yesterday, and occupied twenty-five minutes in its discussion.”

Mr. Kelly: “It is singular that gentlemen should make objection, when it is a well-known fact that the whole discussion on this bill has directed itself to that particular point. But I think there is a disposition on the part of the House to let me go on.”

Several Members: “There is; go ahead.”

The Speaker: “Does the Chair understand that unanimous consent is given to the gentleman’s proceeding?”

Mr. Lovejoy: “Not unless he is in order.”

Mr. Morris, of Pennsylvania: “I object; because if the gentleman is allowed to proceed, other gentlemen must be allowed to speak in reply, and thus we would have a general debate in violation of the rules of the House, and I will not agree to violating the rules of the House.”

Mr. Kelly: “Inasmuch as there are objections I withdraw my appeal. I do not desire to force myself upon the House.”

Thus did the Know-Nothings wince under the lash of John Kelly of New York. Had he chosen to insist, he would have been heard, for he was now one of the leaders of the House, and the majority would have found a way to secure him the floor. He was the most formidable enemy of the Know-Nothings in the Northern States, for he knew how to act as well as to talk. Dreamers and visionaries write fine theories, but only great men reduce them to practice. Mr. Kelly’s youth and early manhood were passed at a period when native American bigotry and intolerance were burning questions in State and National affairs. He had been taught by observation, and a study of the fathers of the government, that the best service he could render his country was to make war on Know-Nothingism. He had met the leaders of that party in their strongholds in the city of New York, and vanquished them. Before his day there were clubs and factions, and local leaders and captains of bands—Bill Poole and his Know-Nothings, Isaiah Rynders and his Empire Club, Arthur Tappan and his Abolitionists, Mike Walsh and his Spartans, Samuel J. Tilden and his Barnburners, Charles O’Conor and his Hunkers—but the born captain had not appeared to mould the discordant elements to his will, and make them do the work that was to be done. When John Kelly struck the blow at Know-Nothingism at the primary election on the corner of Grand and Elizabeth streets, already described, and drove out the ballot-box stuffers, the people of New York instantaneously recognized a man behind that blow, and everybody felt better for the discovery. When he ran against the celebrated Mike Walsh for Congress, one of the most popular characters who ever figured in New York politics, and beat him, the native American proscriptionists were glad that John Kelly was out of the way, for while they feared him in local politics, they persuaded themselves that he would be swallowed up in obscurity among the great men at Washington, and that he would be heard of no more. Given a big idea lodged in the centre of a big man’s head, and be sure fruit will spring from the seed. Kelly carried his idea with him to Congress, and hostility to Know-Nothingism marked his career there, as it had done at home.

When James Buchanan became President, John Kelly became one of the leaders of the Administration party in Congress. He was then thirty-four years old. One day General Cass, Secretary of State, visited the Capitol, and in conversation with a friend said: “Look at John Kelly moving about quietly among the members. The man is full of latent power that he scarcely dreams of himself. He is equal to half a dozen of those fellows around him. Yes, by all odds, the biggest man among them all. The country will yet hear from Honest John Kelly.” These words of General Cass, uttered in his imposing George-the-Third style of conversation, shortly after were repeated to old James Gordon Bennett, the friend of Kelly’s boyhood, and the editor took early opportunity to mention Honest John Kelly in the Herald, and frequently afterwards applied the same title to him. The appellation struck the public as appropriate, and soon passed into general use. The subject of this memoir has been called “Honest John Kelly,” from that day to this. In a letter to the present writer, in 1880, the late Alexander H. Stephens said: “I have stood by John Kelly in his entire struggle, and have often said, and now repeat, that I regard him as the ablest, purest and truest statesman that I have ever met with from New York.”

Mr. Buchanan was urged by Mr. Kelly to appoint Augustus Schell Collector of the Port of New York. Other members of the New York delegation in the House, and both the New York Senators opposed the selection of Mr. Schell. Mr. Seward was vehement in his opposition. But John Kelly stuck with the tenacity of Stanton in the War Department, or Stonewall Jackson in the battle-field. The President nominated Mr. Schell Senator Clay of Alabama reported the nomination favorably from the Committee of Commerce, William H. Seward and the others were overborne, and Mr. Schell was confirmed by the Senate.

When Mr. Kelly entered upon his political career, to be a foreigner, or the son of a foreigner, in New York, in the opinion of the intolerant of both parties, was deemed a matter that required an apology, or at least an explanation. In 1857 one of the leading representative men of the Federal Administration in New York was John Kelly, and those who had been persecuted and oppressed before were recognized and advanced equally with all others in the city and State of New York; and the vanishing Know-Nothings at last realized that the absent Kelly had dealt them heavier blows from Washington than he ever delivered in New York. In these later and happier days men are no longer ashamed to be called the sons of Irishmen, and at the festive board of the Irish societies the notable ones of the country gather to make eloquent speeches and drink rousing toasts. But while some men forget, true Irishmen and true descendants of Irishmen have not forgotten their Horatius at the bridge in the brave days of old. John Kelly, were he a man of vanity, in contrasting the auspicious scenes of to-day with those of the dark days of 1844 and 1854, and in viewing his own part in effecting the change, could not fail to find much cause for pride and complacent reflection; but vanity is not his weakness.

John Kelly
(AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS.)

Mr. Kelly went to Washington in the winter of 1855 to succeed the brilliant Mike Walsh in the House of Representatives. How did the weighty statesmen receive him? He went into their midst a big-boned, heavy-browed, brawny stranger, with his far-seeing eye, and firm solid step, and as he strode in among the Solons of Washington they all felt an instantaneous conviction from his conversation and bearing that in the society of the most eminent men of the Republic John Kelly was exactly where he was entitled to be. He flattered no great man by the least symptom of being himself flattered by his notice. He measured his strength in discussion with the most celebrated men in Congress, and feared the face of none. At their social gatherings he responded to the brilliant bon mots of the wits of the capital by quiet strokes of humor, and anecdote, and story, that sent bursts of merriment through the circle, delighting the sensible, and penetrating even those who encased themselves in triple folds of aristocratic reserve.

There is nothing artificial about him, but he has been always, and was so particularly in those days, the child of nature, with no shadow of pretension or affectation in his manners. He was not simply a man lifted up from the ranks of toil to be noticed by the world’s favored ones, but he was endowed with that greatness of soul which always distinguishes its possessor above his fellows, whether his lot be cast in the highest or lowest situation of life. It is not strange that New York has felt, and will continue to feel, the moral influence of this man as long as he continues to take part in its affairs, loved by the masses for his lion-like courage, and by friends who meet him face to face in retirement for his almost womanly gentleness, while for obvious reasons he is hated and vilified by those who do not appreciate such qualities. And this courage and gentleness and unruffled equanimity come all in a breath, perfectly natural and free, for they come of their own accord. His composure under all circumstances has often been remarked upon, and in the hurly-burly of New York politics, and the headlong rush of the tide of life in the great metropolis, John Kelly is as sedate and recollected as the ascetic in his cloister. But there is nothing of sourness in his temper. Reflecting much at all times, he possesses the rare gift of thinking while he is talking, and when he is expressing one idea his thoughts never outrun the present sentence, as do those of nine-tenths of people, to frame words for the next one. He does not, in short, think of what he is going to say next, but of what he is saying now. Among the finer shades of character that distinguish one man from another it is extremely difficult to define that untranslatable something which gives to each person his individuality; but this intentness of Mr. Kelly upon the immediate subject under consideration, both as listener and talker, is wonderfully attractive, and constitutes one of the subtle forces of his character as a political leader. This faculty of concentration belongs exclusively to original minds. Self-reliant, and borrowing nothing from others as to style or conduct, he gets at the point without labored approaches, and acts great parts with a happy carelessness. When others have been cast down and worried with care over affairs in which Mr. Kelly was more interested than themselves, his elastic spirit has not given way. Loving thus the sunshine, he affords a conspicuous example of the truth of the inspired words, “a merry man doeth good like a medicine.” Nothing has ever dispelled his cheerfulness. Defeat, deprivation of office, desertion by those he trusted, and who owed all they were to him, have neither embittered him, cast him down, daunted his courage, nor shaken his faith in himself. Domestic afflictions such as few men ever know—the death of his entire family—have come upon him, and while the keen shaft scarred the granite, his constancy has remained, and neither head nor chastened heart succumbed to misanthropy or rebellion against Providence. Surely something more substantial than wit, or genius, or equable temper was required to sustain John Kelly in the trials he has borne. The natural can only accomplish the natural, but a good man draws from supernatural fountains to replenish the well-springs in the arid plains of the desert, and Christianity, not for holiday show but daily use, must have been this man’s sheet-anchor.

Those acquainted with Mr. Kelly will be proper judges of the fidelity or shortcomings of this picture. They who have read the absurd delineations of him in some of the newspapers, and accept them without more inquiry as reliable, may reject this description of his character as contradictory of their preconceived notions on the subject. There is a third class of witnesses—an increasing class—perhaps more impartial than the two former ones, whose testimony on the point is important. These are strangers who have formed violent prejudices against the man after reading certain newspapers, but who on becoming acquainted with him repudiate their own opinions as rash and preposterously unjust.

“Oh!” but say his enemies, “this is not a fair test; Kelly is plausible and fair-spoken, and has great personal magnetism. Strangers when they meet him fall under his spell.” The objection is a weak one, for these strangers never relapse into their former absurd opinions after they have gone away, and withdrawn themselves out of his spell. Let such strangers decide as to the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of the picture sketched here. A case of the kind occurred at the Cincinnati Democratic Convention in 1880. A delegate to the Convention from the State of Rhode Island was very severe on John Kelly. He had been reading an unfriendly newspaper. He denounced him as a boss, and uttered many just sentiments on the evils of bossism. While he was speaking John Kelly and Augustus Schell passed by, and the former was pointed out to him. “Is that Kelly?” said he. “Well, he doesn’t look much like a New York rough, or bar-room bully anyhow. I have been told he was both.” An introduction followed, and a conversation took place between the delegate and the subject of his recent execrations. “I am greatly obliged to you,” said the Rhode Island delegate to the author of this memoir, who gave the introduction, after Mr. Kelly had parted from him and re-joined Mr. Schell. “I honestly detested John Kelly, as a low, ignorant ward politician, who had conducted a gang of rowdies to this Convention to try and overawe it. So I had been told again and again. Now I don’t believe a word of it. I never talked to a more sensible man, and modest gentleman than John Kelly. This opens my eyes to the whole business.”

In the course of this chapter particular attention has been directed to Mr. Kelly’s war on Know-Nothingism as his chief claim to distinction and the gratitude of his country during his younger days. He became identified with the cause of equal rights in the minds of adopted citizens of various nationalities, especially of the Irish, and contributed as much, after Henry A. Wise, towards the overthrow of the Know-Nothing party, as any man in the United States. The adopted citizens were proud of their champion, and the place which he gained in their affections became so deep that, like Daniel O’Connell in Ireland, he could sway them by his simple word as completely as a general at the head of his army directs its movements. Mr. Kelly never abused this confidence, and consequently has retained his influence to the present day. Many have marvelled at his hold on the people of New York, as great when out of power, as when he has had the patronage of office at his disposal. Among the causes which have conspired to give him the largest Personal following of any man of the present generation, his patriotic services in the old Native American and Know-Nothing days must be reckoned among the chief. Such a hold Dean Swift had upon Irishmen in the eighteenth century. Nothing could break it, nothing weaken it, the King on his throne could not withstand the author of the Drapier’s Letters in his obscure Deanery in Ireland. It is fortunate John Kelly is a just and honest man, unmoved by clamor, not to be bribed by place or power, nor seduced by the temptations of ambition; for were it otherwise, his sway over great multitudes of men might enable him to lead them to the right or left, whichsoever way he might list, a momentous power for good or evil. The politician who ignores this man’s influence, the historian who omits it from his calculation of causes, has not looked below the surface of things, and knows nothing of the real state of affairs in the city and State of New York.

Alexander H. Stephens was acquainted with John Kelly for over a quarter of a century; came into daily contact with him for four years on the floor of Congress; served with him for two years on the Committee of Ways and Means in the House; and his estimate of Mr. Kelly’s character, referred to at a former page, is entitled to respectful consideration from every man in the United States, especially on the part of those who know nothing about him except what they have read in partisan newspapers. “I have often said, and now repeat,” declared Georgia’s great Commoner, “that I regard John Kelly as the ablest, purest and truest statesman that I have ever met with from New York.”

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Cleveland’s Life of A. H Stephens, p. 469.

[7] The greater number of those he was addressing were Know-Nothings.

[8] Cleveland’s Life of A. H. Stephens, p. 472, et seq.

[9] The Carolina Tribute to Calhoun (Rhett’s oration), p. 350.

CHAPTER IV.

RISE OF POLITICAL ABOLITIONISM—MARTIN VAN BUREN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF THE ABOLITIONISTS—JOHN KELLY’S BRILLIANT COURSE IN THE SYRACUSE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION OF 1855.

The rise and fall of the Know-Nothing party took place when John Kelly was yet a young man. The old Federal party and its several legitimate successors, more especially the Whigs and Know-Nothings, had not been fortunate in their conflicts with the Democratic party. Founded by Mr. Jefferson, the latter party always had been distinguished for two central ideas—a strict construction of the Constitution, and adherence to the minimum scale of governmental powers. The Federalists had destroyed themselves as a national organization by opposition to the war of 1812. General Jackson declared he would have hung the men who burned blue lights at New London, when Commodore Decatur was blockaded there by the British fleet.[10] These blue lights were said to be signals to the enemy of the movements of the American forces. The exposure by John Quincy Adams of the machinations at Boston of John Henry, the British emissary and spy, who was sent from Canada to instill treason in New England and bring about the secession of the Eastern States,[11] had hardly less effect in sealing the fate of the Federal party than the Hartford Convention, whose object was the dissolution of the Union. Massachusetts—not South Carolina—was the birthplace of the secession doctrine.[12] The extinction of the Federal party was followed by the “era of good feeling.” Then came the disruption during the administration of John Quincy Adams, who having first propitiated Jefferson and Madison by making war on the Hartford Convention and the Essex Junto, in the end showed he was a Federalist at heart by reviving the principles which had distinguished his father’s administration, and opening the way for the formation of the Whig party by fastening the protective system on the country, and deducing implied powers from the Constitution not found in that instrument. The inevitable tendency of these revived ideas of federalism was towards the centralization of all powers, whether delegated or not, in the General Government. The Whig party, though led by the brilliant Henry Clay, was no match for the Democratic party. Twice it succeeded in wresting the government from the Democrats, but on each occasion the result was due to Democratic dissensions, and to the furore excited over the name of a military chieftain—Harrison in 1840, and Taylor in 1848. With Clay and Webster the Whig party died, and was succeeded by Know-Nothingism. Mr. Kelly’s part in the overthrow of the American or Know-Nothing party was dwelt upon in the last chapter.

But the old Federal party, so unsuccessful with the Hartford Convention, and in its opposition to the second war with England; so short-lived in its regained supremacy under the Whigs; and so easily overthrown under its bigoted organization of Know-Nothingism; was at length about to adopt a new course, and to acquire a new vitality in its war with the party of the Constitution, the Jeffersonian Democracy, destined to place it in control of the government for a quarter of a century, and to revolutionize the institutions of the country, if not the principles of the Constitution itself. Agitation over negro slavery furnished the anti-Jefferson party with this new lease of life. That agitation became the burning question in American politics while Mr. Kelly was in Congress. A maximum of government was now to be employed, and the disciples of Mr. Jefferson, divided and routed, were soon to behold the Hamiltonian school of politicians in absolute control of every department of the Federal Government.

The commanding influence of New York in the affairs of the United States was never more conspicuously displayed than at the time of the dissolution of the Whig and organization of the Republican parties. Dissensions among the Democrats of New York proved a potent factor in this process of decay and rejuvenation among their opponents. Prior to 1848 the Abolitionists had no strength as a party organization. Mobbed in Boston, New York and other cities, denounced by Daniel Webster as “infernal Abolitionists,” and by Henry Clay as “mad fanatics,” they struggled in vain for long years to effect a lodgment in American politics. A rapid glance at the origin of political Abolitionism will not be without interest to the historical student. Forty-four years ago, January 28-29, 1840, an anti-slavery convention was held at Arcade, then in Genessee County, New York. Reuben Sleeper of Livingston County presided. Among the delegates were Myron Holley and Gerrit Smith. At this conclave a call was issued for a national convention, to be held at Albany April 1, 1840, to discuss the expediency of nominating Abolition candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States. At the time and place appointed the first national convention of the anti-slavery party was held. Alvan Stewart presided, and the Liberty Party, after a long discussion, was organized. The convention was composed of delegates from six States. James G. Birney and Thomas Earle were nominated for President and Vice-President. They received a little less than 7,000 votes at the polls, the Harrison and Tyler tidal wave sweeping everything before it. In 1844 the Liberty Party again placed its candidates in the field—James G. Birney for President and Thomas Morris for Vice-President—who polled nearly 60,000 votes, and defeated Henry Clay. The politicians were not slow to perceive that the Abolitionists at last held the balance of power between the two national parties of Whigs and Democrats. But no one then dreamed that Martin Van Buren, who had achieved all his successes in life as a Democrat, whom the South had made President in 1836, and whom John Randolph described as the “Northern man with Southern principles,” would place himself at the head of the Abolitionists in 1848, and thereby defeat his own party at the Presidential election of that year. In this surprising defection of Mr. Van Buren from the Democratic party, Samuel J. Tilden likewise struck his colors and went off with the Little Magician into the camp of the Abolitionists. Lucius Robinson also bolted with Tilden. John Kelly followed the lead of William L. Marcy and Horatio Seymour, and supported Cass and Butler, the nominees of the National Democracy.

A convention of the Liberty Party was held at Macedon Locke, Wayne county, New York, June 8, 9 and 10, 1847, at which the Abolitionists nominated Gerrit Smith and Elihu Burritt for President and Vice-President. Burritt declined, and at a convention held soon after at Rochester, New York, Charles C. Foote was nominated in Burritt’s place. The politicians now began to put in their fine work. The national committee of the Liberty Party and their outside advisers had their own plans with which the nomination of Gerrit Smith conflicted. They accordingly called another convention of the Liberty Party to meet at Buffalo, October 20, 1847. The Macedon convention thereupon separated from the Liberty Party, and took the name of Liberty League. Both wings were in agreement in maintaining that slavery was unconstitutional. William Lloyd Garrison and his followers, while not endorsing the Liberty Party in all things, held that a rising of the slaves in the Southern States would be no “insurrection.” In this view the Abolition editors concurred, as did also the Liberty Party conventions in Massachusetts and other Eastern States, those held in various parts of New York, and those convened in Ohio and other Western States. The Liberty League occupied the same ground in regard to slavery, with this difference: they took position on other public questions which the Liberty Party excluded from the scope of its operations. Gerrit Smith, who was one of the single idea Abolitionists, in fact their leader, was placed in nomination for the Presidency at the Buffalo Liberty Party Convention of October 20, 1847. His candidature would have received the hearty support of the Liberty League, for its members knew that a servile insurrection was what he desired. Thirteen years later Gerrit Smith supplied John Brown with the money to carry out his notorious Harper’s Ferry raid, the revelation of which fact in Frothingham’s biography of Gerrit Smith led to the suppression of the book by the friends of the latter. The managers of the convention passed over Mr. Smith, and for the first time went outside of their own ranks for candidates. John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, and Leicester King, of Ohio, were nominated for President and Vice-President. These nominations were only temporary. In 1848 the Barnburners of New York were in open revolt against the Democrats, bolted at the National Democratic Convention of Baltimore, and held a convention of their own at Utica. The anti-slavery Whigs of Massachusetts and the followers of Joshua R. Giddings and Salmon P. Chase in Ohio were ready to unite with the Abolitionists of the Liberty Party. A conference was held by the leaders of these various discordant factions, secessionists from the two old parties, which led to the call for the celebrated Buffalo Convention of August 9, 1848. In that Convention was born the Republican party of to-day. The Liberty Party was swallowed up, Hale and King withdrew, the name of Free Soil party was assumed, and two men never before considered as distinctive Abolitionists, Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams, were nominated for President and Vice-President. “A party has arisen,” said Daniel Webster with vitriolic humor in a speech at Abington, Massachusetts, October 9, 1848, “which calls itself the Free Soil party. I think there is a good joke by Swift, who wished to ridicule some one who was making no very tasteful use of the words ‘natale solum’:

“‘Libertas, et natale solum!

Fine words. I wonder where you stole ’em.’”

Thomas H. Benton, the Jackson Democrat and friend and champion of Van Buren in the long struggle between the latter and Calhoun, added his condemnation to that of Webster, the New England Whig. Of the Free Soil party, which was launched on its stormy career at the Buffalo Convention, Benton says in his “Thirty Years’ View”: “It was an organization entirely to be regretted. Its aspect was sectional, its foundation a single idea, and its tendency to merge political principles in a slavery contention. And deeming all such organizations, no matter on which side of the question, as fraught with evil to the Union, this writer, on the urgent request of some of his political associates, went to New York to interpose his friendly offices to get the Free Soil organization abandoned; but in vain. Mr. Van Buren accepted the nomination, and in so doing placed himself in opposition to the general tenor of his political conduct in relation to slavery. I deemed this acceptance unfortunate to a degree far beyond its influence upon persons or parties. It went to impair confidence between the North and the South, and to narrow down the basis of party organization to a single idea; and that idea not known to our ancestors as an element in political organizations. Although another would have been nominated if he (Van Buren) had refused, yet no other nomination could have given such emphasis to the character of the convention and done as much harm.”[13] The vote in 1848 was as follows: Taylor and Fillmore, 1,360,752; Cass and Butler, 1,219,962; Van Buren and Adams, 291,342. Mr. Van Buren was assisted very warmly in this crusade against the National Democratic party by Samuel J. Tilden and Lucius Robinson, and having effected his object in joining the Abolitionists, the defeat of General Cass, he turned his back on his new allies in a single year and returned to the Democratic fold. But the “harm” predicted by Benton had been done, and the prodigal’s return could not undo it. It was by such exploits that Mr. Van Buren won the title of “Fox of Kinderhook.”

Four years later, in 1852, the Free Soil party again held a national convention, and nominated for President and Vice-President John P. Hale of New Hampshire, and George W. Julian of Indiana. They polled 157,685 votes at the election.

At the succeeding Presidential election the Whig party was dead, and the seed sown at the Buffalo Convention of 1848 by the Free Soilers had flowered in the interval into its natural fruit—the Republican party, a sectional organization founded on the single idea of opposition to slavery. The mission of this party was proclaimed by its leader. William H. Seward, to be an “irrepressible conflict” between a solid North and a solid South. John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton were nominated for President and Vice-President by the Republican National Convention of 1856. Francis P. Blair, Mr. Van Buren’s old friend of the Globe, was the political inventor of Colonel Fremont. Buchanan received 1,838,169 votes, Fremont 1,341,264, and Fillmore 874,534.

Mr. Tilden was now back in the Democratic party, and acting in harmonious accord with Mr. Kelly. Not so Mr. Lucius Robinson. This gentleman, whose famous gubernatorial contest with Mr. Kelly twenty-three years later attracted national attention, and operated disastrously on the fortunes of Mr. Tilden, now left the Democrats and joined the Republican party. At a Fremont convention held at Syracuse, New York, July 25, 1856, resolutions denouncing the Democratic conventions, State and National, were adopted. The committee reporting these resolutions, of which Lucius Robinson was a member, also submitted an address which was adopted. “Mr. Buchanan,” it was said in this address, “the candidate of the Cincinnati Convention, stands pledged to make the resolutions of that convention his rule of practice. Such a candidate, under such circumstances, we cannot support. Mr. Fremont, who has been nominated by the Republicans, is an acceptable choice. In his hands the Presidential office will be vigorously and justly administered. We have, therefore, nominated him for the Presidency, and his associate Mr. Dayton, for the Vice-Presidency, and will use every honorable effort to secure their election, that we may rescue the Presidential office from the degradation into which it has fallen, and the politics of the country from the corruption which is fast undermining our best institutions.” Mr. Robinson’s committee also arraigned President Pierce for the “deplorable misrule of the present administration.”

For twenty years Lucius Robinson continued to be an active Republican. In 1876 when Mr. Tilden insisted on that gentleman’s nomination as Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, Mr. Kelly called Mr. Tilden’s attention to the record of his candidate, and advised against his nomination. As Mr. Tilden still insisted, and was himself the Democratic candidate for President, Mr. Kelly gave Mr. Robinson his support, in order not to weaken the national ticket. Robinson was elected Governor. His administration will long be memorable for the proscriptive policy adopted by the Governor against a respectable and powerful wing of the Democratic party. He surrounded himself with an inner council, or star chamber, and stretched the Executive prerogative of arraigning and removing Democratic officials to the verge of tyranny. It soon became evident that no Democrat, howsoever irreproachable in the walks of life, who did not belong to the Governor’s faction, and who might be reached by Mr. Robinson, could count on his safety in office, or feel himself secure for an hour from the vengeance of the Executive. To follow John Kelly, or to adhere to the Tammany Hall Democracy, became an atrocious crime in the estimation of Lucius Robinson. The revolt against Robinson which soon took place, cleared the moral atmosphere wonderfully, and proved that the spirit of manhood which De Witt Clinton half a century earlier infused into the politics of New York, when he rebelled against a similar tyranny, was still to be relied upon in an emergency.

The rise of political Abolitionism presents a curious study, and this rapid outline of its genesis has been deemed necessary. Mr. Kelly at the juncture now reached was in a position to take an important and conservative part in the great anti-slavery controversy, about which so many angry passions have been lashed, and whose true history has not yet been written. The Democratic party of the State of New York has always been a quarrelsome family. De Witt Clinton and Van Buren were leaders of rival factions; Wright and Marcy renewed the controversy; and Tilden and Kelly, in the present generation, inherited the local feuds and marshalled the contending hosts of their party in the State. Settled first by the Dutch, New York was more rapidly colonized by the Puritans, and later by the Irish and Germans. Contrarieties of race sped the growth and power of the Empire State, but produced those antagonisms among its people, which have been more intense there than in any other State in the Union. Clinton, sprung from Irish stock, was at war with Van Buren, who, although of Dutch blood, became the leader of the New York Puritans. In the days of Jackson and Calhoun the quarrel was revived over the disputes in which those two celebrated national leaders, theretofore devoted friends, were embroiled by Martin Van Buren about the year 1830. Calhoun was supplanted in Jackson’s affections, and Van Buren, thanks to Peggie O’Neil, succeeded to the Presidency. But Calhoun’s retributive blows in 1840 and 1844 prostrated Van Buren, and destroyed his ascendency in the Democratic party. Stripped of dear bought power, Van Buren resolved on revenge, and in 1848 turned on the National Democratic party itself, of which Mr. Calhoun was then the powerful leader. Persons of a retrospective imagination may indulge in day dreams over what might have been the destiny of the United States, and over what other and happier story the Muse of History might have related, had Martin Van Buren restrained his feelings, and not rushed headlong into the camp of the Abolitionists. Pursuing the same pleasing train of reflection, they might say—if the Van Buren bolt had not occurred, the supreme calamity of disunion and war, which Henry Clay and Daniel Webster by the most marvellous exercise of statesmanship averted in 1850, might not have taken place in 1860. But this is all idle speculation, like the saying that if Richard Cromwell had possessed the genius of his father, he would have fixed the Protectorate in his family, which Count Joseph de Maistre brushes away with the pithy remark, that “this is precisely the same as to declare, if the Cromwell family had not ceased to rule it would rule still.”[14]

John Kelly was trained in the school of William L. Marcy, who, in consideration of his pre-eminent abilities, was chosen Secretary of State by General Pierce, and as the New Hampshire organ of the President, the Concord Patriot declared, because Mr. Marcy had “completely succeeded in re-uniting the Democracy of New York.” Mr. Kelly occupied a similar position to that taken by Horatio Seymour in relation to African slavery. Regarding slavery as an evil, Kelly believed, if the principles of Jefferson should be allowed to work out their legitimate results without infraction of the compromises of the Constitution, that the Southern States themselves in time would adopt the policy of emancipation. This was the sentiment Washington and Jefferson[15] had often expressed, and which John Randolph put in practice by emancipating his four hundred slaves. Charles Fenton Mercer, a Virginia statesman whose zeal for the negro was no less ardent than that of Dr. Channing, the Boston philanthropist, devoted his life to the extinction of slavery in Virginia. In 1836 John Letcher and Charles James Faulkner championed a bill for gradual emancipation in the Legislature of the same State. The Emancipationists did their share in the interest of the black man, long before the Abolitionists began their agitation. In estimating the influence of the two forces upon the destinies of the negro race, greater sobriety of statement than that of partisans will be required for the purposes of history. Whether the views of Senator Ingalls of Kansas on John Brown are more correct than those of Mr. Daniel B. Lucas of West Virginia on John Randolph, or whether the verdict of posterity will pronounce both eulogists at fault, it is beyond the power of any man of this generation satisfactorily to decide. “Scholars,” Ingalls says, “orators, poets, philanthropists play their parts, but the crisis comes through some one whom the world regards as a fanatic or impostor, and whom the supporters of the system he assails crucify between thieves or gibbet as a felon. It required generations to arouse the conscience of the American people to the enormous iniquity of African slavery. The classical orators, the scholarly declaimers and essayists performed their work. They furnished the formulas for popular use and expression, but old John Brown, with his pikes, did more in one brief hour to render slavery impossible than all the speechmakers and soothsayers had done in a quarter of a century, and he will be remembered when they and their works are lost in dusty oblivion.”[16]

“In regard to African slavery,” Lucas says, “which has played so important a part in our political history, Randolph was an Emancipationist as distinguished from an Abolitionist. This distinction was a very broad one; as broad as that between Algernon Sidney and Jack Cade. It was the difference between Reason and Fanaticism. On this subject Randolph and Clay concurred; both were Emancipationists, and both denounced the Abolitionists, as did also Webster and all the best, wisest and purest men of that day. Randolph was right in his denunciation of the Abolitionists. They were a pestilent class of agitators who, for the most part, with little or no stake in the community, mounted their hobby-horses, Hatred and Fanaticism, and rode them, like Ruin and Darkness, the steeds of Lucifer in Bailey’s “Festus,” over the fairest portion of our Republic. An exhaustless empire of land has enabled the nation to survive this substitution of the methods of Abolition for those of Emancipation; but the eternal truth remains the same, that the one was legitimate and the other internecine; and to justify the Abolitionists, because Emancipation followed their efforts would be to justify the crime of the Crucifixion because Redemption followed the Cross.”[17]

The Democratic party in New York, after the Buffalo Convention, became divided upon the subject of slavery, and the Wilmot Proviso tended to widen the breach. Barnburners who trained under Van Buren, and Hunkers who followed the lead of Marcy, although all claimed to be Democrats, were more bitter against each other than against those of the opposite party. The election of Franklin Pierce in 1852, upon a platform which proclaimed the inviolability of the Compromise Measures of 1850, served to soften the asperities existing in the Democratic party of New York. Before that time, Marcy and Seymour, both Hunkers, had declared “that opinions upon slavery should not be made a test” of party loyalty. Daniel S. Dickinson, then a Democratic extremist, who afterwards became a Republican extremist, took opposite ground, and refused to unite with the Barnburners. This led to the division of the New York Democracy into “Hards” and “Softs.” And it is here, after these divisions had taken shape, that John Kelly came forward, and acted an interesting and conspicuous part in this great sectional controversy. His action and influence in the Soft Shell Conventions of August 29, 1855, and January 10, 1856, although he was not a delegate to the latter Convention, proved him to be a statesman of commanding abilities.

The New York Soft Shell Democratic Convention of 1855 was composed of gentlemen who represented three distinct factions in the Democratic party.

First, of those who had not recanted their Free-soil sentiments of 1848, and were still simon-pure Barnburners, utterly opposed to any compromise with slaveholders, or the admission of another State into the Union with the institution of slavery recognized in its constitution.

Secondly, of those who had previously occupied the same ground as the first class, but who now enjoyed the patronage and favor of the Pierce administration in New York, and who had abandoned their Buffalo platform, and accepted the principles of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, prohibiting slavery in all territories, except Missouri, lying north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude.

Thirdly, of those who accepted the Webster-Clay Compromise of 1850 as a settlement “in principle and in substance” of the slavery question in all the territories, and who, therefore, acquiesced in the legislation of 1854 in re-affirmation of that memorable compromise.

The Union had been saved by the Compromise of 1850. Franklin Pierce had been elected on a platform squarely endorsing it. The Whigs had not given to it as hearty an endorsement in their platform, but rather evaded the issue. Pierce went to the people on this vital question, and beat Scott overwhelmingly. The verdict approached unanimity, only four States in the Union giving their electoral votes for Scott. The Congressional legislation of 1854, known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill, was supplementary to, and in strict conformity with the principles of the Compromise of 1850, and left the question of slavery in those territories entirely to the people thereof to settle for themselves, with no interference from without. This was the ground taken by Henry Clay in his last great effort to pacify the sections on a basis just and honorable to each. It was the ground on which Daniel Webster took his stand so patriotically in his celebrated 7th-of-March speech in 1850. The only man who maintained the same position in the New York Soft Shell Democratic Convention of 1855 was John Kelly, notwithstanding the unparalleled approval the compromise received at the hands of the people in Pierce’s election. John Van Buren, who had been in company with President Pierce at the White Sulphur Springs in Virginia—an administration favorite of anti-administration proclivities—hastened back to New York, and appeared as a delegate at Syracuse, to defend, as it was reasonably supposed, the measures of Pierce in a convention composed of Democrats who enjoyed the patronage of the administration. But Prince John, as Mr. Van Buren was called, displayed his usual fickleness in this business, and went far in his dalliance with the Abolitionists, to undermine the administration in whose sunshine he was basking, and to render the renomination of that excellent President, Franklin Pierce, practically hopeless. Without exactly joining the Abolitionists of the Syracuse Convention in an unqualified crusade against slavery, he kicked over the traces of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, repudiated the compromise of 1850, and in order to find a middle ground to stand on went back to the obsolete Missouri Compromise of 1820. Dean Richmond, Sandford E. Church, and others followed Van Buren’s lead in this matter, and voted for a resolution he submitted taking this position. The Abolitionists of the Convention, like General James W. Nye and Ward Hunt, pronounced the Van Buren resolution “mere patchwork,” and wanted to go further in condemnation of Franklin Pierce. There was only one man in the convention who stood up to rebuke the slippery conduct of Mr. Van Buren, and to defend the National Democracy from its false friends. This gentleman was Congressman John Kelly, the subject of this memoir.

Prominent among the delegates who took part in the Convention were Dean Richmond, chairman of the Democratic State Committee; Sandford E. Church, afterwards Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals; John Kelly, Congressman elect; John Cochrane, Surveyor of the Port of New York; Lorenzo B. Shepard, John Van Buren, Robert Kelly, President of the Convention; James W. Nye, Timothy Jenkins, Wm. Cassidy, Ward Hunt, Andrew H. Green, Israel T. Hatch, who was nominated for Governor, Thomas B. Alvord, Peter Cagger, Dennis McCarthy and Benjamin Wood. Although the Convention was called to nominate candidates for State officers, the debate took a wide range, and the Kansas-Nebraska troubles became the subject of an angry discussion.

The New York Herald of September 2, 1855, contained in its Syracuse correspondence a spirited sketch of the brilliant debate in the Convention, and of the exciting scenes to which it gave rise. A disruption at one time seemed inevitable. “The excitement,” said the Herald, “had been wrought up to fever heat. There were dire menacings of a bolt. Both divisions of the army seemed ready simultaneously to throw off their allegiance, and go over to the double enemy. Mr. John Kelly of New York, had thrown out awful menacings of defection in favor of the National Democracy, if the Convention should fail to endorse the administration; and Ex-Lieutenant Governor Church, Jenkins and Hunt, of Oneida, and the good-humored member from Suffolk, General Nye, seemed to be just as ready to march off with their hosts to the Republican party. The remnant of the faction, if any were left, might have divided themselves among the Whigs or Know-Nothings, leaving only the Custom House, marshalled by John Cochrane, as the sole corporal’s guard of the Administration. Such a dreadful contingency was to be avoided at all hazards and sacrifices. The recess was utilized in endeavoring to harmonize conflicting views, and to beat down the extravagant requirements of the extremists of either section. There was, therefore, intense interest manifested in the proceedings of the evening session, and when the Convention re-assembled at 7 o’clock P. M., the hall was crowded to its greatest capacity.”

In the preliminary stages of the Convention two sets of resolutions had been submitted. Those of the regularly appointed committee were reported by William Cassidy. In these the Pierce administration was endorsed, and the National Democracy sustained. Minority or supplementary resolutions taking directly opposite grounds were offered by Timothy Jenkins, a pronounced Free-soiler.

Jenkins, in a radical Barnburner speech, denounced the territorial legislation known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill, arraigned the President, and demanded a restoration of the Missouri Compromise. He was answered by John Cochrane in defence of the President, but as Mr. Cochrane had been a violent Barnburner in 1848, his argument was handicapped by his record. Besides, he was Surveyor of the Port of New York, and the newspapers had often referred to a letter said to have been written by Franklin Pierce to the bolting Barnburners’ meeting in the Park in 1848, at which the standards of party rebellion against Cass and Butler and the National Democracy were first raised. If General Pierce wrote such a letter it was suppressed, but Mr. Cochrane’s opponents claimed that he was the recipient of this “scarlet letter,” as the Herald styled it, and as he subsequently obtained one of the President’s fat offices, uncharitable comments were made upon General Pierce’s motives in the transaction. But it is scarcely credible, in view of Pierce’s antecedents, that he could have committed himself to the Van Buren bolters of 1848. His record in the United States Senate, and in New Hampshire, had been that of a Jeffersonian Democrat of the strict construction school.

John Van Buren addressed the Convention after Mr. Cochrane, but as he too had been a Barnburner, and the Rupert of debate among the bolters of 1848, his effort now to throw oil on the troubled waters proved a failure. Besides, it was a very halting effort. He moved that all resolutions in relation to the Administration, Kansas-Nebraska legislation, and Slavery be laid on the table, but did not press the motion to a vote, and shortly after withdrew it. The motion to withdraw was more consonant with Mr. Van Buren’s real sentiments than the one to table the disturbing resolutions. The Convention was now face to face with Mr. Jenkins’s anti-Democratic programme, and Mr. Van Buren showed a disposition to support it. It was at this juncture that Mr. John Kelly rose to stem the tide of Sewardism that was sweeping over the Convention. With an intuitive understanding of a scene which was constantly shifting, but whose inevitable end, if not now stopped, he foresaw would be the elevation of William H. Seward to a position little short of that of dictator of the destinies of the Union, John Kelly pointed out the perilous levity of Mr. Van Buren’s conduct, and made a patriotic appeal to the Convention to close up its ranks and redeem the State from Know-Nothingism, and the sectional Republican party. “The firebrand of discord,” said Mr. Kelly, “which gentlemen of the old Barnburner persuasion are now on this floor throwing into the ranks of the Democratic party, would have even worse consequences than their course had produced in 1848, when they defeated General Cass for the Presidency, and enabled the Whigs to slip into control of the Legislature, and elect Mr. Seward United States Senator to succeed a Democrat. The fate of the Union now trembled in the balance, and dissensions in this Convention would go far to destroy the National Democracy, and place the sceptre of power in the hands of the arch-agitator, William H. Seward. Mr. Van Buren’s constituents,” continued Mr. Kelly, “will approve of the resolutions of the Committee in favor of the National Democracy, though that gentleman may not do so. I admire Mr. Van Buren’s personal character, but not his political tergiversations. I hope the Convention will sustain the administration of Franklin Pierce, and not divide the Democratic party by passing the supplementary resolutions of the gentleman from Oneida. But to preserve harmony here I am willing to leave out all matters relating to Kansas, and so will be the delegation from New York city, who are prepared now to vote for the resolutions of the regular committee.”[18]

General Nye, former political associate of Gerrit Smith, the John Brown Abolitionist, took the floor to reply to Mr. Kelly. Bowie knives, and pistols, and pronunciamentos in Kansas formed the burden of his speech. In conclusion the eloquent but somewhat comical General Nye declared: “I would say, President Pierce, you have openly insulted the spirit of your countrymen. Let us speak out and make this declaration. I know it is our opinion, and think it is his. I don’t think my friend Kelly would withdraw from the Convention if we passed the Jenkins resolutions; but if he should do so, we should obtain legions by adopting them. The Republican Convention is counting on our ominous silence.”

Another Free Soil resolution was introduced at this point by Sandford E. Church, declaring uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery into free territory. John Van Buren again took the floor and loudly advocated the Church resolution. An administration resolution was next offered by Lorenzo B. Shepard, declaring that the people in the Territory of Kansas should be left to settle their own matters as to slavery without interference from the North or South. A Mr. Hinckley, of Ontario County, made a violent Abolition speech, and caused roars of laughter by assuming a tragic attitude and declaring, “I feel like a brave Indian on the battle field.”

John Van Buren, whose mission in the Convention seemed to be to destroy his friend President Pierce, now offered the following resolution:

“Resolved, That while the Democracy of this State will faithfully adhere to all the compromises of the Constitution, and maintain all the reserved rights of the States, they deem this an appropriate occasion to declare their fixed hostility to the extension of slavery into free territory.”[19]

He supported this resolution in a long speech, in which he tried hard to leave the Administration without a leg to stand on. As a death-blow to Pierce, the effort was eminently successful. In conclusion, he moved to lay the whole subject on the table. Having shot his parthian arrow into the side of the National Democracy, Prince John was not disposed to give its friends a chance to be heard. A sharp running debate now took place between Mr. Kelly and Mr. Van Buren. The New York Herald published a synopsis of it:

“Mr. John Kelly, of New York, hoped the gentleman would not press his motion, but would give other gentlemen an opportunity of expressing their sentiments.”

Mr. Van Buren: “I will withdraw it, for I am going to dinner (laughter), provided you or the gentleman who shall speak last agrees to renew it in my name.”

Mr. Kelly: “I will agree to that if the Convention agrees to go to dinner now.” (Laughter.)

Mr. Van Buren: “But if the Convention does not now take a recess, I want to make the same bargain. I want the last man who speaks to renew the motion in my name.”

Mr. Kelly: “I will do no such thing.”

Mr. Van Buren: “Then I insist on my motion.”

Mr. Kelly: “I expected more generosity from the gentleman from the Thirteenth District of New York, than to do anything of this kind.”

At this point a recess was taken until 3 o’clock P. M. On the re-assembling of the body Mr. John Kelly addressed the Convention, and showed a determination not to be choked off by Mr. John Van Buren and the Seward contingent of Disunionists and Abolitionists, who, notwithstanding their noisy demonstrations, constituted only about one-third of the Convention. He made a powerful speech in defense of the National Democracy, and the Administration of General Pierce. He reviewed, in scathing terms, the treason to Cass and Butler on the part of the bolting Barnburners in 1848, and when he declared sternly and with unmistakable indignation, that, if this treason was now to be repeated he would leave the Convention, and never again affiliate with Barnburners, a great sensation occurred, and it became evident that the schemes of the fanatics had been arrested and thwarted by Mr. Kelly. A hurried consultation took place between the friends and opponents of the Administration. Mr. Kelly’s demand that a delegation of true Democrats, and not Seward Democrats, should be sent to the Cincinnati National Convention, and that a platform endorsing the territorial legislation of Congress in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill (in effect a re-affirmation of the Webster-Clay Compromise of 1850) should be adopted, was reluctantly but finally conceded. The sectional and disturbing resolutions of Jenkins, Church and Hunt were withdrawn, and in return for these concessions it was agreed to by Kelly and his friends that the appointment of the delegation to Cincinnati should be postponed to a later day, and the drafting of an address and resolutions expressive of National Democratic principles should be deferred until the meeting of another convention, at which the National Convention delegates should be chosen. In view of this compromise any further conflict over the Van Buren Free-soil resolution was avoided, and it was adopted by the Convention.

No full report of Mr. Kelly’s important speech, which brought about the administration victory, was taken down at the time of its delivery, indeed none of the speeches before the convention was fully reported. The New York Herald, of September 1st, 1855, contained the following synopsis of what he said:

“Mr. John Kelly, of New York, took the floor. He came here, he said, to represent the Democracy of the city of New York, and he was determined to do so. He was always led to suppose that it was not upon principle, but upon personal grounds that the Democratic party was divided. He belonged to the Tammany Hall section of the party, but if it were resolved to force down the throats of the Convention resolutions derogatory to the honor of the Democratic party, and of the administration, he, for one, would not remain in the Convention. Let these dividing questions, he said, rest as they are. If the resolutions reported by the Committee were brought up, the city delegates would sustain them. But if on the other hand, the resolutions of the gentleman from Oneida were forced down the throats of the body, he would leave the Convention, and never attach himself again to this branch of the party. (Sensation and applause.) He asked was it desirable for one-third of this Convention to be the means of severing the ties which connect the party together? He knew that the constituents of the gentleman from New York who last spoke (Mr. Van Buren) would endorse the administration, and endorse the Kansas-Nebraska bill. If it were the desire of that gentleman to try and distract the Convention, he should have come from another district, and not disgrace that which sent him. (Hisses and applause.) When he—Mr. Kelly—remembered the causes of the division of the Democracy in 1848, he thought that the ‘isms’ and those causes of division were to be forever buried in oblivion. But they come here again. Shall it be said that the Democratic party of New York shall not sustain a Democratic administration? If so, let it go forth that the administration portion of the Democratic party of New York has refused to endorse and sustain it. He trusted the Convention would consider these matters well, and see what they were going to do. They were going to divide the party and dissever it, never to be brought together again in its present strength. They were going to give the power to the proscriptive Know-Nothing party, which would bring the country to ruin and desolation. Let them consider the matter well, and ask their consciences whether they could do such a thing as this. He, for one, would vote for the resolutions endorsing the administration, and if it were necessary to endorse the Kansas and Nebraska bill, he would vote for such resolution, too, and he was sure that the majority of the New York delegation would do so.”

General Nye: “It is not on the issue of the Kansas-Nebraska bill that the Democratic party of New York can hope to triumph, nor on it that my friend from New York city, Mr. John Kelly, can expect to be sent to Congress in 1856.”

Mr. Kelly: “On that issue alone I was elected.”

General Nye: “It so happens, however, that the opposing candidate voted for the bill, and you could not have much advantage over him there. (Laughter.) Besides, the very district which my friend Mr. Van Buren is said to misrepresent—the Thirteenth—elected John Wheeler, who voted against the bill.”

Mr. Kelly: “Will you also state that John Wheeler was elected by the Know-Nothing party?”

General Nye: “No: I know nothing of that party. (Laughter.) I wish this Convention to treat the subject in a manly way. If you do, I do not believe Mr. Kelly will withdraw from the Convention; but even if he does, better he should go than that the hosts that I see around me should do so.”

Mr. Ward Hunt, of Oneida, made a violent Free soil speech, in the course of which he said:

“Another gentleman from the city of New York, a member of Congress elect (Mr. John Kelly), threatened to walk out of the Convention, if it happened to adopt a course not in accordance with his views. He would only say that if that gentleman did walk out, his blessing would go with him, and the delegation of the city of New York might go with him, too.”

Mr. O’Keefe: “Except Van Buren.” (Laughter.)

Mr. Hunt: “Well, I am glad to see that there is one good man left in the city of New York.”

Mr. Van Buren: “I will not give notice, like my friend from the Fourteenth Ward, Mr. Kelly, that if the procedure of the Convention should not please me I would bolt. Perhaps if I did, the Convention on that very account would persist in adopting such measures.” (Laughter.)

The repeated references by the leading opposition members of the Convention to Mr. Kelly’s notice of his determination to retire, if the Seward wing of the party persisted in its factious course, and the concessions which followed, showed that the blow had been sent home. The one strong man had been found to arrest the progress of disunion, and to aid materially in staving off in 1856, the calamity which finally overtook the country in 1860.

Had New York entered the Democratic National Convention of 1856, distracted by intestine feuds, as was the case in 1848, the election of the Republican candidate for President, John C. Fremont, probably would have followed, together with the dreadful appeal to arms which shook the continent four years later. The State ticket placed in the field by the Soft Shell Convention of 1855, was not successful at the polls. The State was carried by the Know-Nothings by decisive majorities. Samuel J. Tilden was the candidate on the Soft Shell ticket of that year for Attorney General. A short time before the election Mr. Tilden received the following letter from Josiah Sutherland, nominee for the same office on the State ticket of the other wing of the party:

New York City, Friday, Oct. 12, 1855.

Samuel J. Tilden, Esq.,

My Dear Sir:—I was nominated for the office of Attorney General of this State, by that portion of the Democratic party of the State called the Hards; you were subsequently nominated for the same office by that portion or section of the Democratic party of the State called the Softs. I look upon the resolutions passed and published by the Convention which put me in nomination (a copy of which I herewith enclose) as truly, emphatically and unequivocally expressing great principles of the National Democracy and of the Constitution. The third resolution, as you will observe, firmly enunciates the great Democratic principle, “That it should be left to the people of the States to determine for themselves all local questions, including the subject of slavery;” it expresses also “an unqualified adherence to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,” and a firm opposition to “any effort to re-establish the Missouri prohibition.”

I approve of these resolutions and have endorsed them, and do now endorse them in letter and spirit. Do you look upon these resolutions as truly and faithfully expressing principles of the National Democracy and of the Constitution? Are you in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and of the great principle of the exclusive constitutional right and liberty of the people of the Territories on the subject of slavery, thereby affirmed?

Do you believe that in the organization of future Territories Congress will have no right or power, under the Constitution as it now is, to prevent the inception, existence or continuance of slavery in such Territories as a domestic or Territorial institution; that the question and subject of slavery as a domestic or Territorial institution, in the absence of any express provision or clause of the Constitution giving such right and power to Congress, will and must of necessity belong exclusively to the people of such Territories—of natural, if not of constitutional right; and that the only constitutional and legitimate way in which a citizen of Massachusetts or of New York can interfere with or act upon that question, is by exercising his undoubted right to move to the territory where the question is pending, and to become a citizen or resident thereof?

Are you opposed to the political, verbal “Black Republican” fanatics and demagogues of the North, who, using words for things, oppose this great principle, and call for a restoration of the “Missouri Compromise line?” Are you opposed to the State ticket lately put in nomination in this State, headed by Preston King, and to the declared principles and grounds upon which that ticket was nominated?

The opinions, propositions, or principles which would be implied in the affirmative answers to the foregoing questions appear to me to be plainly expressed, or necessarily implied in the resolutions of the Convention which put me in nomination, and of which you herewith receive a copy.

Please answer these questions by letter at the earliest possible day; for if you answer them in the affirmative, I shall take great pleasure in immediately laying your letter before the State Committee of the party which put me in nomination, and shall at the same time inform that Committee that I decline any longer to be considered a candidate. I will not stand in the way of a union of the Democratic party of this State upon principle. The Constitution and the Union now need the united force of the Democratic party of this State for their protection.

With the most sincere desire to promote such a union of that party, and with high regard for yourself personally, I have the honor to be,

Your obedient servant,

Josiah Sutherland.

MR. TILDEN’S REPLY.

New York, Thursday, Oct. 18, 1855.

Dear Sir:—I have received your letter, offering, on certain conditions, to send your declension to the State Committee of the party by which you were nominated, with my letter of compliance, and to open to me the opportunity of running before that Committee for their nomination in the vacancy.

I think that, on reflection, you will see that it is impossible for me to entertain any negotiation, or discuss any conditions, for a fusion of a part of the two State tickets, as proposed by you, or of the entire ticket, as proposed in other quarters. Still less can I initiate such an arrangement for my individual advantage, irrespective of the other gentlemen nominated on the ticket with me, and which, even if not intended for that purpose, may result in a call for some of them to reciprocate your withdrawal. Discussions as to the feasibility, propriety or terms of any union of the two tickets belong not to me, but to the party which nominated me, or its authorized representatives. The only countenance I could, in any event, give to the suggestion would be in retiring myself, and not in being made instrumental in, or even a party to, causing others to do so. Those who have done me the honor to make me their candidate know that no delicacy toward me need restrain them from anything of this nature which they think it advisable to do. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Hon. J. Sutherland.[20]

S. J. Tilden.

It will be observed that Mr. Tilden made no answer to Judge Sutherland’s inquiries on the vexed question of slavery in the territories. Mr. Tilden was one of the Free soil bolters at the Baltimore Convention of 1848, and supported Van Buren and Adams in the Presidential contest of that year. His views on the subject of Slavery in the Territories, which he did not disclose in this correspondence, were frankly stated five years later in his letter of October 26, 1860, to Judge William Kent. “I never held any opinion,” said Mr. Tilden in the Kent letter, “which could justify either the policy or the organization of the Republican party. If I had done so I should not hesitate to frankly renounce so grave an error. * * * But, in truth, I never adopted the doctrine of absolute and universal exclusion, by federal legislation, of slavery from all territories, and still less that of the exclusion of new slave States, or the philosophical theories on which the doctrines are founded.”

Mr. Kelly’s energetic protests in the Soft Shell Convention of 1855 bore ample fruit in the Convention of the same party held at Syracuse January 10, 1856. The delegates chosen to represent the Softs at Cincinnati were headed by Horatio Seymour, and were National Democrats of conservative convictions and feelings. Mr. Kelly was a delegate from the Fourth Congressional District. An able and elaborate address, written by Nicholas Hill, Jr., was adopted by the Convention, and was replete with sound Democratic doctrine of the broadest national character. Not a word of Free soilism appeared in it. The resolutions were of the same conservative kind, and adverted to the triumph of the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska bill as shown in the recent elections. The fourth resolution was in these words:

“Resolved, That the determination of Congress, avowed in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, to reject from the National councils the subject of slavery in the Territories, and to leave the people thereof free to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, is one that accords with the sentiments of the Democracy of this State, and with the traditional course of legislation by Congress, which under Democratic auspices, has gradually, in successive Territorial bills, extended the domain of popular right and limited the range of Congressional action; and that we believe this disposition of the question will result most auspiciously to the peace of the Union and the cause of good government.”

Thus the principles advocated by John Kelly were embodied in the address and resolutions of this Convention, while those which John Van Buren had urged were entirely rejected. Franklin Pierce was unfortunate in the selection of his political representative in the State of New York, at this important juncture. He was an aspirant for renomination, and his brilliant but unstable counsellor, Prince John, landed him in a Serbonion bog, and left the coveted prize to James Buchanan. John Kelly would have proved a safer adviser for the eloquent and patriotic Pierce. The differences between the two wings of the New York Democracy, led respectively by Horatio Seymour and Greene C. Bronson, were harmonized at Cincinnati, and on motion of Mr. Bayard of Delaware, both were admitted on an equal footing in the National Convention.

It has been said that William L. Marcy desired John Kelly, in place of John Van Buren, to be made the mouthpiece of the Administration in New York at this critical period. But from the day of Pierce’s election John Van Buren had been assiduous in his attentions to him. He went early to Concord before the inauguration, and was closeted with the President elect.[21] He was with him at the White Sulphur Springs, in Virginia, just before the Syracuse Convention of 1855. Mr. Van Buren was a man of varied and fascinating accomplishments, and found it an easy task to capture the President’s heart. Notwithstanding the preference of Mr. Marcy for John Kelly as administration leader in New York, on Prince John was bestowed that distinction. William L. Marcy, with the exception of De Witt Clinton, the greatest Democratic statesman the Empire State has yet furnished to the country, died at Ballston Spa, New York, July, 4, 1857.

Mr. Kelly won a national reputation by his brilliant course in the Syracuse Convention of 1855. His services in the cause of the Democracy were recognized on all sides before he took his seat in Congress at the meeting in December of that year. General Cass, successor of Mr. Marcy in the State Department, introduced and welcomed his old New York supporter of 1848 into the councils and friendship of the Administration of Mr. Buchanan. John Kelly entered the field of Federal politics, as a member of the Thirty-fourth Congress, under favorable auspices for a successful career.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Ingersoll’s Hist. Second War between the United States and Great Britain. Vol. 1, p. 439.

[11] Message of President Madison to Congress, March 9, 1812. Vt. Gov. and C., Vol. V., 478-9. Henry himself for $50,000 revealed the matter to Madison. Ibid. Committee on Foreign Relations Ho. Rep. June 3, 1812, also arraigns England. Ibid, 499.

[12] January 14, 1811, in the debate in the House of Representatives upon the erection of the Louisiana purchase into a State, Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, opposed the measure. “He expressed his deliberate opinion that so flagrant a disregard of the Constitution would be a virtual dissolution of the bonds of the Union, freeing the States composing it from their moral obligation of adhesion to each other, and making it the right of all, as it would become the duty of some, to prepare definitively for separation, amicably if they might, forcibly if they must! This declaration, the first announcement on the floor of Congress of the doctrine of Secession, produced a call to order from Poindexter, delegate from the Mississippi Territory.” Hildreth’s Hist. U. S., Vol. III., p. 226.

[13] Vol. 2, p. 723.

[14] Generative Principle of Political Constitutions, p. 19.

[15] Jefferson’s Complete Works. VII., 159.

[16] Address by Hon. John J. Ingalls at Ossawatomie, Kansas, August 30, 1877, on the dedication of a monument to John Brown and his associates.

[17] John Randolph of Roanoke. An Address delivered before the Literary Societies of Hampden-Sidney College, June 13, 1883, by Daniel B. Lucas, LL.D.

[18] New York Herald August 31, 1855.

[19] “New York Hards and Softs,” p. 70.

[20] New York Hards and Softs, pp. 71-2.

[21] New York Hards and Softs, p. 39.

CHAPTER V.

KELLY, AS ALDERMAN AND CONGRESSMAN—SKETCH OF MIKE WALSH—GREAT STRUGGLE FOR SPEAKERSHIP—STORMY DAYS IN CONGRESS—JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS PLAYS PART OF CASSANDRA—CULLEN OF DELAWARE TALKS OF EGGING THE CATHOLICS—KELLY REPLIES—READS IMPORTANT LETTER OF LAFAYETTE ON PRIESTS WHICH THE KNOW-NOTHINGS HAD GARBLED—KELLY THE ONLY CATHOLIC IN THE HOUSE.

Although a political rather than a chronological order has been observed in the preceding chapters, it is necessary now, for the preservation of important threads of the narrative, to speak of some events as they transpired.

John Kelly, then captain of that popular company the Emmet Guards, was elected Alderman for the Fourteenth Ward at the election in November, 1853, to serve for two years, beginning January 1st, 1854. Twenty-five or thirty years ago the people of the city of New York selected the strongest men in the community to represent them in the Board of Aldermen. To attain, at that period, the place of a City Father was an object of ambition with those who sought an attractive rank among their fellow-citizens, and many men were elected Aldermen who have since become famous in State and National politics. The Boards of which Mr. Kelly was a member in 1854-5, were exceptionally able bodies. At his election, November 8th, 1853, the whole number of votes cast for Alderman of the Fourteenth Ward was 1938, of which John Kelly received 1097; Thomas Wheelan, 566; and Morris Miller, 275. Mr. Kelly’s majority over all was 256. He was a member of the Committee on the Almshouse Department in the Board of Aldermen, and of the Committee on Annual Taxes in the Board of Supervisors, the latter body being composed of the Mayor, Recorder and Board of Aldermen. The Aldermanic list for 1854 contains the well-known names of Nathan C. Ely, President of the Peter Cooper Insurance Company, and also President of the Board of Aldermen; William Boardman, jun.; Abram Wakeman, Amor J. Williamson, Thomas Christy, Anson Herrick, Daniel D. Lord, John Kelly, Richard Mott and Thomas Woodward. To these were added, in 1855, Isaac O. Barker, who succeeded Mr. Ely as President of the Board, Orison Blunt, William Chauncey, George W. Varian, and others, the new members taking the seats of those whose terms expired in 1854.

Mr. Kelly’s aptitude for affairs was soon recognized by his fellow members. President Barker placed him on no less than five committees in his second year in the Board, and appointed him chairman of the most important committee of the body—that on Annual Taxes in the Board of Supervisors. The members of this Committee were John Kelly, Henry R. Hoffmire and Daniel D. Lord. The Know-Nothings were then powerful in New York, and John Kelly was their sleepless opponent in the Board of Aldermen. His constituents were warmly attached to the man, and duly appreciated his services in official life. Some even went so far as to predict that he would soon become a dangerous rival to the celebrated Mike Walsh, then in the meridian of his popularity. Kelly and Walsh both lived in the Fourth Congressional District, and the latter was at that time representing the District with great acceptability in the Thirty-third Congress. The prediction was verified, and Kelly became Walsh’s competitor at the ensuing election. The interest which this contest excited was not confined to the city, but extended to all parts of the State of New York. The plan adopted in these pages of giving outline sketches of the more conspicuous men with whose names that of Mr. Kelly has been associated in political controversies, certainly cannot be disregarded in the case of Mike Walsh, that wayward genius, gifted orator, and child of misfortune.

Michael Walsh was born in the town of Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, in 1815, and came to this country with his parents when he was a child. His father was an intelligent, industrious, hard working man, and the owner of a mahogany yard in Washington Street, New York. He entertained peculiar views in regard to a republican form of government, and on that account never became a citizen of the United States. His son Michael possessed a great deal of talent, and was educated at St. Peter’s school in Barclay Street. When he was about sixteen years of age his father indentured him to a lithographer at Broadway and Fulton Street, with whom he learned that business. He was hardly twenty-one when he began to be exceedingly active in political affairs in New York, and the whole country. As an orator, for his age, he had probably no equal. He possessed literary ability, and was equally ready with pen or tongue. His forte, however, was sarcasm, and unfortunately for himself he had an unrivaled knack for coining slang expressions. Many of the slang sayings peculiar to New York at this day were invented by Mike Walsh. He was naturally humorous, and was endowed with powers of mimicry that would have made his fortune on the stage. He could describe the weaknesses of human nature, and lay bare the motives which influenced public men in their actions with a mastery which no other man of his time possessed.

He was elected to the lower branch of the Legislature of New York before he was twenty-one years of age, and although he had little or no business ability, he distinguished himself in the House by his fine oratorical powers. His speeches were not only interesting and amusing, but often full of information. Without previous thought or reflection, he could make a capital off-hand speech, expressing his views very intelligently, and enlisting the attention of his audience throughout. The Democratic party in New York, at that period, was under the control and influence of men who had very little respect for Walsh, as his manners were not only objectionable, but sometimes his language was abusive. He was very strong, notwithstanding, with the people, and on that account was feared by the leaders. He was re-elected to the Assembly several times. He established and edited a paper which he called “The Subterranean,” and his squibs, sometimes clever but often coarse, were sent forth in its columns. There was a furniture dealer in the Fifth Ward named John Horsepool, between whom and Walsh a bitter feud existed. Several times Horsepool had him arrested for libel. At last “The Subterranean” belched forth an angrier flame than usual, and Horsepool got his revenge. Walsh was indicted, tried and convicted, and sent for a short term to the penitentiary. But this served to excite sympathy for him and increase his popularity. He was a very companionable man, was full of anecdote, and had a very retentive memory. He recollected, without particular effort, nearly everything he had ever read, and if called upon would recount a story or any other matter with great precision. Among his companions, for several years, were Tom Hyer, the pugilist, and Jack Haggarty, son of the old New York auctioneer of that name. They generally made their headquarters at the Hone House, a hostelry kept by Morgan L. Mott. This was formerly the private residence of Philip Hone, and took its name from him. Walsh and his coterie would gather together here daily, and relate stories and anecdotes of their checkered experiences. Having no business occupations and some money to spend, they all shortened their days by the immoderate use of alcoholic stimulants. As long as Mike Walsh survived he was the life of the company. During the Presidential canvass of 1844 Walsh formed a political organization on the East Side of New York city, which he named the Spartan Band. This body was in opposition to the Empire Club of Captain Isaiah Rynders. Both of these clubs were exceedingly active during the Polk and Dallas campaign, and rendered efficient service to the Democratic ticket. Walsh was proud of the influence he wielded over his men, and of the power his position brought to him as a leader. The singular notion occurred to him of giving high-sounding titles to his several lieutenants, and he consequently called them after the distinguished French Marshals who fought in the wars of Napoleon the First. All the men who were prominent in those days in the Spartan Band and Empire Club have long since passed away, with the exception of Captain Rynders, who still figures in New York politics at eighty-one, as erect of carriage and almost as brisk of step as he was fifty years ago.[22]

A curious anecdote is told of the way in which Mike Walsh and David C. Broderick, subsequently Senator from California, ceased to be friends. After Walsh was sentenced to Blackwell’s Island, an understanding is said to have been reached between them that Walsh should commit suicide on his way to the penitentiary by jumping from the ferry-boat into the East River. Walsh being regarded as the champion of the poor as against the rich, and many believing he had been sentenced to Blackwell’s Island because of his advocacy of the interests of the poor, his death in the manner indicated, it was thought, would be avenged by his followers as that of a martyr in their cause. In view of the disgrace visited upon him, Walsh is said to have promised Broderick that he would sacrifice his life by drowning, and thus stir up the vengeance of the populace in retaliation upon his and their oppressors. But Walsh showed better sense than to do so foolish a thing, and Broderick became his enemy, and branded him as a coward, because he did not kill himself according to promise.

During the summer months Mike Walsh was in the habit of frequently sleeping all night in one or another of the parks of the city, because, as he claimed, the night air hardened his constitution. For the same reason he seldom wore an overcoat in winter. He was an inveterate joker, and was in his element whenever he could play a trick on the unwary or uninitiated. He was the author of the Frank McLoughlin hoax, which all old New Yorkers will remember. McLoughlin was a noted sporting man in New York forty years ago, and a great toast among horse men, pugilists, and like people of that day. He was one of the California pioneers of 1849 when the gold excitement broke out. In a few years he returned to New York. Mike Walsh happened to be passing through the City Hall Park, and met McLoughlin as he was on his way from the ship to the house of his relatives.

“Well, Frank,” said Mike, “I see you have returned.”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“Do you expect to remain here?”

“Yes, sir,” said Frank, “I hope to spend the remainder of my days in New York. I have been in no place since I left here that I like as well.”

“I suppose,” said Mike, “all of your friends will be glad to see you?”

“Yes, I am sure they will, and I shall be glad to see them.”

Thus they separated. Walsh hastened over to the Pewter Mug on Frankfort Street, Thomas Dunlap proprietor, then known as Tammany Hall. Passing into the bar-room, Walsh exclaimed to those present that he had just seen Frank McLoughlin, and that he had gone to a public-house on the Bowery, and requested his friends to call on him there at once. McLoughlin being a favorite, a great many persons started out to find him, but as it was Sunday they encountered some difficulty in obtaining admittance to the hotel. The bar-keeper there perceived the joke in an instant, and said McLoughlin had been at the hotel, but had gone to John Teal’s, on the corner of Stanton and Forsyth Streets, having left word, if any of his friends should call, they were to go there and see him. Walsh took care to circulate the hoax all over the city, sending people to various points in quest of McLoughlin, who was the bearer, quoth Mike, of many letters and presents to the boys in New York from old acquaintances in California. Proprietors of drinking saloons reaped a large harvest by selling extra quantities of their beverages to the victims of the hoax. In sportive tricks of this sort Mike Walsh was continually engaged.

In 1852 he was nominated for Congress in the Fourth Congressional District, and elected. He served in the House of Representatives for two years, and attracted by his peculiar powers much attention in that body. He was nominated the second time in 1854 by the Hard Shells. The Soft Shells nominated John Kelly. A very bitter and exciting contest followed. Many thought Walsh was invincible in the Fourth District, but his opponent was very popular, and the struggle between them was carried on with great enthusiasm and energy. Mr. Kelly came out the victor, but only with eighteen plurality. The whole number of votes was 7,593, of which John Kelly received 3,068; Mike Walsh, 3,050; Sandford E. Macomber, 824; John W. Brice, 626; James Kelly, 1; and scattering, 24.

After the election Walsh served notice on Kelly that he would contest his seat, on the ground that illegal votes had been cast in the Fourteenth Ward, where the majority against Walsh was quite large. Mr. Kelly at once acted on information that had been given to him by a friend of Walsh’s father, the late John Griffin, that Walsh was not a citizen of the United States, his father not having been naturalized, and he himself having neglected to take out citizen’s papers when he reached the proper age. He was not, therefore, a citizen of the United States. A certificate of his baptism was procured from the parish priest at Bandon, Ireland, where he was born, and Walsh, fearing the result of an exposure, withdrew, and the contest ended.

The subsequent career of Mr. Walsh was a checkered one. He was employed by George Steers, the well-known ship-builder, as his agent to go to Russia to negotiate a contract in his favor to build ships for that Government. Walsh obtained letters of introduction from the Secretary of the Navy of the United States to officials of the Russian Government, and set out on his mission with fair prospects of a successful issue to the business. Instead, however, of conducting the affair well, the unfortunate man fell into riotous living in Europe, and spent the remittances his employer sent to him. He returned to the United States in the steerage of one of the steamships plying between Liverpool and New York.

He was never a candidate for office again, after his memorable contest with Mr. Kelly in 1854. In the winter of 1859 poor Mike, while on his way home one night, slipped and fell down a cellar-way on the 8th Avenue, near 16th Street, and was supposed to have been instantly killed, as he was found dead the next morning by the police. Although at the time it was thought that he had been murdered, the evidence taken at the inquest showed that this was not the case, and the jury returned their verdict that his death was caused by an accidental fall in an open cellar-way. His death called forth expressions of profound sorrow in New York, for, in spite of the infirmities of his nature, Mike Walsh had a powerful hold on the popular mind, and over his new-made grave many an eye was dimmed with unhidden grief, and all that was gentle and noble in his nature was feelingly recalled.

Although John Kelly had been an ardent Hunker, or Cass and Butler man, in 1848, he was now acting with the Soft Shells, having, when the reconciliation took place between the Hunker and Barnburner factions in 1849, followed the leadership of William L. Marcy and Horatio Seymour, the two eminent Hunkers, who became Soft Shells. It was by the Soft Shells he was nominated against Walsh in 1854. The country was roused to a high pitch of excitement by the Kansas imbroglio when he took his seat as a Representative of the city of New York in the Thirty-fourth Congress. For the first time in the history of the government a purely sectional candidate, sustained exclusively by sectional votes, was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1856. This was Nathaniel P. Banks, of Waltham, Massachusetts. The struggle was the most bitter and protracted one that ever took place in the House, beginning when Congress assembled on the first Monday of December, 1855, and continuing from day to day for nine weeks. The contending forces were so evenly balanced, and party spirit ran so high, that it seemed impossible to break the dead-lock. There were three candidates in the field, and the followers of each supported their respective favorites with unflinching resolution. William A. Richardson of Illinois, who had brought in the Kansas-Nebraska bill at the last session, and carried it through successfully, was the caucus nominee of the Democrats; Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, of the Republicans; and Henry M. Fuller, of Pennsylvania, of the Know-Nothings. It was the beginning of the great sectional conflict, and the ominous mutterings of the storm were now heard in the House of Representatives whose thunder in a few years was to break forth on a hundred battle-fields. There was Joshua R. Giddings, the ancient Abolitionist, who for years like Cassandra in the gates had been uttering prophecies of woe, and now in anticipation of victory was goading the Hotspurs of the South to fury, such as Keitt, and Brooks, and Caskie, and Bowie, and Extra Billy Smith, and Fayette McMullin. There, too, were Humphrey Marshall, Henry Winter Davis, Zollicoffer and Cullen, Know-Nothing birds of evil, shouting their No-Popery cry in the House, like Lord George Gordon in the British Parliament, seventy-five years before. There were Alexander H. Stephens, who on the outbreak of sectionalism left the Whigs forever, and now took sides with the National Democrats, John Kelly, Howell Cobb, James L. Orr, and William A. Richardson, marshalling the forces of the administration, and striving to pluck success from the aggressive and powerful sectionalists. They would have succeeded in electing the Democratic candidate, William Aiken, finally settled upon in place of Messrs. Richardson and Orr, but for the officious intermeddling of a blunderer, who revealed the plans of the Democrats before they were fully matured, and nominated Aiken in a theatrical speech which repelled the two or three wavering votes, only needed to elect him. This was Williamson R. W. Cobb of Alabama. In the homely words of Mr. Stephens, as will be explained more fully a few pages further on, he “plugged the melon before it was ripe.”[23] It was true that Aiken was first nominated by John Kelly in a few tentative words, that attracted several and did not repel any votes. Mr. Kelly made no kite-flying speech, and the anti-Banks Whigs, such as John Scott Harrison, Haven, Cullen and Barclay, who opposed an out-and-out Democrat, were interested in Mr. Kelly’s off-hand manner of presenting William Aiken’s name, and showed a disposition to vote for him as against Banks. Harrison had avowed his intention to do so.[24] But W. R. W. Cobb of Alabama, let the secret out that Aiken was the Democratic dark horse, and the masterly plans of Alexander H. Stephens and John Kelly, just as victory was in reach, were dashed to the ground. An opinion further prevailed among many that one or two Democrats were corruptly bought off.

On the 18th of December, 1855, after nearly two weeks had been spent in a fruitless effort to organize the House, John Letcher of Virginia proposed that all the members should resign, and new elections be held. This proposal was not made seriously, but rather as a protest against the dead-lock. Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio chose to treat the proposition seriously, and on the 18th of December spoke of the Democrats as follows: “These are the gentlemen who propose here to the majority of the House, that we shall resign and go home, if they will. The proposition is unfair. We are endeavoring to organize this House; they are endeavoring to prevent an organization. To illustrate my idea, I will remark that I am reminded of the criminal standing upon the gallows, the rope fastened to the beam over his head and around his neck, the drop on which he stands sustained by a single cord, which the sheriff stands ready with his hatchet to cut. ‘Now,’ says the criminal to the sheriff, ‘if you will resign, I will, and we will go home together, and appeal to the people.’ Let me say to gentlemen, we are each of us now writing our biography with more rapidity than we generally imagine. Gentlemen of the Democratic party, I say again, in your attempt to extend this sectional institution, you have called down the vengeance of the American people upon your heads. The handwriting upon the wall has been seen and read of all men. Your history is written, and your doom is sealed; the sentence is pronounced against you, ‘depart, ye cursed!’ I have already given my views upon Republicanism. They are expressed in the language of that immortal instrument the Declaration of Independence. That is the foundation of my Republicanism, as it is that of a vast majority of the Whigs and Know-Nothings of the North. You, gentlemen of the Democratic party, stand forth here denying this doctrine. You say men are not endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right of liberty. * * * I would to God I could proclaim to every slave in Virginia to-day—You have the right of self-defence, and when the master attempts to exercise the right of dominion over you, slay him as he would slay yourselves!”[25]

Here then the incendiary appeal in favor of a servile insurrection, which John Brown tried to carry out with arms in 1859, was openly made on the floor of Congress in 1855.

That Giddings was either blinded by his fanaticism, or was a dishonest pettifogger, became clearly established a few weeks after he made this seditious speech. On the 18th of January, 1856, the House still being in the wrangle over the Speakership, Mr. Giddings took the floor, and advocated the adoption of the plurality rule. Mr. Banks had the largest number of votes of the several candidates. Giddings, who had bitterly opposed this rule in 1849, now, to help his candidate, as earnestly advocated it.

He said: “We have but one precedent in the history of the Government for our guidance. In 1849 this body found itself in the same condition for three weeks that it now finds itself in during almost seven weeks. There were then, as now, three parties in the House. No one party had sufficient numbers to decide the election. No one party now has sufficient numbers to elect.”

Mr. Jones of Tennessee rose to a question of order.

Mr. Giddings: “I do not blame the gentleman (Mr. Jones) for rising to a question of order. He then stood with the party which established a precedent which shall go down in all time to the condemnation of his party. I mean that under the circumstances, the Democratic party, as a party, in its caucus, speaking by a party organ, then declared the plurality rule to be the proper and only rule which could be adopted for the organization of the House.”

Mr. Howell Cobb, “Mr. Clerk, the gentleman is mistaken.”

Mr. Giddings: “No, sir; I stand upon the record. I have the record before me, and the gentleman must contradict that before he contradicts me. I read from the Congressional Globe. ‘The House had now’ says the record, ‘reached the contingency contemplated in the proposition of Mr. Stanton. It had exhausted the three votings therein provided for, without a result, and had arrived at that point where, in fulfillment of an agreement entered into between the two parties, a Speaker was to be elected by a plurality vote.’ Here, sir, stands the record. Now we stand precisely where we then stood. I do not know the number of times that we, on this side of the House, have endeavored to follow this established precedent that was then adopted. It was adopted by gentlemen on the other side of the House, and under it the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Cobb) himself was exalted to that chair. The Republican party stands ready to carry out that precedent now. The Republicans stand upon the great principle which was avowed by both of the great parties, Whigs and Democrats.”

Mr. Cobb: “I corrected the gentleman in a statement of fact. I rise now for the purpose of putting that statement correctly before the country in connection with his remarks. He stated that the Democratic party had in 1849 adopted the plurality resolution in caucus. The truth is simply this: the plurality rule was adopted in caucus by the Whig party. When it was reported by the Committee of Conference of the two parties to the Democratic caucus, it was rejected there by a decided majority. And, if he desires to stand by the record, there was no man on the floor more violent or more denunciatory of the operation of the plurality rule than the gentleman from Ohio. My recollection is that he offered a substitute for it, which declared that it was wrong in principle, dangerous in its tendency, and ought not to be adopted.”

Mr. Giddings: “I only repeat what was said by a leading member of the Democratic party, the Hon. Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, on this floor, and in the presence of the gentleman from Georgia, and his party in this House. That gentleman sat silently in his seat when Mr. Stanton declared the plurality rule to have been agreed to by the Committee, and he did not deny it; no member of his party denied the fact. I call the attention of the country to the fact that in their caucus the Democratic party, as a party, agreed with the Whig party, as a party, that this should be the rule. I do not involve gentlemen; I only involve the Democratic party. I mean to pin it on that party.”

Mr. Edmundson: “Anybody who asserts that the Democratic party agreed to adopt the plurality rule, asserts what is not true.”

Mr. Orr: “I was present on the occasion to which I suppose reference is made; and I state distinctly that no such resolution as that referred to by the gentleman from Ohio was adopted by the Democratic caucus, either directly or indirectly.”

Mr. Millson, and other members who had attended the Democratic caucus of 1849, made similar denials.

Mr. Cobb: “Fortunately the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Stanton), although not a member of this House, is here, and I assert, without one word of conference with him, that he never intended to say before this House, nor did a single member of the House at that time so construe his language—that the Democratic party had adopted the plurality rule in caucus.”

At this point Mr. Jones, of Tennessee, referred to the Globe of 1849, and showed that the words put in Mr. Stanton’s mouth by Mr. Giddings had not been used by him at all, but were words of the reporter distinctly employed in another connection. This revelation, so damaging to Mr. Giddings’s character for fair dealing, was clinched by Mr. Letcher, who quoted from a speech made in the House by Mr. Giddings himself, in 1849, five days after the adoption of the plurality rule, in which he declared the Whig party had forced the rule upon the House. Having quoted the passage from Mr. Giddings’s speech contradictory of himself, Mr. Letcher remarked: “Now, Sir, I submit that whatever may have been the opinion of other people, it does not become the gentleman from Ohio to rise here in his place, and undertake to charge that the Democratic party adopted that rule, after he has sent out to the country and published a speech, revised and printed in pamphlet form, in which he purports to give the facts as they occurred in 1849.”

Mr. Giddings: “I repeat what I said when I first rose, that the Democratic party in its caucus, speaking through its committee, did agree to the resolution.”

Mr. Edmundson: “I want to let the gentleman from Ohio know that he is asserting what is not true. I am stating facts within my own knowledge. The Democratic caucus voted down the resolution, and refused to adopt it. Now, any statement made in conflict with that, I say this from my own personal knowledge, is a statement which is not true, and he who makes it knows, at the time he is making it, that it is not true.”

Mr. Giddings:

“‘Go, show your slaves how choleric you are,

And make your bondmen tremble,’

but do not come here to make any imputations upon me.”

Mr. Edmundson (advancing towards Mr. Giddings, who had sprung Shakespeare on him unexpectedly): “I want to hear what the gentleman from Ohio is saving.”

Mr. Giddings: “Let gentlemen keep cool.”

Mr. Edmundson: “I will keep cool, if you will state the facts.”

At this point there were loud cries of “Order, order,” and much confusion and excitement in the hall.

Mr. Cobb: “When the gentlemen from Ohio stated that the Democratic party had adopted as a party the plurality rule, I unhesitatingly denied that statement. When he said that the resolution was introduced by Mr. Stanton, he read the language of Mr. Stanton to show that he made the statement to the House, and to the country, to that effect. I stated then that it was a misconstruction of the language of Mr. Stanton, and that it must have been so from the facts as they were. Now, Mr. Clerk, I ask this House, and I put it to the candor of every man on this floor, if, at the time this declaration was made, it was not its understanding that the language quoted was the language of Mr. Stanton?”

Several members: “He so stated, expressly.”

Mr. Cobb: “I put it to the memory and candor of gentlemen here, if the gentleman from Ohio did not so intend it, then he made a charge against the party without any particle of ground to stand on. If he did intend it, it was an effort to falsify the record on which he was standing. This language was the language of the reporter, giving an account of the proceedings of the day, and does not occur in connection with Mr. Stanton’s name at all. There is a vote intervening between the time when Mr. Stanton addressed the House, and the remarks here made by the reporter, which had no earthly connection with them whatever. Where, then, is the point of the gentleman’s remarks when he charges me with sitting by and allowing Mr. Stanton to state that the plurality proposition was the result of an agreement between the two parties, unless it be because he had put in Mr. Stanton’s mouth the language of the reporter? I submit the facts to the House; I shall not characterize them.”

Mr. Orr: “Since the debate commenced, Mr. Stanton has come within the limits of this hall. I have had an interview with him, and he has authorized me to state, that when the proposition to elect by plurality was presented to the Democratic caucus, it was almost unanimously rejected by them, and that when he offered the plurality resolution he did it upon his own individual responsibility.”