Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

CHAPTER III SAMUEL HOAR

I was born in Concord August 29, 1826. My grandfather, two great-grandfathers, and three of my father's uncles were at Concord Bridge in the Lincoln Company, of which my grandfather, Samuel Hoar, whom I well remember, was lieutenant, on the 19th of April, 1775. The deposition of my great-grandfather, John Hoar, with a few others, relating to the events of that day, was taken by the patriots and sent to England by a fast- sailing ship, which reached London before the official news of the battle at Concord came from the British commander. John had previously been a soldier in the old French War and was a prisoner among the Indians for three months. His life was not a very conspicuous one. He had been a Selectman of Lexington, dwelling in the part of the town afterward incorporated with Lincoln. There is in existence a document manumitting his slave, which, I am happy to say, is the only existing evidence that any ancestor of mine ever owned one.

My father's grandfather, on the mother's side, was Colonel Abijah Peirce, of Lincoln. He was prominent in Middlesex County from a time preceding the Revolutionary War down to his death. He was one of the Committee of the Town who had charge of corresponding with other towns and with the Committee of Safety in Boston. The day before the battle at Concord Bridge, he had been chosen Colonel of a regiment of Minute Men. But he had not got his commission, taken the oath, or got his equipments. So he went into the battle as a private in the company in which his son-in-law was lieutenant, armed with nothing but a cane. After the first volley was exchanged he crossed the bridge and took the cartridge-box and musket of one of the two British soldiers who were killed, which he used during the day. The gun was preserved for a long time in his family, and came to my grandfather, after his death. It was the first trophy of the Revolutionary War taken in battle. Such things, however, were not prized in those days as they are now. One of my uncles lent the musket to one of his neighbors for the celebration of the taking of Cornwallis, and it never was brought back. We would give its weight in gold to get it back.

I will put on record two stories about Colonel Peirce, which have something of a superstitious quality in them. I have no doubt of their truth, as they come from persons absolutely truthful and not superstitious or credulous themselves.

When Colonel Peirce was seventy years old, he told his wife and my aunt, her granddaughter, from whom I heard the story, who was then a grown-up young woman, that he was going out to the barn and going up to the high beams. In those days the farmers' barns had the hay in bays on each side, and over the floor in the middle rails were laid across from one side to the other, on which corn-stalks, for bedding the cattle, and other light things were put. They urged him not to go, and said an old man like him should not take such risks; to which he replied by dancing a hornpipe in the room in their presence, showing something of that exhilaration of spirit which the Scotch called being "fey" and which they regard as a presage of approaching misfortune. He went out, and within a few minutes fell from the high beams down to the floor and was instantly killed.

The other story is that a little while before this happened he said that he thought he saw the dim and misty figure of a ship pass slowly from one side of the barn to the other, under the roof.

A like story is told of Abraham Lincoln; that he used to see a vision of a ship before any great event, and that it came to him the night before he died.

I asked Mr. Secretary Hay about the Lincoln anecdote and give his reply.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, April 18, 1903.

Dear Senator Hoar:

You will find on page 281 of Volume 10 of "The Life of Lincoln," by Nicolay and Hay, all I know about the story.

General Grant, in an interview with the President, on the 14th of April—the day he was shot—expressed some anxiety as to the news from Sherman. "The President answered him in that singular vein of poetic mysticism, which, though constantly held in check by his strong common sense, formed a remarkable element in his character. He assured Grant that the news would come soon and come favorable, for he had last night had his usual dream which preceded great events. He seemed to be, he said, in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, moving with great rapidity towards a dark and indefinite shore. He had had this dream before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg."

The story is also found in George Eliot's Life (Vol. 3, 113), as related by Charles Dickens on the authority of Stanton, with characteristic amplifications.

Yours faithfully,
JOHN HAY.
The Honorable
George F. Hoar
United States Senate

My father, Samuel Hoar of Concord, was born in 1778 and died in 1856. He was one of the most eminent lawyers at the Massachusetts Bar. To this statement I can give better testimony than my own, in the following letter from the Honorable Eben F. Stone, late member of Congress from the Essex District.

WASHINGTON 9 March, '84.

My dear Mr. Hoar:

When I was a law student, I dined at Ipswich in our county, with the Judges of the Supreme Court and the members of the Essex Bar, who then had a room and a table by themselves. The conversation took a professional turn, and a good deal was said about Mr. Choate's great skill and success as an advocate. Judge Shaw then remarked that, sitting at nisi prius in different parts of the State, he had had an opportunity to compare the different lawyers who were distinguished for their success with juries, and that there was no man in the State, in his opinion, who had so much influence with a jury as Sam Hoar of Concord. This he ascribed not simply to his legal ability, but largely to the confidence the people had in his integrity and moral character.

Yours truly,
E. F. STONE.

Mr. Hoar was associated with Mr. Webster in the defence of Judge Prescott when he was impeached before the Senate of Massachusetts. He encountered Webster, and Choate, and Jeremiah Mason, and John Davis, and the elder Marcus Morton, and other giants of the Bar, in many a hard battle. Mr. Webster makes affectionate reference to him in a letter to my brother, now in existence. He was a member of the Harrisburg Convention which nominated General Harrison for the Presidency in 1839. He represented Concord in the Massachusetts Convention to Revise the Constitution, in 1820, in which convention his father, Samuel Hoar, represented Lincoln. When he first rose to speak in that body, John Adams said, "That young man reminds me of my old friend, Roger Sherman." He was a Federalist, afterward a Whig, and in the last years of his life a Republican.

Mr. Hoar succeeded Edward Everett as Representative in Congress from the Middlesex District in 1835. He served there but a single term. He made one speech, a Constitutional argument in support of the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He also took rather a prominent part in a discussion in which the Whig members complained of one of the rulings of the Democratic speaker.

His service was not long enough to gain for him any considerable national distinction. But that he made a good impression on the House appears from an extract of a letter I lately received from my classmate, Rev. Walter Mitchell, the author of the spirited and famous poem, "Tacking Ship off Fire Island." He says: "I heard your uncle, Mr. Eliot, say that when your father went to Congress the Southern members said, 'Where has this man been all his life, and why have we never heard of him? With us a man of his ability would be known all over the South.'"

My father retired from active practice at the Bar shortly after his return from Congress in 1837. In 1844 an event occurred which contributed largely to the bitter feeling between the two sections of the country, which brought on the Civil War.

As is well known, under the laws of South Carolina, colored seamen on ships that went into the port of Charleston were imprisoned during the stay of the ship, and sold to pay their jail fees if the ship went off and left them, or if the fees were not paid.

The Legislature of Massachusetts directed the Governor to employ counsel to test the constitutionality of these laws. No Southern lawyer of sufficient ability and distinction could be found who would undertake the duty. The Governor found it difficult to procure counsel who were in active practice. Mr. Hoar was led by a strong sense of duty to leave his retirement in his old age and undertake the delicate and dangerous mission. When he arrived in South Carolina and made known his errand, the people of the State, especially of the city of Charleston, were deeply excited. The Legislature passed angry resolutions, directing the Governor to expel from the State, "the Northern emissary" whose presence was deemed an insult. The mob of Charleston threatened to destroy the hotel where Mr. Hoar was staying. He was urged to leave the city, which he firmly and steadfastly refused to do. The mob were quieted by the assurances of leading gentlemen that Mr. Hoar would be removed. A deputation of seventy principal citizens waited upon him at his hotel and requested him to consent to depart. He had already declined the urgent request of Dr. Whittredge, an eminent physician, to withdraw and take refuge at his plantation, saying he was too old to run and could not go back to Massachusetts if he had returned without an attempt to discharge his duty. The committee told him that they had assured the people that he should be removed, and that he must choose between stepping voluntarily into a carriage and being taken to the boat, or being dragged by force. He then, and not until then, said he would go. He was taken by the committee to the boat, which sailed for Wilmington.

It has generally been said that Mr. Hoar was driven from Charleston by a mob. This I suppose to be technically true. But it is not true in the popular sense of the words. The committee of seventy, although they had no purpose of personal violence, other than to place one old gentleman in a carriage and take him to a boat, were, of course, in every legal sense a mob. But when that committee waited upon him the personal danger was over.

A solitary negative vote against the resolve of the Legislature directing Mr. Hoar to be expelled was cast by C. S. Memmenger, afterward Secretary of the Treasury of the Southern Confederacy. He is said to have been a Union man in 1832.

I was told by General Hurlburt of Illinois, a distinguished officer in the Civil War, and member of the national House of Representatives, that at the time of my father's mission to South Carolina, he was a law student in the office of James L. Petigru. Mr. Petigru, as is well known, was a Union man during the Civil War. Such, however, was the respect for his great ability and character that he was permitted to live in Charleston throughout the War. It is said that on one occasion while this strife was going on, a stranger in Charleston met Mr. Petigru in the street and asked him the way to the Insane Hospital. To this the old man answered by pointing north, south, east and west, and said, "You will find the Insane Hospital in every direction here."

According to General Hurlburt, Mr. Petigru had quietly organized a company of young men whom he could trust, who were ready, under his lead, to rescue Mr. Hoar and insure his personal safety if he were attacked by the mob.

John Quincy Adams says in his diary, speaking of the transaction: "I approved the whole of his conduct." Governor Briggs, in communicating the facts to the Legislature, says in a special message: "The conduct of Mr. Hoar under the circumstances seems to have been marked by that prudence, firmness and wisdom which have distinguished his character through his life." Mr. Emerson says, in a letter dated December 17, 1844:

"Mr. Hoar has just come home from Carolina, and gave me this morning a narrative of his visit. He had behaved admirably well, I judge, and there were fine heroic points in his story. One expression struck me, which, he said, he regretted a little afterward, as it might sound a little vapouring. A gentleman who was very much his friend called him into a private room to say that the danger from the populace had increased to such a degree that he must now insist on Mr. Hoar's leaving the city at once, and he showed him where he might procure a carriage and where he might safely stop on the way to his plantation, which he would reach the next morning. Mr. Hoar thanked him but told him again that he could not and would not go, and that he had rather his broken skull should be carried to Massachusetts by somebody else, than to carry it home safe himself whilst his duty required him to remain. The newspapers say, following the Charleston papers, that he consented to depart: this he did not, but in every instance refused,—to the Sheriff, and acting Mayor, to his friends, and to the committee of the S. C. Association, and only went when they came in crowds with carriages to conduct him to the boat, and go he must,—then he got into the coach himself, not thinking it proper to be dragged."

I add this letter from Dr. Edward Everett Hale.

39 HIGHLAND ST., ROXBURY, MASS., Mar. 13, 1884.

Dear Hoar:

Thank you very much for your memoir of your father. I was in Washington the day he and your sister came home from Charleston. I remember that Grinnell told me the news—and my first real feeling in life that there must be a war, was when Grinnell said on the Avenue: "I do not know but we may as well head the thing off now—and fight it out." The first public intelligence the North had of the matter was in my letter to the Daily Advertiser, which was reprinted in New York, their own correspondents not knowing of the expulsion.

Always yours,
EDW. E. HALE.

I have Dr. Vedder's permission to publish the accompanying correspondence, which so happily turns into a means of delightful reconciliation what has been so long, but can be no longer, a painful memory. I was received in Charleston with the delightful hospitality of which no other people in the world so fully understand the secret.

CHARLESTON, S. C., Oct. 20, 1898.
THE HONORABLE GEORGE F. HOAR.

Dear Sir:

We have a New England Society in Charleston which is now seventy- six years old. It has had a notable history, Daniel Webster having been among its annual orators. Its Forefathers' Anniversary is the social and literary event of our year. I write to extend the warm greeting of the Society to yourself, and the earnest request that you will be our guest at the banquet on Forefathers' Day Dec. 22, and speak to the sentiment— "The Day we Celebrate," or any other that you would prefer. Of course, it will be our privilege to make your coming wholly without cost to yourself. May I venture to urge that your presence with us will have a beautiful significance in its relation to the good feeling which so happily obtains in all our land, and a past event which associates your honored Father's name so memorably and sadly with our City? Charleston would fain give the honored Son a welcome which shall obliterate the past.

Hoping for a favorable and early reply, I remain,
Yours with great respect,
CHARLES S. VEDDER, President.

WORCESTER, MASS., October 26, 1898.

My Dear Sir:

I am sure you will not doubt that I feel myself highly honored by your invitation in behalf of the New England Society of Charleston, as I am deeply touched and gratified by what you say in the letter which conveys it. I thank God that I have lived to behold this day, and that my eyes have been spared to see the people of the whole country united again in affection as in the early time.

I hope and expect to be able to attend your banquet next Forefathers' Day. I will do so if the condition of the public business shall permit. I have the charge of the business of the Committee on the Judiciary, two of whose important members are now absent in Paris, and it is of course possible that some of the great questions which are before us may require constant attendance in their places of all the Senators during the next session without the possibility of interruption for a Christmas holiday. Subject to that possibility, I will accept your invitation, and am, with high regard,

Faithfully yours,
GEO. F. HOAR.

In 1850, after he had withdrawn from professional and public life, being then seventy-two years old, Mr. Hoar was sent to the House of Representatives, by the town of Concord, to oppose the removal of the courts from Concord. He was successful in the opposition. He had, during the winter, an opportunity to render a very important service to Harvard College. There was a vigorous and dangerous attempt to abolish the existing Corporation, and transfer the property and control of the College to a board of fifteen persons, to be chosen by the Legislature by joint ballot, one third to go out of office every second year. This measure was recommended in an elaborate report by Mr. Boutwell, an influential member of the House, chosen Governor at the next election, and advocated by Henry Wilson, afterward Senator and Vice-President, and by other gentlemen of great influence. All the members of the Corporation were Whigs in politics and Unitarians, a sect containing a very small proportion of the people of the State. The project to take the College from their control was very popular. The House listened willingly to the able arguments with which the measure was introduced, and before Mr. Hoar spoke its opinion was unmistakable for the bill. He argued that the measure was in conflict with the Constitution of the United States, and defended the College with great earnestness from the charge that it had "failed to answer the just expectations of the public." The Boston Daily Atlas, edited by General Schouler, then a member of the House, said the next day of this speech: "The argument of Mr. Hoar was of transcendent excellence, and had a most overpowering effect upon the House. We regret that no report was made of it. It is a pity that so much learning, argument and eloquence should be lost."

This speech caused a revolution in the opinion of the body. The measure was referred to the next General Court. Mr. Hoar was employed by the Corporation as counsel to appear before the Legislature the next winter in its behalf. But the measure was never heard of afterward. Dr. Walker said of this occurrence, after his sententious fashion: "Other men have served the College; Samuel Hoar saved it."

The Board of Overseers, who have visitorial powers over the College, and whose concurrence is necessary to the election or appointment of officers, Professors and members of the Corporation, and who included for a long time the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and members of the Senate, had always been held to be the representative of the Commonwealth, although the members of the body who were not members ex-officio were elected by the Board itself.

A bill passed in 1851, to which no objection was made, vested the election of this body in the Legislature. But after a few years' trial, that was abandoned, and the members of the Overseers are now chosen by the Alumni of the College.

I shall speak in a later chapter of the foundation of the Free Soil Party. The call for the Convention held at Worcester on the 28th of June, 1848, addressed to all persons opposed to the election of Cass and Taylor, written by his son, E. R. Hoar, was headed by Mr. Hoar. He presided over the meeting, and delegates were elected to a National Convention to be held at Buffalo, which nominated Van Buren and Adams for President and Vice-President. This was the origin of the Republican party.

After 1848, Mr. Hoar did not relax his efforts to bring about a union of all parties in the North, in opposition to further encroachments of the slave power. In accomplishing this end, his age, the regard in which he was held by all classes of people, his known disinterestedness and independence, fitted him to exert a large influence. The Free Soil movement had led to the formation of a party in Massachusetts, small in numbers, but zealous, active, in earnest, containing many able leaders, eloquent orators, and vigorous writers. They had sent Charles Allen to the lower House of Congress, and Sumner and Rantoul to the Senate. But they had apparently made little impression on the national strength of either of the old parties.

In 1854, the passage of the measure known as the Kansas- Nebraska Bill afforded a new opportunity. A meeting of citizens of Concord appointed a committee, of which Mr. Hoar was Chairman, and A. G. Fay, Secretary, who called a meeting of prominent persons from different parts of the State to meet at the American House in Boston, to take measures for forming a new party and calling a State Convention. This Convention was held at Worcester on the 7th of September, and formed a party under the name of Republican, and nominated candidates for State offices. Its meeting has been claimed to be the foundation of the Republican party of Massachusetts, and its twenty- fifth anniversary was celebrated accordingly in 1879. But it effected little more than to change the name of the Free Soil party. Few Whigs or Democrats united to the movement. A secret organization called Americans, or Know-Nothings, swept the Commonwealth like a wave, electing all the State officers, and, with scarcely an exception, the entire Legislature.

The candidate for Governor nominated by the Republicans at Worcester, himself joined the Know-Nothings, and labored to defeat his own election.

The next year the attempt was more successful. On the 10th of August, 1855, a meeting without distinction of party was held at Chapman Hall, in Boston, which was addressed by Mr. Hoar, George Bliss, Franklin Dexter, William Brigham, Lyman Beecher, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Charles F. Adams, Henry Wilson, Stephen C. Phillips, and others. On the 30th of the same month, a meeting of conference committees was held, representing the American or Know-Nothing party, the Know-Somethings, an antislavery organization which had held a National Convention at Cleveland in June, and the Chapman Hall Convention. This conference appointed a committee of twenty-six to call a State Convention, at the head of which they placed Mr. Hoar. This State Convention was held at Worcester, nominated Julius Rockwell for Governor, and the organization which it created has constituted the Republican party of Massachusetts to the present day.

The part taken in calling this Convention, and in promoting the union which gave it birth, was Mr. Hoar's last important public service. His failing health prevented his taking an active share in the Presidential campaign of 1856.

I prefer, in putting on record this brief estimate of a character which has been to me the principal object of reverence and honor in my life, to use the language of others, and not my own. From many tributes to my father's character, from persons more impartial than I can be, I have selected two or three.

I cannot quote at length Ralph Waldo Emerson's sketches of Mr. Hoar, who was his near neighbor and intimate personal friend for many years. They are noble and faithful as portraits of Van Dyke or Titian. One of them is a speech made in Concord town-meeting on the third day of November, 1856, the day after Mr. Hoar's death. The other was contributed to the Unitarian Monthly Religious Magazine, then edited by Rev. Dr. Huntington, afterward Bishop of New York. Mr. Emerson says in one of them: "His head, with singular grace in its lines, had a resemblance to the bust of Dante. He retained to the last the erectness of his tall but slender form, and not less the full strength of his mind. Such was, in old age, the beauty of his person and carriage, as if his mind radiated, and made the same impression of probity on all beholders."

He ends with this quatrain:

With beams December planets dart,
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned;
July was in his sunny heart,
October in his liberal hand.

The following is from a letter of Sherman Day, a man whose reputation for wisdom and integrity is among the treasures of California:

"BERKELEY, 23d May, 1884.
HON. GEO. FRISBIE HOAR,
U. S. Senate, Washington, D. C.

My Dear Sir:

"I was very much gratified to receive, some weeks since, a copy of your biographical sketch of your venerable father. It was the more precious to me because it awakened memories of my own early life; while it recalls the tall, the gentle and dignified figure and courteous demeanor of your father in his prime of life. I can remember being at your father's wedding at my grandmother's house when I was about 6-1/2 years old. Several years before you were born, I was at the Phillips Academy at Andover, and used occasionally to spend a vacation with my beloved aunt, who was a sort of mother to me in my earliest childhood. It was at her home that I first read Washington Irving's Sketch Book, then just appearing in separate numbers. I believe the book belonged to a law student of your father's, as your father had not yet taken to the reading of romances.

"My memory extends back to the organization of the Constitutional Convention of 1820. I well remember the venerable figure of John Adams, as he took the seat of honor at the right hand of the president, and I remember the sonorous voice of Josiah Quincy, the Secretary. I was staying at the house of Mr. Evarts, and remember your father's dining there, and discussing the deportment and characteristics of several of the more prominent members. Among them was the tall member from Worcester, Levi Lincoln, conspicuous by his drab overcoat, by his frequent speaking, and by his constantly moving about among the members. The member who made the most lasting impression on my memory was Daniel Webster. He was not yet forty years old, stalwart, black haired and black eyed, with a somewhat swarthy complexion; his manly beauty and his eloquence being alike objects of admiration. He had not attained that stoutness which his form assumed in later years. I could illustrate his appearance better to your brother, Edward, by asking him to recall Don Pablo de la Guerra of Santa Barbara, whom I deemed a very good type, in appearance, of Webster in the Convention of 1820."

George William Curtis came to know Mr. Hoar very well during his own life in Concord. He and his brother, Burrill, were almost daily visitors at our house:

WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, N. Y.,
March 19, 1884.

My dear Mr. Hoar:

I thank you very much for a copy of your sketch of your father which vividly recalls him to me as I remember him in my Concord days long ago. I recollect that when I saw in Paris Couture's famous picture of the Decadence of the Romans, it was your father that I thought of as I saw the figures of the older Romans gazing reproachfully upon the revels. So he may have felt of his country as he died.

With great regard, very truly yours,
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

The following is from J. Evarts Greene, formerly editor of the Worcester Spy, and one of the ablest members of his profession in New England:

WORCESTER, Mar. 10, 1884.

My dear Mr. Hoar:

I want to thank you especially for the copy of the Memoir of your father, which I received to-day. I am exceedingly glad to have it on your account and his. He is the most venerable figure in my memory. He was always spoken of in our family with the highest respect, and few things have ever gratified me so much as his kindness to me on the occasion of my last visit to Concord during his lifetime. It was in 1850, I think, while I was in college and about fifteen years old. I had always held him in awe as the greatest and wisest man within my knowledge, and should have no more have thought of familiar conversation with him than with the Pope. But his grave and kindly courtesy, as he sat down with me after supper, though it did not quite put me at my ease, gave me courage to talk more freely than I had ever thought possible; and while my veneration for him was not diminished, I felt that there was no one now on earth that I need be afraid of.

Faithfully yours,
J. EVARTS GREENE.
The Hon. Geo. F. Hoar.

The following letter is from Professor Thatcher, the eminent
Latin Professor of Yale:

NEW HAVEN, 14th March, 1884.
HONORABLE GEORGE F. HOAR.

My dear Senator:

I write simply but cordially to thank you for the copy of your venerated Father's Memoir which you have been so kind as to send to your cousin, Elizabeth. I have read it with the delight which must be common to all who read it. A life so qualified with the selectest traits of a great and gentle soul, so substantial with continual but full and unembarrassed labor, and so constantly influential for elevated and beneficent ends, with nothing discoverable in it to check its great drift and power,—such a life is an almost unequalled gift of God to such a community as his. There is a rare charm in the narrative, and one cannot help rejoicing that you have been able to gather together the recorded judgments of so many men whose judgments are worthy to be recorded,

I am, ever,
Very truly yours,
THOMAS A. THATCHER.

SENATE, WASHINGTON, March 9, 1884.

My dear Mr. Hoar:

I thank you very much for a copy of the Memoir of your father. It is a tribute to his worth and fame worthy of him and of yourself. I hardly know which most to admire, the character it portrays, or the filial piety it evinces.

It brings back very vividly the venerable form and the lovely character I met and revered in the Massachusetts Legislature when I was a young man, and have ever since held among the safest and best of the land. Permit me to count it my own best fortune that I can subscribe myself the colleague and friend of the son and biographer of Samuel Hoar.

Truly yours,
H. L. DAWES.
The Honorable Geo. F. Hoar,
Senate.

HONORABLE GEO. F. HOAR

Dear Sir

Thanks for the "Memoir of Samuel Hoar, by his Son, George
F. Hoar."

For years the character of this true man, as a noble, courageous, self-sacrificing and independent American citizen has commanded my profound admiration and respect, and I am greatly pleased to become more familiar with his life. Fortunately the facts of it need no ornamentation or partial painting by the Son, for the modesty of the latter would never have responded to any such necessity.

I am,
Very truly,
Yours, etc.
WM. P. FRYE.

LEICESTER, March 13/84.

Dear Mr. Hoar:

I cannot too much thank you for sending me the memoir—tho' so brief and exceedingly temperate—of your father.

He was one of the few men who kept Massachusetts and New England from rushing down the steep place and perishing in the waters, as the herd of swine was doing,—a son worthy of the Fathers of New England. I think of him as a kind of tall pillar, on a foundation of such granite solidity as to quiet all fears of possible moving therefrom. He was an example—and became by his S. Carolina mission a conspicuous one; by his attitude and demeanor, opposing the whole moral power of the North to the despotic and insolent assumptions of Slavery.

Yours very truly,
SAML MAY.

My father, in everything that related to his own conduct, was controlled by a more than Puritan austerity. He seemed to live for nothing but duty. Yet he was a man of strong affections, unlike what is generally deemed to be the character of the Puritan. He was gentle, tolerant, kindly and affectionate. He had all his life a large professional income. But he never seemed to care for money. In that respect he was like one who dwelt by the side of a pond, ready to dip up and to give its waters to any man who might thirst. He never wasted money, or spent it for any self-indulgence. But he was ready to share it with any deserving object. Starr King said of him that "he lived all the beatitudes daily."

Mr. Hoar was, I suppose, beyond all question, the highest authority in New England, indeed in the whole country, on the difficult and abstruse questions belonging to the law of water privileges and running streams. He was declared to be such by the late Judge Benjamin R. Curtis. The great Locks and Canals Company was organized and all the arrangements for the ownership, management and control of the water-power of Lowell were made under his advice and direction. The same methods have been followed in substance at Lawrence and Woonsocket and other manufacturing places.

He preserved his vigor of body until he entered his seventy- seventh year, taking walks of five or six miles without fatigue. About that time he took a severe cold at a neighbor's funeral. An illness followed which seriously impaired his strength. He died, November 2, 1856, two days before the Presidential election.

He was six feet three inches in height, erect, with fine gray hair, blue eyes, of graceful and dignified deportment, and of great courtesy, especially to women and children.

He held a few simple beliefs with undoubting faith. He submitted himself to the rule of life which followed from these, and rigorously exacted obedience to it from all for whom he was responsible. He accepted the exposition of Christian doctrine given by Dr. Channing. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 seemed to him a nearly perfect system of government. He earnestly resisted, in the Convention of 1820, the abolition of the property qualification for voters, and of the obligation of all citizens to be taxed for the support of religious worship. He took early and deep interest in the temperance reform, and gave much time, labor, and money to promote it. "The strength and beauty of the man," says Mr. Emerson, "lay in the natural goodness and justice of his mind, which in manhood and in old age, after dealing all his life with weighty private and public interests, left an infantile innocence of which we have no second or third example,—the strength of a chief united to the modesty of a child. He returned from the courts and Congresses to sit down with unaltered humility, in the church, or in the town-house, on the plain wooden bench, where Honor came and sat down beside him. He was a man in whom so rare a spirit of justice visibly dwelt, that, if one had met him in a cabin or in a court, he must still seem a public man answering as a sovereign state to sovereign state; and might easily suggest Milton's picture of John Bradshaw, —'that he was a consul from whom the fasces did not depart with the year, but in private seemed ever sitting in judgment on kings.'"

But he would have liked better than anything else what was said of him in his official report by the President of the College he loved with that deep affection which her children felt for her in his time. President Walker closes his annual report of December 31, 1856, as follows: "The undersigned could not conclude his report without allusion to the recent lamented death of the Honorable Samuel Hoar, a distinguished and justly influential member of this board,—venerable alike for his age and his virtues,—a devoted friend of the College which he has been able to serve in a thousand ways by the wisdom of his counsels and the weight of his character."

Mr. Hoar was naturally conservative, as would be expected as an old Federalist who was educated at Harvard in the beginning of the nineteenth century. His rules of public and private conduct were strict and austere. He applied them more strictly to himself than to others. His classmates in college used to call him Cato. He favored the suppression of the sale and use of intoxicating liquors, and desired that the whole force of the State should be brought to bear to accomplish that end. He was the inveterate foe of oppression, and in his later years, opposed every compromise with slavery. But he had no sympathy with reforms which seemed to him to be devised merely as political instruments to advance the fortunes of persons or parties.

He had a huge respect for John Quincy Adams, a respect which I have good reason to know was reciprocated. But he was by no means Mr. Adams's blind follower. The ex-President, I think about the year 1832, published a pamphlet in which he savagely attacked the Masonic Order. He met Mr. Hoar in Boston and asked him what he thought of it. Mr. Hoar answered: "It seems to me, Mr. Adams, there is but one thing in the world sillier than Masonry. That is Anti-Masonry."

Mr. Hoar used to relate with some amusement a dialogue he had with a shrewd and witty old lawyer named Josiah Adams, who shared the old Federalist dislike of his namesake, John Quincy Adams. My father was talking quite earnestly in a gathering of Middlesex lawyers and said: "I believe John Quincy Adams means to be a Christian." "When?" inquired Josiah.

But I cannot draw the portraiture of this noble and stately figure. George Herbert did it perfectly, long ago, in his poem, "Constancy."

Old Dr. Lyman Beecher, the foremost champion in his day of the old Orthodoxy, spent his life in combating what he deemed the pestilent Unitarian heresy. He was the most famous preacher in the country. Mr. Hoar was a pillar of Unitarianism. Yet the Doctor came to know and honor his old antagonist. He read in the Boston papers, late Saturday evening, that Mr. Hoar was dying at Concord. Early Sunday morning before daybreak he started, with his son-in-law, Professor Stowe, and drove twenty miles to Concord. He got there just after Mr. Hoar's death. He asked to go into the chamber where his old friend lay. My sister said: "Father would have been glad to see you, if he were alive." The Doctor gazed a moment, and then said: "He's passed safe over, I haven't a doubt of it. He was an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile."