Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature

by Unknown

OUR HISTORIC CHARACTERS

Washington

Washington was a vestryman of both Truro and Fairfax parishes. The place of worship of the former was at Pohick, and of the latter at Alexandria. Mount Vernon was within Truro parish, and in the affairs of the church Washington took a lively interest. The old Pohick building became so dilapidated that in 1764 it was resolved to build a new church. The question as to location was discussed in the parish with considerable excitement, some contending for retention of the old site and others favoring a more central position. At a meeting for settling the question, George Mason (the famous author of the Bill of Rights of Virginia) made an ardent and eloquent plea to stand by the old landmarks consecrated by the ashes of their ancestors, and sacred to all the memories of life, marriage, birth, and death. In reply to this touching appeal Washington produced a survey of the parish, drawn by himself with his usual accuracy, on which every road was laid down, and the residence of every householder marked. Spreading his map before the audience, he showed that the new location which he advocated would be more conveniently reached by every member of the parish, while to many of them the old site was inaccessible. He expressed the hope that they would not allow their judgment to be guided by their feelings. When the vote was taken, a large majority favored removal to the proposed locality. Thereupon George Mason put on his hat and stalked out of the meeting, saying, in not smothered tones, “That’s what gentlemen get for engaging in debate with a damned surveyor.” But, notwithstanding this little tiff, the owners of Gunston Hall and of Mount Vernon had the highest respect and warmest affection for each other.

One of the greatest blessings which a man can possess—especially if he is a public man—is an imperturbable temper. It is a remarkable fact that those who have most signally manifested this virtue have been men who were constitutionally irritable. Such was the case with Washington, whose habitual composure, the result of strenuous self-discipline, was so great that it was supposed to be due to a cold and almost frigid temperament. By nature a violently passionate man, he triumphed so completely over his frailty as to be cheated of all credit for his coolness and exasperating trials.

His biographers record very few instances of violent outbreak of anger, even under excessive provocation. One of the few was in the well-known disobedience of orders by General Charles Lee, at the battle of Monmouth, and his ordering a retreat by which the day was nearly lost. It was a betrayal of confidence which was subsequently explained by the verdict of a court-martial convened to inquire into his misconduct. When Washington, who was hurrying forward to his support, met the retreating troops struggling and straggling in confusion, and realized the situation, he rode at Lee as if he meant to ride him down. He was like a raging lion. Demanding the meaning of the rout, he accompanied his questions with imprecations whose crushing force was terrible.

Another instance of justifiable wrath following the libellous attacks of Bache, Freeman, and the French Minister Genet, is noted as follows in McMaster’s “History of the People of the United States,” which we copy from that admirable book by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton & Company:

“For a while Washington met this abuse with cold disdain. ‘The publications,’ he wrote to Henry Lee, June 21, 1793, ‘in Freneau’s and Bache’s papers are outrages on common decency. But I have a consolation within that no earthly effort can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me, though, while I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed.’ But as time went on, the slanders daily heaped upon him by the National Gazette and the General Advertiser irritated him to such a degree that every allusion to them provoked a testy answer or a show of rage. One of these outbursts took place at a cabinet meeting held early in August, and has been described with manifest delight by Jefferson. The matter discussed was the conduct of Genet, and, in the course of some remarks, Knox spoke of the recent libel on the President. In a moment the face of Washington put on an expression which it was seldom given his friends to see. Says Jefferson, ‘He got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself, ran on much on the personal abuse which had been bestowed on him, and defied any man on earth to produce one single act of his since he had been in the government which had not been done on the purest motives. He had never repented but once having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since; and, by heavens! he would rather be in his grave than in his present situation. He would rather be on his farm than be emperor of the world; and yet they were charging him with wanting to be a king.’”

This reference to a dictatorship recalls the incident which shook to its centre his evenly balanced and self-controlled nature. Discontent among officers and soldiers over arrearages of pay, the neglect of Congress to make provision for the claims of their suffering families, and increasing distrust of the efficiency of the government and of republican institutions, led to an organized movement for a constitutional monarchy, and to make Washington its king. A paper embodying the views of the malcontents was drawn up, and presented to the Chief by a highly esteemed officer,—Colonel Nicola. Washington’s scornful rebuke, dated Newburgh, May 22, 1782, expressed surprise and indignation. Said he, “No occurrences in the course of the war have given me more painful sensations than your information of the existence of such ideas in the army, ideas which I view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity. I am at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address, which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. Let me conjure you, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature.”

While colonel of the Virginia troops in 1754, Washington was stationed at Alexandria. At an election for members of the Assembly Colonel Washington, in the heat of party excitement, used offensive language toward a Mr. Payne. Thereupon that gentleman struck him a heavy blow and knocked him down. Intelligence of the encounter aroused among his soldiers a spirit of vengeance, which was quieted by an address from him, showing his noble character. Next day, Mr. Payne received a note from Washington, requesting his attendance at the tavern in Alexandria. Mr. Payne anticipated a duel, but instead of pistols he found a table set with wine and glasses, and was met with a friendly smile by his antagonist. Colonel Washington felt that himself was the aggressor, and determined to make reparation. He offered Mr. Payne his hand, and said: “To err is human; to rectify error is right and proper. I believe I was wrong yesterday; you have already had some satisfaction, and if you deem that sufficient, here is my hand—let us be friends.” The amende honorable was promptly accepted.

Another case of offence, with prompt regret and reparation, occurred at Cambridge, in 1775, when the army was destitute of powder. Washington sent Colonel Glover to Marblehead for a supply of that article, which was said to be there. At night the colonel returned and found Washington in front of his head-quarters pacing up and down. The general, without returning his salute, asked, roughly, “Have you got the powder?” “No, sir.” Washington swore the terrible Saxon oath, with all its three specifications. “Why did you come back, sir, without it?” “Sir, there is not a kernel of powder in Marblehead.” Washington walked up and down a minute or two in great agitation, and then said, “Colonel Glover, here is my hand, if you will take it and forgive me. The greatness of our danger made me forget what is due to you and myself.”

In his “Memories of a Hundred Years,” Edward Everett Hale says, “It is with some hesitation that I add here what I am afraid is true, though I never heard it said aloud until the year 1901. It belongs with the discussion as to the third term for the Presidency. The statement now is that Washington did not permit his name to be used for a third election because he had become sure that he could not carry the State of Virginia in the election. He would undoubtedly have been chosen by the votes of the other States, but he would have felt badly the want of confidence implied in the failure of his own ‘country,’ as he used to call it in his earlier letters, to vote for him. It is quite certain, from the correspondence of the time, that as late as September of the year 1796, the year in which John Adams was chosen President, neither Adams nor Washington knew whether Washington meant to serve a third time.”

In delineating the characteristics of Washington, Edward Everett says, in his masterly way:

“If we claim for Washington solitary eminence among the great and good, the question will naturally be asked in what the peculiar and distinctive excellence of his character consisted; and to this fair question I am tasked to find an answer that does full justice to my own conceptions and feelings. It is easy to run over the heads of such a contemplation; to enumerate the sterling qualities which he possessed and the defects from which he was free; but when all is said in this way that can be said, with whatever justice of honest eulogy, and whatever sympathy of appreciation, we feel that there is a depth which we have not sounded, a latent power we have not measured, a mysterious beauty of character which you can no more describe in words than you can paint a blush with a patch of red paint, or the glance of a sunbeam from a ripple with a streak of white paint thrown upon the canvas; a moral fascination, so to express it, which we all feel, but cannot analyze nor trace to its elements. All the personal traditions of Washington assure us that there was a serene dignity in his presence which charmed while it awed the boldest who approached him.”

Franklin

Benjamin Franklin is probably the best specimen that history affords of what is called a self-made man. He certainly “never worshipped his maker,” according to a stinging epigram, but was throughout his life, though always self-respectful, never self-conceited. Perhaps the most notable result of his self-education was the ease with which he accosted all grades and classes of men on a level of equality. The printer’s boy became, in his old age, one of the most popular men in the French Court, not only among its statesmen, but among its frivolous nobles and their wives. He ever estimated men at their true worth or worthlessness; but as a diplomatist he was a marvel of sagacity. The same ease of manner which recommended him to a Pennsylvania farmer was preserved in a conference with a statesman or a king. He ever kept his end in view in all his complaisances, and that end was always patriotic. When he returned to his country he was among the most earnest to organize the liberty he had done so much to achieve; and he also showed his hostility to the system of negro slavery with which the United States was burdened. At the ripe age of eighty-four he died, leaving behind him a record of extraordinary faithfulness in the performance of all the duties of life. His sagacity, when his whole career is surveyed, was of the most exalted character, for it was uniformly devoted to the accomplishment of great public ends of policy or beneficence.

During a part of his reign, George III. was in the habit of keeping a note-book, in which he jotted down his observations of men and passing events. In the volume dated 1778, among the names to which the king attached illustrative quotations, was the name of Benjamin Franklin, with the following passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar, ii. 1:

O let us have him; for his silver hairs

Will purchase us a good opinion,

And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds:

It shall be said his judgment ruled our hands;

Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,

But all be buried in his gravity.

With regard to the charge frequently made against him of scepticism and infidel leanings, Franklin’s own refutation should suffice. In a letter written in 1784 to his friend William Strahan, in England, he said, referring to the successful outcome of the Revolutionary struggle,—

“I am too well acquainted with all the springs and levers of our machine not to see that our human means were unequal to our understanding, and that, if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity. It is He that abases the proud and favors the humble. May we never forget His goodness to us, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude!”

In a letter to Whitefield, written shortly before his death, he said,—

“I am now in my eighty-fifth year and very infirm. Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we can render Him is by doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting his conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.”

Add to such testimony the closing lines of his famous self-written epitaph: “The work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author.”

Hamilton

In discussing the qualities of the founders of our republic, Colonel T. W. Higginson draws a good portraiture of Alexander Hamilton.[^[1]] Washington being President, Adams and Jay having also been assigned to office, there naturally followed the two men who had contributed most in their different ways to the intellectual construction of the nation. Hamilton and Jefferson were brought together in the Cabinet,—the one as Secretary of the Treasury, the other as Secretary of State,—not because they agreed, but because they differed. Tried by all immediate and temporary tests, it is impossible to deny to Hamilton the position of leading intellect during the constitutional period; and his clear and cogent ability contrasts strongly with the peculiar mental action, always fresh and penetrating, but often lawless and confused, of his great rival. Hamilton was more coherent, more truthful, more combative, more generous, and more limited. His power was as an organizer and advocate of measures, and this is a less secure passport to fame than lies in the announcement of great principles. The difference between Hamilton and Jefferson on questions of finance and State rights was only the symbol of a deeper divergence. The contrast between them was not so much in acts as in theories; not in what they did, but in what they dreamed. Both had their visions, and held to them ardently, but the spirit of the nation was fortunately stronger than either; it made Hamilton support a republic against his will, and made Jefferson acquiesce, in spite of himself, in a tolerably vigorous national government.

[1]. From Harper’s Magazine. Copyright, 1884, by Harper & Brothers.

There is not a trace of evidence that Hamilton ever desired to bring about a monarchy in America. He no doubt believed the British constitution to be the most perfect model of government ever devised by man, but it is also true that he saw the spirit of the American people to be wholly republican; all his action was based on the opinion that “the political principle of this country would endure nothing but republican government.” He believed—very reasonably, so far as the teachings of experience went—that a republic was an enormous risk to run, and that this risk must be diminished by making the republic as much like a monarchy as possible. If he could have had his way, only holders of real estate would have had the right to vote for President and Senators, and these would have held office for life, or at least during good behavior; the President would have appointed all the governors of States, and they would have had a veto on all State legislation. All this he announced in Congress with the greatest frankness, and having thus indicated his ideal government, he accepted what he could get, and gave his great powers to carrying out a constitution about which he had serious misgivings. On the other hand, if Jefferson could have had his way, national organization would have been a shadow. He accepted the constitution as a necessary evil.

“Hamilton and I,” wrote Jefferson, “were pitted against each other every day in the Cabinet, like two fighting-cocks.” The first passage between them was the only one in which Hamilton had clearly the advantage of his less practised antagonist, making Jefferson, indeed, the instrument of his own defeat. The transfer of the capital to the banks of the Potomac was secured by the first of many compromises between the Northern and Southern States, after a debate in which the formidable slavery question showed itself often, as it had shown itself at the very formation of the constitution. The removal of the capital was clearly the price paid by Hamilton for Jefferson’s acquiescence in his first great financial measure. This measure was the national assumption of the State debts to an amount not to exceed twenty millions. It was met by vehement opposition, partly because it bore very unequally on the States, but mainly on the ground that the claims were in the hands of speculators, and were greatly depreciated. Yet it was an essential part of that great series of financial projects on which Hamilton’s fame must rest, even more than on his papers in the Federalist—though these secured the adoption of the Constitution. Three measures—the assumption of the State debts, the funding act, and the national bank—were what changed the bankruptcy of the new nation into solvency and credit. There may be question as to the good or bad precedents established by these enactments; but there can be no doubt as to their immediate success.

It is difficult to say what this accomplished man might have done as a leader of the Federal opposition to the Democratic administrations of Jefferson and Madison, had he not, in the maturity of his years, and in the full vigor of his faculties, been murdered by Aaron Burr. Nothing can better illustrate the folly of the practice of dueling than the fact that, by a weak compliance with its maxims, the most eminent of American statesmen died by the hand of the most infamous of American demagogues.

Jefferson

Among the voluminous writings of that great statesman, Thomas Jefferson, none is of more universal interest than his “Rules of Life,” as embodied in the following letter:

To Thomas Jefferson Smith:

This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run; and I, too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell.

Monticello, February 21, 1825.

The Portrait of a good man by the most sublime of Poets, for your Imitation.[^[2]]

Lord, who’s the happy man that may to thy blest courts repair;

Not stranger like to visit them, but to inhabit there?

’Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves;

Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproves.

Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor’s fame to wound;

Nor hearken to a false report by malice whispered round.

Who vice in all its pomp and power can treat with just neglect;

And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect.

Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood;

And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good.

Whose soul in usury disdains his treasures to employ;

Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.

The man who, by this steady course, has happiness insured,

When earth’s foundations shake, shall stand by Providence secured.

[2]. Paraphrase of Psalm xv.

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life.

1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

9. Take things always by their smooth handle.

10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

Marshall

When John Marshall became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court only six decisions had been rendered on Constitutional questions by that tribunal. Not only were the Federal Constitution and the laws enacted under it in their infancy, but an absolutely new question in political science was presented,—the question whether it was possible to carry out successfully a scheme contemplating the contemporaneous sovereignty of two governments, State and federal, distinct and separate in their action, yet commanding with equal authority the obedience of the same people. Viewed against this sombre background of an untried and difficult experiment, Marshall’s services assume heroic proportions. On account of the lack of precedent an opposite decision might in many cases have been given, which, as a matter of pure law, could have been well supported. Much depended, therefore, on the spirit in which the work should be approached. Marshall brought to the task a mind which had been trained in forensic strife with the ablest bar that Virginia has ever known. In the Virginia Legislature, in Congress, and in the Constitutional Convention of Virginia he had become familiar with the fundamental principles of government. The temper in which Marshall assumed the responsibilities of his judicial station was exemplified in his remarks during the trial of Aaron Burr: “That this Court dares not usurp power is most true. That this Court does not shrink from its duty is no less true. No man is desirous of placing himself in a disagreeable situation. No man is desirous of becoming the peculiar subject of calumny. No man, might he let the bitter cup pass from him without reproach, would drain it to the bottom. But if he has no choice in the case—if there be no alternative presented to him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium of those who are denominated the world—he merits the contempt as well as the indignation of his country; who can hesitate which to embrace?”

There is no doubt that under Marshall the United States Supreme Court acquired the energy, weight, and dignity which Jay had considered indispensable for the effectual exercise of its functions. During the thirty-four years that he presided over the court, twelve hundred and fifteen cases were decided, the reports of which will fill thirty volumes. In something more than one hundred cases no opinion was given, or, if given, was reported as “by the Court,” per curiam. Of the remainder, Marshall delivered the opinion of the court in five hundred and nineteen. Of the sixty-two decisions during his time, on questions of constitutional law, he wrote the opinion in thirty-six; in twenty-three of the latter, comprising most of his greatest efforts, there was no dissent.

Contemporaries and later students concur in the opinion that the original bias of Marshall’s mind was toward general principles and comprehensive views rather than to technical and recondite learning. His argumentation was, as Mr. Phelps has said, “that simple, direct, straightforward, honest reasoning that silences as a demonstration in Euclid silences, because it convinces.” His reasoning was, for the most part, simple, logical deduction, unaided by analogies, and unsupported by precedent or authority. Marshall’s type of mind presented a strong contrast to that of Justice Story, whose concurring opinion in the Dartmouth College case bristled with authorities: “When I examine a question,” said Story, “I go from headland to headland; from case to case. Marshall has a compass, puts out to sea, and goes directly to his result.”

Jackson

After the sedate, passionless, orderly administrations of Monroe and Adams, there was a popular demand for something piquant and amusing, and this quality was always found in Old Hickory. Friends and foes alike declare that Andrew Jackson was in many ways far above the imitators who have posed in his image. True, he was narrow, ignorant, violent, unreasonable; he punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. But he was, on the other hand,—and his worst opponents did not deny it,—chaste, honest, truthful, and sincere. For a time he was more bitterly hated than any one who ever occupied his high office, and we may be sure that these better qualities would have been discredited had it been possible. It was constantly reiterated that his frequent and favorite oath was “By the Eternal,” yet neither his nephew and secretary, Mr. Donelson, who was associated with him for thirty years, nor Judge Brackenridge, of Western Pennsylvania, who wrote most of his State papers, ever heard him use such an expression. With long, narrow, firmly set features, and a military stock encircling his neck, he had one advantage for the social life of Washington which seemed difficult of explanation by anything in his earlier career. He had at his command the most courteous and agreeable manners. Even before the election of Adams, Daniel Webster had written to his brother: “General Jackson’s manners are better than those of any of the candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly.” But whatever his personal attractions, he sacrificed his social leadership at Washington by his quixotic attempt to force the Cabinet ladies to admit into their circle the wife of Secretary Eaton, a woman whose antecedents as Peggy O’Neill, an innkeeper’s daughter, made her a persona non grata. For once, Jackson overestimated his powers. He had conquered Indian tribes, and checked the army of Great Britain, but the ladies of Washington society were too much for him. At the dinner-table, or in the ball-room, every lady ignored the presence of “Bellona,” as the newspapers called her.

The two acts with which the administration of President Jackson will be longest identified are his dealings with South Carolina in respect to nullification, and his long warfare with the United States Bank. The first brought the New England States back to him and the second took them away again. He perhaps won rather more applause than he merited by the one act, and more condemnation than was just for the other.

Among the amusing anecdotes of Jackson, it is related that when he was military commander in Florida during the administration of President Monroe, he tried at a drumhead court-martial and hanged two Englishmen who had incited, it is said, an insurrection among the Indians. President Monroe feared that Great Britain would make trouble about this, and summoned the general to Washington before the Cabinet. John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, who had instructed Jackson to govern with a firm hand in Florida, defended him, and read a long argument in which he quoted international law as expounded by Grotius, Vattel, and Puffendorff. Jackson listened in sullen silence, but in the evening, when asked at a dinner party whether he was not comforted by Mr. Adams’s citation of authorities, he exclaimed, “What do I care about those old musty chaps? Blast Grotius, blast Vattel, and blast the Puffenchap. This is a fight between Jim Monroe and me, and I propose to fight it out.”

Webster

Senator George F. Hoar, in describing the personal appearance of Daniel Webster in the prime of life, says, “He was physically the most splendid specimen of noble manhood my eyes ever beheld. He was a trifle over five feet nine inches high and weighed one hundred and fifty-four pounds. His head was finely poised upon his shoulders. His beautiful black eyes shone out through the caverns of his deep brows like lustrous jewels. His teeth were white and regular, and his smile when he was in gracious mood, especially when talking to women, had an irresistible charm.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson thus speaks of Mr. Webster’s appearance at the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, in 1843: “His countenance, his figure, and his manners were all in so grand a style that he was, without effort, as superior to his most eminent rivals as they were to the humblest. He alone of all men did not disappoint the eye and the ear, but was a fit figure in the landscape. There was the monument, and there was Webster. He knew well that a little more or less of rhetoric signified nothing; he was only to say plain and equal things—grand things, if he had them; and if he had them not, only to abstain from saying unfit things—and the whole occasion was answered by his presence.”

The masterly address on that June anniversary closed with these sentences:

“And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered around it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, ‘Thank God, I also am an American.’”

In reviewing Mr. Webster’s “Speeches and Forensic Arguments,” Edwin P. Whipple says, “Believing that our national literature is to be found in the records of our greatest minds, and is not confined to the poems, novels, and essays which may be produced by Americans, we have been surprised that the name of Daniel Webster is not placed high among American authors. Men in every way inferior to him in mental power have obtained a wide reputation for writing works in every way inferior to those spoken by him. It cannot be that a generation like ours, continually boasting that it is not misled by forms, should think that thought changes its character when it is published from the mouth instead of the press. Still, it is true that a man who has acquired fame as an orator and statesman is rarely considered, even by his own partisans, in the light of an author. He is responsible for no ‘book.’ The records of what he has said and done, though perhaps constantly studied by contemporaries, are not generally regarded as part and parcel of the national literature. The fame of the man of action overshadows that of the author. We are so accustomed to consider him as a speaker, that we are somewhat blind to the great literary merit of his speeches. The celebrated argument in reply to Hayne, for instance, was intended by the statesman as a defence of his political position, as an exposition of constitutional law, and a vindication of what he deemed to be the true policy of the country. The acquisition of merely literary reputation had no part in the motives from which it sprung. Yet the speech, even to those who take little interest in subjects like the tariff, nullification, and the public lands, will ever be interesting from its profound knowledge, its clear arrangement, the mastery it exhibits of all the weapons of dialectics, the broad stamp of nationality it bears, and the wit, sarcasm, and splendid and impassioned eloquence which pervade and vivify, without interrupting, the close and rapid march of the argument.”

Considered merely as literary productions, Webster’s speeches take the highest rank among the best productions of the American intellect. They are thoroughly national in their spirit and tone, and are full of principles, arguments, and appeals, which come directly home to the hearts and understandings of the great body of the people. They contain the results of a long life of mental labor, employed in the service of the country. They give evidence of a complete familiarity with the spirit and workings of our institutions, and breathe the bracing air of a healthy and invigorating patriotism. They are replete with that true wisdom which is slowly gathered from the exercise of a strong and comprehensive intellect on the complicated concerns of daily life and duty. They display qualities of mind and style which would give them a high place in any literature, even if the subjects discussed were less interesting and important; and they show also a strength of personal character, superior to irresolution and fear, capable of bearing up against the most determined opposition, and uniting to boldness in thought intrepidity in action. In all the characteristics of great literary performances, they are fully equal to many works which have stood the test of age, and baffled the skill of criticism.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

At the consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 9, 1863, Hon. Edward Everett was the orator of the day, and President Lincoln made the dedicatory address. Concerning Mr. Lincoln’s appearance on that memorable occasion, Mr. Edward McPherson, Clerk of the National House of Representatives, in a newspaper report, said that Mr. Lincoln never showed more ungainliness of figure, “slouchiness” of dress, and angularity of gesture, all of which appeared in striking contrast with the elegance and grace of person, speech, and manner that characterized Mr. Everett. But although every one admired the rhetorical effects produced by Everett during his oration of ninety minutes’ length, they had not been “aroused to enthusiasm, nor melted to tenderness.” “But,” says Mr. McPherson, “as Mr. Lincoln proceeded no face ever more unmistakably mirrored a conviction than did Mr. Everett’s, that by these few but weighty sentences, all memory of what he had said was erased. It is part of the current mention of the times that Mr. Everett, in congratulating Mr. Lincoln at the close of the exercises, laughingly, but with a sense of its truth, remarked, ‘You have said all on this occasion that will be remembered by posterity.’”

Hon. James Speed, formerly Attorney-General, under Lincoln, says that Lincoln showed him a letter from Everett, eulogizing the Gettysburg speech in the very highest terms, and that a year or two after the death of Mr. Lincoln, there were present at his house in Washington, Senator Sumner, Governor Clifford, of Massachusetts, and others, and Mr. Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech became the subject of conversation. “Mr. Sumner said, and others concurred in what he said, that it was the most finished piece of oratory he had ever seen. Every word was appropriate—none could be omitted and none added and none changed.”

He also says,—

“I recollect that soon after its delivery, at my house in Louisville, Robert Dale Owen, who was present with others, took from his pocket a speech which he had cut from a newspaper, and read it aloud saying it would be translated into all languages in the world, being the very finest oration of the kind that had ever been delivered. He said there were utterances in it which would become familiar to all the people of the world as household words. I recollect further that Judge S. S. Nicholas, of Louisville, an accomplished man and a fine writer, upon first seeing the speech, spoke of it in terms of the highest praise, saying he did not believe a man of the education and culture of Mr. Lincoln could have written it. He believed, until corrected by me, that it had been written by another hand.”

One of the most remarkable tributes that has been paid was that of the London Quarterly Review, which said, substantially, that the oration surpassed every production of its class known in literature; that only the oration of Pericles over the victories of the Peloponnesian war could be compared to it, and that was put into his mouth by the historian Thucydides.

A greatly admired personal tribute to Lincoln is that of James Russell Lowell in the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July, 1865. It is especially noteworthy for its broad significance, its tender pathos, its discriminating appreciation, and its grand American sentiment, closing as follows:

Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait

Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime

Till the wise years decide.

Great Captains, with their guns and drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;

These are all gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame.

The kindly earnest, brave, foreseeing man,

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American.

Governor Andrew, in an address to the Legislature of Massachusetts, following the assassination of Lincoln, after describing him as the man who had added “martyrdom itself to his other and scarcely less emphatic claims to human veneration, gratitude and love,” continued thus: “I desire on this grave occasion to record my sincere testimony to the unaffected simplicity of his manly purpose, to the constancy with which he devoted himself to his duty, to the grand fidelity with which he subordinated himself to his country, to the clearness, robustness, and sagacity of his understanding, to his sincere love of truth, his undeviating progress in its faithful pursuit, and to the confidence which he could not fail to inspire in the singular integrity of his virtues, and the conspicuously judicial quality of his intellect.”

Grant at Appomattox

At the dedication of the Mausoleum erected at Riverside Park, New York, in memory of General Grant, Colonel Charles Marshall, who had been Chief of Staff to General Lee, the Confederate commander, was the orator. In the course of his address he said,—

“When General Grant first opened the correspondence with General Lee which led to the meeting at Appomattox, General Lee proposed to give a wide scope to the subject to be treated of between him and General Grant, and to discuss with the latter the terms of a general pacification.

“General Grant declined to consider anything except the surrender of General Lee’s army, assigning as a reason for his refusal his want of authority to deal with political matters, or any other than those pertaining to his position as the commander of the army. The day after the meeting at McLain’s house, at which the terms of surrender were agreed upon, another interview took place between Grant and Lee, upon the invitation of General Grant, and when General Lee returned from that meeting he repeated, in the presence of several of his staff, the substance of the conversation, in one part of which, you will see, as we all did, the feeling that controlled the actions of General Grant at that critical period.

“The conversation turned on the subject of a general peace, as to which General Grant had already declared the want of power to treat, but, in speaking of the means by which a general pacification might be effected, General Grant said to General Lee, with great emphasis and strong feeling: ‘General Lee, I want this war to end without the shedding of another drop of American blood’—not Northern blood, not Southern blood, but ‘American blood’—for in his eyes all the men around him, and those who might be then confronting each other on other fields over the wide area of war, were ‘Americans.’

“These words made a great impression upon all who heard them, as they did upon General Lee, who told us, with no little emotion, that he took occasion to express to General Grant his appreciation of the noble and generous sentiments uttered by him, and assured him that he would render all the assistance in his power to bring about the restoration of peace and good-will without shedding another drop of ‘American blood.’ This ‘American blood,’ sacred in the eyes of both these great American soldiers, flows in the veins of all of us, and let it be sacred in our eyes also, henceforth and forever, ready to be poured without stint as a libation upon the altar of our common country, never to be shed again in fratricidal war.

“It is in the light of this noble thought of General Grant that I have always considered the course pursued by him at the moment of his supreme triumph at Appomattox, and, seen in that light, nothing could be grander, nobler, more magnanimous, nor more patriotic than his conduct on that occasion.

“Look at the state of affairs on the morning of the 9th of April, 1865. The bleeding and half-starved remnant of that great army which for four years had baffled all the efforts of the Federal government to reach the Confederate capital, and had twice borne the flag of the Confederacy beyond the Potomac, confronted with undaunted resolution, but without hope save the hope of an honorable death on the battle-field, the overwhelming forces under General Grant.

“At the head of that remnant of a great army was a great soldier, whose name was a name of fear, whose name is recorded in a high place on the roll of great soldiers of history. That remnant of a great army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander at its head, after the long siege at Richmond and Petersburg, had been forced to retreat, and on the 9th of April, 1865, was brought to bay at Appomattox, surrounded by the host of its great enemy.

“There was no reasonable doubt that the destruction of that army would seal the fate of the Confederacy and put an end to further organized resistance to the Federal arms, and no doubt that if that remnant were driven to desperation by the exactness of terms of surrender against which its honor and its valor would revolt, that resistance would have been made, and that General Grant and his army might have been left in the possession of a solitude that they might have called peace, but which would have been the peace of Poland, the peace of Ireland. Under such circumstances, had General Grant been governed by the mere selfish desire of the rewards of military success, had he been content to gather the fruits that grew nearest the earth on the tree of victory, the fruits that Napoleon and all selfish conquerors of his time have gathered, the fruits that our Washington put away from him, what a triumph lay before him!

“What Roman triumph would have approached the triumph of General Grant had he led the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander in chains, up Pennsylvania Avenue, thenceforth to be known as the ‘Way of Triumph!’

“But so simple, so patriotic was the mind of General Grant that the thought of self seems never to have affected his conduct.

“He was no more tempted at Appomattox to forego the true interests of his country for his own advantage than Washington was tempted when the time came for him to lay down his commission at Annapolis. I doubt if the self-abnegation of Washington at Annapolis was greater than that of Grant at Appomattox, and it is the glory of America that her institutions breed men who are equal to the greatest strain that can be put upon their courage and their patriotism.

“On that eventful morning of April 9, 1865, General Grant was called upon to decide the most momentous question that any American soldier or statesman has ever been required to decide. The great question was, How shall the war end? What shall be the relations between the victors and vanquished?

“Upon the decision of that question depended the future of American institutions. If the extreme rights of military success had been insisted upon, and had the vanquished been required to pass under the yoke of defeat and bitter humiliation, the war would have ended as a successful war of conquest—the Southern States would have been conquered States, and the Southern people would have been a conquered people, in whose hearts would have been sown all the enmity and ill-will of the conquered to the conquerors, to be transmitted from sire to son.

“With such an ending of the war there would have been United States without a united people. The power of the Union would then have reposed upon the strength of Grant’s battalions and the thunder of Grant’s artillery. Its bonds would have stood upon the security of its military power, and not upon the honor and good faith and good-will of its people. The federal government would have been compelled to adopt a coercive policy toward the disaffected people of the South, which would soon have established between the government and those States the relations between England and Ireland, and some Northern Gladstone would be demanding for the Southern people the natural right that the English Gladstone claimed for the Irish against their haughty conquerors.

“Does any man desire to exchange the present relations between the people of the Northern and Southern States for the relations of conqueror and conquered? Does any wish to have a union of the States without a union of the people?

“General Grant was called upon to decide this great question on the morning of April 9, 1865. The Southern military power was exhausted. He was in a position to exact the supreme rights of a conqueror, and the unconditional submission of his adversary, unless that adversary should elect to risk all on the event of a desperate battle, in which much ‘American blood’ would certainly be shed.

“The question was gravely considered in Confederate councils whether we should not accept the extreme risk, and cut our way through the hosts of General Grant, or perish in the attempt. This plan had many advocates, but General Lee was not one of them, as will be seen by his farewell order to his army.

“Under these circumstances General Lee and General Grant met to discuss the terms of surrender of General Lee’s army, and, at the request of General Lee, General Grant wrote the terms of surrender he proposed to offer to the Confederate general. They were liberal and honorable, alike to the victor and the vanquished, and General Lee at once accepted them.

“Any one who reads General Grant’s proposal cannot fail to see how careful he is to avoid any unnecessary humiliation to his adversary. As far as it was possible, General Grant took away the sting of defeat from the Confederate army. He triumphed, but he triumphed without exultation, and with a noble respect to his enemy.

“There was never a nobler knight than Grant of Appomattox—no knight more magnanimous or more generous. No statesman ever decided a vital question more wisely—more in the interest of his country and of all mankind—than General Grant decided the great question presented to him when he and General Lee met that morning of April 9, 1865, to consider the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The words of his magnanimous proposal to his enemy were carried by the Confederate soldiers to the furthest borders of the South. They reached ears and hearts that had never quailed at the sound of war. They disarmed and reconciled those who knew not fear, and the noble words of General Grant’s offer of peace brought peace without humiliation, peace with honor.”

Last Words

Iconoclasts overshadow with their doubts and questionings the alleged dying words of eminent men, but the following appear to be authentic. George Washington, “It is well.” John Adams, “Independence forever.” Benjamin Franklin, in severe suffering, “A dying man can do nothing easy.” Thomas Jefferson, “I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country.” John Quincy Adams, “It is the last of earth; I am content.” John C. Calhoun, “The South! the South! God knows what will become of her.” William H. Harrison, “I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” Daniel Webster, “I still live.” James Buchanan, “O, Lord Almighty, as Thou wilt.” William McKinley, “It is God’s way. His will be done, not ours.” Henry Ward Beecher, “Now comes the great mystery.”