Hitherto, the life of a schoolmaster had been his utmost ambition, and the trials he made satisfied him that, with his love of knowledge and desire to impart it, he would ultimately be able to succeed. The prospect of a college course had not yet dawned on him. But, from his patron Loomis to others of greater influence the carpenter's merit spread wider and wider, until the Rev. Abiel Abbott, then a clergyman at Coventry, Connecticut, procured for him a scholarship at Phillips Exeter Academy, upon a benevolent foundation, to which meritorious pupils of limited means were admitted without charge for board and instruction. On the 4th of September, 1809, he left Tolland, Connecticut, and walked the one hundred and twenty miles to Exeter, New Hampshire, becoming a scholar of the Academy for two years. Here he first met, as fellow pupils, his life-long friends, Palfrey and Bancroft. He studied diligently, and made rapid progress; yet, anxious to preserve his independence, and to obtain what was necessary for his personal comfort without further tax on friends or obligation to strangers, he taught, during one winter of these two years, a school at Rochester in New Hampshire. In one of his memorandums he sums up his tuition thus: "the whole amount of my schooling was about forty months, which was the length of time I attended school before I was twenty years old."
But the great hope of his heart—a hope that had been gradually kindled—was at last to be realized, and, in 1811, at the age of twenty-two, through the active interest of President Kirkland, Sparks entered Harvard University, on a Pennoyer scholarship. Yet, the res angusta domi pursued him still. It is said, that, "in consequence partly of ill health and partly of poverty," he was unable to pass more than two entire years, of his four, at Cambridge. To eke out a slender but necessary income, he obtained leave of absence during parts of his Freshman and Sophomore years, and spent the time as a private teacher in the family of Mr. Mark Pringle, at Havre de Grace, Maryland. He was there when the British, under Admiral Cockburn, plundered and partly destroyed the village; and here, probably, he enjoyed the only military experience of his life, by serving, as a private, in the Maryland militia, called out to guard the neighborhood. The inhabitants, it is related, generally fled to the woods, and but few, among whom was Sparks, remained to witness the barbarous behaviour of the enemy. Fifteen months of this leave of absence were, thus, spent in our State, in the bosom of an excellent and refined family, by whose members he was warmly esteemed; and, at length, he received his degree of Bachelor of Arts, at Harvard, with the class of 1815.
His college course, notwithstanding its interruptions, was successful. President Kirkland used to say, in his quaint way, "Sparks is not only a man, but a man and a-half." He graduated with high honors. In his senior year he gained the Bowdoin prize for an essay on the physical discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, an essay which is remembered in the traditions of the University as "a masterpiece of analytic exposition, philosophical method, lucid and exact statement."
This successful essay was, perhaps, the key of his life and character, for his mind was emphatically clear, exact, analytic, mathematical; and throughout his career, the same qualities were distinct in whatever he investigated or wrote. It has, indeed, been said that his merits were already recognized by the rival University of Yale, and that offers for his removal thither had been made during one of his years at Harvard; but the friendly influence of Dr. Kirkland prevailed over those allurements, and he remained constant to his patron and college.
The years 1816 and 1817 were passed by the graduate in teaching a private school at Lancaster, Massachusetts. He finished his college course at the advanced age of twenty-six, and had now added two years more to the score. At Lancaster he cultivated those habits of methodical industry which always characterized him afterwards. Soon after undertaking the school, he wrote: "I board at Major Carter's, a mile and a quarter from my school, to and from which I walk twice a day. I rose this morning an hour before sunrise, and rode five or six miles before breakfast, an exercise which I shall continue regularly. My school occupies six hours, and I have resolved to devote, and thus far, have devoted, six hours of the twenty-four to study." Before this, he has a memorandum of walking from Cambridge to Bolton, twenty-six miles; setting out at half-past one, and arriving at Bolton at eight in the evening.
In 1817, at the age of twenty-eight, and two years after graduation, his alma mater recognizing the tendency of his mind towards the exact sciences, as well as the extent of his acquirements, chose him tutor in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard. There also, very soon afterwards, chiefly under the instruction of the Rev. Dr. Ware, who was then the Hollis Professor, he commenced the study of divinity, pursuing it zealously during two years, being, at the same time, the "working editor" of the North American Review. Its numbers from May, 1817, to March, 1819, inclusive, were edited by him. In May, of the latter year, at the age of thirty, he was called to Baltimore and ordained in this city as the first pastor of the Unitarian church which had just been erected. On this memorable occasion, the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing preached that discourse in exposition of the Unitarian faith, which has been so widely celebrated, published, and read in America and Europe: a discourse which is said to have "caused more remark on its theological views, while more controversy grew out of the statement of doctrines therein declared, than any single religious discourse in this country ever occasioned."
As clergyman of this congregation, Mr. Sparks remained a resident of our city for four years. He is well remembered in the families of his own church and of other religious societies, among whose members his firm but genial manners always made the studious and estimable gentleman a welcome guest. He was a steadfast laborer among his congregation; but the ultimate literary drift of his life was already beginning to develop itself, having probably received an impetus from his editorial task on the North American Review. In addition to his clerical duty in Baltimore, he did a great deal of work in editing the Unitarian Miscellany, in publishing his well-known Letters on the Comparative Moral tendency of the Unitarian and Trinitarian Doctrines, which drew on him the controversial notice of that renowned champion, Dr. Miller, of Princeton, and produced a discussion, which, instead of estranging the combatants, strengthened their personal relations, and increased their mutual confidence and respect. In after years, when Mr. Sparks required a Life of Jonathan Edwards for his American Biography, he selected Dr. Miller to write it, and, in the truly liberal spirit that always governed his editorial labors, and, indeed, his whole literary life, published the memoir of the great Calvanist "without the alteration of a single word." It was here, too, in Baltimore, in consequence of a sermon against Unitarianism by the late Rev. Dr. Wm. E. Wyatt, of St. Paul's, that Mr. Sparks published his volume of Letters on the Ministry, Ritual, and Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It was in Baltimore, in 1822, that he arranged and began the republication of Essays and Tracts in Theology by Wm. Penn, Bishop Hoadley, Newton, Whitby, Evelyn, Locke, and others. It was in Baltimore, also, during his religious ministry, that he received the flattering tribute from Congress of being elected its Chaplain. This was a great honor, won in ten years, by the Harvard student of 1811; and although his election alarmed the clergy and laity of other Christian denominations, and a member of Congress declared they had "voted Christ out of the House," still, in time, Congress learned to know him better, to admit the tolerance of his catholic spirit, and to honor him with increased confidence. But, in 1823, after four years of labor in our city, Mr. Sparks's health became so much impaired that he resolved to retire from the Church entirely, and devote himself exclusively to literature. Yet, he always loved Baltimore; he always met the people with warmth, and recurred joyfully to the happy years he spent in Maryland as teacher and minister. At the beginning of the late rebellion he wrote to me concerning an address published by one of our patriotic citizens: "I could not," said he, "but approve most highly its candor and independent tone, and the enlightened and just views it presented of our public affairs. It furnished a demonstration that there were brave spirits and true in your city, notwithstanding the misgivings which many, in this quarter, had, at that time, begun to indulge. Most heartily do I wish prosperity, good fortune, and success to Baltimore. With no place have I more deeply cherished associations. May peace, quiet, and brotherly sympathies prevail within her borders." And again, at a later day, he wrote in the same strain of affectionate memory of our city and its people: "I take a lively interest in all that concerns Maryland both present and past. I have not forgotten that my home was once there. I have many and deeply cherished recollections of Baltimore, which will remain in my heart and mind while the power of memory continues to act. The order of Providence and strange events have produced changes, but it is Baltimore, still." Such were the sentiments of this excellent man towards our state, and city, and people. They continued to be cherished by him to the last hour of his life, and were warmly repeated to me in one of the last letters he ever wrote, received but a day or two before his death. He left Baltimore reluctantly; his congregation parted with him painfully, and its farewell letter, written and signed by the late Chancellor of our state, Theodorick Bland, bears the most honorable testimony to the success of his pastoral labors.
Yet, probably, it was not ill health alone that determined Mr. Sparks's removal to Boston. I think he had already set his heart on the great themes of National History, and resolved, if possible, to pursue the work faithfully by the acquisition of the vast and scattered materials it needed. Upon his arrival in Massachusetts in 1823, he purchased the North American Review, and became its sole editor from January, 1824, to April, 1830. In these seven years his industrious pen contributed no less than fifty articles, many of profound study, and all adding to the solid critical literature of America. It was in 1828 that he made his first elaborate biographical essay in the attractive Life of John Ledyard, the American Traveller. About this time, too, good fruits were borne to him by his previous residence in Baltimore and the acquaintance he had made with the illustrious men who, in those days, were found every winter in Washington. In that city his worth had been recognized by the descendants of prominent revolutionary personages, by leading legislators and public functionaries from the several States, and, particularly, by such persons as Chief Justice Marshall, the biographer of Washington, and his nephew Bushrod Washington and Mr. Justice Story, both, at that time, Associate Judges of the Supreme Court. Thenceforward, the idea that had taken possession of his mind on the temporary failure of his health at Baltimore—"the city of noble souls, of large-hearted men," as he was wont to call it—became the ruling purpose of his life. He was to run the career of a man of letters, and in a country hardly ripe for literary production. American history was to be his occupation; all things else became subservient to this great purpose. He had conceived the project of collecting the correspondence of Washington, and of gathering all the accessible documents in this country and Europe necessary for an authentic life of the great chief. On his first application for the Washington manuscripts, which Mr. Justice Bushrod Washington had intended to edit, Mr. Sparks was told, much as he was respected, he could by no means have them. Yet, his journal of that date has no complaining, despondent mention of the rebuff, for, on that very day he set forth from the city of Washington on his journey to the South, in quest of other materials; and, with a light, confident, indefatigable spirit, went on patiently collecting them from public and private sources, everywhere finding profitable work, and, with marvellous keenness and sagacity, choosing and appropriating whatever he should want for the great task which it was his destiny to accomplish. Our archives at Annapolis, scant and neglected as they unfortunately are, still bear marks of his diligence; and, years after his task was completed in our State House, I have found, among our documents, the frequent traces of his minute and accurate labors. This, I am told, was a life-long trait of his preparation, for he always provided himself with every species of preliminary information which could lead to what he did not possess, in case, at some future day, it might become useful or necessary. His memorandums, therefore, were copious and explicit. Indeed, he became so familiar with the archives of the several States, that from his study in Massachusetts, he could readily, without a fresh journey, command the desired documents, and always indicate the department, and, generally, the shelf, book, or bundle in which the coveted manuscript was to be found by his correspondents. And, so he went on cheerily from state to state and family to family, increasing his national treasures, until, at last, the richest of the American collections was yielded to him by the Washington family and the government. The manuscripts at Mount Vernon—the entire correspondence of Washington and his papers—arranged by him in more than two hundred folio volumes; the state papers of the "old thirteen," and the private papers of many of the civil and military leaders of the Revolution, were opened to his inspection, and some of them actually placed in his possession for ten years, while engaged in the composition of his great work.
This would have been anxious labor even for a man of leisure, robust health, and a fortune that secured him from all care for present support or comfort. But Sparks was still poor, and, while engaged in this expensive preliminary task of mere accumulation—a task that might produce profitable results after many years—he was also obliged to provide for the needs of the passing day. His ready talent and economical habits enabled him to do it.[1] Nor did he rest satisfied with what he found in the United States or could gain by correspondence from abroad. He went to Europe to complete his researches; and the national and private archives of France and England, which had hitherto been closed to American students, were soon unlocked for him through the personal solicitations in his favor of Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. Lockhart, Mr. Hamilton, Lord Landsdowne, and Lord Holland, in Great Britain, and of General Lafayette, Monsieur Guizot, and Monsieur de Marbois in France;—another proud achievement by the charity student of 1811. I may add here, at once, that Mr. Sparks paid a second visit to Europe in 1840, in order to examine its archives; on that occasion, discovering, in the French cabinet, the original letter of Franklin and the famous map with our North-eastern boundary delineated by a "red line," which were so much discussed in the subsequent negotiations with Great Britain in regard to our limits in that quarter.
The first fruits of these domestic and foreign studies was Mr. Sparks's valuable publication, in 1829-30, of the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution; followed, after two years, by the Life of Gouverneur Morris, with selections from his correspondence and miscellaneous papers. In 1830, he originated and edited that excellent annual, so long a favorite in our country, known as the American Almanac; and, about the same time, he began his Library of American Biography, extending, in two series, to twenty-five volumes, for which he composed the charming biographies of La Salle, Ribault, Pulaski, Benedict Arnold, Father Marquette, Charles Lee, and Ethan Allen.