Very soon after my return to Washington, I became personally acquainted with Judge Upshur, Secretary of State. From the first day I saw and conversed with him in his office, until the day of his death, I saw him at least once, often twice a day, and wrote down at night what had been the subjects of our conversation in our interview. I did this at his suggestion, so that he could duly consider the subject matter of our discourse in the day time. He was one of the most agreeable, sensible and truly good men, whom I ever became personally acquainted with. Sometimes he has been called a nullifier, perhaps, but no man in the nation was ever more attached to the Union than he was. We thought precisely alike on that subject—that it is the highest duty of all our citizens to use all the means in our power to promote the interests of all sections of the Union, and of all classes of its people.
The natural cements of our confederacy, consisting of mutual interests promoted by mutual acts of kindness and affection for each other, Judge Upshur preferred, as he often told me, to all or even any resorts to the violent restraints of physical force, such as the despot and the tyrant employ. He dwelt with rapture on the future prospects of this nation, when its citizens and its institutions, would cover the whole of North America, like a mantle, and when our ships would float on every sea and visit every island and country in the world. When our steamers would ascend and descend every river of any size that irrigates the countries of both continents. By such means, he thought, christianity would be spread from pole to pole, and all the world become united in the bonds of peace, harmony and brotherly affection. In this way, wars would cease and the despot and the warrior be laid aside as useless. “The nodding plume, he said, dyed in blood, would no more be seen.” Knowing as I did, all his views and all his plans, and the means which he would have used to carry them into execution, I felt the overwhelming calamity of his death the more on these accounts. His plans were all formed, and they were just about to be carried into effect, otherwise he would have instantly gone into private life. Laying my own feelings, as to myself, out of the question, and looking only to the public interest, I felt myself and the country overwhelmed by an awful calamity. Any successor of Judge Upshur would not have the time, such as he had devoted to that object, to form and mature plans of operation. And if he had such plans laid as Upshur had, his successor might not have the necessary means of effecting his object. As a nation, we deserved to suffer, but still we may mourn for our dreadful loss, sustained by his untimely death.
Judge Upshur was a man of good principles and pure morals. He was all in reality and truth, that any old Virginia gentleman was in the days of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, an ornament to human nature itself and of the “Ancient Dominion.” He recalled to my mind the old patriots of Virginia, for whom from my earliest years I had entertained a strong and abiding sense of their worth, their intrinsic value, as men and as citizens of this republic. From three of their Presidents I had received numerous marks of their confidence in me and my relatives. This may be one reason almost without my knowing it why I have always taken such pleasure in doing justice to Virginia’s favorite sons. I shall always take a melancholy pleasure in remembering Judge Upshur, and in associating him in my mind with my old friend Chief Justice Marshall. From the latter gentleman I received a great deal of aid in the way of information, while I was in Washington, many years since, when I was preparing for the press my History of Ohio. An old Virginia gentleman, as he exists in my recollections of Jefferson, Marshall, Monroe and Upshur—the Randolphs, the Masons, the Lees, the Pendletons—and what I hear of Archer, Rives and others is as perfect as human nature can be.
Here I present a very condensed account of the awful calamity on board the Princeton on the 28th day of February, 1844.—The first announcement of the event is derived from the Intelligencer of the 29th of February, and the account of the funeral obsequies is extracted from the Globe of the 4th of March.
In the whole course of our lives it has never fallen to our lot to announce to our readers a more shocking calamity—shocking in all its circumstances and concomitants—than that which occurred on board the United States ship Princeton, yesterday afternoon, whilst under way, in the river Potomac, fourteen or fifteen miles below the city. Yesterday was a day appointed by the courtesy and hospitality of Captain Stockton, Commander of the Princeton, for receiving as visiters to his fine ship (lying off Alexandria) a great number of guests, with their families, liberally and numerously invited to spend the day on board. The day was most favorable, and the company was large and brilliant, of both sexes; not less probably in number than four hundred, among whom were the President of the United States, the Heads of the several Departments, and their families. At a proper hour, after the arrival of the expected guests, the vessel got under way and proceeded down the river, to some distance below Fort Washington. During the passage down, one of the large guns on board (carrying a ball of 225 pounds) was fired more than once, exhibiting the great power and capacity of that formidable weapon of war. The ladies had partaken of a sumptuous repast; the gentlemen had succeeded them at the table, and some of them had left it; the vessel was on her return up the river, opposite to the fort, where Captain Stockton consented to fire another shot from the same gun, around and near which, to observe its effects, many persons had gathered, though by no means so many as on similar discharges in the morning, the ladies who then thronged the deck being on this fatal occasion almost all between decks, and out of reach of harm.
The gun was fired. The explosion was followed, before the smoke cleared away so as to observe its effect, by shrieks of wo which announced a dire calamity. The gun had burst, at a point three or four feet from the breech, and scattered death and desolation around. Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State, Mr. Gilmer, so recently placed at the head of the Navy, Commodore Kennon, one of its gallant officers, Virgil Maxcy, lately returned from a diplomatic residence at the Hague, Mr. Gardner, of New York, (formerly a member of the Senate of that State,) were among the slain. Besides these, seventeen seamen were wounded, several of them badly and probably mortally. Among those stunned by the concussion, we learn not all seriously injured, were Capt. Stockton himself; Col. Benton, of the Senate; Lieut. Hunt, of the Princeton; W. D. Robinson, of Georgetown.—Other persons also were perhaps more or less injured, of whom in the horror and confusion of the moment, no certain account could be obtained. The above are believed to comprise the whole of the persons known to the public who were killed or dangerously or seriously hurt.
The scene upon the deck may more easily be imagined than described. Nor can the imagination picture to itself the half of its horrors. Wives, widowed in an instant by the murderous blast! Daughters smitten with the heart-rending sight of their father’s lifeless corpse! The wailings of agonized females! The piteous grief of the unhurt but heart-stricken spectators! The wounded seamen borne down below! The silent tears and quivering lips of their brave and honest comrades, who tried in vain to subdue or to conceal their feelings! What words can adequately depict a scene like this?
On Saturday the last rites were paid to the distinguished men who laid down their lives on the deck of the Princeton. The funeral procession presented the most sad, solemn, affecting scene ever witnessed in this city of the Union. The President’s House was again—as on the demise of General Harrison—made the receptacle of death. Instead of one, five bodies were now laid out in the lately illuminated east room of that fair mansion, which before the melancholy fate which there awaited General Harrison in the first month of the first year of his presidential term, had never known a pall within its precincts. The first month of the last year of the same term found it again turned almost into a charnel house. Like “the Capets monument,” it became “a palace of dim night,” and gathered within its gloom the blackened and bloody remains of a most frightful tragedy—the bodies of five intimate friends of the President, two of them his cabinet associates, all hurried out of existence while he sat unconsciously, with only a plank between them, enjoying a song. What a thin partition in this life separates its scenes of greatest enjoyment and bitterest grief!!
Religious rites were performed over the dead by the Rev. Mr. Hawley and Mr. Butler, of the Episcopal Church, and Mr. Laurie, of the Presbyterian Church, before leaving the President’s House. The bodies were then hearsed, and the procession led off by the military companies, which filled the avenue in front of the President’s house. The military array, composed of horse, infantry, and artillery, made a very imposing appearance; and the train of carriages which followed extended along the avenue more than a mile. A vast multitude, on foot and on horseback, from the neighboring cities and adjoining country, filled the spaces not occupied by the procession. The whole distance between the President’s and the Capitol square, as far as the vision could reach through the darkness of the day and the dust, seemed to be a living current, in slow movement to the wailing and mournful music of the band, which, with the sound of distant cannon and solemn-pealing bells, alone broke the silence. The immense crowd was perfectly mute in its march. The dread quiet that reigned over all; the almost twilight darkness that dimmed the whole day; the deep mists that shadowed the surrounding hills and horizon from sight; the cloud of dust that covered the long and gloomy procession; the sweeping trains of crape that blackened the closed windows and doors of the dwellings on the way,—gave, altogether, the most saddened and impressive aspect of wo ever worn by this city. It was rendered the more deeply affecting by the contrast of but a few days before, when the warmth of a vernal sun had shone out, giving light and gayety to our streets, opening the buds upon the trees and bringing out the tender green upon the grounds whereon the snow had so recently lain.
The mournful ceremonials had just been concluded, when the city was alarmed with the apprehension of another fatal accident to the Chief Magistrate himself. As he returned in his carriage of state from the place of interment, (the Congress burying ground, about three miles from the President’s House,) his horses took fright, and ran with fury along the great thoroughfare, filled with people and carriages. There was no arresting their wild career; the reins were broken in the attempt to restrain them, and all that could be done was to give room to their headlong flight. As they approached the turn in the end of the avenue, obstructed by the President’s square, they got scared at something on one side of the street, and shied off in their course to the curb-stone on the other side, which gave the advantage to an intrepid colored man on the side walk to seize them by the short reins and stop them. A little beyond, in the direction they were going, lay masses of the large stone rejected from the new treasury building, near the precipitous bank to the south of the President’s wall. Had not the career of the horses been arrested at the moment that it was, the next would have wrecked the carriage on these rocks, or precipitated it over the bank. The President was happy to escape from his state equipage, over which all guidance and control was lost, and find himself afoot, by the side of his humble deliverer.