Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

The Worcester Lyceum, which furnished the principal course of lectures in the city in those days, was in the hands of some very worthy and conservative old Whigs. They would not permit any politics or religion, or what was called Radicalism, either in religious or social matters, to be discussed on their platform. So we had to listen to very respectable and worthy, but rather dull and tame conservative gentlemen, or stay away, as we preferred. A few of the young men, of whom I was one, conspired to get possession of the Lyceum. They turned out in force for the election of officers, chose me President, and we got Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson and other shining lights of a newer philosophy, much to the indignation of the old Whig magnates. But the lectures were very successful, and at the end of my Presidency, which lasted two or three years, we had an ample balance in our treasury.

If I were to give an account of my professional life for twenty years, I must make another book. It was full of interest and romance. The client in those days used to lay bare his soul to his lawyer. Many of the cases were full of romantic interest. The lawyer followed them as he followed the plot of an exciting novel, from the time the plaintiff first opened his door and told his story till the time when he heard the sweetest of all sounds to a lawyer, the voice of the foreman saying: "The jury find for the plaintiff." Next to the "yes," of a woman, that is the sweetest sound, I think, that can fall on human ears.

I used to have eighteen or twenty law cases at the fall term each year. The judges gave their opinions orally in open Court, and the old judges like Shaw and Metcalf, used to enliven an opinion with anecdotes or quaint phrases, which lent great interest to the scene. If Walter Scott could have known and told the story of the life of an old Massachusetts lawyer from the close of the Revolution down to the beginning of the Rebellion, there is nothing in the great Scotch novels which would have surpassed it for romance and for humor.

I think I may fairly claim that I had a good deal to do with developing the equity system in the courts of Massachusetts, and with developing the admirable Insolvency system of Massachusetts, which is substantially an equity system, from which the United States Bankruptcy statutes have been so largely copied.

The great mass of the people of Massachusetts, Whigs and Democrats as well as Republicans, were loyal and patriotic and full of zeal when the war broke out. A very few of the old Whigs and Democrats, who were called "Hunkers" or "Copperheads," sympathized with the Rebellion, or if they did not, were so possessed with hatred for the men who were putting it down that they could find nothing to approve, but only cause for complaint and faultfinding. Andrew, the Governor, Sumner and Wilson, the Senators, most of the members of Congress, most of the leaders in the Legislature and in the military and political activities, were of the old Free Soil Party. There was a feeling, not wholly unreasonable, that the old Whigs had been somewhat neglected, and that their cooperation and help were received rather coldly. This feeling led to the movement, called the People's Party, which begun at a large public meeting in Cambridge, where my dear old friend and partner, ex-Governor Washburn, was one of the speakers. That party called a State Convention and nominated Charles Devens for Governor. Devens had been an old Whig. He had become a Republican in 1856, and had been one of the earliest to enlist in the War, in which he became afterward the most famous Massachusetts soldier. He was a man of spirit, very affectionate and generous, always ready to stand by his friends, especially if he suspected that anybody had treated them unjustly. The People's Party sent a Committee to the seat of war in September, 1862. The Committee found Devens in his tent, repeated to him the plans of his old Whig friends, and induced him to accept the nomination of the People's Party for Governor.

I was called to the battlefield of Antietam, where a near kinsman of mine had been mortally wounded, just about the same time. I entered Devens's tent just as this Committee was leaving it with his written acceptance in their hands. I told him the other side of the story, told him how the whole people were alive with enthusiasm, and that Governor Andrew was doing the very best possible, and that these petty jealousies, while there was some little reason for them, ought not to affect the public action of the people. Devens regretted very much what he had done. He told me that if he could recall the letter, he would do it. But it was too late.

Governor Andrew was triumphantly reelected, and Devens was ever after an earnest and loyal Republican.

CHAPTER X POLITICAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM 1848 TO 1869

In 1848, the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts nominated candidates for State officers. It was made up of Whigs, Democrats and members of the Liberty Party. It had made no distinct issue with the Whig Party upon matters of State administration. Governor Briggs, the Whig Governor, was a wise and honest Chief Magistrate, highly respected by all the people. But the Free Soil leaders wisely determined that if they were to have a political party, they must have candidates for State officers as well as National. It is impossible to organize a political party with success whose members are acting together in their support of one candidate and striving with all their might against each other when another is concerned. My father was urged to be the Free Soil candidate for Governor. Charles Francis Adams and Edmund Jackson visited him at Concord to press it upon him as a duty. Charles Allen wrote him an earnest letter to the same effect. But he was an old friend of Governor Briggs and disliked very much to become his antagonist. He looked to the Whig Party for large accessions to the Free Soil ranks. A large plurality of the people of the community were still devoted to that party. He doubted very much the wisdom of widening the breach between them by a conflict on other questions than that of slavery. So he refused his consent. Stephen C. Phillips, an eminent Salem merchant, and a former Member of Congress, was nominated. The result was there was no choice of State officers by the people, and the election of the Whig candidates was made by the Legislature.

The next year it occurred to the leaders of the Free Soil and Democratic Parties that they had only to unite their forces to overthrow the Whigs. The Free Soil leaders thought the effect of this would be the eventual destruction of the Whig Party at the North,—as afterward proved to be the case,— and the building up in its place of a party founded on the principle of opposition to the extension of slavery. So in 1849 there was a coalition between the Free Soil and the Democratic Parties in some counties and towns, each supporting the candidates of the other not specially obnoxious to them, neither party committing itself to the principles of the other party or waiving its own. In the fall of the next year, 1850, this policy was pursued throughout the State and resulted in the election by the Legislature of a Democratic Governor, Mr. Boutwell, and of Charles Sumner as the successor of Daniel Webster in the Senate. The experiment was repeated with like success in the fall of 1851.