Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

William and Mary was the oldest college in the country, except Harvard. It numbered among its children many famous statesmen, including Jefferson, Marshall, Peyton Randolph, and Monroe. Washington was its Chancellor for twelve years. Its graduates loved it ardently. I came to the conclusion that it would tend very much to restore the old affectionate feeling between the States to rebuild this College without inquiring too strictly into the merits of the case, as tested by any strict principle of law. I accordingly reported and advocated a bill for appropriating sixty or seventy thousand dollars to rebuild the College. Afterward, when on the Committee of Claims in the Senate, I advocated extending the same principle to all colleges, schools and other institutions of education and charity destroyed by the operations of the War without regard to the question who was in fault. This policy was, after a good deal of opposition and resistance, successfully carried out.

But the William and Mary College Bill was reported at the time when the passions excited by the War were still burning in the breasts of many Republican statesmen. The measure was received with derision. I was hardly allowed to go on with my speech in order, and the ordinary courtesy of a brief extension of time to finish it was refused amid great clamor. But I got the Bill through the House the next winter. I had a powerful ally in Mr. Perce of Mississippi, a Northern soldier, who had settled in that State after the War. It was not considered in the Senate. The measure was renewed again later in the House. But it was bitterly attacked by Mr. Reed of Maine, afterward Speaker, and defeated. Afterward I succeeded in getting it through the Senate when the Democrats had possession of the House, during the Administration of President Harrison, and it became a law.

I have been assured by many Southern men that that measure, and the report and speech in which I advocated it, had a very strong and wide influence in restoring good feeling toward the Union in the minds of the people of Virginia. Several of the graduates of William and Mary who afterward became Republicans have assured me of this with great emphasis. I was much pleased to get the following letter from Governor Henry A. Wise, the eminent Virginia statesman, who was, with two or three exceptions, the most powerful and influential advocate of secession in the South.

RICHMOND VA
Feby 13th 1872.
HON MR HOAR
OF MASSTS.

Honored Sir.

I write for no reason but one of pure feeling of respect— not even for a reply. I am a visitor of Wm and Mary College —truly of the most venerable of the "Mothers of Thought" —and have read your excellent appeal to the H. Reps: in her behalf. It was worthy of that Grand old Comth, Massts, the elder sister of this once glorious Comth, which hailed her heartily in the Night of Revolution against Tyrrany. It was worthy of sweet memories—worthy of Letters—it was pious and patriotic. Let me just add a sentence more, to say that if Rebellion and Sectional Hate are to be eradicated— and I hope they are—that is the way to do it. Your speech & the passage of such bills, catholic in every sense of love & charity, will do more to heal our Country's wounds than all the caustic of reconstruction which can be applied.

With unaffected gratitude for your Speech, I pray you will not pause upon it, but keep the bill to its passage through both Houses of Congress. I know you would if you could see the destitution of instruction, and the poverty which cant pay for it, on the Consecrated peninsula of Jas Town, York Town, and Williamsburg. Ah! tear down every parapet of War— cruel War, wanton war call it if you will—but for the Past, for Piety's sake, for Learning and Moral's sake let Old Wm & Mary stand a Beacon Light for the guide of the Future.

Very sincerely
Yrs
HENRY A. WISE

Governor Wise had a very conspicuous career in the United States House of Representatives. He was a very zealous supporter of the Southern doctrine before the War. He was regarded as a good deal of a fire eater. He was Governor of Virginia when John Brown was executed. But in spite of the horror and indignation that the people of the South felt for John Brown's raid he did full justice to the heroic quality of the man. He declared him "the gamest man" he ever saw.

I served in my second term on the Committee on Elections under the Chairmanship of George W. McCrary. Election cases in the House up to that time were, as they always were in the English House of Commons and as they have been too often in the Senate, determined entirely by party feeling. Whenever there was a plausible reason for making a contest the dominant party in the House almost always awarded the seat to the man of its own side. There is a well-authenticated story of Thaddeus Stevens, that going into the room of the Committee of Elections, of which he was a member, he found a hearing going on. He asked one of his Republican colleagues what was the point in the case. "There is not much point to it" was the answer. "They are both damned scoundrels." "Well," said Stevens, "which is the Republican damned scoundrel? I want to go for the Republican damned scoundrel."