Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Captain Eads afterward had a scheme which always seemed to me very feasible for a ship-railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. His project was to construct a railway with a sufficient number of tracks, and to raise ships of the largest size on the principle applied in locks of ordinary canals. He had a contrivance made of stout beams which would hold and support a loaded vessel to which it was adjusted. The beams were to operate something like the keys of a piano, and the whole operation was something like that by which hatters measure and record the shape of a man's head. This plan received the hearty commendation of some very eminent engineers, including Major Reed of England, the highest authority of such subjects, the constructor of the dry docks at Malta. The scheme had a good many supporters in Congress. I think it would have been adopted but for Captain Eads's premature death.

Rather a singular coincidence took place when I was interesting myself in this matter which possibly may be not too trivial to record. One Thanksgiving morning I received by express a beautiful copy of Wordsworth, which I had bought in Boston the day before. Just as I was opening it the morning mail was brought in. I opened the book at random and turned to Wadsworth's poem, "The Highland Broach." My eye caught the following lines:

Lo! Ships from seas by nature barred,
Mount along ways by man prepared;
Along far stretching vales, whose streams
Seek other seas, their canvas gleams,
And busy towns grow up on coasts
Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts.

I turned by eye from these verses to the mail in which was a copy of a New York illustrated journal containing an account of the Eads ship-railway.

The inscription in Eads's "History of the Jetties," above referred to, is as follows:

To Hon. George F. Hoar, who, as a member of the House Committee which matured the Jetty Act, prepared the first report in its favor, this book is presented; with the assurance that his unfaltering support of the enterprise through all its struggles, entitled him to a prominent place among the statesmen to whom the producers in the Valley of the Mississippi are most largely indebted.

JAS B. EADS
Washington, D. C.,
February
1881

I had the pleasure of receiving a telegram from New Orleans shortly after the completion of the jetties saying that a loaded steamer, drawing between twenty-seven and twenty-eight feet of water, had safely passed through them to New Orleans.

The Commission appointed by the Government insisted upon having the jetties constructed at the south pass of the Mississippi River. This Captain Eads strenuously resisted and urged the superiority of the southwest pass for the purpose. The House when it passed the jetty bill adopted Mr. Eads's plan. But the Senate insisted on taking the opinion of the Commission, much to his distress. The Senate was firm, and the House was obliged to yield. I think everybody now agrees that Eads was right, and that the scheme would have been perfectly successful, and would have continued to perform all that was desired of it, if his counsel had been taken. As it is, the jetties have been of great value and well worth their cost. But it will probably be necessary some time to construct a similar work in the southwest pass.

During my first term in the House on the Committee on Education and Labor I had the important duty of investigating the conduct of the Freedman's Bureau and other charges made against General Oliver O. Howard. I wrote nearly the whole of the report, all of it containing the arguments of the Committee, and the summing up of the evidence. A few passages are by the Chairman, Mr. Arnell. The Freedman's Bureau was established to aid the colored people who had been suddenly emancipated by President Lincoln's Proclamation, to attain a condition where they could get their living in comfort, and their children could be educated. General Howard, a very eminent officer in the Civil War, afterward at the head of the Army, was a man singularly fitted for this duty. He was profoundly religious, absolutely incorruptible, a man of very kind heart, not afraid to break out new paths, apt to succeed in all his undertakings, a lover of Liberty and thoroughly devoted to his work. The resources at his command were the unclaimed pay of the negro soldiers and some other sums specially granted from the Treasury. But the work was one entirely different from anything which had been accomplished by government agency in the country before. He purchased tracts of land, which were divided into building lots, which were sold to the colored people. Money was advanced to them to build houses, the Freedman's Bureau taking a mortgage as security. The Bureau endowed Howard University, of which General Howard was made President. A large Congregational Church was built in Washington with moneys advanced by the Bureau, the religious society giving its bonds at seven per cent. for which the structure was ample security. General Howard had incurred the bitter animosity not only of the enemies of the negro race, who disliked the whole object for which the Bureau was founded, but of other persons whom he had offended. I believe in no instance was there any loss to the Government, or to the fund in his charge. He was able to establish in comfortable homes, and to educate and to provide work for many thousand freedmen who had flocked to Washington during the disturbed period immediately following emancipation. After a thorough investigation, where the prosecution was conducted by Fernando Wood, a very distinguished and able Representative from New York, formerly Mayor of the City, General Howard was completely exonerated by the report of the majority of the Committee. The report was accepted by the House.