Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Hoping that his numerous personal friends in the various relations of life will do greater justice and honor to his memory than this pen can, the foregoing is respectfully tendered.

Very respectfully yours,
ADIN BALLOU.

But it is not necessary to seek an explanation of Judge Thayer's interest in life beyond the native tendencies which came to him by lawful inheritance. More than one person of his name and blood in former generations were noted for their public spirit and exercised a large influence in the affairs of the town. Traditions of two brothers, Captain Caleb Thayer and 'Squire Elisha Thayer, are still fresh. Captain Caleb Thayer was the great-grandfather of Adin Thayer, Esquire. Elijah was grandfather of Hon. Eli Thayer, member of Congress from the Worcester district, and founder of the Emigrant Aid Society, which had so illustrious a share in saving Kansas from slavery. Eli Thayer tells me Elijah governed Mendon. He always carried in town meeting what he wanted to carry, and killed what he wanted to kill.

Caleb Thayer, the father of the Judge, was an early anti- slavery man, and one of the founders of the Free Soil Party. He was a man of vigorous sense and great public spirit. He had large interests in Mendon and Blackstone. He represented Mendon in the Legislature and helped elect Charles Sumner to the Senate in 1851. He was generally sociable and cheerful, but subject to occasional periods of depression of spirits, when he liked to remain in solitude until the time of gloom passed by.

Adin Thayer's education was chiefly in the district schools of his neighborhood. Hosea Biglow may be taken as the type of the ordinary Yankee country boy of that day. Adin had the advantage, better, if you can have but one, than any university, of being brought up in the country. He was a member of that absolute democracy, the old-fashioned New England country town, where character and worth were the only titles to respect in the community, where the son of a President or the son of a Senator or of a Governor stood on an absolute and entire social equality with the son of the washerwoman. If the son of a President or Governor gave himself any airs on that account, he had applied to him a very vigorous and effective remedy well known to our Saxon ancestors.

Adin Thayer came to manhood when the hosts of slavery and freedom were marshalling for the great contest for the territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific.

He was soaked in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, a soaking which has somewhat the same effect on the moral and mental fibre that seven years in a tanner's vat used to have upon sole leather. How often I have known Adin, on some great political occasion or crisis, to crush some sophistry or compromise, or attempt to get things on a lower plane, by indignantly flashing out with some old text, such as, "Righteousness exalteth a nation," or "Sin is a reproach to any people," or answer, as he did once, to a gentleman who wanted him to sacrifice some moral principle for the sake of harmony in the Republican Party, "My friend, we will be first pure, and then peaceable."

Adin Thayer was a member of the School Committee of Worcester for some years. He was Senator from Worcester, I think, for two years, in 1871 and 1872. He was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the eighth district by President Lincoln on August 26, 1862, and gave way to a successor appointed by President Johnson, September 14, 1866. He was reappointed by President Grant, June 22, 1872, and held the office until January, 1877, when the eighth and tenth districts were consolidated. He was appointed Judge of Probate by Governor Rice in the fall of 1877, and held that office until his death. He was Chairman of the State Committee in 1878. He gave to the public three or four essays or speeches printed in newspapers, and some of them in pamphlet form. They were, under one title or another, treatises on the moral duties of citizenship and appeals to the youth of the State to take their full and patriotic share in its administration.

But his function in life was that of an organizer. He was an ambitious man. But he never suffered his ambitions to stand in the way of what he thought was the good of the Commonwealth or of the party. Many and many a time, as there are plenty of persons who can testify, it had been the expectation that he would be the choice of his party for Senator or for Representative of the district in Congress, or some important municipal office, but when the time came, Mr. Thayer was the first to suggest that victory and harmony or the public advantage would be best attained by some other candidate, to whose service he gave a zeal and efficiency which he never would have given in his own behalf. He believed in party in politics, in organization, in work in the ward and in the school district. But he believed in those things because they were, in his judgment, essential to the accomplishment of the highest results in the country and in the Commonwealth. He was absolutely incorruptible, either by money or by office. He was a man of clean hands and a pure heart. His methods were as open as the daylight. He conducted the great campaign against General Butler, when he was Chairman of the State committee. He came to Boston and found the knees of Boston trembling, people shaking in their shoes and their teeth chattering. He went into the committee room, put things to rights, organized a campaign never approached for thoroughness and efficiency in this Commonwealth, and during the whole time there sat at the table next his own a beautiful and refined young lady hearing and knowing everything that went on from the beginning of the campaign until the end. He had no political secrets. He never, to use a common phrase, "laid his ear to the ground." He never listened for the stamping of feet or the clapping of hands or the shouting or excitement or acclaim of the multitude. His ear was to the sky. He used to speak with infinite scorn of settling questions of righteousness by a show of hands. He had a perfect faith in the American people and the people of Massachusetts, but it was a faith in the American people and the people of Massachusetts, governed by reason and not by passion, acting under constitutional restraints, listening ever for the voice of duty, a people acting not on the first impulse, but on sober second thought. He was often in the minority, and once or twice in his life a bolter. He was never afraid of being in the minority. But he never was contented until he had changed or helped to change that minority into a majority. He was a politician almost from his cradle to his grave. He believed that the highest human occupation was to take a share in the leadership and direction of a self- governing people. He was a very tolerant, friendly and considerate man, in dealing with men who differed from himself. He would pardon sinners. He would pardon politicians with whose efforts there was, as he thought, even a mingling of ambition and self-seeking. But he had nothing but hatred and contempt for men who received all the benefits of the Republic, but shrank from any labor or sacrifice in its behalf. To his mind the one base creature in the Commonwealth was the man who said he was no politician. He thoroughly believed in Ralph Waldo Emerson's saying, which he borrowed from his brother Charles: "That is the one base thing in the universe, to receive benefits and render none." He had a clear business sense. He was the best adviser I knew of in Worcester, with but one possible exception, for clients who were in financial difficulties. He was a man of absolute integrity, of absolute veracity, and of a tender and boundless compassion. One of the most touching scenes I ever beheld was, when at his funeral, among the men of high station and of honor, there came forward a little group of Negroes and fugitive slaves who had been attracted to Worcester by its reputation as the home of freedom. They passed by the coffin with bowed heads and moistened eyes, every one of them probably knowing him as the friend and benefactor who had made life possible for them in this strange and unaccustomed community. He did not get carried off his feet by any sentimentalities.

He was the best of company. You could not talk with him or tackle him without a bright and entertaining answer. He was no great respecter of persons in such an encounter. I remember meeting him one day, when he said he had just been spending Sunday in Canton. "Indeed!" said I, "my great-grandfather used to live there, and is buried there." "Well, sir," he answered, "it may be a very respectable town for all that."