The life and times of John Kelly, tribune of the people

by J. Fairfax McLaughlin

Mr. Morris, of Pennsylvania: “I object; because if the gentleman is allowed to proceed, other gentlemen must be allowed to speak in reply, and thus we would have a general debate in violation of the rules of the House, and I will not agree to violating the rules of the House.”

Mr. Kelly: “Inasmuch as there are objections I withdraw my appeal. I do not desire to force myself upon the House.”

Thus did the Know-Nothings wince under the lash of John Kelly of New York. Had he chosen to insist, he would have been heard, for he was now one of the leaders of the House, and the majority would have found a way to secure him the floor. He was the most formidable enemy of the Know-Nothings in the Northern States, for he knew how to act as well as to talk. Dreamers and visionaries write fine theories, but only great men reduce them to practice. Mr. Kelly’s youth and early manhood were passed at a period when native American bigotry and intolerance were burning questions in State and National affairs. He had been taught by observation, and a study of the fathers of the government, that the best service he could render his country was to make war on Know-Nothingism. He had met the leaders of that party in their strongholds in the city of New York, and vanquished them. Before his day there were clubs and factions, and local leaders and captains of bands—Bill Poole and his Know-Nothings, Isaiah Rynders and his Empire Club, Arthur Tappan and his Abolitionists, Mike Walsh and his Spartans, Samuel J. Tilden and his Barnburners, Charles O’Conor and his Hunkers—but the born captain had not appeared to mould the discordant elements to his will, and make them do the work that was to be done. When John Kelly struck the blow at Know-Nothingism at the primary election on the corner of Grand and Elizabeth streets, already described, and drove out the ballot-box stuffers, the people of New York instantaneously recognized a man behind that blow, and everybody felt better for the discovery. When he ran against the celebrated Mike Walsh for Congress, one of the most popular characters who ever figured in New York politics, and beat him, the native American proscriptionists were glad that John Kelly was out of the way, for while they feared him in local politics, they persuaded themselves that he would be swallowed up in obscurity among the great men at Washington, and that he would be heard of no more. Given a big idea lodged in the centre of a big man’s head, and be sure fruit will spring from the seed. Kelly carried his idea with him to Congress, and hostility to Know-Nothingism marked his career there, as it had done at home.

When James Buchanan became President, John Kelly became one of the leaders of the Administration party in Congress. He was then thirty-four years old. One day General Cass, Secretary of State, visited the Capitol, and in conversation with a friend said: “Look at John Kelly moving about quietly among the members. The man is full of latent power that he scarcely dreams of himself. He is equal to half a dozen of those fellows around him. Yes, by all odds, the biggest man among them all. The country will yet hear from Honest John Kelly.” These words of General Cass, uttered in his imposing George-the-Third style of conversation, shortly after were repeated to old James Gordon Bennett, the friend of Kelly’s boyhood, and the editor took early opportunity to mention Honest John Kelly in the Herald, and frequently afterwards applied the same title to him. The appellation struck the public as appropriate, and soon passed into general use. The subject of this memoir has been called “Honest John Kelly,” from that day to this. In a letter to the present writer, in 1880, the late Alexander H. Stephens said: “I have stood by John Kelly in his entire struggle, and have often said, and now repeat, that I regard him as the ablest, purest and truest statesman that I have ever met with from New York.”

Mr. Buchanan was urged by Mr. Kelly to appoint Augustus Schell Collector of the Port of New York. Other members of the New York delegation in the House, and both the New York Senators opposed the selection of Mr. Schell. Mr. Seward was vehement in his opposition. But John Kelly stuck with the tenacity of Stanton in the War Department, or Stonewall Jackson in the battle-field. The President nominated Mr. Schell Senator Clay of Alabama reported the nomination favorably from the Committee of Commerce, William H. Seward and the others were overborne, and Mr. Schell was confirmed by the Senate.

When Mr. Kelly entered upon his political career, to be a foreigner, or the son of a foreigner, in New York, in the opinion of the intolerant of both parties, was deemed a matter that required an apology, or at least an explanation. In 1857 one of the leading representative men of the Federal Administration in New York was John Kelly, and those who had been persecuted and oppressed before were recognized and advanced equally with all others in the city and State of New York; and the vanishing Know-Nothings at last realized that the absent Kelly had dealt them heavier blows from Washington than he ever delivered in New York. In these later and happier days men are no longer ashamed to be called the sons of Irishmen, and at the festive board of the Irish societies the notable ones of the country gather to make eloquent speeches and drink rousing toasts. But while some men forget, true Irishmen and true descendants of Irishmen have not forgotten their Horatius at the bridge in the brave days of old. John Kelly, were he a man of vanity, in contrasting the auspicious scenes of to-day with those of the dark days of 1844 and 1854, and in viewing his own part in effecting the change, could not fail to find much cause for pride and complacent reflection; but vanity is not his weakness.

John Kelly
(AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS.)

Mr. Kelly went to Washington in the winter of 1855 to succeed the brilliant Mike Walsh in the House of Representatives. How did the weighty statesmen receive him? He went into their midst a big-boned, heavy-browed, brawny stranger, with his far-seeing eye, and firm solid step, and as he strode in among the Solons of Washington they all felt an instantaneous conviction from his conversation and bearing that in the society of the most eminent men of the Republic John Kelly was exactly where he was entitled to be. He flattered no great man by the least symptom of being himself flattered by his notice. He measured his strength in discussion with the most celebrated men in Congress, and feared the face of none. At their social gatherings he responded to the brilliant bon mots of the wits of the capital by quiet strokes of humor, and anecdote, and story, that sent bursts of merriment through the circle, delighting the sensible, and penetrating even those who encased themselves in triple folds of aristocratic reserve.

There is nothing artificial about him, but he has been always, and was so particularly in those days, the child of nature, with no shadow of pretension or affectation in his manners. He was not simply a man lifted up from the ranks of toil to be noticed by the world’s favored ones, but he was endowed with that greatness of soul which always distinguishes its possessor above his fellows, whether his lot be cast in the highest or lowest situation of life. It is not strange that New York has felt, and will continue to feel, the moral influence of this man as long as he continues to take part in its affairs, loved by the masses for his lion-like courage, and by friends who meet him face to face in retirement for his almost womanly gentleness, while for obvious reasons he is hated and vilified by those who do not appreciate such qualities. And this courage and gentleness and unruffled equanimity come all in a breath, perfectly natural and free, for they come of their own accord. His composure under all circumstances has often been remarked upon, and in the hurly-burly of New York politics, and the headlong rush of the tide of life in the great metropolis, John Kelly is as sedate and recollected as the ascetic in his cloister. But there is nothing of sourness in his temper. Reflecting much at all times, he possesses the rare gift of thinking while he is talking, and when he is expressing one idea his thoughts never outrun the present sentence, as do those of nine-tenths of people, to frame words for the next one. He does not, in short, think of what he is going to say next, but of what he is saying now. Among the finer shades of character that distinguish one man from another it is extremely difficult to define that untranslatable something which gives to each person his individuality; but this intentness of Mr. Kelly upon the immediate subject under consideration, both as listener and talker, is wonderfully attractive, and constitutes one of the subtle forces of his character as a political leader. This faculty of concentration belongs exclusively to original minds. Self-reliant, and borrowing nothing from others as to style or conduct, he gets at the point without labored approaches, and acts great parts with a happy carelessness. When others have been cast down and worried with care over affairs in which Mr. Kelly was more interested than themselves, his elastic spirit has not given way. Loving thus the sunshine, he affords a conspicuous example of the truth of the inspired words, “a merry man doeth good like a medicine.” Nothing has ever dispelled his cheerfulness. Defeat, deprivation of office, desertion by those he trusted, and who owed all they were to him, have neither embittered him, cast him down, daunted his courage, nor shaken his faith in himself. Domestic afflictions such as few men ever know—the death of his entire family—have come upon him, and while the keen shaft scarred the granite, his constancy has remained, and neither head nor chastened heart succumbed to misanthropy or rebellion against Providence. Surely something more substantial than wit, or genius, or equable temper was required to sustain John Kelly in the trials he has borne. The natural can only accomplish the natural, but a good man draws from supernatural fountains to replenish the well-springs in the arid plains of the desert, and Christianity, not for holiday show but daily use, must have been this man’s sheet-anchor.