“The other sections of the bill are either explanatory of the first, or designed to guard against mistake or fraud in its execution. Its general purport and object is, as its title indicates, to secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain.”

Mr. Kelly next enters into a minute history of the vast extent of the public lands of the United States, how and when title to them was acquired, from whom derived, and an interesting resumè of the subject from a period anterior to the adoption of Articles of Confederation between the thirteen original States, down to the latest acquisition of territory in 1854, known as the Gadsden Purchase. After an instructive review of European, and especially of English colonization, he continues as follows:

“But, sir, humanity claims for this bill the serious consideration of every member of this House, more especially of those who, like myself, represent in part any of the large and populous cities of the Union. For the laboring classes, large cities and towns, with superabundant populations, are too often but the portals from wretchedness to death. They can find no employment whereby to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and idleness, poverty and crime are the inevitable results. The very shifts they resort to, the avocations they follow in quest of subsistence, even if they desire to live honestly, yield but scarcely sufficient to supply unwholesome, scanty, unnutritious diet; and hence the statistics of city life exhibit a frightful mortality. * * Does not humanity, then, as well as patriotism, invoke our favorable action on a bill which will withdraw from our large cities this overplus population, and by giving a proper incentive to its industry and labor, rescue it from pauperism and death? It is not for the worthless vagrant who is found in every large city, lurking amid the haunts of vice and wretchedness, I appeal. This pauperism strikes down those who are able and willing to work, and, therefore, are fit subjects for the bounty of Congress. It is a truism in political economy that when pauperism siezes upon this class of citizens, the wages of labor are reduced to the cost of subsistence. The whole class must therefore be subjected to the necessity of working, rather to avoid the poor-house than to better their condition. Rescue these and such as these, not only from New York or Boston, or New Orleans or Baltimore, but from every city, and town, and village in the Union; rescue them from drudgery and death, and transform them into useful and industrious citizens of a free Republic. The earth which God made is man’s. Give him, at least, a share of it, a spot for a cot and a garden, and a grave when he dies, else God will hold us as usurpers and faithless stewards, when the great day of reckoning shall come.”[51]

Nothing in the political career of John Kelly has been more marked than his hostility to the great land cormorants, particularly the railroad corporations, and in nearly all his public utterances from that day to this he has uniformly denounced the venal men who have controlled the lobbies of Congress, and bought legislation by bribery and gifts, whereby they have usurped so vast a part of the public domain. A true history of Congressional grants to those corporations has yet to be written. The annals of Congress show nothing so disgraceful, and so disastrous to the public welfare, as the wholesale donations of the lands of the people to the great railroad monopolists.

In closing this rapid sketch of John Kelly’s Congressional career, it may be observed that necessarily many things have been omitted which properly should find a place in his complete biography. The object sought here is to elucidate his character, and the transactions which have been selected for this purpose were among those in which he more especially displayed the bent of his mind, his love of human kind, and the practical business direction of his thoughts and language. Mr. Kelly had not reached his thirty-fourth year when he entered Congress. He had had no former experience in National politics, and was called upon to contend with statesmen of great ability, long service, and with a large following in the House. Two or three terms are required, generally, before members can hope to attain prominence as legislators and debaters in a body where men of so much ability are in rivalry for the palm of superiority. In spite of these obstacles, Mr. Kelly took rank among the leading men even during his first term, and during his second he was placed on the Committee of Ways and Means, the most important committee of the House, was recognized as one of the leaders of his party, and wielded an influence with the Administration scarcely exceeded by any one. Had he remained in the House of Representatives, considering the high position he won there in two terms, and judging from the remarkable ability he has displayed in his subsequent career, in all probability John Kelly would have become one of those few great parliamentary worthies whose names occupy so large a space in American history. He has given ample evidence that he possessed the requisite qualifications to have succeeded Stephen A. Douglas as leader of the Northern Democracy, when death snatched the sceptre from the hands of that gifted man. Of the calibre of Kelly, the reader has seen the opinions in the preceding pages which were expressed by such weighty statesmen as Lewis Cass, and Alexander H. Stephens. The gauge and measurement which those distinguished men took of him over a quarter of a century ago have been justified by the events of the past fifteen years, and the marvellous grip upon the minds and imagination of the American people which the very name of Kelly has come to possess.

Hardly had he taken his seat in Congress when he was confronted by Wm. H. Seward, as leader of the Banks forces, in the famous contest over the Speakership in the Thirty-fourth Congress, and yet after nine weeks of stubborn battle in the House, John Kelly named a candidate, William Aiken, as competitor against Mr. Seward’s candidate, and Aiken came within two votes, in a House containing seventy-four Democrats and one hundred and four Republicans, of beating Mr. Banks for Speaker of the House of Representatives. In his second struggle with Mr. Seward, when the Collectorship of the Port of New York was at stake, Mr. Kelly may be said to have entered the lists almost single handed against a powerful adverse interest in the Senate and House from his own State. He was, nevertheless, completely successful in securing the confirmation by the Senate of Augustus Schell for that office, as he had been mainly instrumental in procuring his nomination by President Buchanan. In a letter to a friend in New York, written some time after, Mr. Kelly said: “Mr. Schell’s nomination was opposed very bitterly by a large number of Democrats, and I have no doubt but that it was my influence with Clay, Orr, Dowdell, Shorter, Fitzpatrick, and I might say quite a number of the members of the Senate, that brought about the confirmation of Mr. Schell.” John Kelly and Augustus Schell were devoted personal and political friends, although in the factional divisions in New York the former had been a Soft Shell and the latter a Hard Shell Democrat. They stood shoulder to shoulder in victory and defeat, thinking the same things about the Republic, inseparable in affection and fellowship throughout a long and tempestuous period in the politics of the country. In city, State and National conventions of the Democratic party these two men always appeared together, and in their journeys to and fro they travelled together, roomed together, sat at the same table, and presented a picture to the public eye of more than brotherly affection. In looking at them, as they conversed with each other at such times, one would be reminded of Gales and Seaton in real life, or of the Cheeryble Brothers of romance. The death of Mr. Schell, in 1884, was a grievous blow to Mr. Kelly. All who heard his speech at the memorial meeting for his departed friend at Tammany Hall, will remember the unwonted emotions under which he labored.

Society at the Capital during Mr. Kelly’s day in Congress was very agreeable and homelike, and the manners and tastes of the people were formed in the school of frugality and simplicity well befitting a Democratic Republic. Boast as men may of the material progress of the country, the old school which held sway at Washington, during Democratic Administrations, was the nursery of civic virtues, and had about it the flavor of the golden age of the fathers. This was the school Jefferson founded, and Madison and Monroe illustrated. It was the school in which appeared John Taylor of Caroline, Rufus King, William Pinkney, Governor Gore, Josiah Quincy, William Gaston, and Littleton Waller Tazewell. Along Pennsylvania Avenue John Marshall and Daniel Webster might be seen wending their way to market with baskets on their arms, while Chancellor Bibb has gone fishing to the Long Bridge, John Quincy Adams to have a swim in the Potomac, and John C. Calhoun has gone out in the old-fashioned omnibus to Georgetown College to talk philosophy with Father Dzierozynsky.[52] This society was based on simplicity, the heritage handed down from Revolutionary soldiers, offshoot of freedom and downrightness. There was no charlatanism in Washington then, neither had there been any since Jefferson came to tell the people “we are all Republicans, all Federalists.” For fifty years the official rogues could be counted on the ten fingers. How different in that respect since the antique school has passed away. The great wars have blown out the old-fashioned virtues, and money-changers have unhinged the morality of the people. Corruption in high places has prevailed, and it has been in Washington as it was in Rome during the last days of the Empire, when Fabricius and Tully were forgotten, and turgid and loquacious rhetoricians mouthed in the Capitol. The golden age of manners, and tastes, and honest living still survived while the subject of this memoir sat in Congress. To be a gentleman above reproach was glorious. Poverty was no badge of disgrace, for James Monroe had given his fortune to the country in the war of 1812, and died, “like rigid Cincinnatus, nobly poor.” Henry Clay could never reach the White House, because after the fashion of the simple great ones he would rather be right than President. Webster was an old school patriot, for after Calhoun’s speech in 1833, he modified his views so greatly that he never afterwards denied that the Government of the United States was a compact between sovereign States. The rule of right living was so inflexible that Calhoun relinquished all hopes for the Presidency, rather than have his wife visit Bellona, at the dictation of General Jackson.

Happy days! Fortunate John Kelly! to have been there to witness the antique social phases, and to have come away again before the era was quite passed and gone, and another and a different one had arisen in its place.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] The reference in the speech was to the murder of a waiter named Keating, in the spring of 1856, at Willard’s Hotel, by a drunken Congressman from California named Herbert. Great indignation was aroused by this unprovoked crime, and although after two trials, the jury failing to agree in the first, Herbert was acquitted, his usefulness as a representative was destroyed. “He remained in Congress till the end of his term,” says Gobright in his Recollection of Men and Things at Washington, “but failed to be respected by his fellow-members,” p. 164.