But while misfortune reveals a man his foes, it also shows him his friends. Barnum was overwhelmed with offers of assistance, funds were declared at his disposal, both for the support of his family and to re-establish him in business. "Benefits" by the score were offered him, and there was even a proposition among leading citizens of New York to give a series of benefits.
Every one of these offers Barnum declined on his unvarying principle of never accepting a money favor. The following correspondence is taken from the New York papers of the time, and will show the stand he took in the matter:
NEW YORK, June 2d, 1856.
MR. P. T. BARNUM:
Dear Sir. The financial ruin of a man of acknowledged energy and enterprise is a public calamity. The sudden blow, therefore, that has swept away, from a man like yourself, the accumulated wealth of years, justifies, we think, the public sympathy. The better to manifest our sincere respect for your liberal example in prosperity, as well as exhibit our honest admiration of your fortitude under overwhelming reverses, we propose to give that sympathy a tangible expression by soliciting your acceptance of a series of benefits for your family, the result of which may possibly secure for your wife and children a future home, or at least rescue them from the more immediate consequences of your misfortune.
Freeman Hunt, E. K. Collins, Isaac V. Fowler, James Phalen,
Cornelius Vanderbilt, F. B. Cutting, James W. Gerard, Simeon
Draper, Thomas McElrath, Park Godwin, R. F. Carman, Gen. C. W.
Sanford, Philo Hurd, President H. R. R.; Wm. Ellsworth, President
Brooklyn Ins. Co.; George S. Doughty, President Excelsior Ins.
Co.; Chas. T. Cromwell, Robert Stuyvesant, E. L. Livingston, R.
Busteed, Wm. P. Fettridge, E. N. Haughwout, Geo. F. Nesbitt,
Osborne Boardman & Townsend, Charles H. Delavan, I. & C. Berrien,
Fisher & Bird, Solomon & Hart, B. Young, M. D., Treadwell, Acker
& Co., St. Nicholas Hotel; John Wheeler, Union Square Hotel; S.
Leland & Co., Metropolitan Hotel; Albert Clark, Brevoort House;
H. D. Clapp, Everett House; John Taylor, International Hotel;
Sydney Hopman, Smithsonian Hotel; Messrs. Delmonico, Delmonico's;
Geo. W. Sherman, Florence's Hotel; Kingsley & Ainslee, Howard
Hotel; Libby & Whitney, Lovejoy's Hotel; Howard & Brown, Tammany
Hall; Jonas Bartlett, Washington Hotel; Patten & Lynde, Pacific
Hotel; J. Johnson, Johnson's Hotel, and over 1,000 others.
To this gratifying communication he replied as follows:
LONG ISLAND, Tuesday, June 3d, 1856.
GENTLEMEN: I can hardly find words to express my gratitude for your very kind proposition. The popular sympathy is to me far more precious than gold, and that sympathy seems in my case to extend from my immediate neighbors, in Bridgeport, to all parts of our Union.
Proffers of pecuniary assistance have reached me from every quarter, not only from friends, but from entire strangers. Mr. Wm. E. Burton, Miss Laura Keene, and Mr. Wm. Niblo have in the kindest manner tendered me the receipts of their theatres for one evening, Mr. Gough volunteered he proceeds of one of his attractive lectures; Mr. James Phalon generously offered me the free use of the Academy of Music; many professional ladies and gentlemen have urged me to accept their gratuitous services. I have, on principle, respectfully declined them all, as I beg, with the most grateful acknowledgments (at least for the present), to decline yours—not because a benefit, in itself, is an objectionable thing, but because I have ever made it a point to ask nothing of the public on personal grounds, and should prefer, while I can possibly avoid that contingency, to accept nothing from it without the honest conviction that I had individually given it in return a full equivalent.