The grief of the reader in learning from the Political Beginnings, that Humphrey Marshall was "violent, irreligious and profane," will be mollified by the assurance given in the same work that Harry Innes "was a sincerely religious man." It might with equal truth have been stated that Caleb Wallace, who had abandoned the Presbyterian pulpit to go into politics, kept up his church relations, and practiced his devotions with the utmost regularity. Sebastian also, who had cast off the gown of the Episcopal ministry in his pursuit of the "flesh pots of Egypt," continued, it is believed, the exercise of all religious observations, and, in the depth of his piety, deemed a treasonable overture entirely too good to be communicated to an infidel. While John Brown, who had absorbed faith as he sat under the very droppings of the sanctuary, it will be cheerfully conceded was the most devout of the four. On the other hand, John Wood, one of the editors of the Western World, whom they afterwards bought, was a reprobate; and young Joseph M. Street, whom they could neither bribe nor intimidate, and the attempt to assassinate whom proved a failure, was a sinner. It is distressing to think that, like Gavin Hamilton, the latter "drank, and swore, and played at cards." It may be that the wickedness of the editors of the Western World, and the contemplation of their own saintliness, justified in the eyes of the four Christian jurists and statesmen the several little stratagems they devised, and paid Littell for introducing into his "Narrative," in order to obtain the advantage of the wicked editors in the argument. The contrast of their characters made innocent those little mutilations by Innes of his own letter to Randolph! The same process of reasoning made laudable John Brown's suppression of his Muter letter, his assertion that it was identical with the "sliding letter," and his claim that the acceptance of Gardoqui's proposition would have been consistent with the alleged purpose to make some future application for the admission of Kentucky into the new Union! While the suppression of the resolution of Wallace and Wilkinson in the July convention, and the declaration that such a motion never was made, in order to prove the unhappy editors to be liars, became as praiseworthy as the spoiling of the Egyptians by the Israelites! The scene of those four distinguished gentlemen seated around a table, with a prayer-book in the center, planning the screen for themselves and the discomfiture of the editors, would be a subject worthy of the brush of a Hogarth.
[FORCEYTHE WILLSON]
Forceythe Willson, "the William Blake of Western letters," was born at Little Genesee, New York, April 10, 1837, the elder brother of the latest Republican governor of Kentucky, Augustus E. Willson. When Forceythe was nine years old, his family packed their household goods upon an "ark," or Kentucky flatboat, at Pittsburgh, and drifted down the Ohio river, landing at Maysville, Kentucky, where they resided for a year, and in which town the future governor of Kentucky was born. In 1847 the Willsons removed to Covington, Kentucky, and there Forceythe's education was begun. The family lived at Covington for six years, at the end of which time Forceythe entered Harvard University, but an attack of tuberculosis compelled him to leave without his degree. He returned to the West, making his home at New Albany, Indiana, a little town just across the Ohio river from Louisville. A year later Willson joined the editorial staff of the Louisville Journal, and together he and Prentice courted the muse and defended the cause of the Union. Willson's masterpiece, The Old Sergeant, was the "carrier's address" for January 1, 1863, printed anonymously on the front page of the Journal. The author's name was withheld until Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes pronounced it the best ballad the war had produced, when Willson was heralded as its author. The Old Sergeant recites an almost literally true story, and it is wonderfully well done. In the fall of 1863 Willson was married to the New Albany poet, Elizabeth C. Smith, and they removed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the future executive of the Commonwealth of Kentucky was a student in Harvard University. The Willsons purchased a home near Lowell's, and they were soon on friendly terms with all of the famous New England writers. In 1866 The Old Sergeant and Other Poems appeared at Boston, but it did not make an appeal to the general public. Forceythe Willson died at Alfred Centre, New York, February 2, 1867, but his body was brought back to Indiana, and buried on the banks of the Whitwater river. Willson believed it quite possible for the living to hold converse with the dead, and this, with other strange beliefs, entered largely into his poetry.
Bibliography. His authoritative biographer, Mr. John James Piatt, the Ohio poet, has written illuminatingly of this rare fellow, with his "almond-shaped eyes," as Dr. Holmes called them, and his Oriental look and manner, in The Atlantic Monthly (March, 1875); Lexington Leader (September 13, 1908). His brother, Hon. Augustus E. Willson, will shortly utter the final word concerning him and his work.
THE OLD SERGEANT
[From The Old Sergeant and Other Poems (Boston, 1867)]
The Carrier cannot sing to-day the ballads
With which he used to go,
Rhyming the glad rounds of the happy New Years
That are now beneath the snow:
For the same awful and portentous Shadow
That overcast the earth,
And smote the land last year with desolation,
Still darkens every hearth.
And the carrier hears Beethoven's mighty death-march
Come up from every mart;
And he hears and feels it breathing in his bosom,
And beating in his heart.