That calm collected look,
As though her pulses beat by book.
Another intimate friend of my father was Frederick de Peyster, who at a later day became President of the New York Historical Society. He habitually took Sunday tea with us, and always received a warm welcome from the juvenile members of the family with whom he was a great favorite. He was devoted to children, and delighted our young hearts by occasional presents of game-chickens which at once became family pets.
In 1823 and 1824 my father's sympathies were deeply enlisted in behalf of the Greeks in their struggles for independence from the Turkish rule. It will be remembered that this was the cause to which Byron devoted his last energies. The public sentiment of the whole country was aroused to a high pitch of excitement, and meetings were held not only for the purpose of lending moral support and encouragement to the Greeks, but also for raising funds for their assistance. Among those to whom my father appealed was his friend, Rudolph Bunner, a highly prominent citizen of Oswego, N.Y. Although a lawyer he did not practice his profession, but devoted himself chiefly to his extensive landed estates in Oswego county. He was wealthy and generous, a good liver and an eloquent political speaker. He served one term in Congress where, as elsewhere, he was regarded as a man of decided ability. He died about 1833 at the age of nearly seventy. The distinguished New York lawyer, John Duer, married his daughter Anne, by whom he had thirteen children, one of whom, Anna Henrietta, married the late Pierre Paris Irving, a nephew of Washington Irving and at one time rector of the Episcopal church at New Brighton, Staten Island. Mr. Bunner's letter in response to my father's appeal is not devoid of interest, and is as follows:
Oswego, 12 Jan'y 1824.
My dear Sir,
Though I have not written to you yet you were not so soon forgotten. Nor can you so easily be erased from my memory as my negligence might seem to imply. In truth few persons have impressed my mind with a deeper sentiment of respect than yourself; you have that of open and frank in your character which if not in my own, is yet so congenial to my feelings that I shall much regret if my habitual indolence can lose me such a friend. Your request in favor of the Greeks will be hard to comply with. If I can be a contributor in a humble way to their success by my exertions here they shall not want them, but I fear the angusta res domi may press too heavily upon us to permit of an effectual benevolence. If you wanted five hundred men six feet high with sinewy arms and case hardened constitutions, bold spirits and daring adventurers who would travel upon a bushel of corn and a gallon of whiskey per man from the extreme point of the world to Constantinople we could furnish you with them, but I doubt whether they could raise the money to pay their passage from the gut of Gibraltar upwards. The effort however shall be made and if we can not shew ourselves rich we will at least manifest our good will. Though Greece touches few Yankee settlers thro the medium of classical associations yet a people struggling to free themselves from foreign bondage is sure to find warm hearts in every native of the wilderness. We admire your noble efforts and if we do not imitate you it is because our purses are as empty as a Boetian's skull is thick. We know so little of what is really projecting in the cabinets of Europe that we are obliged to believe implicitly in newspaper reports, and we are perhaps foolish in hoping that the Holy Alliance intends to take the Spanish part of the New World under their protection. In such an event our backwoodsmen would spring with the activity of squirrels to the assistance of the regenerated Spaniards and perhaps there we might fight more effectually the battle for universal Freedom than either at Thermopylæ or Marathon. There indeed we might strike a blow that would break up the deep foundations of despotic power so as that neither art or force could again collect and cement the scattered elements. We are too distant from Greece to make the Turks feel our physical strength and what we can do thro money and sympathy is little in comparison with what we could if they were so near as that we might in addition pour out the tide of an armed northern population to sweep their shores and overcome the tyrants like one of their pestilential winds. Nevertheless, sympathy is a wonderful power and the sympathy of a free nation like our own will not lose its moral effect. I calculate strongly on this. It is a more refined and rational kind of chivalry—this interest and activity in the fate of nations struggling to break the oppressor's rod, and it should be encouraged even where it is not directed so as to give it all adequate force. They who would chill it, who would reason about the why and the wherefore ought to recollect that such things can not be called forth by the art of man—they must burst spontaneously from his nature and be directed by his wisdom for the benefit of his kind.... We are all here real Radical Democrats and though some of us came in at the eleventh hour we will not go back, but on—on—on though certain of missing the penny fee. In truth this is the difference between real conviction and the calculating policy which takes sides according to what it conceives the vantage ground. A converted politician is as obstinate in his belief as one born in the faith. The man of craft changes his position according to the varying aspect of the political heavens. The one plays a game—the other sees as much of reality (or thinks he sees) in politicks as he does in his domestic affairs and is as earnest in the one as the other.
Salve—Καὶ Χαῖρε
R. Bunner.
8 o'clock.
I have had a full meeting for your Greeks—and found my men of more mettle than I hoped for. We will do something thro the Country—We have set the Parsons to work and one shilling a head will make a good donation. We think we can give you 4 or 5 hundred dollars.