But the reader will observe, I hope, that he does not in the "Defence" attempt anything else than the task he had assigned. Here is no general Apology. It is no discussion of the Evidences. It is a specific duty,—which he had assigned to himself,—cleanly, neatly, and thoroughly done. He knew what he was going to do, when he began; and he knew, when he had finished what he could do. His victories, his life through, will all be found, I think, to illustrate that sort of steady, but determined resolution,—determined, in the sense that, before he began, the bounds were established for the work which was to be done.
When he went to Congress, for instance, in 1824, he had been widely known, in this part of the country at least, as a scholar who had travelled in Europe, and as one of the leaders in the movement in favor of the Greeks. Very naturally, Mr. Taylor appointed him on the Committee on Foreign Relations, and in that capacity he served all the time he was in the House. "I devoted myself," he said of that part of his life, "mainly to the discharge of that part of the public business which was intrusted to me"; that is, to the foreign relations. There were enough other interests in those years to which he might have devoted himself. But this was the sub-department which had been assigned to him, and therefore he devoted himself to it. If it had been Indian Affairs, or the Militia, he would have devoted himself to either of those; and I think he would have distinguished himself in either of them as much as he did in the other.
In this connection, it is to be observed, that, though few men worked as rapidly or as easily as he, this same moral determination appeared in the resoluteness with which he refused to do anything till he was satisfied with his own preparation. The thing might not require any, and then he made none. But if it was an occasion which he thought deserved preparation, no haste nor pressure nor other excuse availed to induce him to attempt what he had not made the fit preparation for. I think nothing really made him so indignant with us who were his juniors, as that we would half do things, instead of taking time to do them as well as we could. Yet, when the necessity came, he could achieve things that no other man would have dreamed of on such short notice. There are stories of his feats in this way which need not be repeated here.
I have heard people speak of his political life, especially of late years, as if it were a great riddle; and, in eulogies on him since his death, I find men speaking as if he underwent some great revulsion of character when Fort Sumter was attacked in 1861. I think there is no such mystery about it. The secret—if secret it is to be called—of his politics was blazoned in almost every speech he ever made, if people could only train themselves to think that a public man really believes what he says. It was this, that at heart he believed in the people. He believed they had virtue enough and good sense enough to carry them through any difficulty they would ever get into. He did not believe in total depravity. He did not, therefore, believe in theirs. And when he had any appeal to make to the people, he appealed to their supposed virtue, and not to their supposed vices,—he spoke to their good sense, and not to their folly. Mr. Emerson says somewhere, that he gave people no new thoughts. I do not think this is true. It is, however, very certain that he gave them no buncombe. He believed in them, in their good sense, and in their average virtue. He knew that everything depended on them. He was eager to educate the people, therefore, and all the people. He did not believe it possible to educate any of them too well. And if you had asked him, the day he died, what had been the central idea of his life, he would have said it was the education of the people. His life was full of it. His speeches were full of it. Nothing so provoked him as any snobbism which wanted to hinder it. When he was President of the College,—I think in 1848,—there was a black boy in the High School at Cambridge, fitting for college. Some gentlemen in Alabama, who had sons there, or on their way there, wrote to Mr. Everett to remonstrate against the boy's entering. He replied, that the College was endowed to educate all comers; that, if the black boy could pass his examination, as he hoped he could, he would be admitted; and that, if, as they seemed to suppose, all the white students withdrew, the College would then be conducted on its endowments for the black boy alone. And that was no exceptional reply. It was his way of looking at such things.
Now it is very true that a man like that makes no demagogue appeals to the people. He will not be apt to ally himself with any specially radical party. He will never say that an unwashed man has as good chance for godliness as a washed man, because he will not believe it. He will never say that an ignorant man's vote is as good as a sensible man's, because he will not believe that. But in any question where the rights of men are on one side and the rights of classes on the other, he will pronounce for the rights of men. Accordingly, his verdict was stiffly against the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and 1821. He said it was unwise and unjust. When, in 1836, it came time, under that Compromise, to admit the State of Arkansas,—the next Slave State after Missouri,—he said that we were not bound to admit her with slavery, that the Compromise was not binding, and never could be made binding; it was unwise and unjust. Because he had said so, he considered himself estopped from saying that it was binding, and sacred, and inviolable, and all that, in 1854, when the rest of us made it into a new-found palladium of liberty. He would not argue the Nebraska question on the Compromise, but on the original principles of the popular rights involved. It is the same confidence in the people which shines through the letter to Baron Hülsemann, which he wrote at the request of Mr. Webster, and through his answer to the proposal of the Three Powers that we should guaranty Cuba to Spain. It may be necessary for popular freedom that Spain shall not have Cuba. The same thing is in all his reviews of the Basil Halls and other travellers. I do not suppose he liked a dirty table-cloth better than Mrs. Trollope did. I do not suppose he liked a Virginia fence better than Cobbett did. But he knew that table-cloths could be washed, and Virginia fences changed in time for hedges and walls. And he was willing to wait for such changes,—even with all the elegance people talk of,—if he were sure that the education of the people was going forward, and the lines of promotion were kept open.
When, therefore, the issue of 1861 came, there was no question, to anybody who knew him well, where he would stand. He would stand with the democratic side against the aristocratic side. And the issue of this war is the issue between democracy and oligarchy. Persons who did not believe in the people did not stand on the democratic side. Persons who thought a republican government had been forced on us by misfortune, and that we must simply make the best of it, did not stand there. They did not believe that this time the people could get through. So they thought it best to stop before beginning. He knew the people could go through anything. So he thought it best to hold firm to the end.
Some of the most amusing of the details of his early life, which, with his wonderful memory, he was rather fond of relating, belong to his experiences in education.
Here is his account of his first attendance at the central town-school of Dorchester, after he had left a dame-school.
"In this school, on first entering it, I was placed at the bottom of the lowest class; but even that was a position beyond my previous attainments. Unable to spell the words which formed the lesson, I used, when they came down to me from the boy above, to say just what he did, not being far enough advanced to insinuate a blunder of my own. But in the course of a few months I made great progress. In writing I was rather forward. I can remember writing 1799 at the bottom of the page in my copybook; and this is the oldest date which as a date I can recollect. I was then five years old.[D] My father having, as a reward for my improvement, promised me a boughten 'writing-book,' as it was called, instead of a sheet of paper folded at home, with which children usually began, the brilliant prospect melted me almost to tears.
"Each boy in those days provided his own 'ink-horn,' as it was called. Mine was a ponderous article of lead, cast by myself at the kitchen fire, with a good deal of aid from the hired man who was employed in the summer to work the little farm. For pens we bought two goose-quills fresh from the wing, for a cent; older boys paid that sum for a single 'Dutch quill.'...