Something of Men I Have Known / With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective

The measure now to be mentioned aroused deeper attention—more anxious concern—throughout the entire country than any with which the name of Douglas had yet been closely associated.It pertained directly to slavery, the "bone of contention" between the North and the South, the one dangerous quantity in our national politics from the establishment of the Government.Beginning with its recognition—though not in direct terms—in the Federal Constitution, it had through two generations, in the interest of peace, been the subject of repeated compromise.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, Douglas in the early days of 1854 reported a bill providing for the organization of the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas.This measure, which so suddenly arrested public attention, is known in our political history as the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill."Among its provisions was one repealing the Missouri Compromise or restriction of 1820.The end sought by the repeal was, as stated by Douglas, to leave the people of said Territories respectively to determine the question of the introduction or exclusion of slavery for themselves; in other words, "to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."The principle strenuously contended for was that of "popular sovereignty" or non-intervention by Congress, in the affairs of the Territories.In closing the protracted and exciting debate just prior to the passage of the bill in the Senate, he said:

"There is another reason why I desire to see this principle recognized as a rule of action in all time to come.It will have the effect to destroy all sectional parties and sectional agitation.If you withdraw the slavery question from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and commit it to the arbitrament of those who are immediately interested in and alone responsible for its consequences, there is nothing left out of which sectional parties can be organized.When the people of the North shall all be rallied under one banner, and the whole South marshalled under another banner, and each section excited to frenzy and madness by hostility to the institutions of the other, then the patriot may well tremble for the perpetuity of the Union.Withdraw the slavery question from the political arena and remove it to the States and Territories, each to decide for itself, and such a catastrophe can never happen."

These utterances of little more than half a century ago, fall strangely upon our ears at this day.In the light of all that has occurred in the long reach of years, how significant the words, "No man is wiser than events"!Likewise, "The actions of men are to be judged by the light surrounding them at the time—not by the knowledge that comes after the fact."The immediate effect of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was directly the reverse of that so confidently predicted by Douglas.The era of concord between the North and the South did not return.The slavery question—instead of being relegated to the recently organized Territories for final settlement—at once assumed the dimensions of a great national issue.The country at large—instead of a single Territory—became the theatre of excited discussion.The final determination was to be not that of a Territory, but of the entire people.

One significant effect of the passage of the bill was the immediate disruption of the Whig party.As a great national organization —of which Clay and Webster had been eminent leaders, and Harrison and Taylor successful candidates for the Presidency—it now passes into history.Upon its ruins, the Republican party at once came into being.Under the leadership of Fremont as its candidate, and opposition by Congressional intervention to slavery extension as its chief issue, it was a formidable antagonist to the Democratic party, in the Presidential contest of 1856.Mr. Buchanan had defeated Douglas in the nominating convention of his party that year.His absence from the country as Minister to England, during the exciting events just mentioned, it was thought would make him a safer candidate than his chief competitor, Douglas.He had been in no manner identified with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or the stormy events which immediately followed its passage.In his letter of acceptance, however, Mr. Buchanan had given his unqualified approval of his party platform, which recognized and adopted "the principle contained in the organic law establishing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the slavery question."Upon the principle here declared, issue was joined by his political opponents, and the battle fought to the bitter end.

Although Douglas had met personal defeat in his aspiration to the Presidency, the principle of non-intervention by Congress in the affairs of the Territories, for which he had so earnestly contended, had been triumphant both in the convention of the party, and at the polls.This principle, in its application to Kansas, was soon to be put to the test.From its organization, that Territory had been a continuous scene of disorder, often of violence.In rapid succession three Governors appointed by the President had resigned and departed the Territory, each confessing his inability to maintain public order.The struggle for mastery between the Free State advocates and their adversaries arrested the attention of the entire country.It vividly recalled the bloody forays read of in the old chronicles of hostile clans upon the Scottish border.

The parting of the ways between Senator Douglas and President Buchanan was now reached.The latter had received the cordial support of Douglas in the election which elevated him to the Presidency.His determined opposition to the re-election of Douglas became apparent as the Senatorial canvass progressed.The incidents now to be related will explain this hostility, as well as bring to the front one of the distinctive questions upon which much stress was laid in the subsequent debates between Douglas and Lincoln.

A statesman of national reputation, the Hon. Robert J. Walker, was at length appointed Governor of Kansas. During his brief administration a convention assembled without his co-operation at Lecompton, and formulated a Constitution under which application was soon made for the admission of Kansas into the Union. This convention was in part composed of non-residents, and in no sense reflected the wishes of the majority of the bona fide residents of the Territory. The salient feature of the Constitution was that establishing slavery. The Constitution was not submitted to the convention to popular vote, but in due time forwarded to the President, and by him laid before Congress, accompanied by a recommendation for its approval, and the early admission of the new State into the Union.

When the Lecompton Constitution came before the Senate, it at once encountered the formidable opposition of Senator Douglas.In unmeasured terms he denounced it as fraudulent, as antagonistic to the wishes of the people of Kansas, and subversive of the basic principle upon which the Territory had been organized.In the attitude just assumed, Douglas at once found himself in line with the Republicans, and in opposition to the administration he had helped place in power.The breach thus created was destined to remain unhealed.Moreover, his declaration of hostility to the Lecompton Constitution was the beginning of the end of years of close political affiliation with Southern Democratic statesmen.From that moment Douglas lost prestige as a national leader of his party.In more than one-half of the Democratic States he ceased to be regarded as a probable or even possible candidate for the Presidential succession.The hostility thus engendered followed him to the Charleston convention of 1860, and throughout the exciting Presidential contest which followed.But the humiliation of defeat —brought about, as he believed, by personal hostility to himself— was yet in the future.In the attempted admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, Douglas was triumphant over the administration and his former political associates from the South.Under what was known as the "English Amendment," the obnoxious Constitution was referred to the people of Kansas, and by them overwhelmingly rejected.

The close of this controversy in the early months of 1858 left Douglas in a position of much embarrassment.He had incurred the active hostility of the President, and in large measure of his adherents, without gaining the future aid of his late associates in the defeat of the Lecompton Constitution.His Senatorial term was nearing its close, and his political life depended upon his re-election.With a united and aggressive enemy, ably led, in his front; his own party hopelessly divided—one faction seeking his defeat—it can readily be seen that his political pathway was by no means one of peace.Such, in brief outline, were the political conditions when, upon the adjournment of Congress, Douglas returned to Illinois in July, 1858, and made public announcement of his candidacy for re-election.

In his speech at Springfield, June 17, accepting the nomination of his party for the Senate, Mr. Lincoln had uttered the words which have since become historic.They are quoted at length, as they soon furnished the text for his severe arraignment by Douglas in debate.The words are:

"We are now far into this fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'I believe this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.It will become all one thing or all the other.Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

This, at the time, was a bold utterance, and, it was believed by many, would imperil Mr. Lincoln's chances for election.Mr. Blaine in his "Twenty Years of Congress," says:

"Mr. Lincoln had been warned by intimate friends to whom he had communicated the contents of his speech in advance of its delivery, that he was treading on dangerous ground, that he would be misinterpreted as a disunionist, and that he might fatally damage the Republican party by making its existence synonymous with a destruction of the Government."

The opening speech of Senator Douglas at Chicago a few days later— sounding the keynote of his campaign—was in the main an arraignment of his opponent for an attempt to precipitate an internecine conflict, and array in deadly hostility the North against the South.He said:

"In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free States against the slave States—a war of extermination—to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave."

The two speeches, followed by others of like tenor, aroused public interest in the State as it had never been before.The desire to hear the candidates from the same platform became general.The proposal for a joint debate came from Mr. Lincoln on July 24 and was soon thereafter accepted.Seven joint meetings were agreed upon, the first to be at Ottawa, August 21, and the last at Alton, October 15.The meetings were held in the open, and at each place immense crowds were in attendance.The friends of Mr. Lincoln largely preponderated in the northern portion of the State, those of Douglas in the southern, while in the centre the partisans of the respective candidates were apparently equal in numbers.The interest never flagged for a moment from the beginning to the close.The debate was upon a high plane; each candidate enthusiastically applauded by his friends, and respectfully heard by his opponents.The speakers were men of dignified presence, their bearing such as to challenge respect in any assemblage.There was nothing of the "grotesque" about the one, nothing of the "political juggler" about the other.Both were deeply impressed with the gravity of the questions at issue, and of what might prove their far-reaching consequence to the country.

Kindly reference by each speaker to the other characterized the debates from the beginning."My friend Lincoln," and "My friend the Judge," were expressions of constant occurrence during the debate.While each mercilessly attacked the political utterances of the other, good feeling in the main prevailed.Something being pardoned to the spirit of debate, the amenities were well observed.They had been personally well known to each other for many years; had served together in the Legislature when the State Capitol was at Vandalia, and at a later date, Lincoln had appeared before the Supreme Court when Douglas was one of the judges.The amusing allusions to each other were taken in good part.Mr. Lincoln's profound humor is now a proverb.It never appeared to better advantage than during these debates.In criticising Mr. Lincoln's attack upon Chief Justice Taney and his associates for the Dred Scott decision, Douglas declared it to be an attempt to secure a reversal of the high tribunal by an appeal to a town meeting.It reminded him of the saying of Colonel Strode that the judicial system of Illinois was perfect, except that "there should be an appeal allowed from the Supreme Court to two justices of the peace."Lincoln replied, "That was when you were on the bench, Judge."Referring to Douglas's allusion to him as a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, he said:

"Then as the Judge has complimented me with these pleasant titles, I was a little taken, for it came from a great man.I was not very much accustomed to flattery and it came the sweeter to me.I was like the Hoosier with the gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better and got less of it than any other man."

In opening the debate at Ottawa, Douglas said:

"In the remarks I have made on the platform and the position of Mr. Lincoln, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman.I have known him for twenty-five years.There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted.We were both comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land.I was a school-teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem.He was more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods.Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake.I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and when a cabinet-maker I made a good bedstead and table, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else.I met him in the Legislature and had a sympathy with him because of the up-hill struggle we both had in life.He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now.He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a foot-race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse-race or a fist-fight, excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody.I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties, and so was I."

To which Lincoln replied:

"The Judge is woefully at fault about his friend Lincoln being a grocery-keeper.I don't know as it would be a sin if I had been; but he is mistaken.Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one Winter in a little still house up at the head of a hollow."

The serious phases of the debates will now be considered.The opening speech was by Mr. Douglas.That he possessed rare power as a debater, all who heard him can bear witness.Mr. Blaine in his history says:

"His mind was fertile in resources.He was master of logic.In that peculiar style of debate which in its intensity resembles a physical combat, he had no equal.He spoke with extraordinary readiness.He used good English, terse, pointed, vigorous.He disregarded the adornments of rhetoric.He never cited historic precedents except from the domain of American politics.Inside that field, his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical.He could lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions."

Douglas was, in very truth, imbued with little of mere sentiment.He gave little time to discussions belonging solely to the realm of the speculative or the abstract.He was in no sense a dreamer.What Coleridge has defined wisdom—"common sense, in an uncommon degree"—was his.In phrase the simplest and most telling, he struck at once at the very core of the controversy.Possibly no man was ever less inclined "to darken counsel with words without knowledge."Positive, and aggressive to the last degree, he never sought "by indirections to find directions out."In statesmanship— in all that pertained to human affairs—he was intensely practical.With him, in the words of Macaulay, "one acre in Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia."

It is a pleasure to recall—after the lapse of half a century—the two men as they shook hands upon the speaker's stand, just before the opening of the debates that were to mark an epoch in American history.Stephen A.Douglas!Abraham Lincoln!As they stood side by side and looked out upon "the sea of upturned faces"—it was indeed a picture to live in the memory of all who witnessed it.The one stood for the old ordering of things, in an emphatic sense for the Government as established by the fathers—with all its compromises.The other, recognizing equally with his opponent the binding force of Constitutional obligation, yet looking, away from present surroundings, "felt the inspiration of the coming of the grander day."As has been well said, "The one faced the past; the other, the future."

The name of Lincoln is now a household word.But little can be written of him that is not already known to the world.Nothing that can be uttered or withheld can add to, or detract from, his imperishable fame.But it must be remembered that his great opportunity and fame came after the stirring events separated from us by the passing of fifty years.It is not the Lincoln of history, but Lincoln the country lawyer, the debater, the candidate of his party for political office, with whom we have now to do.Born in Kentucky, much of his early life was spent in Indiana, and all his professional and public life up to his election to the Presidency, in Illinois.His early opportunities for study, like those of Douglas, were meagre indeed.Neither had had the advantage of the thorough training of the schools.Of both it might truly have been said, "They knew men rather than books."From his log-cabin home upon the Sangamon, Mr. Lincoln had in his early manhood volunteered, and was made captain of his company, in what was so well known to the early settlers of Illinois as the Black Hawk War.Later on, he was surveyor of his county, and three times a member of the State Legislature.At the time of the debates with Senator Douglas, Mr. Lincoln had for many years been a resident of Springfield, and a recognized leader of the bar.As an advocate, he had probably no superior in the State.During the days of the Whig party he was an earnest exponent of its principles, and an able champion of its candidates.As such, he had in successive contests eloquently presented the claims of Harrison, Clay, Taylor, and Scott to the Presidency.In 1846, he was elected a Representative in Congress, and upon his retirement he resumed the active practice of his profession.Upon the dissolution of the Whig party, he cast in his fortunes with the new political organization, and was in very truth one of the builders of the Republican party.At its first national convention, in 1856, he received a large vote for nomination to the Vice-Presidency, and during the memorable campaign of that year canvassed the State in advocacy of the election of Fremont and Dayton, the candidates of the Philadelphia convention.

In the year 1858—that of the great debates—Douglas was the better known of the opposing candidates in the country at large.In a speech then recently delivered in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln said:

"There is still another disadvantage under which we labor and to which I will ask your attention.It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate.Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown.All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly at no distant day to be the President of the United States.They have seen in his ruddy, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.On the contrary, nobody has ever seen in my poor lank face that any cabbages were sprouting out."

Both, however, were personally well known in Illinois.Each was by unanimous nomination the candidate of his party.Douglas had known sixteen years of continuous service in one or the other House of Congress.In the Senate, he had held high debate with Seward, Sumner, and Chase from the North, and during the last session—since he had assumed a position of antagonism to the Buchanan administration—had repeatedly measured swords with Tombs, Benjamin, and Jefferson Davis, chief among the great debaters of the South.

Mr. Lincoln's services in Congress had been limited to a single term in the lower house, and his great fame was yet to be achieved, not as a legislator, but as Chief Executive during the most critical years of our history.

Such, in brief, were the opposing candidates as they entered the lists of debate at Ottawa, on the twenty-first day of August, 1858.Both were in the prime of manhood, thoroughly equipped for the conflict, and surrounded by throngs of devoted friends.Both were gifted with remarkable forensic powers and alike hopeful as to the result.Each recognizing fully the strength of his opponent, his own powers were constantly at their tension.

  "the blood more stirs
  To rouse a lion than to start a hare."

In opening, Senator Douglas made brief reference to the political condition of the country prior to the year 1854.He said:

"The Whig and the Democratic were the two great parties then in existence; both national and patriotic, advocating principles that were universal in their application; while these parties differed in regard to banks, tariff, and sub-treasury, they agreed on the slavery question which now agitates the Union.They had adopted the compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a full solution of the slavery question in all its forms; that these measures had received the endorsement of both parties in their National Conventions of 1852, thus affirming the right of the people of each State and Territory to decide as to their domestic institutions for themselves; that this principle was embodied in the bill reported by me in 1854 for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska; in order that there might be no misunderstanding, these words were inserted in that bill: 'It is the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution.'"

Turning to his opponent, he said:

"I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln to-day stands as he did in 1854 in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law; whether he stands pledged to-day as he did in 1854 against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them; whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make.I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States north as well as south of the Missouri Compromise line.I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to acquisition of any more territory unless slavery is prohibited therein.I want his answer to these questions."

Douglas then addressed himself to the already quoted words of Mr. Lincoln's Springfield speech commencing: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."He declared the Government had existed for seventy years divided into free and slave States as our fathers made it; that at the time the Constitution was framed there were thirteen States, twelve of which were slave-holding, and one a free State; that if the doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln that all should be free or all slave had prevailed, the twelve would have overruled the one, and slavery would have been established by the Constitution on every inch of the Republic, instead of being left, as our fathers wisely left it, for each State to decide for itself.He then declared that:

"Uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible nor desirable; that if uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere.I hold that humanity and Christianity both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every right and every privilege and every immunity consistent with the safety of the society in which he lives.The question then arises, What rights and privileges are consistent with the public good?This is a question which each State and each Territory must decide for itself.Illinois has decided it for herself."

He then said:

"Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously upon this great principle of popular sovereignty, it guarantees to each State and Territory the right to do as it pleases on all things local and domestic; instead of Congress interfering, we will continue at peace one with another.This doctrine of Mr. Lincoln of uniformity among the institutions of the different States is a new doctrine never dreamed of by Washington, Madison, or the framers of the Government.Mr. Lincoln and his party set themselves up as wiser than the founders of the Government, which has flourished for seventy years under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the right of each State to do as it pleased.Under that principle, we have grown from a nation of three or four millions to one of thirty millions of people.We have crossed the mountains and filled up the whole Northwest, turning the prairies into a garden, and building up churches and schools, thus spreading civilization and Christianity where before there was nothing but barbarism.Under that principle we have become from a feeble nation the most powerful upon the face of the earth, and if we only adhere to that principle we can go forward increasing in territory, in power, in strength, and in glory, until the Republic of America shall be the North Star that shall guide the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world.I believe that his new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln will dissolve the Union if it succeeds; trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the Southern; to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States in order that one or the other may be driven to the wall."

Mr. Lincoln said in reply:

"I think and will try to show, that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is wrong—wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska; wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.This declared indifference, but as I must think covert zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.I hate it because it deprives our Republic of an example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites.I have no prejudices against the Southern people; they are just what we would be in their situation.If slavery did now exist amongst us we would not instantly give it up.This I believe of the masses North and South.When the Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the same.I surely will not blame them for what I should not know how to do myself.If all earthly powers were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution."

Declaring that he did not advocate freeing the negroes, and making them our political and social equals, but suggesting that gradual systems of emancipation might be adopted by the States, he added, "But for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.But all this to my judgment furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our free territory than it would for reviving the African slave trade by law."

He then added:

"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races.But I hold that notwithstanding all this there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral and intellectual endowment.But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

Referring to the quotation from his Springfield speech of the words,
"A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said:

"Does the Judge say it can stand?If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of somewhat higher character.I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our Government, the institution of slavery has not only failed to be a bond of union, but on the contrary been an apple of discord and an element of division in the house.If so, then I have a right to say that in regard to this question the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to that fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it—restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the seal of legislation against its spread, the public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.Now, I believe if we could arrest its spread and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would—as for eighty years past —believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction."

Referring further to his Springfield speech, he declared that he had no thought of doing anything to bring about a war between the free and slave States; that he had no thought in the world that he was doing anything to bring about social and political equality of the black and white races.

Pursuing this line of argument, he insisted that the first step in the conspiracy, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, followed soon by the Dred Scott Decision—the latter fitting perfectly into the niche left by the former—"in such a case, we feel it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin, Roger and James, all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was struck."

In closing, Douglas, after indignant denial of the charge of conspiracy, said:

"I have lived twenty-five years in Illinois; I have served you with all the fidelity and ability which I possess, and Mr. Lincoln is at liberty to attack my public action, my votes, and my conduct, but when he dares to attack my moral integrity by a charge of conspiracy between myself, Chief Justice Taney, and the Supreme Court and two Presidents of the United States, I will repel it."

At Freeport, Mr. Lincoln, in opening the discussion, at once declared his readiness to answer the interrogatories propounded.He said:

"I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law; I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union; I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make; I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different States; I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories."

Waiving the form of the interrogatory, as to being pledged, he said:

"As to the first one in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think under the Constitution of the United States the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law.Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave Law further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it without lessening its efficiency.In regard to whether I am pledged to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, I would be exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must add that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories during the Territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field when they come to adopt the Constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slavery Constitution uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union.I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia.I believe that Congress possesses Constitutional power to abolish it.Yet, as a member of Congress, I should not be in favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that the abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of qualified voters in the district; third, that compensation should be made unwilling owners.With these conditions, I confess I should be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the language of Henry Clay, 'Sweep from our Capital that foul blot upon our nation.'"

These carefully prepared answers will never cease to be of profound interest to the student of human affairs.They indicate unmistakably the conservative tendency of Mr. Lincoln, and his position at the time as to the legal status of the institution of slavery.But "courage mounteth with occasion."Five years later, and from the hand that penned the answers given came the great proclamation emancipating a race.The hour had struck—and slavery perished.The compromises upon which it rested were, in the mighty upheaval, but as the stubble before the flame.

Recurring to the Freeport debates, Mr. Lincoln propounded to his opponent four interrogatories as follows:

"First, if the people of Kansas shall by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects adopt a State Constitution and ask admission into the Union under it before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the bill—some ninety-three thousand— will you vote to admit them?Second, can the people of a United States Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?Third, if the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?Fourth, are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?"

The questions propounded reached the marrow of the controversy, and were yet to have a much wider field for discussion.This was especially true of the second of the series.Upon this widely divergent—irreconcilable—views were entertained by Northern and Southern Democrats.The evidence of this is to be found in the respective national platforms upon which Douglas and Mr. Breckenridge were two years later rival candidates of a divided party.The second interrogatory of Mr. Lincoln clearly emphasized this conflict of opinion as it existed at the time of the debates.It is but just, however, to Douglas—of whom little that is kindly has in late years been spoken—to say that there was nothing in the question to cause him surprise or embarrassment.It would be passing strange if during the protracted debates with Senators representing extreme and antagonistic views, a matter so vital as the interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act—as indicated by the interrogatory—had never been under discussion.Conclusive evidence on this point is to be found in the speech delivered by Senator Douglas at Bloomington, July 16, forty-two days before the Freeport debate, in which he said:

"I tell you, my friends, it is impossible under our institutions to force slavery on an unwilling people.If this principle of popular sovereignty, asserted in the Nebraska Bill, be fairly carried out by letting the people decide the question for themselves by a fair vote, at a fair election, and with honest returns, slavery will never exist one day or one hour in any Territory against the unfriendly legislation of an unfriendly people.Hence if the people of a Territory want slavery they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the necessary police regulations; if they do not want it, they will withhold that legislation, and by withholding it slavery is as dead as if it were prohibited by a Constitutional prohibition.They could pass such local laws and police regulations as would drive slavery out in one day or one hour if they were opposed to it, and therefore, so far as the question of slavery in the Territories is concerned in its practical operation, it matters not how the Dred Scott case may be decided with reference to the Territories.My own opinion on that point is well known.It is shown by my vote and speeches in Congress."

Recurring again to the Freeport debate, in reply to the first interrogatory, Douglas declared that in reference to Kansas it was his opinion that if it had population enough to constitute a slave State, it had people enough for a free State; that he would not make Kansas an exceptional case to the other States of the Union; that he held it to be a sound rule of universal application to require a Territory to contain the requisite population for a member of Congress before its admission as a State into the Union; that it having been decided that Kansas has people enough for a slave State, "I hold it has enough for a free State."

As to the third interrogatory, he said that only one man in the United States, an editor of a paper in Washington, had held such view, and that he, Douglas, had at the time denounced it on the floor of the Senate; that Mr. Lincoln cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court by supposing that it would violate the Constitution; that it would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to.To the fourth—which he said was very "ingeniously and cunningly put"—he answered that, whenever it became necessary in our growth and progress to acquire more territory he was in favor of it without reference to the question of slavery, and when we had acquired it, he would leave the people to do as they pleased, either to make it free, or slave territory as they preferred.

The answer to the second interrogatory—of which much has been written—was given without hesitation.Language could hardly be more clear or effective.He said:

"To the next question propounded to me I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times, that in my opinion the people of a Territory can by lawful means exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution.It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day, or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations.These police regulations can only be established by the local Legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst.If, on the contrary, they are for it, their Legislature will favor its extension.Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill."

The trend of thought, the unmeasured achievement of activities looking to human amelioration, during the fifty intervening years, must be taken into the account before uncharitable judgment upon what has been declared the indifference of Douglas to the question of abstract right involved in the memorable discussion.It must be remembered that the world has moved apace, and that a mighty gulf separates us from that eventful period, in which practical statesmen were compelled to deal with institutions as then existing.And not to be forgotten are the words of the great interpreter of the human heart,

"But know thou this, that men are as the time is."

The great debates between Douglas and Lincoln—the like of which we shall not hear again—had ended and passed to the domain of history.To the inquiry, "Which of the participants was the victor?"there can be no absolute answer.Judged by the immediate result, the former; by consequence more remote and far-reaching, the latter.Within three years from the first meeting at Ottawa, Mr. Lincoln —having been elected and inaugurated President—was upon the threshold of mighty events which are now the masterful theme of history; and his great antagonist in the now historic debates had passed from earthly scenes.

It has been said that Douglas was ambitious.

  "If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
  And grievously hath he answered it."

We may well believe that, with like honorable ambition to the two great popular leaders of different periods—Clay and Blaine —his goal was the Presidency.

In the last three national conventions of his party preceding his death, he was presented by the Illinois delegation to be named for the great office.The last of these—the Charleston convention of 1860—is now historic.It assembled amid intense party passion, and after a turbulent session that seemed the omen of its approaching doom, adjourned to a later day to Baltimore.Senator Douglas there received the almost solid vote of the Northern, and a portion of that of the Border States, but the hostility of the extreme Southern leaders to his candidacy was implacable to the end.What had seemed inevitable from the beginning at length occurred, and the great historical party—which had administered the Government with brief intermissions from the inauguration of Jefferson—was hopelessly rent asunder.This startling event—and what it might portend— gave pause to thoughtful men of all parties.It was not a mere incident, but an epoch in history.Mr. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress," says:

"The situation was the cause of solicitude and even grief with thousands to whom the old party was peculiarly endeared.The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance.The fact was recalled that the Republic had grown to its imperial dimensions under Democratic statesmanship.It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under Democratic administrations, and in spite of the resistance of their opponents.That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro in a country where his labor was not wanted, was to many of its members as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating.They might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest, the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with judgment displaced by a desire for revenge."

The withdrawal from the Baltimore Convention of a large majority of the Southern delegates and a small following, led by Caleb Cushing and Benjamin F.Butler from the North, resulted in the immediate nomination by the requisite two-thirds vote of Senator Douglas as the Presidential candidate.The platform upon the question of slavery was in substance that contended for by the candidate in the debates with Lincoln.The Democratic party divided —Breckenridge receiving the support of the South—Douglas's candidacy was hopeless from the beginning.But his iron will, and courage, that knew no faltering, never appeared to better advantage than during that eventful canvass.Deserted by former political associates, he visited distant States and addressed immense audiences in defence of the platform upon which he had been nominated, and in advocacy of his own election.His speeches in Southern States were of the stormy incidents of a struggle that has scarcely known a parallel.Interrogated by a prominent citizen at Norfolk, Virginia, "If Lincoln be elected President, would the Southern States be justified in seceding from the Union?"Douglas replied, "I emphatically answer, No.The election of a man to the Presidency in conformity with the Constitution of the United States would not justify an attempt to dissolve the Union."

Defeated in his great ambition, broken in health, the sad witness of the unmistakable portents of the coming sectional strife—the few remaining months of his mortal life were enveloped in gloom.Partisan feeling vanished—his deep concern was now only for his country.Standing by the side of his successful rival—whose wondrous career was only opening, as his own was nearing its close —he bowed profound assent to the imperishable utterances of the inaugural address: "I am loath to close.We are not enemies but friends.We must not be enemies.Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

Yet later—immediately upon the firing of the fatal shot at Sumter that suddenly summoned millions from peaceful pursuits to arms— by invitation of the Illinois Legislature Douglas addressed his countrymen for the last time.

Broken with the storms of state, the fires of ambition forever extinguished, standing upon the threshold of the grave, his soul burdened with the calamities that had befallen his country, in tones of deepest pathos he declared:

"If war must come—if the bayonet must be used to maintain the Constitution—I can say before God, my conscience is clear.I have struggled long for a peaceful solution of the trouble.I deprecate war, but if it must come, I am with my country, and for my country, in every contingency, and under all circumstances.At all hazards our Government must be maintained, and the shortest pathway to peace is through the most stupendous preparation for war."

Who that heard the last public utterance that fell from his lips can forget his solemn invocation to all who had followed his political fortunes, until the banner had fallen from his hand,— to know only their country in its hour of peril?

The ordinary limit of human life unreached; his intellectual strength unabated; his loftiest aspirations unrealized; at the critical moment of his country's sorest need—he passed to the grave.What reflections and regrets may have been his in that hour of awful mystery, we may not know.In the words of another: "What blight and anguish met his agonized eyes, whose lips may tell?what brilliant broken plans, what bitter rending of sweet household ties, what sundering of strong manhood's friendships?"

In the light of what has been discussed, may we not believe that with his days prolonged, he would during the perilous years have been the safe counsellor—the rock—of the great President, in preserving the nation's life, and later in "binding up the nation's wounds."

Worthy of honored and enduring place in history, Stephen A.Douglas —statesman and patriot—lies buried within the great city whose stupendous development is so largely the result of his own wise forecast and endeavor,—by the majestic lake whose waves break near the base of his stately monument and chant his eternal requiem.

VIII THE FIRST POLITICAL TELEGRAM

SENATOR SILAS WRIGHT NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT—WORD OF HIS NOMINATION SENT HIM BY THE MORSE TELEGRAPH—MORSE'S FIRST CONCEPTION OF AN ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH—OBSTACLES TO THE CARRYING OUT OF HIS INVENTION—A BILL APPROPRIATING $30,000 TO TEST THE VALUE OF HIS TELEGRAPH—EARLIER FORMS OF TELEGRAPHIC INTERCOURSE—A EULOGY ON THE INVENTOR BY MR. GARFIELD—ANOTHER, BY MR. COX—THE FIRST MESSAGE THAT EVER PASSED OVER THE WIRE—DR. PRIME'S PRAISE OF MORSE AFTER HIS DEATH.

By all odds, the most venerable in appearance of the Representatives in the forty-sixth Congress, was Hendrick B.Wright of Pennsylvania.After a retirement of a third of a century, he had been returned to the seat he had honored while many of his present associates were in the cradle.Of massive build, stately bearing, lofty courtesy; neatly appareled in blue broadcloth, with brass buttons appropriately in evidence, he appeared indeed to belong to a past generation of statesmen.

  "And thus he bore without abuse
  The grand old name of gentleman."

In one of the many conversations I held with him, he told me that he was the president of the Democratic National Convention which met in Baltimore in 1844.As will be remembered, a majority of the delegates to that convention were favorable to the renomination of Mr. Van Buren, but his recently published letter opposing the annexation of Texas had rendered him extremely obnoxious to a powerful minority of his own party.After a protracted struggle, Mr. Van Buren, under the operation of the "two-thirds rule," was defeated, and Mr. Polk nominated.The convention, anxious to placate the friends of the defeated candidate, then tendered the nomination for Vice-President to Senator Silas Wright, the close friend of Mr. Van Buren.

At the time the convention was in session, Samuel F.B.Morse was conducting in a room in the Capitol the electrical experiments which have since "given his name to the ages."Under an appropriation by Congress, a telegraph line had been recently constructed from Washington to Baltimore.

Immediately upon the nomination of Senator Wright, as mentioned, the president of the convention sent him by the Morse telegraph a brief message, the first of a political character that ever passed over the wire, advising him of his nomination, and requesting his acceptance.Two hours later he read to the convention a message from Senator Wright, then in Washington, peremptorily declining the nomination.

Upon the reading of this message to the convention, it was openly declared to be a hoax, not one member in twenty believing that a message could possibly have been received.The convention adjourned till the next day, first instructing its president to communicate with Senator Wright by letter.A special messenger, by hard riding and frequent change of horse, bore the letter of the convention to Wright in Washington, and returned with his reply by the time the convention had reassembled.As will be remembered, Wright persisting in his declination, George M.Dallas was nominated and duly elected.

Later, in conversation with the Hon.Alexander H.Stephens of Georgia, he told me that he was in the room of the Capitol set apart for the experiments which Mr. Morse wished to make, and distinctly remembered the fact of the transmission of the message to and from Senator Wright, as stated.

The incident mentioned recalls something of the obstacles encountered by Morse in the marvellous work with which his name is inseparably associated.He first conceived the idea of an electro-magnetic telegraph on shipboard on a homeward-bound voyage from Europe in 1832.Before landing from his long voyage, his plans for a series of experiments had been clearly thought out.Having constructed his first recording apparatus, his caveat for a patent was filed five years later; and in 1838, he applied to Congress for an appropriation to enable him to construct an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore in order to demonstrate the practicability of his invention.His proposal was at first treated with ridicule —even with contempt; and for more than three years no favorable action was taken by Congress.With abiding faith, however, in the merits of his invention, his zeal knew no abatement during years of poverty and discouragement.At length in the Twenty-seventh Congress, Representative Kennedy of Maryland—at a later day Secretary of the Navy—introduced a bill appropriating thirty thousand dollars "to test the value of Morse's Electro-Magnetic Telegraph," to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury.

By the untiring efforts of Mr. Kennedy and other Representatives, the bill was finally brought before the House for consideration near the close of the session.In the light of events, the discussion that immediately preceded the vote is of interest, and in no small degree amusing, to this generation.On February twenty-first, 1843, Mr. Johnson of Tennessee wished to say a word upon the bill.As the present Congress had done much to encourage science, he did not wish to see the science of Mesmerism neglected and overlooked.He therefore proposed that one-half of the appropriation be given to Mr. Fisk to enable him to carry on experiments as well as Professor Morse.Mr. Houston thought that Millerism should also be included in the benefits of the appropriation.Mr. Stanley said he should have no objection to the appropriation for Mesmeric experiments provided the gentleman from Tennessee was the subject.Mr. Johnson said he should have no objection provided Mr. Stanley was the operator.Several gentlemen now called for the reading of the amendment, and it was read by the clerk as follows: "Provided that one-half of the said sum shall be appropriated for trying Mesmeric experiments under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury."

Mr. Mason arose to a question of order. He maintained that the amendment was not bona fide, and that such amendments were calculated to injure the character of the House. He appealed to the Chair, the House being then in committee of the whole, to rule the amendment out of order.

The Chairman said that it was not for him to judge of the motives of members who offered amendments, and that he could not therefore undertake to pronounce the amendment not bona fide. Objection might be raised to it on the ground that it was not sufficiently analogous in character to the bill under consideration; but, in the opinion of the Chair, it would require a scientific analysis to determine how far the magnetism of mesmerism was analogous to that employed in telegraphs. He therefore ruled the amendment in order.

The amendment was rejected.The bill was subsequently reported favorably to the House, and two days later passed by the close vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three.

The bill then went to the Senate, and was placed upon the calendar.A large number of bills were ahead of it, and Mr. Morse was assured by a kindly Senator that there was no possible chance for its consideration.All hope seemed to forsake the great inventor, as, from his seat in the gallery, he was a gloomy witness of the waning hours of the session.Unable longer to endure the strain, he sought his humble dwelling an hour before final adjournment.On arising the next morning, a little girl, the daughter of a faithful friend, ran up to him with a message from her father, to the effect that in the hurry and confusion of the midnight hour, and just before the close of the session, the Senate had passed his bill, which immediately received the signature of the President.

With the sum thus appropriated at his command, Morse now earnestly resumed the experiments, which a few months later resulted so successfully.Referring to the homeward voyage from Europe, in 1832, his biographer says:

"One day Dr. Charles S.Jackson of Boston, a fellow passenger, described an experiment recently made in Paris by means of which electricity had been instantaneously transmitted through a great length of wire; to which Morse replied, 'If that be so, I see no reason why messages may not instantaneously be transmitted by electricity.'"

The key-note was struck, and before his ship reached New York the invention of the telegraph was virtually made, and even the essential features of the electro-magnetic transmitting and recording apparatus were sketched on paper.Of necessity, in reaching this result, Morse made use of the ideas and discoveries of many other minds.As stated by his biographer:

"Various forms of telegraphic intercourse had been devised before; electro-magnetism had been studied by savants for many years; Franklin even had experimented with the transmission of electricity through great lengths of wire. It was reserved for Morse to combine the results of many fragmentary and unsuccessful attempts, and put them, after many years of trial, to a practical use; and though his claims to the invention have been many times attacked in the press and in the courts, they have been triumphantly vindicated alike by the law and the verdict of the people, both at home and abroad. The Chief Justice of the United States in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in one of the Morse cases, said: 'It can make no difference whether the inventor derived his information from books or from conversation with men skilled in the science; and the fact that Morse sought and obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best sources and acted upon it, neither impairs his right as an inventor, nor detracts from his merits.' "

It will be remembered that soon after his first successful experiment, Morse was harassed by protracted litigation, and that many attempts were made to deprive him of the just rewards of his great invention.True, he had been preceded along the same lines by great discoveries.This fact no man recognized more unreservedly than himself.He was the inventor, his work, that of gathering up and applying the marvellous discoveries of others to the practical purposes of human life.As stated by Mr. Garfield:

"His to interpret to the world that subtle and mysterious element with which the thinkers of the human race had so long been occupied.As Franklin had exhibited the relation between lightning and the electric fluid, so Oersted exhibited the relation between magnetism and electricity.From 1820 to 1825, his discovery was further developed by Davy and Sturgeon of England, and Arago and Ampere of France.The electro-magnetic telegraph is the embodiment, I might say the incarnation, of many centuries of thought, of many generations of effort to elicit from Nature one of her deepest mysteries.No one man, no one century, could have achieved it.It is the child of the human race, the heir of all ages.How wonderful are the steps that led to its creation!The very name of this telegraphic instrument bears record of its history—Electric, Magnetic.

"The first, named from the bit of yellow amber whose qualities of attraction and repulsion were discovered by a Grecian philosopher twenty-four centuries ago, and the second, from Magnesia, the village of Asia Minor where first was found the lodestone, whose touch turned the needle forever toward the north.These were the earliest forms in which that subtle, all-pervading force revealed itself to men.In the childhood of the race men stood dumb in the presence of its more terrible manifestations.When it gleamed in the purple aurora, or shot dusky-red from the clouds, it was the eye-flash of an angry God before whom mortals quailed in helpless fear."

More than three centuries ago, Shakespeare put into the mouth of one of his creations the words,

  "I'll put a girdle round about the earth
  In forty minutes."

The words spoken in jest were in the nature of a prophecy.After the passing of many generations, in a country unknown to the great bard, Morse, in the words of Mr. Cox, one of the most eloquent of his eulogists—

"Gave to the universal people the means of speedy and accurate intelligence, and so stormed at once the castles of the terrible Giant Doubt and Giant Despair.He has saved time, shortened the hours of toil, accumulated and intensified thought by the rapidity and terseness of electric messages.He has celebrated treaties.Go to the uttermost parts of the earth; go beneath the deep sea; to the land where snows are eternal, or to the tropical realms where the orange blooms in the air of mid-winter, and you will find this clicking, persistent, sleepless instrument ready to give its tireless wing to your purpose."

It was my good fortune to serve in the House of Representatives with Mr. Stephens of Georgia, and Mr. Wood of New York, both of whom more than a third of a century before had given their votes in favor of the appropriation that made it possible for Morse to prosecute experiments fraught with such stupendous blessing to our race.The member who reported back the bill from the Committee on Commerce, with favorable recommendations, and then supported it by an eloquent speech upon the floor of the House, was Robert C.Winthrop of Massachusetts.No public man I have ever known impressed me more favorably than did Mr. Winthrop.He had been the close friend of Everett, Choate, Webster, and Clay.He was the last survivor of as brilliant a coterie of party leaders and statesmen as our country has ever known.On a visit he made to the House of Representatives, of which he had many years before been the Speaker, business was at once suspended, and the members from all parts of the Great Hall gathered about him.In a letter to the Morse Memorial meeting in Boston, Mr. Winthrop stated that he was present in the Capitol while the first formal messages were passing along the magic cords between Washington and Baltimore.He referred to the declination read by Senator Wright in his presence, of the nomination to the Vice-Presidency tendered him, and added:

"All this gave us the most vivid impression, not only that a new kind of wire-pulling had entered into politics, but that a mysterious and marvellous power of the air had at length been subdued and trained to the service of mankind."

It is an interesting fact in this connection, to note that the little girl, Miss Ellsworth, who brought to Mr. Morse the joyful tidings of the passage of the bill on that early May morning in 1843, was rewarded by being requested by the great inventor to write the first message that ever passed over the wire.When she selected,

"What hath God wrought,"

words to find utterance by all tongues—she builded better than she knew, for in the words of Speaker Blaine:

"The little thread of wire placed as a timid experiment between the national capital and a neighboring city grew, and lengthened, and multiplied with almost the rapidity of the electric current that darted along its iron nerves, until, within his own lifetime, continent was bound to continent, hemisphere answered through ocean's depths to hemisphere, and an encircled globe dashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched eloquence of a grand achievement."

Words of praise, spoke by Dr. Prime, of the great inventor just after he had passed from the world, to which he left such a heritage, can never lose their interest:

"Morse in his coffin is a recollection never to fade.He lay like an ancient prophet or sage such as the old masters painted for Abraham, or Isaiah.His finely chiselled features, classical in their mould and majestic in repose, and heavy flowing beard; the death calm upon the brow that for eighty years had concealed a teeming brain, and that placid beauty that lingers upon the face of the righteous dead, as if the freed spirit had left a smile upon its forsaken home—these are the memories that remain of the most illustrious and honored private citizen that the New World has yet given to mankind."

IX ALONG THE BYPATHS OF HISTORY

THE WIDOW OF GEN.GAINES CLAIMS PROPERTY AT NEW ORLEANS WORTH $30,000,000—HER SUCCESS AFTER MUCH LITIGATION—THE WIDOW OF JOHN H.EATON, SECRETARY OF WAR—A CLOUD ON HER REPUTATION—HER HUSBAND A FRIEND OF GEN.JACKSON—A DUEL BETWEEN RANDOLPH AND CLAY—HOSTILITY OF THE LEADERS OF WASHINGTON SOCIETY TO MRS. EATON—SECRETARY EATON DISLIKED BY HIS COLLEAGUES—CONSEQUENT DISRUPTION OF JACKSON'S CABINET—MRS. EATON'S POVERTY IN HER OLD AGE.

Nearly a third of a century ago, as the guest in a Washington house, I had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Gaines, the widow of General Edmund P.Gaines, a distinguished officer of the War of 1812, and Mrs. Eaton, the widow of the Hon.John H.Eaton of Tennessee, for a number of years a Senator from that State, and later Secretary of War during the administration of President Jackson.Their names suggested interesting events in our history, I gladly availed myself of the invitation to meet them.

I found Mrs. Gaines an old lady of small stature, with a profusion of curls, and gifted with rare powers of conversation.She spoke freely of her great lawsuits, one of which was then pending in the Supreme Court of the United States.As I listened, I thought of the wonderful career of the little woman before me.Few names, a half-century ago, were more familiar to the reading public than that of Myra Clark Gaines.She was born in New Orleans in the early days of the century; was the daughter of Daniel Clark, who died in 1813, the owner of a large portion of the land upon which the city of New Orleans was afterwards built.She was his only heir, and soon after attaining her majority, instituted a suit, or series of suits, for the recovery of her property.After years of litigation, the seriously controverted fact of her being the lawful heir of Daniel Clark was established, and the contest, which was to wear out two generations of lawyers, began in dead earnest.The value of the property involved in the litigation then exceeded thirty millions of dollars.At the time I saw her, she had just arrived from her home in New Orleans to be present at the argument of one of her suits in the Supreme Court.She had already received nearly six millions of dollars by successful litigation, and she assured me that she intended to live one hundred years longer, if necessary, to obtain her rights, and that she expected to recover every dollar to which she was rightfully entitled.The air of confidence with which she spoke, and the pluck manifested in her every word and motion, convinced me at once that the only possible question as to her ultimate success was that of time.And so indeed it proved, for,

  "When like a clock worn out with eating time,
  The wheels of weary life at last stood still,"

numerous suits, in which she had been successful in the lower courts, were still pending in the higher.

She told me with apparent satisfaction, during the interview, that she could name over fifty lawyers who had been against her since the beginning of her contest, all of whom were now in their graves.Her litigation was the one absorbing thought of her life, her one topic of conversation.

General Gaines had died many years before, and her legal battles,— extending through several decades and against a host of adversaries, —she had, with courage unfaltering and patience that knew no shadow of weariness, prosecuted single-handed and alone.

In view of the enormous sums involved, the length of time consumed in the litigation, the number and ability of counsel engaged, and the antagonisms engendered, the records of our American courts will be searched in vain for a parallel to the once famous suit of Myra Clark Gaines against the city of New Orleans.

At the close of this interview, I was soon in conversation with the older of the two ladies.Mrs. Eaton was then near the close of an eventful life, one indeed without an approximate parallel in our history.Four score years ago, there were few persons in the village of Washington to whom "Peggy O'Neal" was a stranger.Her father was the proprietor of a well-known, old-style tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue, which, during the sessions of Congress, included among its guests many of the leading statesmen of that day.Of this number were Benton, Randolph, Eaton, Grundy, and others equally well known.The daughter, a girl of rare beauty, on account of her vivacity and grace soon became a great favorite with all.She was without question one of the belles of Washington.

It was difficult for me to realize that the care-worn face before me was that of the charming Peggy O'Neal of early Washington days.Distress, poverty, slander possibly, had measurably wrought the sad change, but after all,

"the surest poison is Time."

Traces of her former self still lingered, however, and her erect form and dignified mien would have challenged respect in any assembly.

While yet in her teens, she had married a purser in the Navy, who soon after died by his own hand, while on a cruise in the Mediterranean.A year or two after his death, with reputation somewhat clouded, she married the Honorable John H.Eaton, then a Senator from Tennessee.He was many years her senior, was one of the leading statesmen of the day, and had rendered brilliant service in the campaign which terminated so triumphantly at New Orleans.He was the devoted personal and political friend of General Jackson, his earliest biographer, and later his earnest advocate for the Presidency.Indeed, the movement having in view the election of "Old Hickory" was inaugurated by Major Eaton assisted by Amos Kendall and Francis P.Blair.

This was in 1824, before the days of national conventions.Eaton visited several of the States in the interest of his old commander, and secured the hearty co-operation of many of the most influential men.It was in large degree through his personal efforts that the Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Tennessee proposed the name of Andrew Jackson for the great office.

The Presidential contest of that year marked an epoch in our political history.It was at the close of the Monroe administration, "the era of good feeling."The struggle for supremacy which immediately followed was the precursor of an era of political strife which left its deep and lasting impress upon the country.Of the four candidates in the field, two were members of the outgoing Cabinet of President Monroe: John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, and William H.Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury.The remaining candidates were Henry Clay, the eloquent and accomplished Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Andrew Jackson, "the hero of New Orleans."The candidates were all of the same party, that founded by Jefferson; the sun of the once powerful Federalists had set, and the Whig party was yet in the future.

No one of the candidates receiving a majority of the electoral vote, the election devolved upon the House of Representatives.Mr. Clay being the lowest upon the list, the choice by constitutional requirement was to be made from his three competitors.The influence of the Kentucky statesman was thrown to Mr. Adams, who was duly elected, receiving the votes of a bare majority of the States.The determining vote was given by the sole representative from Illinois, the able and brilliant Daniel P.Cook, a friend of Mr. Clay.The sad sequel was the defeat of Cook at the next Congressional election, his immediate retirement from public life, and early and lamented death.

Not less sad was the effect of the vote just given upon the political fortunes of Henry Clay.His high character and distinguished public services were scant protection against the clamor that immediately followed his acceptance of the office of Secretary of State tendered him by President Adams. "Bargain and Corruption" was the terrible slogan of his enemies in his later struggles for the Presidency and its echo scarcely died out with that generation.

In this connection, the bitter words spoken in the Senate by John Randolph will be recalled: "the coalition between the Puritan and the blackleg."The duel which followed, now historic, stands alone in the fierce conflicts of men.Whatever the faults of Randolph, let it be remembered to his eternal honor, that after receiving at short range the fire of Mr. Clay, he promptly discharged his own pistol in the air.Even after the lapse of eighty years how pleasing these words: "At which Mr. Clay, throwing down his own pistol, advanced with extended hand to Mr. Randolph, who taking his hand quietly remarked, 'You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay,' to which the latter exclaimed, 'Thank God the obligation is no greater!'"

Immediately upon the defeat of Jackson, his friends began the agitation which resulted in his overwhelming triumph over Adams, in 1828.Chief among his supporters in this, as in his former contest, was Major Eaton.The untiring devotion of Jackson to his friends is well known.It rarely found more striking illustration than in the selection of Eaton as Secretary of War, and in the zeal with which he sustained him through good and evil report alike, during later years.

When it became known that Senator Eaton was to hold a seat in the Cabinet of the new administration, the fashionable circles of the capital were deeply agitated, and protests earnest and vehement assailed the ears of the devoted President.The objections urged were not against Major Eaton, but against his beautiful and accomplished wife.Rumors of an exceedingly uncomplimentary character, that had measurably died out with time, were suddenly revived against Mrs. Eaton, and gathered force and volume with each passing day.It is hardly necessary to say that this hostility was, in the main, from her own sex.To all remonstrances and appeals, however, President Jackson turned a deaf ear.The kindness shown by the mother of Mrs. Eaton to the wife of the President during a former residence, and while he was a Senator, in Washington, had never been forgotten.It will be remembered that during the late Presidential contest not only had Jackson himself been the object of merciless attack, but even his invalid wife did not escape.Divorced from her first husband because of his cruel treatment, she had married Jackson, when he was a young lawyer in Nashville, many years before.As the result of the aspersions cast upon her, the once famous duel was evolved in which Charles Dickinson fell by the hand of Jackson in 1806.

After his election, but before his inauguration, Mrs. Jackson died, the victim of calumny as her husband always believed.A few days after he had turned away from that new-made grave, he was in the turmoil of politics at the national capital.With the past fresh in his memory, it is not strange that he espoused the cause of his faithful friend, and the daughter of the woman who had befriended one dearer to him than his own life.Thoroughly convinced of the innocence of Mrs. Eaton, he made her cause his own, and to the end he knew no variableness or shadow of turning.

The new administration was not far upon its tempestuous voyage before the trouble began.The relentless hostility of the leaders of Washington society against Mrs. Eaton was manifested in every possible way.Their doors were firmly closed against her.This, of itself, would have been of comparatively little moment, but serious consequences were to grow out of it.From private parlors and drawing-rooms the controversy soon reached the little coterie that constituted the official family of President Jackson.While this is almost forgotten history now, one chapter of Jackson's biography published soon after the events mentioned, was headed, "Mr. Van Buren calls upon Mrs. Eaton."As is well known, the creed in action of the most suave of our presidents was,

  "The statues of our stately fortunes
  Are sculptured with the chisel, not the axe."

Mr. Van Buren was Secretary of State, and one of the most agreeable and politic of statesmen.He was in line of succession to the great office, and understood well the importance of maintaining his hold upon President Jackson.A widower himself, the call upon which so much stress was laid at the time subjected the Secretary of State to no embarrassment at home.Not so, however, with three of his colleagues in the Cabinet: Mr. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Branch of the Navy, and Mr. Berrien the Attorney-General.The wife of each of these gentlemen refused to return Mrs. Eaton's call, or to recognize her in any possible manner.No remonstrance on the part of the President could avail to secure even a formal exchange of courtesies on the part of these ladies.All this only intensified the determination on the part of the President to secure to the wife of the Secretary of War the social recognition to which he considered her justly entitled, but it would not avail; the purpose of the most resolute man on earth was powerless against a determination equal to his own.Never was more forcibly exemplified the truth of the old couplet:

  "When a woman will, she will, you may depend on't,
  And when she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't."

As to how Mrs. Eaton meanwhile appeared to others, something may be gleaned from the statement of a distinguished gentleman who called at the home of the Secretary of War:

"I went to the house in the evening, and found assembled there a large company of gentlemen who paid assiduous court to the lady.Mrs. Eaton was not then the celebrated character she was destined ere long to be made.To me she seemed a strikingly beautiful and fascinating woman, all graciousness and vivacity—the life of the company."

That the discordant status of the households of the official advisers of the President was the topic of discussion among leading statesmen, may be inferred from the following extract from a letter written at the time by Daniel Webster:

"Mr. Van Buren has evidently, at this moment, quite the lead in influence and importance.He controls all the pages on the back stairs, and flatters what seems to be, at present, the Aaron's serpent among the President's desires, a settled purpose of making out of the lady of whom so much has been said, a person of reputation."

Of curious interest even now, is the closing sentence in Mr. Webster's letter, in which with prophetic ken he forecasts the effect of the Eaton controversy upon national politics: "It is odd enough, but too evident to be doubted, that the consequence of this dispute in the social and fashionable world is producing great political effects, and may very probably determine who shall be successor to the present chief magistrate."

As explanatory of the above quotation, it will be remembered that next to President Jackson, the two most prominent leaders of the dominant party were Vice-President Calhoun and Secretary of State Van Buren.The political forces were even then gathering around one or the other of these great leaders, and there was little question in official circles that the successor to Jackson would be either Van Buren or Calhoun.It was equally certain that the successful aspirant would be the one who had the good fortune to secure the powerful influence of Jackson.Chief among the friends of Calhoun were the Cabinet officers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien.The incumbent of the office of Postmaster-General—now for the first time a Cabinet office—was William T.Barry of Kentucky.He was the friend of Van Buren, and in the social controversy mentioned, he sided with the President and the Secretary of State as a champion of Mrs. Eaton.As to the views of the Vice-President upon the all-absorbing question, we have no information.Not being one of the official advisers of the President, he probably kept entirely aloof from a controversy no doubt in every way distasteful to him.

Meanwhile the relations between Secretary Eaton and his colleagues of the Treasury, Navy, and Department of Justice, became more and more unfriendly, until all communication other than of the most formal official character ceased.The soul of the President was vexed beyond endurance; and as under existing conditions harmony in his official family was impossible, he determined upon a reorganization of his Cabinet.To this end, the resignations of Van Buren, Eaton, and Barry were voluntarily tendered, and promptly accepted.A formal request from the President to Messrs.Ingham, Branch, and Berrien secured the resignation of these three official advisers; and thus was brought about what is known in our political history as "the disruption of Jackson's Cabinet."

The three gentlemen whose resignations had been voluntarily tendered, were, in modern political parlance, at once "taken care of." Mr. Van Buren was appointed minister to St. James, Barry to Madrid, and Eaton to the governorship of Florida Territory. No such good fortune, however, was in store for either Ingham, Branch, or Berrien. Each was, henceforth, persona non grata with President Jackson.

The end, however, was not yet.A publication by the retiring
Secretary of the Treasury contained an uncomplimentary allusion to
Mrs. Eaton, which resulted first in his receiving a challenge from
her husband, and later in a street altercation.

The almost forgotten incidents just mentioned were rapidly leading up to matters of deep consequence.The true significance of the words of Webster last quoted will now appear.A rupture, never yet fully explained, now occurred between President Jackson and Mr. Calhoun.The intention of the former to secure to Mr. Van Buren the succession to the presidency was no longer a matter of doubt.

Van Buren, "the favorite," was meanwhile reposing upon no bed of roses.He was, in very truth, "in the thick of events."His confirmation as Minister was defeated by the casting vote of Vice-President Calhoun, after the formal presentation of his credentials to the Court to which he had been accredited.It was believed that this rejection would prove the death knell to Van Buren's Presidential hopes.But it was not so to be.His rejection aroused deep sympathy, secured his nomination upon the ticket with Jackson in 1832, and for four years he presided over the great body which had so lately rejected his nomination, and as is well known, four years later he was chosen to succeed Jackson as President.Unfortunately for Calhoun, one of the ablest and purest of statesmen, he had incurred the hostility of Jackson, and never attained the goal of his ambition.

During my interview with Mrs. Eaton I said to her, "Madam, you must have known General Jackson when he was President?" "Known General Jackson," she replied, "known General Jackson?" "Oh, yes," I said, "your husband was a member of his Cabinet and of course you must have known him. I would like to know what kind of a man General Jackson really was?" "What kind of a man," replied Mrs. Eaton in a manner and tone not easily forgotten. "What kind of a man—a god, sir, a god."The spirit of the past seemed over her, as with trembling voice and deep emotion she spoke of the man whose powerful and unfaltering friendship had been her stay and bulwark during the terrible ordeal through which she had passed.

Accompanying her that evening to the humble home provided for her by a distant relative, she remarked, "I have seen the time, sir, when I could have invited you to an elegant home."She then said that when Major Eaton died, he left for her an ample fortune but that some years later she unfortunately married a man younger than herself, who succeeded in getting her property into his hands and then cruelly deserted her.

Fiction indeed seems commonplace when contrasted with the story of real life such as this now penniless and forgotten woman had known.Once surrounded by all that wealth could give, herself one of the most beautiful and accomplished of women, her husband the incumbent of exalted official position,—now, wealth, beauty, and position vanished; the grave hiding all she loved; sitting in silence and desolation, the memories of the long past almost her sole companions.When in the tide of time has there been truer realization of the words of the great bard—

  "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn,
  Good and ill together?"

X THE CODE OF HONOR

BLADENSBURG, A PLACE NOTORIOUS FOR DUELS—FRANKLIN'S OPINION OF
DUELLING—NOTABLE MEN WHO FELL IN DUELS—FATAL DUEL BETWEEN COMMODORES
BARRON AND DECATUR—THE LAST DUEL FOUGHT AT BLADENSBURG—ITS CAUSE A
MERE PUNCTILIO—THE WRITER'S INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF THE SECONDS—
A DUEL IN REVOLUTION DAYS—GEORGE WASHINGTON DISSUADES GEN. GREENE
FROM ACCEPTING A CHALLENGE—GEN. CONWAY, FOR CONSPIRING AGAINST
WASHINGTON, WOUNDED BY COL. CADWALLADER—GEN. CHARLES LEE, ANOTHER
CONSPIRATOR, WOUNDED BY COL. LAURENS—DUEL BETWEEN CLINTON,
"THE FATHER OF THE ERIE CANAL," AND MR. SWARTOUT—THREE NOTABLE
REPLIES TO CHALLENGES—THE FATAL DUEL BETWEEN HAMILTON AND BURR
—UNHAPPINESS OF BURR'S OLD AGE—DUEL BETWEEN SENATOR BRODERICK
AND JUDGE TERRY—A HARMLESS DUEL BETWEEN SENATOR GWIN AND MR.
McCORKLE—A MURDER UNDER THE GUISE OF A DUEL—DUELLING BY ILLINOISANS
—LINCOLN'S INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PRELIMINARIES OF HIS DUEL WITH
SENATOR SHIELDS.

The very name "Bladensburg" is suggestive of pistol and bullet, savors indeed of human blood.It is associated with tragic events that during successive generations stirred emotions of indignation and horror that have not yet wholly died out from the memories of men.As the words "Baden-Baden" and "Monte Carlo" bring before us the gambler "steeped in the colors of his trade," so the mere mention of Bladensburg calls to mind the duellist, pistol in hand, standing in front of his slain antagonist.

Personal difficulties are now rarely if ever in this country adjusted by an appeal to "the code."The custom, now universally condemned as barbarous, was at an early day practically upheld by an almost omnipotent public opinion.As is well known, in many localities to have declined an invitation to "the field of honor" from one entitled to the designation of a "gentleman" would have entailed not only loss of social position, but to a public man would have been a bar to future political advancement.Thanks to a higher civilization, and possibly a more exalted estimate of the sacredness of human life, the code in all our American States is a thing of the past.

And yet, revolting as the custom now appears, it held its place as a recognized method for the settlement of personal controversies among "gentlemen," to a time within the memories of men still living.The code, a heritage from barbaric times, lingered till it had caused more than one bloody chapter to be written, until it had taken from the walks of life more than one of our most gifted American statesmen.

Truer words were never written than those of Franklin at the time when the code was appealed to for the settlement of every dispute pertaining to personal honor: "A duel decides nothing; the man appealing to it, makes himself judge in his own cause, condemns the offender without a jury, and undertakes himself to be the executioner."And yet, the startling record remains that in the State of New Jersey, one of the ablest and most brilliant of statesmen met death at the hands of an antagonist scarcely less gifted, who was at the time Vice-President of the United States.The survivor of an encounter equally tragic, occurring near the banks of the Cumberland in 1806, was a little more than a score of years later elevated to the Presidency.The valuable life of the Secretary of State during the administration of the younger Adams was saved only by his antagonist magnanimously refusing to return the fire which came within an ace of ending his own life.Thirteen years after the Clay and Randolph duel, a member of Congress from Maine perished in an encounter at Bladensburg with a representative from Kentucky.Sixty-six years ago, a challenge to mortal combat was accepted by one who in later years was twice elected to the Presidency.One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence fell in a duel with an officer of the Colonial army, soon after that great event.There are many yet living who read the startling telegram from the Pacific coast that a Senator from California had fallen in a duel with the Chief Justice of that State, and sad as it is, this dreadful recital might be much farther extended.

While a member of Congress many years ago, in company with Representatives Knott and McKenzie of Kentucky I spent some hours upon the historic duelling ground at Bladensburg, a Maryland village of a few hundred inhabitants, six miles from the city of Washington.Governor Knott pointed out the exact spot where Barron and Decatur stood in the memorable duel in 1820, in which the latter was killed.It is impossible to read the account of this fatal meeting even after the lapse of more than four score years, without a feeling of profound regret for the sad fate of one of the most gallant of all the brave officers the American Navy has known.It was truly said of Decatur: "He was one of the most chivalric men of any age or country."He was one of the little band of naval commanders who by heroic exploits at sea did so much to redeem the American name from the humiliation and disgrace caused by incompetent generalship upon land, in our second war with Great Britain.His encounters with the enemy were of frequent occurrence, and in each instance added new laurels to our little navy.If Commodore Decatur had rendered no other service to his country, that of the destruction of the Algerine pirates would alone entitle him to a place among its benefactors.His skill and daring when in command of our little fleet upon the Mediterranean destroyed forever the power of "the common enemy of mankind," avenged the insult to our flag, and secured for the American name an honored place among the nations of the world.

The tragic death of Decatur—recalling so much of gallant service— has cast a spell about his name.It belongs in the list of immortals, with the names of Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain Lawrence, Lord Nelson, and Oliver Hazard Perry.Cities and counties without number throughout our entire country have been given the honored name of Decatur.

Commodore Barron, too, had known much active service.For an alleged official delinquency, he had been court-martialed near the close of the War of 1812, and sentenced to a suspension of five years from his command.Smarting under this humiliation, he was bitter in his denunciation of all who were in any way concerned in what he regarded an act of flagrant injustice to himself.Chief among the officers who had incurred his displeasure was Commodore Decatur.A protracted and at length hostile correspondence ensued between the two, and this correspondence resulted at length in a challenge from Barron, accepted by Decatur.The latter had repeatedly declared that he bore no personal hostility toward Barron.Before going to the fatal field he told his friend William Wirt—then the Attorney-General of the United States—that he did not wish to meet Barron, and that the duel was forced upon him.When he received the challenge, he assured a brother officer that nothing could induce him to take the life of Barron.In connection with this sad affair, Mr. Wirt—who was untiring in his efforts to effect a reconciliation—has left the record of a conversation with Decatur in which the latter declared his hostility to the practice of duelling, but that he was "controlled by the omnipotence of public sentiment.""Fighting," said he, "is my profession, and it would be impossible for me to keep my station and preserve my respectability without showing myself ready at all times to answer the call of any one who bore the name of gentleman."

The hostile meeting between Barron and Decatur occurred at the place already mentioned, March 22, 1820.The distance was eight paces, the weapons, pistols.Decatur's second was Captain Bainbridge, at a later day a distinguished admiral in our navy.As they took their places at the deadly range, Barron said, "I hope on meeting in another world we will be better friends than in this."To which Decatur replied, "I have never been your enemy, sir."At the word both pistols were discharged, making but a single report.Both combatants fell.Decatur was supported a short distance, and sank down near his antagonist, who was severely—and as it was then supposed, mortally—wounded.Mr. Wirt says:

"What then occurred reminded me of the closing scenes of the tragedy between Hamlet and Laertes.Barron proposed that they should make friends before they met in another world.Decatur said he had never been his enemy, that he freely forgave him his death, but he could not forgive those who had stimulated him to seek his life.Barron then said: 'Would to God you had said that much yesterday.'"

Thus they parted in peace.Decatur knew he was to die, and his only regret was that he had not died in the service of his country.

The last duel fought at Bladensburg was in 1838, between Jonathan Cilley and William J.Graves.The former was at the time a Representative in Congress from Maine, and the latter from Kentucky.In its main features, this duel is without a parallel.It was fought upon a pure technicality.The parties to it never exchanged an unkind word, and were in fact, almost up to the day of the fatal meeting, comparative strangers to each other.

Briefly related, the fatal meeting between Cilley and Graves came about in this wise. In a speech in the House, Mr. Cilley in replying to an editorial in The New York Courier and Inquirer, criticised severely the conduct of its proprietor, James Watson Webb, a noted Whig editor of that day. At this, the latter, being deeply offended and failing to obtain a retraction by Cilley of the offensive words, challenged him to mortal combat. The bearer of this challenge was William J. Graves, a prominent Whig member of the House. Mr. Cilley in his letter to Mr. Graves, in which he declined to receive the challenge of Webb, said: "I decline to receive it because I choose to be drawn into no controversy with him. I neither affirm nor deny anything in regard to his character, but I now repeat what I have said to you, that I intended by the refusal no disrespect to you."

This letter was considered unsatisfactory by Graves, and he immediately sent by his colleague Mr. Menifee, a note to Cilley then in his seat in the House, saying: "In declining to receive Colonel Webb's communication, you do not disclaim any exception to him personally as a gentleman.I have, therefore, to inquire whether you declined to receive his communication on the ground of any personal exception to him as a gentleman or a man of honor."Mr. Cilley declining to give the categorical answer demanded, was immediately challenged by Graves.The challenge was borne by Mr. Wise, a Representative from Virginia.On the same evening, Mr. Jones—then a delegate and later a Senator from Iowa—as the second of Cilley, handed the note of acceptance of the latter to Graves.Bladensburg was designated as the place of meeting, rifles the weapons, the distance eight yards, the rifles to be held horizontally at arm's length down, to be cocked and triggers set, the words to be, "Gentlemen, are you ready?"Some delay was occasioned by the difficulty in procuring a suitable rifle for Mr. Graves.This was at length obviated, as will appear from the following note of Mr. Jones to Mr. Wise: "I have the honor to inform you that I have in my possession an excellent rifle, in good order, which is at the service of Mr. Graves."With every courtesy proper to the occasion rigidly observed, the rifle mentioned, "through the politeness of Dr. Duncan," was sent to Mr. Graves, and the hostile meeting occurred at the designated time, February 24, 1838.

From the report of a special committee of the House of Representatives at a later day appointed to investigate this affair, it appears that Mr. Graves was accompanied to the ground by his second, Mr. Wise, Mr. Crittenden, and Mr. Menifee, two of his colleagues, and Dr. Foltz his surgeon.The attendants of Mr. Cilley were his second, Mr. Jones, Representative Bynum of North Carolina, and Colonel Schoenberg, and Dr. Duncan as his surgeon.The Committee's report then continues in these words:

"Shortly after three o'clock P.M.the parties exchanged shots according to the terms of meeting.Mr. Cilley fired first before he had fully elevated his piece, and Mr. Graves one or two seconds afterwards.Both missed.It is to the credit of both the seconds and to the other gentlemen in attendance, than an earnest desire was then manifested to have the affair terminated, as will appear from the report already mentioned."

Mr. Jones now inquired of Mr. Wise whether Mr. Graves was satisfied, to which Mr. Wise replied: "These gentlemen have come here without animosity toward each other; they are fighting merely upon a point of honor.Cannot Mr. Cilley assign some reason for not receiving at Mr. Graves's hands Colonel Webb's communication, or make some disclaimer which will relive Mr. Graves from his position?"Mr. Jones replied: "While the challenge is impending, Mr. Cilley can make no explanation."Mr. Wise said: "The exchange of shots suspends the challenge, and the challenge is suspended for explanation."Mr. Jones thereupon went to Mr. Cilley, and after returning said:

"I am authorized by my friend Mr. Cilley to say, that in declining to receive the note from Mr. Graves purporting to come from Colonel Webb, he meant no disrespect to Mr. Graves because he entertained for him then as he does now, the highest respect and the most kind feeling; but that he declined to receive the note because he chose not to be drawn into any controversy with Colonel Webb."

The above not being satisfactory to Mr. Graves, and Mr. Cilley declining to make further concession, the challenge was renewed and the parties resumed their positions and again exchanged shots.Mr. Graves fired first, before he had fully elevated his piece; Mr. Cilley about two seconds afterwards.They both missed, although the witnesses then thought from the motions and appearance of Mr. Graves that he was hit.The latter immediately and peremptorily demanded another shot.

The challenge was here again, for the time, withdrawn and another unsuccessful attempt made by the seconds to effect an adjustment.In the light of what was so soon to follow, it is painful to read that all this came about and continued to the bloody end, because Mr. Cilley in substance refused to disclaim that his declination of Webb's challenge was for the reason that he did not consider him a gentleman.His repeated assurance that in doing so, he intended no disrespect to the bearer of the challenge, for whom he entertained the most kindly feelings, strangely enough to us was deemed insufficient.

The challenge being renewed, the parties, after due observance of the formalities as before, confronted each other for the third and last time.And now closes the official report: "the rifles being loaded, the parties resumed their stations, and fired the third time very near together.Mr. Cilley was shot through the body.He dropped his rifle, beckoned to some one near him, and said, 'I am shot,' put both his hands to his wound, fell, and in two or three minutes expired."

What a commentary all this upon "the code of honor"!Upon what appears the shadow of a technicality even, two young men of recognized ability, chosen representatives of the people, confronted each other in continued combat, until death closed the scene, and neither had the slightest feeling of hostility toward the other!This duel, so utterly groundless in its inception and bloody in its termination, was the last fought in Bladensburg.Intense excitement followed the death of the lamented Cilley and public sentiment was deeply aroused against the horrible custom of duelling.But the public sentiment that existed at the time must be taken into account before a too ready condemnation of one of the actors in this fearful tragedy.In announcing the death of Mr. Cilley to the Senate, Mr. Williams of Maine said: "In accepting the call, he did nothing more than he believed indispensable to avoid disgrace to himself, his family, and his constituents."

While the presiding officer of the Senate, a gentleman of small stature and advanced age called upon me and introduced himself as George W.Jones, former Senator from Iowa.I have rarely met a more interesting man.He was then ninety-two years of age, apparently in perfect health, and as active as if, for his exclusive benefit, the hands had been turned back three decades upon the dial.He had been a delegate from the Territory embracing the present States of Iowa and Wisconsin, in the twenty-fifth Congress, when the sessions of the House were held in the Old Hall.Upon the admission of Iowa as a State, he was chosen a Senator, a position he held by successive elections for many years.As delegate, he had been the associate of John Quincy Adams, and as a Senator the contemporary of Benton, Wright, Douglas, Cass, Seward, Preston, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster.He had personally known some of the men whose public life reached back to the establishment of the Government.He had taken part in the discussion of great questions that have left a deep impress upon history.As I listened to his description of the men I have named, and of the momentous events with which their names are associated, he seemed indeed the sole connecting link between the present and the long past.

But what interested me most deeply in the almost forgotten old man before me, was the fact that he was the second of the unfortunate Cilley upon the ill-fated day at Bladensburg.The conversation at length turned to that event, and strangely enough, he manifested no suggestion of embarrassment at its mention.He spoke in the highest terms of Mr. Cilley, as a gentleman of lofty character, of unfaltering courage, of rare gifts, and of splendid promise.It was evident that the passing years had not dimmed his memory of the tragic event, nor lessened his regret at the sad ending of an affair with which his own name is inseparably associated.

The first duel between men of prominence in this country, was that of Gwinett and McIntosh.The fact that one of the parties, Button Gwinett, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence gives it historic interest.He was one of the three delegates from Georgia in the second Continental Congress, and an earnest champion of independence.Six years before, he had emigrated from England, purchased a large tract of land, and devoted himself to agricultural pursuits.Less is known of him, probably, than of any of the signers of the Declaration.

In 1777, he became involved in a bitter personal quarrel with General McIntosh, an officer of the Revolution.Deeply offended at his conduct, Gwinett challenged him to mortal combat.They fought with pistols at a distance of twelve feet, and Gwinett was killed.He is buried at Augusta, Georgia, with his two colleagues in the Continental Congress.

It is now an almost forgotten fact that, but for the wise counsel of his superior officer, Nathaniel Greene, next to Washington the ablest of the American generals, would have been a party to a duel at a time when his services were so greatly in demand.Soon after his transfer to the southern army, Greene was challenged by a captain of his command.Fearing that a declination upon his part would be misunderstood by his brother officers, Greene wrote General Washington a full account of the transaction, concluding: "If I thought my honor or reputation would suffer in the opinion of the world, and more especially with the military gentlemen, I value life too little to hesitate a moment to accept the challenge."The answer of one of the wisest of men possibly saved to our little army one whose loss would have been disastrous to his country at that critical moment.Said Washington:

"I give it as my decided opinion, that your honor and reputation will stand not only perfectly acquitted for the non-acceptance of his challenge, but that your prudence and judgment would have been condemned by accepting it; because if a commanding officer is amenable to private calls for the discharge of his public duty, he has a dagger always at his heart, and can turn neither to the right nor to the left without meeting its point."

The timely words of Washington had the desired effect, and very probably saved General Greene to a brilliant career of usefulness and glory.

One of the most interesting incidents of our Revolutionary history, is what is known as "The Conway Cabal," the attempt to displace Washington from the supreme command and substitute General Horatio Gates in his stead.The latter was then in high favor as the hero of Saratoga and the capturer of the invading army of Burgoyne.In this connection, the prophetic words of the deeply embittered General Charles Lee will be recalled.On his way to take command of the southern army to which he had just been assigned, Gates called upon Lee, then in disgrace and retirement at his home.Both were Englishmen, had known service together in the British army, and were at the time owners of neighboring plantations in what is now Jefferson County, West Virginia.When parting, Lee significantly remarked to this old comrade, "Gates, your Northern laurels will soon be turned into Southern willows."The disastrous defeat at Camden soon thereafter terminated the military career of Gates no less effectually than the timely "curse" of Washington had terminated that of Lee upon his disgraceful retreat at the battle of Monmouth.

The result of the "Cabal" above mentioned was a challenge from Colonel Cadwallader to General Conway, whose name has come down to us associated with the conspiracy to supersede Washington by Gates.In an encounter which immediately followed, Conway was seriously wounded.Believing his wound to be mortal, he called for pen and paper and did much to retrieve his reputation by writing the following letter to Washington:

"SIR: I find myself just able to hold my pen during a few moments and take this opportunity of expressing my sincere grief for having written, said, or done anything disagreeable to Your Excellency.My career will soon be over, therefore justice and truth prompt me to declare my last sentiments.You are in my eyes the great and good man.May you long enjoy the love, esteem, and veneration of these States whose liberties you have asserted by your virtues."

Conway eventually recovered, entered the army of France, and died in its service.

General Charles Lee was indeed a soldier of fortune.A native of England, he held a commission in the British army, and later in that of the King of Italy.As the result of a duel in which he slew an Italian officer, he fled to America, and tendered his services to the Continental Congress just at the beginning of the struggle for independence.He was placed second in command to Washington and was not without supporters for the coveted position of Commander-in-chief.He was from the beginning the enemy of Washington, and deeply resented the fact that his position was subordinate to that of the younger and less experienced officer, for whose ability he expressed great contempt.He was a friend of Gates and one of the chief conspirators in the Conway Cabal.His military career closed at the battle of Monmouth, and from letters that have come to light there is little doubt that he was then in treasonable correspondence with the enemy.

After being deprived of his command at Monmouth, he was challenged by Colonel John Laurens, one of the aides of the Commander-in-chief, because of his denunciation of Washington.The challenge was accepted, and the parties fought with pistols in a retired spot near Philadelphia.Additional interest attaches to this duel from the fact that Colonel Alexander Hamilton of Washington's staff, was the second for Laurens.

At the first fire Lee was wounded, and then, through the interposition of Hamilton the affair terminated.The gratifying narrative has come down to us that, "upon the whole, we think it a piece of justice to the two gentlemen to declare that, after they met, their conduct was strongly marked with all the politeness, generosity, coolness, and firmness, that ought to characterize a transaction of this nature."

The last years of Lee's life were spent at his Virginia plantation.He died in an obscure boarding-house in Philadelphia, in 1782.Upon a visit I made to his Virginia home some years ago, I was shown a certified copy of his will, which contained this remarkable provision:

"It is my will, that I shall not be buried within one mile of any churchyard, or of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist church, for the reason that as I have kept a great deal of bad company in this world, I do not wish to do so in the next."

This country has known few abler or more eminent men than DeWitt Clinton.He was successively Mayor of the city of New York, Governor of that State, a Senator in Congress, and in 1812 an unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency against Mr. Madison.Distinguished as a lawyer and statesman, he is even better known as "the Father of the Erie Canal."His biographer says:

"After undergoing constant, unremitting, and factious resistance, he had the felicity of being borne, in October, 1825, in a barge on the artificial river—which he seemed to all to have constructed —from Lake Erie to the Bay of New York, while bells were rung, and cannon saluted him at every stage of that imposing progress."

In 1803, while in the Senate, Clinton accepted a challenge from General Dayton, a Senator from New Jersey.The ground of the challenge was words spoken by the former in debate.Before the hostile meeting, however, through the interposition of friends a satisfactory explanation upon the part of Clinton resulted in a peaceable adjustment, and the restoration of friendly relations between the two Senators.

An "affair of honor" in which Clinton was engaged one year earlier, was not quite so easily adjusted.This was with a noted politician of that day, John Swartout of New York.The latter was the friend of Aaron Burr, the political and personal enemy of Clinton.Swartout was the challenging party, and the hostile meeting occurred near the city of New York.On the ground, after the parties had been placed in position, Clinton is said to have expressed regret that Burr—the real principal in the controversy—was not before him.History might have run in a different channel had such been the fact.

Three pistol shots were exchanged without effect, at the end of each the second of Clinton demanding of Swartout, "Are you satisfied, sir?" to which the answer was, "I am not." To this, at the third exchange, was added, "neither shall I be until that apology is made which I have demanded of Mr. Clinton." Mr. Clinton declined to sign a paper presented, but declared that he had no animosity against Mr. Swartout, and would willingly shake hands and agree to meet on the score of former friendship. This being unsatisfactory, the fourth shot was promptly exchanged. Fortune, heretofore reluctant to decide between her favorites, now leaned toward the challenged party—Mr. Swartout being struck just below the knee. In reply to the inquiry, "Are you satisfied, sir?" standing erect while the surgeon kneeling beside him removed the ball, he answered, "I am not; proceed." The fifth shot being exchanged, Mr. Swartout's other leg was the recipient of his antagonist's bullet. The voice of the wounded man being still for war, Mr. Clinton here threw down his pistol, declaring he would fight no longer, and immediately retired from the ground. The second of the remaining belligerent now advised his principal to retire also and have his wounds dressed, which certainly seemed reasonable under all the circumstances.

An answer to a challenge that might well stand for a model for all time, was that given during the administration of the older Adams by Mr. Thatcher of Massachusetts, to Blount of North Carolina. The challenge grew out of a heated debate in the House. In reply, Thatcher said in substance, that being a husband and father, his family had an interest in his life, and that he could not think of accepting the invitation without the consent of his wife, that he would immediately consult her, and if successful in obtaining her permission, he would meet Mr. Blount with pleasure. Whereupon Fisher Ames, one of the great men of the day, wittily remarked to a bachelor colleague, "Behold now the advantage of having a wife— God preserve us all from gunpowder!"

The reply of Thatcher was read in the House, causing much merriment and leaving his adversary—

  "Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
  And the sad burden of some merry song."

It is hardly necessary to add that at last accounts the consent of
Mrs. Thatcher had not been obtained.

It is scarcely remembered that Lord Byron, angered by a bitter criticism, once challenged the poet Southey.Accepting the challenge conditionally, Southey added:

"In affairs of this kind, the participants ought to meet on equal terms. But to establish the equality between you and me there are two things that ought to be done, and a third may also be necessary before I meet you on the field. First, you must marry and have four children—all girls. Second, you must prove that the greater part of the provision which you make for them depends upon you life, and you must be under bond for four thousand pounds not to be hanged, commit suicide, nor be killed in a duel, which are the conditions upon which I have insured my life for the benefit of my wife and daughters. Third, you must convert me to infidelity. We can then meet on equal terms, and your challenge will be cheerfully accepted."

Since the writing of the letters of Junius, nothing probably has appeared equal in invective to the correspondence seventy years ago between Daniel O'Connell and Benjamin Disraeli.The former was at the time a distinguished member of Parliament, and an orator without a peer.Disraeli, at first a supporter of the policy of the great Liberator, had joined the ranks of his enemies, and was unsparing in his denunciation of O'Connell and his party.In his reply O'Connell, after charging his assailant with ingratitude and treachery, concluded as follows:

"I cannot divest my mind of the belief that if your genealogy were traced, it would be found that you are the lineal descendant and true heir-at-law of the impenitent thief who atoned for his crimes upon the cross."

The challenge from Disraeli, which immediately followed, was treated by O'Connell with supreme contempt.

The duel between Hamilton and Burr is of perennial interest to the American people.Both were men of great distinction and splendid talents.Both had been soldiers during the Revolutionary War, and Hamilton was the confidential friend and for a time chief-of-staff of Washington.Burr had been a Senator from New York, and was at the time of the duel Vice-President of the United States.He was one of the recognized leaders of the dominant party, and by many considered the probable successor of Jefferson in the great office.Whatever hopes he might have had for the Presidency were destroyed by his alleged attempt to defeat Jefferson and secure his own elevation by the House of Representatives in 1801.His hostility to Hamilton had its beginning in the opposition of the latter to Burr's aspirations to the Presidency.Differing widely, as Hamilton did, with Jefferson upon important questions then pending, he nevertheless preferred the latter to Burr, and his influence eventually turned the scales—after a protracted struggle —in favor of Jefferson.

The valuable service just mentioned was one of the many rendered by Hamilton.He was the earnest advocate of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and his papers during that pivotal struggle have justly given him high place in the list of American statesmen.He was the first Secretary of the Treasury, and possibly no man possessed in larger degree the confidence of Washington.

Aaron Burr was the grandson of the great New England minister, Jonathan Edwards, whose only daughter, Edith, was the wife of the Reverend Aaron Burr, an eminent Presbyterian clergyman and President of Princeton College.From all that is known of this gentleman, there can be no doubt that his ability and piety were unquestioned.Edith, his wife, was a woman of rare gifts and one of the loveliest of her sex.The pathetic reference to her in the funeral sermon over Hamilton will be remembered: "If there be tears in Heaven, a pious mother looks down upon this scene and weeps."

Hamilton and Burr were both citizens of New York, the latter, of Albany, the former, of New York City.At the time of the challenge Hamilton held no public office, but was engaged in a lucrative practice of the law.Burr was near the expiration of his term as Vice-President, and was a prospective candidate for Governor of New York.This candidacy was the immediate cause of the correspondence which resulted in the fatal encounter.Four letters passed between Burr and Hamilton prior to the formal challenge.The first was from Burr, and bears date June 18, 1804.In it attention is directed to a published letter of Dr. Cooper containing the words, "General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they look upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.And I could detail to you a still more deplorable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr."

It was to the last sentence that the attention of Hamilton was especially directed by Mr. Van Ness, the bearer of the letter, which closed with the demand upon the part of Burr of "a prompt and unqualified acknowledgment or denial, of the use of any expression which would warrant the assertion of Dr. Cooper."

In his reply the next day Hamilton said:

"I cannot reconcile it with propriety to make the acknowledgment or denial you desire.I will add that I deem it inadmissable on principle to consent to be interrogated as to the justness of the inferences which may be drawn from others, from whatever I may have said of a political opponent in the course of fifteen years' competition.I stand ready to avow, or disavow promptly and explicitly, any precise or definite opinion which I may be charged with having declared of any gentleman.More than this cannot be fitly expected from me; and especially it cannot be reasonably expected that I shall enter into an explanation upon a basis so vague as that which you have adopted.I trust on more reflection, you will see the matter in the same light with me.If not, I can only regret the circumstance, and must abide the consequences."

The immediate response of Burr to the above, after repeating his former demand, contained the following:

"Political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum.I neither claim such privilege, nor indulge it in others."

Hamilton's reply being unsatisfactory, the formal challenge of Burr was soon thereafter handed to him by W.P.Van Ness.The last named was the second of Burr, and Nathaniel Pendleton was the friend of Hamilton.

Some days elapsed after the formal acceptance of the challenge before the fatal meeting.That Hamilton was anxious to avoid the conflict, clearly appears from a perusal of the many publications that immediately followed.A paper he prepared explanatory in character, the second of Burr declined to receive, on the ground that he considered the correspondence closed by the acceptance of the challenge.

It touches our sympathies deeply even after the lapse of a century to read the letter written by Hamilton to his wife to be delivered in the event of his death, in which he states that he has endeavored by all honorable means to avoid the duel which probably he would not survive.He begs her forgiveness for the pain his death would cause her, and entreats her to bear her sorrows as one who has placed a firm reliance on a kind Providence.

A few days before his death, he and Burr were guests at a dimmer given by the Cincinnati Society, of which both were members.Few persons were aware of what was pending, but it was observed that Hamilton "entered with glee into all the gayety of a convivial party, and even sang an old military song."Burr, upon the contrary, was "silent, gloomy, and remained apart."

In his will, written July 9, Hamilton expressed deep regret that his death will prevent the full payment of his debts.He expresses the hope that his children will, in time, make up to his creditors all that may be due them.After tenderly committing to his children the care of their mother, he says, "in all situations you are charged to bear in mind, that she has been to you the most devoted and best of mothers."

The last paper that came from his pen was evidently intended as his vindication to posterity, his appeal to time.In this he says:

"I was certainly desirous of avoiding this interview, for the most cogent reasons.My religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to duelling, and it would give me pain to be obliged to shed the blood of a fellow-creature in a private combat forbidden by the laws.My wife and children are extremely dear to me, and my life is of the utmost importance to them.I am conscious of no ill-will to Colonel Burr distinct from political opposition, which I trust has proceeded from pure and upright motives.Lastly, I shall hazard much and shall possibly gain nothing by the issue of the interview.But it was impossible for me to avoid it."

He candidly admits that his criticisms of Colonel Burr have been severe.He says:

"And on different occasions, I—in common with many others—have made very unfavorable criticisms of the private character of this gentleman.It is not my design to fix any odium on the conduct of Colonel Burr in this case.He may have supposed himself under the necessity of acting as he has done.I hope the grounds of his proceeding have been such as to satisfy his own conscience.I trust, at the same time, that the world will do me the justice to believe that I have not censured him on light grounds, nor from unworthy inducements."

How strangely in the light of history sounds the following: "It is my ardent wish that he, by his future conduct, may show himself worthy of all confidence and esteem, and prove an ornament and blessing to the country."

That some lingering apprehension existed in the mind of General Hamilton that his criticisms of Colonel Burr might not have been altogether generous, appears from the following:

"As well because it is possible that I may have injured Colonel Burr, however convinced myself that my opinions and declarations have been well-founded, as from my general principles and temper in relation to similar affairs, I have resolved, if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it please God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire; and I have thought even of reserving my second fire, and thus giving to Colonel Burr a double opportunity to pause and to reflect."

And then, before laying down his pen for the last time, he struck the keynote to the conduct of many brave men who, like himself, reluctantly accepted a call to "the field of honor."These are his closing words:

"To those who with me, abhorring the practice of duelling, may think that I ought under no account to have added to the number of bad examples, I answer, that my relative situation as well in public as in private enforcing all the considerations which constitute what men of the world denominate honor imposed on me a peculiar necessity not to decline the call.The ability to be in future useful, whether in arresting mischief or effecting good in this crisis of our public affairs which seemed likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular."

At seven o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1804, at Weehawken, New Jersey, the fatal meeting took place.After the usual formal salutation, the parties were placed in position by their seconds, ten paces apart, the pistols placed in their hands, and the word being given both fired.General Hamilton instantly fell.The statement subsequently given out by the seconds is as follows:

"Colonel Burr then advanced toward General Hamilton with a manner and gesture that appeared to be expressive of regret, but without speaking turned about and withdrew, being urged from the field by his friends.No further communication took place between the principals, and the barge that carried Colonel Burr immediately returned to the city.We conceive it proper to add that the conduct of the parties in this interview was perfectly proper as suited the occasion."

The surgeon in attendance states that after Hamilton was borne to the barge he observed, "Pendleton knows that I did not intend to fire at him."As they approached the shore he said, "Let Mrs. Hamilton be immediately sent for; let the event be gradually broken to her, but give her hopes."His physician adds:

"During the night his mind retained its usual strength and composure.The great source of his anxiety seemed to be in his sympathy with his half-distracted wife and children.'My beloved wife and children' was his often used expression, but his fortitude triumphed over his situation, dreadful as it was.Once, indeed, at the sight of his children, seven in number, brought to his bedside together, his utterance forsook him.To his wife he said in a firm voice but with a pathetic and impressive manner, 'Remember, my Eliza, that you are a Christian.'His words and the tone in which they were uttered, will never be effaced from my memory."

After indescribable agony, death came at two o'clock of the day succeeding the duel.Thus, at the age of forty-seven, perished Alexander Hamilton, a great man in any country or time.Cities and counties bear his name in almost every American State.The story of his wondrous life and tragic death will never lose its pathetic interest.His unswerving devotion to the country of his adoption, his untiring efforts in the establishment of the national Government, and his friendship for Washington, which knew no abatement, have given Hamilton honored and enduring place in American history.

As to Burr, the proverb found instant verification that "in duels the victor is always the victim."Had he, instead of Hamilton, fallen on that ill-fated July morning, how changed their possible places in history.A halo has gathered about the name of Hamilton.Monuments have been erected to his memory, his statue has been given high place in the Capitol.The hour of his fall was that of his exaltation.

The self-same hour witnessed the ruin of his antagonist.From the fatal field, unharmed in body, he turned away, henceforth to the followed by the execrations of his countrymen.Past services were forgotten, brilliant talents availed nothing.His desperate attempt to found a rival government by the partial dismemberment of the one he had helped to establish was thwarted, and after years of poverty and misfortune abroad, he returned to die in neglect and obscurity in his own country.As was truly said: "He was the last of his race; there was no kindred hand to smooth his couch, or wipe the death-damp from his brow.No banners drooped over his bier; no melancholy music floated upon the reluctant air."

The Hon.Hamilton Spencer, one of the ablest of lawyers, gave me an interesting account of an interview he had with Colonel Burr in Albany not long before his death.Notwithstanding his advanced age, broken health, and ruined fortunes, he deeply impressed Mr. Spencer as a gentleman of most courteous manners, dignified bearing, and commanding presence such as he had rarely seen.

The one object of his love was his daughter, the beautiful Theodosia.Her devotion to her father increased with his accumulating misfortunes.The ship in which she sailed from her home in Charleston, South Carolina, to meet him in New York, never reached its destination.In all history, there are few pictures more pathetic than that of the gray-haired, friendless man, with faded cloak drawn closely about him, day after day wandering alone by the seaside, anxiously awaiting the coming of the one being who loved him, the idolized daughter whose requiem was even then being chanted by the waves.

One of the men I occasionally met in Washington was Joseph C.McKibben, a former representative in Congress from the Pacific coast.He was thoroughly familiar with the history of California from its cession to the United States at the close of the Mexican War.He had been an active participant in many of the stirring events occurring soon after the admission of the State into the Union.

"Men, except in bad novels, are not all good, or all evil."

Colonel McKibben was the second of David C.Broderick in his
duel with Judge Terry. At the time of the duel, Broderick was a
Senator of the United States, and Terry the Chief Justice of
California. The challenge given by Terry was promptly accepted.
As will be remembered, in the encounter which immediately followed,
Terry escaped unhurt and Broderick was killed.

I recall vividly the description given me of the meeting between these men in that early Spring morning in 1859.Both possessed unquestioned courage.Their demeanor upon the field, as in deadly attitude they confronted each other a few paces apart, was that of absolute fearlessness."Each had set his life upon a cast, and was ready to stand the hazard of the die."

Rarely have truer words been uttered than those of the gifted Baker over the dead body of Broderick:

"The code of honor is a delusion and a snare; it palters with the hope of true courage, and binds it at the feet of crafty and cruel skill.It surrounds its victim with the pomp and grace of the procession, but leaves him bleeding on the altar.It substitutes cold and deliberate preparedness for courage and manly impulse, and arms the one to disarm the other.It makes the mere trick of the weapon superior to the noblest cause and the truest courage.Its pretence of equality is a lie; it is equal in all the form, it is unjust in all the substance.The habitude of arms, the early training, the frontier life, the border war, the sectional custom, the life of leisure, all these are advantages which no negotiations can neutralize, and which no courage can overcome.Code of honor!It is a prostitution of the name, is an evasion of the substance, and is a shield blazoned with the name of chivalry to cover the malignity of murder."

The tragic ending of the eventful career of Judge Terry, which occurred within the last decade, will be readily recalled.Immediately following his assault upon Justice Field at the railway station in Lathrop, California, he was slain by a deputy United States marshal.The wife of Terry was at his side, and the scene that followed beggars description.

The name of Terry at once recalls the "Vigilance Committee" of early San Francisco days.The committee was composed largely of leading men of the "law-and-order" element of the city.Robberies and murders were of nightly occurrence, and gamblers and criminals in many instances were the incumbents of the public offices.The organization mentioned became an imperative necessity for the protection of life and property.The work of the committee constitutes one of the bloodiest chapters of early Californian history.

Nearly a third of a century ago, Colonel Thornton, a prominent lawyer of San Francisco, related to me an incident which he had witnessed during the time the famous Vigilance Committee was in complete control.A young lawyer, recently located in San Francisco, was arrested for stabbing a well-known citizen who was at the time one of the most active members of the Vigilance Committee.The name of the lawyer was David S.Terry, at a later day Chief Justice of the State.The dread tribunal was presided over by one of the most courageous and best known citizens of the Pacific coast.At a later day, his name was presented by his State to the National Convention of his party for nomination for the Vice-Presidency.

When brought before the Vigilance Committee, the demeanor of Terry was that of absolute fearlessness.Standing erect and perfectly self-possessed, he listened to the ominous words of the president: "Mr. Terry, you are charged with attempted murder; what have you to say?"Advancing a step nearer the committee "organized to convict," and in a tone that at once challenged the respect of all, Terry replied, "If your Honor please, I recognize the jurisdiction of this court, and am ready for trial."He then clearly established the fact that his assault was in self-defence, and after a masterly speech, delivered with as much self-possession as if a life other than his own trembled in the balance, was duly acquitted.

Another California with whom I was personally acquainted, was William M.Gwin.He had long passed the allotted three score and ten when I first met him at the home of the late Senator Sharon.Few men have known so eventful a career.He had been the private secretary of Andrew Jackson.He knew well the public men of that day, and related many interesting incidents of the stormy period of the latter years of Jackson's Presidency.In his early manhood Gwin was a member of Congress from Alabama.At the close of the Mexican War he removed to California, and upon the admission of that State he and John C.Fremont were chosen its first Senators in Congress.

During a ride with him, he pointed out to me the spot where he had fought a duel in early California days. He was then a Senator, and his antagonist the Hon. J. W. McCorkle, a member of Congress. A card signed by their respective seconds appeared the day following, to the effect that after the exchange of three ineffectual shots between the Hon. William M. Gwin and the Hon. J. W. McCorkle, the friends of the respective parties, having discovered that their principals were fighting under a misapprehension of facts, mutually explained to their respective principals how the misapprehension had arisen. As a result, Senator Gwin promptly denied the cause of provocation and Mr. McCorkle withdrew his offensive language uttered at the race-course, and expressed regret at having used it.

To a layman in these "piping times of peace" it would appear the more reasonable course to have avoided "a misapprehension of facts" before even three ineffectual shots.

At the beginning of the great civil conflict, the fortunes of Senator Gwin were cast with the South, and at its close he became a citizen of Mexico.Maximilian was then Emperor, and one of his last official acts was the creation of a Mexican Duke out of the sometime American Senator.The glittering empire set up by Napoleon the Third and upheld for a time by French bayonets, was even then, however, tottering to its fall.

When receiving the Ducal coronet from the Imperial hand the self-expatriated American statesman might well have inquired,

  "But shall we wear these glories for a day,
  Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?"

A few months later, at the behest of our Government, the French arms were withdrawn, the bubble of Mexican Empire vanished, and the ill-fated Maximilian had bravely met his tragic end.Thenceforth, a resident but no longer a citizen of the land that had given him birth, William M.Gwin, to the end of his life, bore the high sounding but empty title of "Duke of Sonora."

Frequent as have been the instances in our own country where death has resulted from duelling, it is believed that in but one has the survivor incurred the extreme penalty of the law.That one case occurred in 1820 in Illinois.What was intended merely as a "mock duel" by their respective friends, was fought with rifles by William Bennett and Alphonso Stewart in Belleville.It was privately agreed by the seconds of each that the rifles should be loaded with blank cartridges.This arrangement was faithfully carried out so far as the seconds were concerned; but Bennett, the challenging party, managed to get a bullet into his own gun.The result was the immediate death of Stewart, and the flight of his antagonist.Upon his return to Belleville a year or two later, Bennett was immediately arrested, placed upon trial, convicted, and executed.

In more than one instance, at a later day, while well-known Illinoisans have been parties to actual or prospective duels, no instance has occurred of a hostile meeting of that character within the limits of the State.A late auditor of public account, but recently deceased, killed his antagonist in a duel with rifles nearly half a century ago in California.

William I.Ferguson, one of the most brilliant orators Illinois has known, in early professional life the associate of men who have since achieved national distinction, fell in a duel while a member of the State Senate in California.

During the sitting of the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1847, two of its prominent members, Campbell and Pratt, delegates from the northern tier of counties, became involved in a bitter personal controversy which resulted in a challenge by Pratt to mortal combat.The challenge was accepted and the principals with their seconds repaired to the famous "Bloody Island" in the Mississippi, when by the interposition of friends a peaceable settlement was effected.The sequel to this happily averted duel was the incorporation in the Constitution, then in process of formulation, of a provision prohibiting duelling in the State, and attaching severe penalties to sending or accepting a challenge.

The earliest hostile meeting of Illinoisans was upon the island last mentioned before State organization had been effected. The principals were young men of well-known courage and ability—one of whom, Shadrack Bond, upon the admission of Illinois was elected its Governor. His adversary, John Rice Jones, was the first lawyer to locate in the Illinois country, and was the brother of the second of the unfortunate Cilley in the tragic encounter already related. The late Governor Bissell of Illinois was once challenged by Jefferson Davis. Both were at the time members of Congress, and the casus belli was language reflecting upon the conduct of some of the participants in the then recently fought battle of Buena Vista. After the acceptance of the challenge, mutual friends of Davis and Bissell effected a reconciliation, just before the hour set for the hostile meeting.

So far as Illinois combatants are concerned, the historic island mentioned above has little claim to its bloody designation, inasmuch as the "affairs" mentioned, and one much more famous, yet to be noted, were all honorably adjusted without physical harm to any of the participants.

The "affair of honor," the mention of which will close this chapter, owes its chief importance to the prominence attained at a later day by its principals.The challenger, James Shields, was at that time, 1842, a State officer of Illinois, and later a general in two wars and a Senator from three States.The name of his adversary has since "been given to the ages."Mr. Lincoln was, at the time he accepted Mr. Shields's challenge, a young lawyer, unmarried, residing at the State capital.He was the recognized leader of the Whig party, and an active participant in the fierce political conflicts of the day.Some criticism in which he had indulged, touching the administration of the office of which Shields was the incumbent, was the immediate cause of the challenge.

That Mr. Lincoln was upon principle opposed to duelling would be readily inferred from his characteristic kindness.That "we are time's subjects," however, and that the public opinion of sixty-odd years ago is not that of to-day will readily appear from the published statement of his friend Dr. Merryman:

"I told Mr. Lincoln what was brewing, and asked him what course he proposed to himself.He said that he was wholly opposed to duelling and would do anything to avoid it that might not degrade him in the estimation of himself and friends; but if such a degradation, or a fight, were the only alternatives, he would fight."

It is stated by one of the biographers of Mr. Lincoln that he was ever after averse to any allusion to the Shields affair.From the terms of his acceptance, it is evident that he intended neither to injure his adversary seriously nor to receive injury at his hands.In his lengthy letter of instruction to his second, he closed by saying:

"If nothing like this is done, the preliminaries of the fight are to be, first, weapons: cavalry broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal in all respects.Second, position: a plank ten feet long and from nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed on edge on the ground as the line between us which neither is to pass his foot over upon forfeit of his life.Next, a line drawn on the ground on either side of said plank and parallel with it, each at the distance of the whole length of the sword, and three feet additional from the plank; the passing of his own line by either party during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest.Third, time: on Thursday evening at five o'clock within three miles of Alton on the opposite side of the river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you.Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at liberty to make at your discretion, but you are in no case to swerve from these rules or to pass beyond their limits."

The keen sense of the humorous, with which Mr. Lincoln was so abundantly gifted, seems not to have wholly deserted him even in the serious moments when penning an acceptance to mortal combat.The terms of meeting indicated—which he as the challenged party had the right to dictate—lend color to the opinion that he regarded the affair in the light of a mere farce.His superior height and length of arm remembered, and the position of the less favored Shields, with broadsword in hand, at the opposite side of the board, and not permitted "upon forfeit of his life" to advance an inch —the picture is indeed a ludicrous one.

Out of the lengthy statements of the respective seconds—the publication of which came near involving themselves in personal altercation—it appears that all parties actually reached the appointed rendezvous on time.

But it was not written in the book of fate that this duel was to take place.Something of mightier moment was awaiting one of the actors in this drama.Two level-headed men, R.W.English and John J.Hardin, the friends respectively of Shields and Lincoln, crossing the Mississippi in a canoe close in the wake of the belligerents, reached the field just before the appointed hour.These gentlemen, acting in concert with the seconds, Whiteside and Merryman, soon effected a reconciliation deemed honorable to all, and the Shields-Lincoln duel passed to the domain of history.That the reconciliation thus brought about was sincere was evidenced by the fact that one of the earliest acts of President Lincoln was the appointment of General Shields to an important military command.

How strangely "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges!"A few paces apart in the old Hall at the Capitol at Washington, stand two statues, the contribution of Illinois for enduring place in the "Temple of the Immortals."One is the statue of Lincoln, the other that of Shields.

XI A PRINCELY GIFT

DESCENT OF JAMES SMITHSON, FOUNDER OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION— HIS EDUCATION AND HIS WRITINGS—HIS WILL—THE UNITED STATES HIS RESIDUARY LEGATEE—SUCCESSFUL PROSECUTION OF THE CLAIM OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE LEGACY—PLANS SUGGESTED FOR THE DISPOSAL OF THE FUND —PROF. JOSEPH HENRY APPOINTED SECRETARY—BENEFICENT WORK OF THE INSTITUTION.

Although a third of a century has passed since I met Professor Joseph Henry, I distinctly recall his kindly greeting and the courteous manner in which he gave me the information I requested for the use of one of the Committees of the House.

The frosts of many winters were then on his brow, and he was near the close of an honorable career, one of measureless benefit to mankind.He was the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the originator of the plan by which was carried into practical effect the splendid bequest for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

As Vice-President of the United States, a regent ex-officio of the Smithsonian Institution, I had rare opportunity to learn much of its history and something of its marvellous accomplishment. As is well known, it bears the name of James Smithson. He was an Englishman, related to the historic family of Percy, and a lineal descendent of Henry the Seventh, his maternal ancestor being the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, cousin to Queen Elizabeth.

Mr. Langley, the late secretary of the institution, said:

"Smithson always seems to have regarded the circumstances of his birth as doing him a peculiar injustice, and it was apparently this sense that he had been deprived of honors properly his which made him look for other sources of fame than those which birth had denied him, and constituted the motive of the most important action of his life, the creation of the Smithsonian Institution."

The deep resentment of Smithson against the great families who had virtually disowned him, finds vent in a letter yet extant, of which the following is a part: "The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to kings; but this avails me not.My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten."

How truly his indignant forecast was prophetic is now a matter of history.Few men know much about the once proud families of Northumberland or Percy, but the name of the youth they scornfully disowned lives in the institution he founded, the greatest instrumentality yet devised for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

Smithson was born in 1765, and received the degree of Master of Arts from Pembroke College at the age of twenty-one.A year later he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, upon the recommendation of his instructors, as being "a gentleman well versed in the various branches of Natural Philosophy, and particularly in Chemistry and Mineralogy."As a student, he was devoted to the study of the sciences, especially chemistry, and his entire life, in fact, was given to scientific research.Twenty-seven papers from his pen were published in "The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" and in "Thompson's Annals of Philosophy," near the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and "all give evidence that he was an assiduous and faithful experimenter."

In this connection, the statement of Professor Clarke, Chief Chemist of the United States Geographical Survey, is in point:

"The most notable feature of Smithson's writings from the standpoint of the analytical chemist, is the success obtained with the most primitive and unsatisfactory appliances.In Smithson's day, chemical apparatus was undeveloped, and instruments were improvised from such materials as lay readiest to hand.With such instruments, and with crude reagents, Smithson obtained analytical results of the most creditable character, and enlarged our knowledge of many mineral species.In his time, the native carbonate and the silicate of zinc were confounded as one species under the name calamine; but his researches distinguished between the two minerals, which are now known as Smithsonite and Calamine, respectively.

"To theory Smithson contributed little, if anything; but from a theoretical point of view, the tone of his writings is singularly modern.His work was mostly done before Dalton had announced the atomic theory; and yet Smithson saw clearly that a law of definite proportions must exist, although he did not attempt to account for it.His ability as a reasoner is best shown in his paper on the Kirkdale Bone Cave, which Penn had sought to interpret by reference to the Noachian Deluge.A clearer and more complete demolition of Penn's views could hardly be written to-day.Smithson was gentle with his adversary, but none the less thorough, for all his moderation.He is not to be classed among the leaders of scientific thought; but his ability and the usefulness of his contributions to knowledge, cannot be doubted."

The life of Smithson was uncheered by domestic affection; he was of singularly retiring disposition, had no intimacies, spent the closing years of his life in Paris, and was long the uncomplaining victim of a painful malady.Professor Langley said of him:

"One gathers from his letters, from the uniform consideration with which he speaks of others, from kind traits which he showed, and from the general tenor of what is not here particularly cited, the remembrance of an innately gentle nature, but also of a man who is gradually renouncing not without bitterness the youthful hope of fame, and as health and hope diminished together, is finally living for the day, rather than for any future."

He died in Genoa, Italy, June 27, 1829, and was buried in the little English cemetery on the heights of San Benigno.The Institution he founded has placed a tablet over his tomb and surrounded it with evidences of continued and thoughtful care.

His will—possibly of deeper concern to mankind than any yet written —bears date October 23, 1826.In its opening clause he designates himself: "Son of Hugh, First Duke of Northumberland, and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley, and niece to Charles the proud Duke of Somerset."Herein clearly appears his undying resentment toward those who had denied him the position in life to which he considered himself justly entitled.

The only persons designated in his will as legatees are a faithful servant, for whom abundant provision was made, and Henry James Hungerford, nephew of the testator.To the latter was devised the entire estate except the legacy to the servant mentioned.The clause of the will which has given the name of Smithson to the ages seems to have been almost casually inserted; it appears between the provision for his servant and the one for an investment of the funds.

The clause in his will which was to cause his name "to live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten," was,—

"In the case of the death of my said nephew without leaving a child or children, or the death of the child or children he may have had under the age of twenty-one years, or intestate, I then bequeath the whole of my property subject to the annuity of one hundred pounds to John Fitall (for the security and payment of which I have made provision) to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

Why he selected the United States as his residuary legatee has long been, and will continue to be, the subject of curious inquiry.He had never been in America, had no correspondent here, and nowhere in his writings has there been found an allusion to our country.So far as we know, he could have had no possible prejudice in favor of our system of representative government.

It is a singular fact, however, in this connection, that the pivotal clause in his will bears striking resemblance to the admonition, "Promote as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge," contained in the farewell address of President Washington.

The contingency provided for happened; the death of the nephew Hungerford unmarried and without heirs occurred six years after that of the testator.The first announcement to the people of the United States of the facts stated was contained in a special message from President Jackson to Congress, December 17, 1835.Accompanying the message was a letter with a detailed statement, and copy of the will, from our Legation in London.In closing his brief message of transmission, President Jackson says: "The Executive having no authority to take any steps for accepting the trust and obtaining the funds, the papers are communicated with a view to such measures as Congress may deem necessary."

On the first day of July, 1836, a bill authorizing the President to assert and prosecute the claim of the United States to the Smithson legacy became a law.This, however, was after much opposition in Congress; a member of the House indignantly declaring that our Government should receive nothing by way of gift from England, and proposing that the bequest should be denied.The prophetic words of the venerable John Quincy Adams—then a member of the House after his retirement from the Presidency—in advocating the passage of the bill are worthy of remembrance:

"Of all the foundations of establishments for pious or charitable uses which ever signalized the spirit of the age, or the comprehensive beneficence of the founders, none can be named more deserving the approbation of mankind than this.Should it be faithfully carried into effect with an earnestness and sagacity of application and a steady perseverance of purpose proportioned to the means furnished by the will of the founder, and to the greatness and simplicity of his design as by himself declared,—'the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men,'—it is no extravagance of anticipation to declare that his name will hereafter be enrolled among the benefactors of mankind."

In the execution of this law, the President immediately upon its enactment appointed Richard Rush, a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia, to proceed to London, and take the necessary steps to obtain the legacy.To the accomplishment of this purpose a suit was soon thereafter instituted by Mr. Rush.The hopelessness of its early termination in an English Chancery Court of that day will at once occur to the readers of Dickens's famous "Jarndyce against Jarndyce."It was truly said, that a chancery suit was a thing which might begin with a man's life, and its termination be his epitaph.

A wiser selection than Mr. Rush could not have been made.He entered upon the work to which he had been appointed, with great determination.In a letter to our Secretary of State just after he had instituted suit, he says:

"A suit of higher interest and dignity, has rarely perhaps been before the tribunals of a nation.If the trust created by the testator's will be successfully carried into effect by the enlightened legislation of Congress, benefits may flow to the United States, and to the human family, not easy to be estimated, because operating silently and gradually throughout time, yet not operating the less effectually.Not to speak of the inappreciable value of letters to individual and social man, the monuments which they raise to a nation's glory often last when others perish, and seem especially appropriate to the glory of a Republic whose foundations are laid in the assumed intelligence of its citizens, and can only be strengthened and perpetuated as that improve."

The successful termination of the suit came, however, sooner than could have been expected; and in May, 1838, the amount of the legacy, exceeding the substantial sum of five hundred thousand dollars, was received and invested as required by law.

The facts stated were communicated by special message from President Van Buren to Congress, in December, 1838.Attention was then called to the fact that he had applied to persons versed in science, for their views as to the mode of disposing of the fund which would be calculated best to meet the intent of the testator, and prove most beneficial to mankind.

During the eight years intervening between this message and the passage of the bill for the incorporation of the Smithsonian Institution, much discussion was had in and out of Congress, as to the best method of making effective the intention of the testator.

In the light of events, some of the many plans suggested are even now of curious interest.The establishment of a magnificent national library at the Capital; the founding of a great university; of a normal school; a post graduate school; and astronomical observatory "equal to any in the world," are a few of the plans from time to time proposed and earnestly advocated.

The act of incorporation in 1846, the appointment of a Board of Regents, and the selection of a Secretary, mark the beginning of the Smithsonian Institution.In the selection of a Secretary, the chief officer of the institution, the regents builded better than they knew.The choice fell upon Professor Joseph Henry of Princeton, then peerless among men of science in America.The appointment was accepted, and the essential features of the plan of organization he proposed were adopted in December, 1847.This plan recognized as

"Fundamental that the terms 'increase' and 'diffusion' should receive literal interpretation in accordance with the evident intention of the testator; that such terms being logically distinct, the two purposes mentioned in the bequest were to be kept in view in the organization of the institution; that the increase of knowledge should be effected by the encouragement of original researches of the highest character; and its diffusion by the publication of the results of original research, by means of the publication of a series of volumes of original memoirs; that the object of the institution should not be restricted in favor of any particular kind of knowledge; if to any, only to the higher and more abstract, to the discovery of new principles rather than that of isolated facts; that the institution should in no sense be national; that the bequest was intended for the benefit of mankind in general, and not for any single nation.

"The accumulation and care of collections of objects of nature and art, the development of a library, the providing of courses of lectures, and the organization of a system of meteorological observation, were to be only incidental to the fundamental design of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men."

In its inception, and in its widening influence during the passing years, those entrusted with the actual management of this institution have conscientiously kept in view the clearly expressed intention of its founder.Following the distinctive but parallel paths, "increase" and "diffusion," the Smithsonian Institution, yet in its infancy, has added largely to the sum of useful knowledge.Its accredited representatives are out upon every pathway of intelligent research and discovery.Under the wise operation of this marvellous instrumentality, long-concealed secrets of nature have been discovered, and it can hardly be doubted that all that is given to man to know will yet be revealed, and it will be permitted him

  "To read what is still unread,
  In the manuscripts of God."

By indefatigable investigation, and by world-wide publication of the results, mankind has indeed become, as was intended, the beneficiary of the princely bequest.

More fitting words could not be selected with which to close this sketch than those of the gifted and lamented Langley, whose best years were given to scientific research, and whose name is inseparably associated with the Smithsonian Institution:

"What has been done in these two paths the reader may partly gather from this volume—in the former from the various articles by contemporary men of science, describing its activities in research and original contributions to the increase of human knowledge; in the latter, in numerous way—among others from the description of the work of one of its bureaux, that of the International Exchanges, where it may be more immediately seen how universal is the scope of the action of the Institution, which, in accordance with its motto 'PER ORBEM,' is not limited to the country of its adoption, but belongs to the world, there being outside of the United States more than twelve thousand correspondents scattered through every portion of the globe; indeed there is hardly a language, or a people, where the results of Smithson's benefaction are not known, and associated with his name.

"If we were permitted to think of him as conscious of what has been, is being, and is still to be done, in pursuance of his wish, we might believe that he would feel that his hope at a time when life must have seemed so hopeless, was finding full fruition; for events are justifying what may have seemed, at the time, but a rhetorical expression, in the language of a former President of the United States, who has said: 'Renowned as is the name of Percy in the historical annals of England, let the trust of James Smithson to the United States of America be faithfully executed, let the result accomplish his object, the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, and a wreath more unfading shall entwine itself in the lapse of future ages around the name of Smithson than the united hands of history and poetry have braided around the name of Percy through the long ages past.'"

XII THE OLD RANGER

JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS, A BORN POLITICIAN—HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE—HIS AFFECTATION OF HUMILITY—ADMITTED TO THE BAR —HE CONDEMNS A MURDERER TO DEATH—HIS CURIOUS ADDRESS TO ANOTHER MURDERER—BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE—ELECTED GOVERNOR —HIS GENEROSITY TO HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES—BECOMES A MEMBER OF CONGRESS—HIS ADMIRATION FOR HIS ASSOCIATES—ELECTED A MEMBER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE—RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE.

This world of ours will be much older before the like of John Reynolds, the fourth Governor of Illinois, again appears upon its stage. The title which he generously gave himself in early manhood, upon his return after a brief experience as a trooper in pursuit of a marauding band of Winnebagoes, stood him well in hand in all his future contests for office. "The Old Ranger" was a sobriquet to conjure with, and turned the scales in his favor in many a doubtful contest.

The subject of this sketch was a born politician if ever one trod this green earth.He was a perennial candidate for office, and it was said he never took a drink of water without serious meditation as to how it might possibly affect his political prospects.The late Uriah Heep might easily have gotten a few points in "'umbleness," if he had accompanied the Old Ranger in one or two of his political campaigns.

While Illinois was yet a Territory, his father had emigrated from the mountains of Tennessee and located near the historic village of Kaskaskia.This was at the time the capital of the Territory.The village mentioned was then the most, and in fact, the only, important place in the vast area constituting the present State of Illinois.There were less than five thousand persons of all nationalities and conditions in the Territory, and they mainly in and about Kaskaskia, and southward to the Ohio.Beck's Gazetteer published in 1823—five years after the admission of the State into the Union—contains the following: "Chicago, a village of Pike County, situated on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago Creek.It contains twelve or fifteen houses, and about sixty or seventy inhabitants."

The acquaintance of John Reynolds with what was then known as "the Illinois Country" began in 1800, and his thorough knowledge of the people and their ways gave him rare opportunities for acquiring great personal popularity.Fairly well educated for the times, gifted with an abundance of shrewdness, and withal an excellent judge of human nature, he soon became a man of mark in the new country.He was at all times and under all circumstances the self-constituted "friend of the people."He affected to be one of the humblest of the sons of men; and his dress, language, and deportment were always in strict keeping with that assumption.For the pride of ancestry he had a supreme contempt.In his "My Own Times," published a few years before his death, he said: "I regard the whole subject of ancestry and descent as utterly frivolous and unworthy of a moment's serious attention."

This recalls what Judge Baldwin said of Cave Burton:

"He was not clearly satisfied that Esau made as foolish a bargain with his brother Jacob as some think. If the birth-right was a mere matter of family pride, and the pottage of agreeable taste, Cave was not quite sure that Esau had not gotten the advantage in his famed bargain with the Father of Israel."

Humility was Reynolds's highest card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes.A few extracts from his book may be of interest:

"I was a singular spectacle when in 1809 I started to Tennessee to college.I looked like a trapper going to the Rocky Mountains.I wore a cream-colored hat made of the fur of the prairie wolf, which gave me a grotesque appearance.I was well acquainted with the mysteries of horse and foot races, shooting matches, and other wild sports of the backwoods, but had not studied the polish of the ball-room and was sorely beset with diffidence, awkwardness, and poverty."

Later, and when out in pursuit of the Indians, he said: "But diffidence never permitted me to approach an officer's tent, or solicit any one for office."

None the less, the office of Orderly Sergeant being thrust upon him, he managed in his humble way to get through with it passably well.

When the State Government was organized in 1818, while shrinking from even the gaze of men, and spurning from the depths of his soul the arts of politicians, he managed in some way to be designated one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the new State.His admiration for the dispensing hand appears as follows: "Wisdom and integrity, with other noble qualities, gave Governor Bond a high standing with his contemporaries.Wisdom and integrity shed a beacon light around his path through life, showing him to be one of the noblest works of God."

Four years prior to this appointment, he had been admitted to the bar, after "undergoing with much diffidence" his examination.This accomplished, he adds: "In the Winter of 1814, I established a very humble and obscure law-office in the French village of Cahokia, the county seat of St.Clair County."The bearing of the one whose meat was locusts and wild honey, and whose loins were girt about with a leathern girdle, was arrogance itself, when compared with the deportment of the later John in the wilderness at the period whereof we write.

That he was orthodox upon what pertained to medical practice will now appear: "It was the universal practice to give the patient of the bilious disease, first, tartar emetic; next day, calomel and jalap; and the third day, Peruvian bark.This was generally sufficient."The latter statement will hardly be questioned.

How his first visitation of the tender passion was mingled with a relish of philosophy is recorded for the benefit of posterity:

"During all my previous life until within a short time before I married, I had not the least intention of that state of existence, and I expressed myself often to my friends to the same effect; but on the subject of matrimony, a passion influences the parties which generally succeeds.Judgment and prudence should be mixed in equal parts with love and affection in the transaction, to secure a lasting and happy union."

With all his diffidence, however, the Old Ranger happened to turn up at the seat of Government in time "to be persuaded by my friends to be a candidate for a Judgeship.It broke in on me like a clap of thunder."The mite of philosophy with which he excused himself for giving way to the urgent demand of his friends is as follows: "Human nature is easier to persuade to mount upwards than to remain on the common level."

His mind, as will appear, was essentially of the strictly practical cast.He no doubt believed with Macaulay that "one acre in Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia."

That the Republican simplicity of the new Judge followed him from his "very humble and obscure law-office" to the Bench, will now appear:

"The very first court I held was in Washington County, and it was to me a strange and novel business.I was amongst old comrades with whom I had been raised, ranged in the war with them, and lived with them in great intimacy and equality, so that it was difficult to assume a different relationship than I had previously occupied with them.Moreover I detested a mock dignity.Both the sheriff and clerk were rangers in the same company with myself, and it seemed we were still ranging on equal terms in pursuit of the Indians.The sheriff was of the same opinion and very familiar.He opened court sitting astride on a bench in the Court-house, and without rising, proclaimed: 'The court is now open, and our John is on the bench.'"

It may here be mentioned that the first case of importance that came before Judge Reynolds, was the trial of one William Bennett for murder.He had killed his antagonist in a duel in St.Clair County, for which he suffered the death penalty.This is the only duel ever fought in Illinois.No doubt the prompt execution of Bennett did much to discourage duelling in the State.

In reply to the charge that he had acted with unbecoming levity upon the trial of Bennett, the Judge said, "No human being of my humble capacity could have acted with more painful feelings and sympathy than did I on this occasion."Having thus vindicated himself from the serious charge mentioned, he adds:

"I am opposed to capital punishment in any case where the convict can be kept in solitary confinement without pardoning his life; it was extremely painful and awful to me to be the instrument in the hands of the law to pronounce sentence of death upon my fellow-man, extinguishing him forever from the face of the earth, and depriving him of life, which I think belongs to God and not to man."

He consoles himself, however, as he closes his narrative of this sad affair, that "it never did assume the character of a regular and honorable duel."It is very satisfactory also, even at this distant date, to be assured by the Judge that "the prisoner embraced religion, was baptized, and died happy, before spectators to the number of two thousand or more."

Governor Ford, in his history of Illinois, relates the following incident as characteristic of Judge Reynolds.The latter was holding court in Washington County when one Green was found guilty upon an indictment for murder.The court was near the hour of adjournment for the term, when the prosecuting attorney suggested to the court that the prisoner Green be brought in in order that sentence be passed upon him."Certainly, certainly," said the Judge, and the prisoner was at once brought in from the jail near by.

"Mr. Green," said the Judge in a familiar tone, "the jury in your case have found you guilty.I want you to understand, Mr. Green, and all your friends down on Indian Creek to know, that it is not I who condemns you, but the jury and the law.The law allows you time for preparation, Mr. Green; and so the court wants to know what time it would suit you to be hung?"The prisoner replying that he was ready to suffer at whatever time the court might appoint, the Judge said;

"Mr. Green, you must know that it is a very serious matter to be hung.It can't happen to a man more than once in his life, and you had better take all the time you can get; the court will give you till this day four weeks.Mr. Clerk, look at the almanac and see if this day four weeks comes on Sunday."The Clerk after examination reported that that day four weeks came on Friday.The Judge then said: "Mr. Green, the court gives you till this day four weeks, and then you are to be hanged."

Whereupon the prosecuting officer, the Hon.James Turney, an able and dignified lawyer, said:

"May it please the court, on solemn occasion like the present, when the life of a human being is to be sentenced away for crime by an earthly tribunal, it is usual and proper for courts to pronounce a formal sentence, in which the leading features of the crime shall be brought to the recollection of the prisoner, a sense of his guilt impressed upon his conscience, and in which the prisoner should be duly exhorted to repentance and warned against the judgment in a world to come."

To which the Judge replied: "Oh, Mr. Turney, Mr. Green understands the whole matter as well as if I had preached to him a month.He knows he has got to be hung this day four weeks.You understand it that way, Mr. Green, don't you?"

"Yes," said the prisoner, upon which the Judge again expressing the hope that he and all his friends down on Indian Creek would understand that it was the act of the jury and of the law, and not of the Judge, ordered the prisoner to be remanded to jail, and the court adjourned for the term.

For some reason, by no means satisfactorily explained, Judge Reynolds retired from the bench at the end of his four years' term. In "Breese," the first volume of Illinois reports, is an opinion by Judge Reynolds which has been the subject of amusing comment by three generations of lawyers. After giving sundry reasons why there was error in the judgment below, the learned Judge concludes: "Therefore, the judgment ought to be reversed; but inasmuch as the court is equally divided in opinion, it is therefore affirmed."

He then resumed the practice of the law, and as he says, "was familiar with the people, got acquainted with everybody, and became somewhat popular.I had no settled object in view other than to make a living, and to continue on my humble, peaceable, and agreeable manner."In view of the aversion already shown to office-holding, the following disclaimer upon the part of the Judge seems wholly superfluous: "I had no political ambition or aspirations for office whatever."

It is gratifying to know that at this time his domestic affairs were in a satisfactory condition: "Plain and unpretending; never kept any liquor in the house—treated my friends to every civility except liquor; used an economy bordering on parsimony."

Under the favorable conditions mentioned, the Judge was enabled to overcome his aversion to holding office, and became a humble member of the State Legislature immediately upon his retirement from the bench.That his "modest aspirations" were on a higher plane than that of ordinary legislators will clearly appear from the following: "I entered this Legislature without any ulterior views, and with an eye single to advance the best interests of the State, and particularly the welfare of old St.Clair County.My only ambition was to acquit myself properly, and to advance the best interests of the country."

Two years later, the aversion of the Old Ranger for office was again overcome, as will appear from the following: "I entered this Legislature, as I had the last, without any pledge or restraints whatever; I then was, and am yet, only an humble member of the Democratic party."

His friends were again on the war-path and the shadow of the chief executive office of the State was now beginning to fall across his pathway.He says:

"It would require volumes to record the transactions of these Legislatures, and of my humble labors in them; but it was my course of conduct in these two sessions of the General Assembly that induced my friends, without any solicitation on my part, to offer me as a candidate for Governor. I was urged not by politicians, but by reasonable and reflecting men, more to advance the interest of the State than my own."

If we did not, from his own lips, know how the Judge loathed "the arts of politicians," we might almost be tempted to conclude from the following that he was one of them:

"I traversed every section of the State, and knew well the people.My friends had the utmost confidence in my knowledge of the people, and when I suggested any policy to be observed, this suggestion was consequently carried out as I requested—thus placing all under one leader."

This, it will be remembered, was in 1830, and neither Reynolds nor Kinney, his competitor, had received a party nomination.Both were of the same party, Kinney being a strong Jackson man of the ultra type, and the Judge only a "plain, humble, reflecting Jackson man."

At one time during the campaign it seemed as if there were real danger of this candidate of the "reflecting men of the State" actually falling into the ways and wiles of politicians. "I often addressed the people in churches, in courthouses, and in the open air, myself occupying literally the stump of a large tree; at times also in a grocery."

The fiery and abusive hand-bills against his competitor he did not attempt to restrain his friends from circulating, "as they had a right to exercise their own judgment"; but he declares he did not circulate one himself.He moreover felicitates himself upon the fact that his conciliatory course gained him votes.

This noted contest lasted eighteen months, as Reynolds says, and, the State being sparsely populated, he enjoyed the personal acquaintance of almost every voter. The fact, as he further states, that his opponent was a clergyman, was a great drawback to him, and almost all the Christian sects, except his own—the anti-missionary Baptists— opposed him. With a candor that does him credit, the Judge admits "the support of the religious people was not so much for me, but against him."

No national issues were discussed, but one point urged by Kinney against the proposed Michigan canal was, "that it would flood the country with Yankees."It would be a great mistake to suppose that Reynolds himself wholly escaped vituperation.On the contrary, he claims the credit of being "the best abused man in the State."He relates that one of the stories told on him was, "that I saw a scarecrow, the effigy of a man in a corn-field, just at dusk, and that I said, 'How are you, my friend?Won't you take some of my hand bills to distribute?'"

Some light is shed on the politics of the good old days of our fathers by the following: "The party rancor in the campaign raged so high that neighborhoods fell out with one another, and the angry and bitter feelings entered into the common transactions of life."

If the contest had lasted a year or two longer it is not improbably that our candidate would have fallen from his high "reflecting" state to the low level of artful politician. "It was the universal custom of the times to treat with liquor. We both did it; but he was condemned for it more than myself by the religious community, he being a preacher of the Gospel."

Some atonement, however, is made for the bad whiskey our model candidate dispensed by the noble sentiment with which he closes this chapter of his contest: "I was, and am yet, one of the people, and every pulsation of our hearts beats in unison."

Having been elected by a considerable majority as he modestly remarks, our Governor-elect falls into something of a philosophical train of thought, and horror of politicians and their wiles and ways again possessed him.He says:

"It may be considered vanity and frailty in me, but when I was elected Governor of the State on fair, honorable principles by the masses, without intrigue or management of party or corrupt politicians, I deemed it the decided approbation of my countrymen, and consequently a great honor."

The admonition of this sage statesman to the rising generation upon the subject of office-seeking, is worthy of profound consideration:

"But were I to live over again another life, I think I would have the moral courage to refrain from aspiring for any office within the gift of the people.By no means do I believe a person should be sordid and selfish in all his actions, yet cannot a person be more useful to the public if he possesses talents in other situations than in office?"

Some memory of the well-known ingratitude of republics evidently entered like iron into his very soul when his memoirs were written:

"Moreover, a public officer may toil and labor all his best days with the utmost fidelity and patriotism, and the masses who reap the reward of his labors frequently permit him, without any particular fault upon his part, to live and die in his old age with disrespect. Witness the punishment inflicted on Socrates, on our Saviour, and many others for no crime whatever. But this contumely and disrespect ought not to deter a good and qualified man from entering the public service, if he is satisfied that the good of the country requires it."

At this point in the career of this eminent public servant, deep sympathy is aroused on account of the conflict between his humility and a not very clearly-defined belief that something was due to the great office to which he had been elevated.As preliminary, however, to accomplishing what was for the best interests of the people it must not be forgotten that "my first object was to soften down the public mind to its sober senses."That no living man was better qualified for the accomplishment of so praiseworthy a purpose will now appear: "It has been my opinion of my humble self, that whatever small forte I might possess was to conciliate and soften down a turbulent and furious people."

This being all satisfactorily accomplished and the abundant reward of the peacemaker in sure keeping for this humble instrument, his efforts were now directed toward the discharge of the duties of the office to which he had so unexpectedly been called.

That this hitherto unquestioned "friend of the people" was now manifesting a slight tendency toward the frailties and vanities of the common run of men, will appear from the following:

"It was my nature not to feel or appear elevated, but I discovered that my appearance and deportment, at times, might look like affected humility or mock modesty, which I sincerely despised, and then I would straighten up a little."

It may be truly said of Reynolds, as Macaulay said of Horace Walpole: "The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great; and whatever was great, seemed to him little."

Having in his inaugural given expression to the noble sentiment that "proscription for opinion's sake is the worst enemy to the Republic," he at once generously dispelled whatever apprehensions his late opponents might feel as to what was to befall them, by the assurance: "Therefore, all those who honestly and honorably supported my respectable opponent in the last election for Governor shall experience from me no inconvenience on that account."Unfortunately no light is shed upon the interesting inquiry as to what "inconvenience" was experienced by those who had otherwise than "honestly and honorably" supported his respectable opponent in the late contest.

The Black Hawk War was the principal event of the administration of Governor Reynolds.A treaty of peace being concluded, the Indians were removed beyond the Mississippi River.In all this the Governor acquitted himself with credit.

That his aversion to office-holding was in some measure lessening, will appear from the following:

"Being in the office of Governor for some years, I was prevented from the practice of the law, and in the meantime had been engaged in public life until it commenced to be a kind of second nature to me. Moreover, I was then young, ardent, and ambitious, so that I really thought it was right for me to offer for Congress; and I did so, in the Spring of 1834."

An "artful politician" would probably have waited until the expiration of his term as Governor.Not so with this "friend of the people."He was not only elected to the next Congress, but the death of the sitting member for the District creating a vacancy, Reynolds was of course elected to that also, and was thus at one time Governor of the State and member elect both to the next and to the present Congress.

His triumph over his "able and worthy competitor" is accounted for in this wise: "I was myself tolerably well informed in the science of electioneering with the masses of the people. I was raised with the people, and was literally one of them. We always acted together, and our common instincts, feelings and interests were the same." He here modestly ventured the opinion that his "efforts on the stump, while making no pretension to classic eloquence, yet flowing naturally from the heart, supplied in them many defects."

A mite of self-approval, tinged with a philosophy which appears to have been always kept on tap, closes this chapter of his remarkable career.He says:

"I sincerely state that I never regarded as important the salary of the office, but I entered public office with a sincere desire to advance the best interest of the country, which was my main reward.If a person would subdue his ambition for office and remain a private citizen, he would be a more happy man."

That he must have been the most miserable of men, during the greater part of his long life, clearly appears from the following: "There is no person happy who is in public office, or a candidate for office."

A more extensive field of usefulness now opened up to the Old Ranger as he took his seat in Congress.He had many projects in mind for the benefit of the people—one, the reduction of the price of the public lands to actual settlers; another, the improvement of our Western rivers.But like many other members both before and since his day, he found that "these things were easier to talk about on the stump than to do."He candidly admits: "This body was much greater than I had supposed, and I could effect much less than I had contemplated."

He informs us that he felt like a country boy just from home the first time, as he entered the hall of the law-makers of the great Republic.The city of Washington, grand and imposing, impressed him deeply, but was as the dust in the balance to "the assemblage of great men at the seat of Government of the United States, and at the opening of Congress, when a grand and really imposing spectacle was presented."

His profound admiration for some of his associates upon the broader theatre of the public service found vent in the following eloquent words:

"When the Roman Empire reached the highest pinnacle of literary fame and political power in the reign of Augustus Caesar, the period was called the Augustan age.There was a period that existed eminently in the Jackson administration and a few years after that might be called the Augustan age of Congress.So extraordinary a constellation of great and distinguished individuals may never again appear in office at the seat of government."

If apology were needed for the new members' exalted opinion of his associates, it can readily be found in the fact that among them in the House were John Quincy Adams, John Bell, Thomas F.Marshall, Ben Hardin, James K.Polk, Millard Fillmore, and Franklin Pierce.The first named had been President of the United States, and the last three were yet to hold that great office.At the same time "the constellation of great stars" that almost appalled the Illinois member upon his introduction included, in the Senate, Crittenden, Wright, Cass, Woodbury, Preston, Buchanan, Grundy, Benton, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster.

On finally taking leave of Congress, our member congratulates himself that during seven years of service he was absent from his seat but a single day.That all his humble endeavors were in the interest of the people, of course, goes without saying.He deprecates in strong terms the extravagance of some members of Congress in allowing their expenses to exceed their salaries, and then leaving the capital in debt.That he did nothing of the kind, but practised economy in all his expenses, it is hardly necessary to state.He is not, however, entitled to a patent for the discovery that "the expenses for living at the seat of Government of the United States are heavy."

Being a widower, conditions were now favorable for a little romance to be mingled with the dull cares of state. Near the close of his last term, he says: "I became acquainted with a lady in the District of Columbia, and we, in consideration of mutual love and affection, married. The same tie binds us in matrimonial happiness to the present time." He here admits a fact that might at this later day subject him to Executive displeasure: "Posterity will have an unsettled account against us for having added nothing to the great reservoir of the human family."

It may be of interest to know that while in Congress our member humbly accepted the appointment tendered him by Governor Carlin as Commissioner to negotiate the Illinois and Michigan Canal bonds.His earnest desire to have some one else appointed availed nothing, and in the interest of the great enterprise, upon the success of which the future of the State seemed to hang, he spent the summer of 1839 in Europe.While his mission abroad was fruitless as to its immediate object, it is gratifying to know that our commissioner returned duly impressed with "the immense superiority in every possible manner of our own country, and all its glorious institutions, over those of the monarchies of the old world."

It would be idle to suppose that the retirement of the Old Ranger from Congress was to terminate his career of usefulness to the people.On the contrary, he says: "In 1846, I was elected a member from St.Clair County to the General Assembly of the State.The main object of myself and friends was to obtain a charter for a macadamized road from Belleville to the Mississippi River, opposite St.Louis."

This all satisfactorily accomplished, and the Legislature adjourned, "I turned my time and attention to the calm and quiet of life.With my choice library of one thousand volumes I indulged in the study of science and literature.I soon discovered that the bustle and turmoil of political life did not produce happiness."

Sad to relate, this faithful public servant, worn with the cares of state, was not even yet permitted to lay aside his armor.The happiness of private life, for which his soul yearned as the hart panteth for the water brooks, was again postponed for the hated bustle and turmoil of politics.In 1852, against his remonstrances, he was again elected to the Legislature, and upon the organization of the House unanimously chosen Speaker.

Reluctantly indeed, we now take leave of John Reynolds—the quaintest of all the odd characters this country of ours has known. In doing so, it is indeed a comfort to know that, true as the needle to the pole, his great heart continued to beat in unison with that of the people. Ascending the Speaker's stand, and lifting the gavel, with deep emotion he said—and these are to us his last words: "I have nothing to labor for but the public good. My life has been devoted to promote the public interest of Illinois, and in my latter days it will afford me profound pleasure to advance now, as I have always done in the past, the best interests of the people."

XIII THE MORMON EXODUS FROM ILLINOIS

DELEGATE CANNON AND SENATOR CANNON, MORMONS—SKETCH OF MORMONISM BY GOVERNOR FORD—JOSEPH SMITH'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF HIS CHURCH—HOW "THE BOOK OF MORMON" WAS MADE—NAUVOO, "THE HOLY CITY"—EFFORTS OF WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TO WIN THE VOTES OF THE MORMONS—VICTORY OF THE DEMOCRATS, AND CONSEQUENT ANTI-MORMONISM OF THE WHIGS—JOSEPH SMITH'S PRETENSIONS TO ROYALTY—THE ORIGIN OF POLYGAMY IN THE MORMON CHURCH—CONFLICT WITH THE STATE AUTHORITIES —SURRENDER OF THE LEADERS—ASSASSINATION OF SMITH—BRIGHAM YOUNG CHOSEN AS HIS SUCCESSOR—THE EXODUS BEGINS.

Just across the aisle from my seat in the House of Representatives during the forty-sixth Congress sat George Q. Cannon, the delegate from the Territory of Utah. He held this position for many years, and possessed in the highest degree the confidence of the Mormon people. Fifteen years later, when presiding over the Senate, I administered the oath of office to his son, the Hon. Frank J. Cannon, the first chosen to represent the State of Utah in the Upper Chamber of the National Congress. Senator Cannon was then in high favor with "the powers that be" in Salt Lake City, but for some cause not well understood by the Gentile world, is now persona non grata with the head of the Mormon Church. The younger Cannon was not a polygamist, and no objection was urged to his being seated upon the presentation of his credentials as a Senator. His father, the delegate, was in theory a polygamist, and had "the courage of his convictions" to the extent of being the husband of five wives, and the head of as many separate households. This, before the days of "unfriendly legislation," was, in Mormon parlance, called "living your religion."

The delegate and the Senator were both men of ability, and possessed in large degree the respect of their associates.The former was in early youth a resident of Illinois, and was of the advance guard of the Mormon exodus to the valley of the Great Salt Lake soon after the assassination of the "prophet."When I first visited Salt Lake City, in 1879, George Q.Cannon, in addition to being the delegate in Congress, was one of the "Quorum of the Twelve," and was in the line of succession to the presidency of the Church.From him I learned much that was of interest concerning the history and tenets of the Mormon people.The venerable John Taylor was then the president of the Church, the immediate successor of Brigham Young.He was in early life a resident with his people in Nauvoo, Illinois, and was a prisoner in the Carthage jail with the "Prophet Joseph" at the time of his assassination, in 1844.President Taylor gave me a graphic description of that now historic tragedy, and of his own narrow escape from the fate of his idolized leader.

A brief notice of this singular people, and of what they did and suffered in Illinois, may not be wholly without interest.Mormonism was the apple of discord in the State during almost the entire official term of the late Governor Ford.More than one little army was, during that period, sent into Hancock County—"the Mormon country"—to suppress disturbances and maintain public order.

Governor Ford says:

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as this organization is denominated by its adherents, is to be viewed from the antagonistic Gentile and Mormon standpoints.

"Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church and its prophet, was born in Vermont, in 1805, of obscure parentage.His early education was extremely limited.When he first began to act the prophet, he was ignorant of almost everything which pertained to science; but he made up in natural cunning for many deficiencies of education.At the age of ten, he was taken by his father to Wayne County, New York, where his youth was spent in an idle, vagabond life, roaming the woods, dreaming of buried treasures, and exerting himself to find them by the twisting of a forked stick in his hands, or by looking through enchanted stones.He and his father were 'water witchers,' always ready to point out the exact points where wells could be successfully dug.While leading an idle, profligate life, Joseph Smith became acquainted with Sidney Rigdon, a man of talents and great plausibility.Rigdon was the possessor of a religious romance written some years before by a Presbyterian clergyman.The perusal of this book suggested to Smith and Rigdon the idea of starting a new religion.By them a story was accordingly devised to the effect that golden plates had been found buried near Palmyra, New York, containing a record inscribed on them in unknown characters, which, when deciphered by the power of inspiration, gave the history of the ten lost tribes of Israel in their wanderings through Asia into America, where they had settled and flourished, and where, in due time, Christ came and preached the Gospel to them, appointed his twelve Apostles, and was crucified here, nearly in the same manner he had been in Jerusalem.The record then pretended to give the history of the American Christians for a few hundred years until the wickedness of the people called down the judgment of God upon them, which resulted in their extermination.Several nations from the Isthmus of Darien to the northern extremity of the continent were engaged in continual warfare.The culmination of all this was the battle of Cumorah, fought many centuries ago near the present site of Palmyra, between the Lamanites and the Nephites—the former being the heathen and the latter the Christians of this continent.In this battle, in which hundreds of thousands were slain, the Nephites perished from the earth, except a remnant, who escaped to the southern country.Among this number was Mormon, a righteous man who was divinely directed to make a record of these important events on plates of gold, and who buried them in the earth, to be discovered in future times.'The Book of Mormon'—none other than the religious romance above mentioned—is the pretended translation of the hieroglyphics said to have been inscribed on the golden plates.

"The account given of himself by the 'prophet' is of far different tenor from the one just given.While yet a youth he became greatly concerned in regard to his soul's salvation; and being deeply agonized in spirit, he sought divine guidance.While fervently engaged in supplication, his mind was taken away from the surrounding objects and enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and he saw two glorious personages similar in form and features and surrounded with a brilliant light, outshining the sun at noonday.He was then informed by these glorious personages that all religious denominations were in error, and were not acknowledged of God as His church and kingdom, and that he, Joseph, was expressly commanded not to go after them.At the same time, he received a promise that the fulness of the Gospel should at some future time be known to him."

Subsequently, on the evening of September 23, 1823, at the hour of six, while he was engaged in prayer, suddenly a light like that of day, only far more pure and glorious, burst into the room, as though the house were filled with fire, and a personage stood before him surrounded with a glory far greater than he had yet seen.This messenger proclaimed himself to be an angel of God, sent with the joyful tidings that the covenant which God had made with ancient Israel was about to be fulfilled; that the preparatory work for the second coming of Messiah was speedily to commence; that the time was at hand for the Gospel to be proclaimed in all its fulness and power to all nations, to the end that a peculiar people might be prepared for the millennial reign.He was further informed that he, Joseph, was to be the instrument in God's hand to bring about this glorious dispensation.The angel also informed him in regard to the American Indians, who they were, and whence they came, with a sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, righteousness, and iniquity, and why the blessing of God had been withdrawn from them as a people.He was also told where certain plates were deposited, whereon were engraved the records of the ancient prophets, who once existed on this continent.And then, to wit, on the last day mentioned, the angel of the Lord delivered into his hands the records mentioned, which were engraved on plates which had the appearance of gold.They were filled with engravings in Egyptian characters and bound together in a volume as the leaves of a book; with the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called "Urim and Thummim," which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate.By the instrumentality of the Urim and Thummim, Joseph was enabled to translate the hieroglyphics aforementioned.

Thus translated, the records mentioned became "The Book of Mormon."The last of the ancient prophets had inscribed these records upon the golden plates by the command of God, and deposited them in the earth, where, fifteen centuries later, they were divinely revealed to Joseph Smith.

It is not pretended that the golden plates are still in existence, but that after being translated by Joseph Smith, by the aid of the wonderful instrument mentioned, they were re-delivered to the angel.The non-production of the plates thus satisfactorily explained, and secondary evidence being admissible, eleven witnesses appeared and testified to having actually seen the plates; three of the number further declaring that they were present when Joseph received the plates at the hands of the angel.

Upon my giving expression, to a high Mormon official, of some lingering doubts as to the absolute authenticity of the above narrative, I was significantly reminded of the words of the immortal bard:

  "Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,
  Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear."

At all events, upon the pretended revelations mentioned, Joseph Smith as "prophet" founded the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, near Palmyra, New York, in 1830.Nor did he lack for followers.The eleven witnesses mentioned, and others, were commissioned and sent forth to proclaim the new gospel, and disciples in large numbers soon flocked to the standard of the "prophet."

The history of delusions from the days of Mahomet to the present time illustrates the eagerness with which men are ever ready to seek out new inventions and to discard the old beliefs for the new.There is no tenet so monstrous but in some breast it will find lodgment.

  "In religion
  What damned error, but some sober brow
  Will bless it and approve it with a text."

In 1833, Mormon colonies were established at Kirtland, Ohio, and in Jackson County, Missouri, but, owing to Gentile persecution, the "saints" at length shook the dust of those unhallowed localities from their feet, and settled in large numbers in Hancock County, Illinois.Here they built Nauvoo, the "Holy City," "the beautiful habitation for man."The Mormon historian says: "The surrounding lands were purchased by the saints, and a town laid out, which was named 'Nauvoo' from the Hebrew, which signifies fair, very beautiful, and it actually fills the definition of the words, for nature has not formed a parallel anywhere on the banks of the Mississippi."

The sacred city, as it was called, soon contained a population of fifteen thousand souls, gathered from all quarters of the globe.Here were built the home of the prophet, the hall of the seventies, a concert hall, and other public institutions.Chief among these buildings was the Temple, described by the same historian as "glistening in white limestone upon the hilltops, a shrine in the wilderness whereat all the nations of the earth may worship, whereat all the people may inquire of God and receive His holy oracles."

This temple, erected at a cost of nearly a million dollars, was at a later day visited by Governor Reynolds, and is thus described by him:

"I was in the Mormon temple at Nauvoo.It was a large and splendid edifice, built in the Egyptian style of architecture; and its grandeur and magnificence truly astonished me.It was erected on the top of the Mississippi bluff, which has a prospect which reached as far as the eye could extend over the country and up and down the river.The most singular appendage of this splendid edifice was the font in which the immersion of the saints was practised.It was composed of marble."

At the time of the Mormon emigration to Illinois, in 1839, the Whig and Democratic parties in the State were in a heated struggle for supremacy.The respective party leaders at once realized that the new importation of voters might be the controlling political factor in the State.To conciliate the Mormons and gain their support soon became the aim of the politicians.This fact is the keynote to the statement of Governor Ford:

"A city charter drawn up to suit the Mormons was presented to the Legislature.No one opposed it, but both parties were active in getting it through.This charter, and others passed in the same manner, incorporated Nauvoo, provided for the election of a mayor, four aldermen, and nine councillors, and gave them power to pass all ordinances necessary for the benefit of the city which were not repugnant to the Constitution.This seemed to give them power to pass ordinances in violation of the laws of the State, and to erect a system of government for themselves.This charter also incorporated the Nauvoo Legion,—entirely independent of the military organization of the State, and not subject to the commands of its officers.Provision was also made for a court-martial for the Legion, to be composed of its own officers; and in the exercise of their duties they were not bound to regard the laws of the State.Thus it was proposed to establish for the Mormons a Government within a Government, a Legislature with power to pass ordinances at war with the laws of the State.These charters were unheard of, anti-republican and capable of infinite abuse.The great law of the separation of the powers of government was wholly disregarded.The mayor was at once the executive power, the judiciary, and part of the Legislature.One would have thought that these charters stood a poor chance of passing the Legislature of a republican people, jealous of their liberties, nevertheless they did pass both Houses unanimously.Each party was afraid to object to them, for fear of losing the Mormon vote."

Some indications of the hopes and fears of party leaders may be gleaned from the statement of the politic John Reynolds, then a representative in Congress.He thus speaks of the visit of Joseph Smith to the national capital:

"I had recently received letters that Smith was a very important character in Illinois, and to give him the civilities that were due him.He stood at the time fair and honorable, except his fanaticism on religion.The sympathies of the people were in his favor.It fell to my lot to introduce him to the President, and one morning the Prophet Smith and I called at the White House to see the chief magistrate.When we were about to enter the apartments of President Van Buren, the prophet asked me to introduce him as a Latter-day Saint.It was so unexpected and so strange to me that I could scarcely believe he would urge such nonsense on this occasion to the President.But he repeated the request, and I introduced him as a Latter-day Saint, which made the President smile.The Prophet remained in Washington a greater part of the winter, and preached often.I became well acquainted with him.He was a person rather larger than ordinary stature, well proportioned, and would weigh about one hundred and eighty pounds.He was rather fleshy, but was in his appearance, amiable and benevolent.He did not appear to possess barbarity in his nature, nor to possess that great talent and boundless mind that would enable him to accomplish the wonders he performed."

Referring again to the narrative of Ford:

"Joseph Smith was duly installed Mayor of Nauvoo—this Imperium in Imperio—he was ex-officio Judge of the Mayor's court, and Chief Justice of the Municipal court; and in this capacity he was to interpret the laws he had assisted to make. The Nauvoo Legion was organized with a multitude of high officers. It was divided into divisions, brigades, cohorts, battalions, and companies; and Joseph Smith as Lieutenant-General was the Commander-in-Chief. The common council of Nauvoo passed many ordinances for the punishment of crime. The punishment was generally different from, and much more severe than, that provided by the laws of the State."

That any Legislature would ever, under any stress of circumstances, have conferred—or have attempted to confer—such powers upon a municipality is beyond comprehension.The statement, if unsustained by the official State records, would now challenge belief.

Under the favorable conditions mentioned, the Mormons were now upon the high wave of prosperity in Illinois.Their number had increased to more than twenty thousand in Hancock and the counties adjoining.The owners of large tracts of valuable land, protected by legislation that finds no parallel in any State, courted by the leaders of both parties, and actually holding for a time the balance of political power in the State—they seemed indeed to be "the chosen people," as claimed by their prophet.

It needed no prophet, however, to foretell that this could not long continue.The Mormon leaders failed to realize that to champion the cause of either party would of necessity arouse the fierce hostility of the other, as in very truth it did.Politics, the prime cause of fortune's favors to them in the beginning, proved their undoing in the end.

Joseph Smith had, soon after his removal from Missouri, been arrested upon a requisition from the Governor of that State. From this arrest he was discharged when brought upon a writ of habeas corpus before Judge Pope, a Whig. The ground of the decision was, that as Smith was not in Missouri at the time of the attempt upon the life of Governor Boggs, and that whatever he did—if he did anything —to aid or encourage the attempt, was done in Illinois, and not within the jurisdiction of Missouri laws, he was not a fugitive from justice within the provision of the Constitution of the United States. The decision excited much comment at the time, but, as stated by Judge Blodgett, it "has borne the test of criticism, and is now the accepted rule of law in interstate extradition cases."

This for a time inclined the Mormons to the support of the Whig party.Again arrested, the prophet, under similar proceedings, was discharged by a Democratic Judge.This, as Governor Ford says,

"Induced Smith to issue a proclamation to his followers declaring Judge Douglas to be a master spirit, and exhorting them to vote for the Democratic ticket for Governor.Smith was too ignorant to know whether he owed his discharge to the law or to party favor.Such was the ignorance of the Mormons generally, that they thought anything to be law which they thought expedient.All action of the Government unfavorable to them they looked upon as wantonly oppressive, and when the law was administered in their favor they attributed it to partiality and kindness."

The last hope of the Whigs for Mormon support was abandoned in 1843.In the district of which Hancock County was a part, the opposing candidates for Congress were Joseph P.Hoge, Democrat, and Cyrus Walker, Whig, both lawyers of distinction.The latter had been counsel for Smith in the Habeas Corpus proceedings last mentioned.Grateful for the services then rendered, Smith openly espoused the candidacy of Walker in the pending contest.That there were tricks in politics even more than sixty years ago, will now appear.One Backinstos, a politician of Hancock County, declared upon his return from the State capital that he had assurances from the Governor that the Mormons would be amply protected as long as they voted the Democratic ticket.It is hardly necessary to say that the Governor denied having given any such assurance.However, the campaign lie of Backinstos, like many of its kind before and since, proved a "good enough Morgan till after the election."This, it will be remembered, was before the days of railroads and telegraphs, and the Mormon settlement was far remote from the seat of government.A partisan jumble, in which the "saints" were the participants, and the low arts of the demagogues and pretended revelations from God the chief ingredients, is thus described by the historian just quoted:

"The mission of Backinstos produced an entire change in the minds of the Mormon leaders.They now resolved to drop their friend Walker and take up Hoge, the Democratic candidate.A great meeting of several thousand Mormons was held the Saturday before the election.Hiram Smith, patriarch and brother of the prophet, appeared in this assembly and there solemnly announced to the people, that God had revealed to him that the Mormons must support Mr. Hoge.William Law, another leader, next appeared and denied that the Lord had made any such revelation.He stated that to his certain knowledge the prophet Joseph was in favor of Mr. Walker, and that the prophet was more likely to know the mind of the Lord than the patriarch.Hiram again repeated his revelation, with a greater tone of authority, but the people remained in doubt until the next day, Sunday, when the prophet Joseph himself appeared before the assemblage.He there stated that he himself was in favor of Mr. Walker and intended to vote for him; that he would not, if he could, influence any man in giving his vote; that he considered it a mean business for any man to dictate to the people whom they should vote for; that he had heard his brother Hiram had received a revelation from the Lord on the subject; but for his own part, he did not much believe in revelations on the subject of election.Brother Hiram was, however, a man of truth; he had known him intimately ever since he was a boy, and he had never known him to tell a lie.If brother Hiram said he had received a revelation he had no doubt he had.When the Lord speaks let all the earth be silent."

That the prophet Joseph well understood how to

"By indirections find directions out,"

clearly appears from his cunning expression of faith in the pretended revelation of the patriarch Hiram.The effect of this speech was far-reaching.It turned the entire Mormon vote to Hoge, thereby securing his election to Congress, and at once placed the Whigs in the ranks of the implacable anti-Mormon party then in process of rapid formation.The crusade that now began for the expulsion of the Mormons from the State, was greatly augmented by acts of unparalleled folly upon their own part.In order to protect their leaders from arrest, it was decreed by the City Council of Nauvoo that no writ unless issued and approved by its Mayor should be executed within the sacred city, and that any officer attempting to execute a writ otherwise issued, within the city, should be subject to imprisonment for life, and that the pardoning power of the Governor of the State was in such case suspended.This ordinance when published created great astonishment and indignation.The belief became general that the Mormons were about to set up for themselves a separate Government wholly independent of that of the State.This belief was strengthened by the presentation of a petition to Congress praying for the establishment of a Territorial Government for Nauvoo and vicinity.

Apparently oblivious of the gathering storm, Joseph Smith early in 1844 committed his crowning act of folly by announcing himself a candidate for the high office of President of the United States.Not only this, but as stated by Governor Ford,