Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1
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Title: Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
ANDREW DICKSON WHITE
WITH PORTRAITS
VOLUME I
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1905
Copyright, 1904, 1905, by
THE CENTURY CO.
----
Published March, 1905
THE DE VINNE PRESS
TO
MY OLD STUDENTS
THIS RECORD OF MY LIFE
IS INSCRIBED
WITH MOST KINDLY RECOLLECTIONS
AND BEST WISHES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I--ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION
CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK--1832-1850
The ``Military Tract'' of New York. A settlement on the
headwaters of the Susquehanna. Arrival of my grandfathers and
grandmothers. Growth of the new settlement. First recollections
of it. General character of my environment. My father and
mother. Cortland Academy. Its twofold effect upon me. First
schooling. Methods in primary studies. Physical education.
Removal to Syracuse. The Syracuse Academy. Joseph Allen
and Professor Root; their influence; moral side of the education
thus obtained. General education outside the school. Removal to
a ``classical school''; a catastrophe. James W. Hoyt and his
influence. My early love for classical studies. Discovery of
Scott's novels. ``The Gallery of British Artists.'' Effect of
sundry conventions, public meetings, and lectures. Am sent to
Geneva College; treatment of faculty by students. A ``Second
Adventist'' meeting; Howell and Clark; my first meeting with
Judge Folger. Philosophy of student dissipation at that place and
time.
CHAPTER II. YALE AND EUROPE--1850-1857
My coup d'<e'>tat. Removal to Yale. New energy in study and
reading. Influence of Emerson, Carlyle, and Ruskin. Yale in
1850. My disappointment at the instruction; character of
president and professors; perfunctory methods in lower-class
rooms; ``gerund-grinding'' vs. literature; James Hadley--his
abilities and influence, other professors; influence of President
Woolsey, Professors Porter, Silliman, and Dana; absence of
literary instruction; character of that period from a literary
point of view; influences from fellow-students. Importance of
political questions at that time. Sundry successes in essay
writing. Physical education at Yale; boating. Life abroad after
graduation; visit to Oxford; studies at the Sorbonne and
Coll<e!>ge de France; afternoons at the Invalides; tramps through
western and central France. Studies at St. Petersburg. Studies
at Berlin. Journey in Italy; meeting with James Russell Lowell
at Venice. Frieze, Fishburne, and studies in Rome. Excursions
through the south of France. Return to America. Influence of
Buckle, Lecky, and Draper. The atmosphere of Darwin and Spencer.
Educational environment at the University of Michigan.
PART II--POLITICAL LIFE
CHAPTER III. FROM JACKSON TO FILLMORE--1832-1851
Political division in my family; differences between my father
and grandfather; election of Andrew Jackson. First recollections
of American politics, Martin Van Buren. Campaign of 1840;
campaign songs and follies. Efforts by the Democrats; General
Crary of Michigan; Corwin's speech. The Ogle gold-spoon speech.
The Sub-Treasury Question. Election of General Harrison; his
death. Disappointment in President Tyler. Carelessness of
nominating conventions as to the second place upon the ticket.
Campaign of 1844. Clay, Birney, and Polk. Growth of
anti-slavery feeling. Senator Hale's lecture. Henry Clay's
proposal, The campaign of 1848; General Taylor vs. General Cass.
My recollections of them both. State Conventions at this period.
Governor Bouck; his civility to Bishop Hughes. Fernando
Wood; his method of breaking up a State Convention. Charles
O'Conor and John Van Buren; boyish adhesion to Martin Van Buren
against General Taylor; Taylor's election; his death. My
recollections of Millard Fillmore. The Fugitive Slave Law.
CHAPTER IV. EARLY MANHOOD--1851-1857
``Jerry'', his sudden fame. Speeches of Daniel Webster and Henry
Clay at Syracuse on the Fugitive Slave Law ; their prophecies.
The ``Jerry Rescue.'' Trials of the rescuers. My attendance at
one of them. Bishop Loguen's prayer and Gerrit Smith's speech.
Characteristics of Gerrit Smith. Effects of the rescue trials.
Main difficulty of the anti-slavery party. ``Fool reformers.''
Nominations of Scott and Pierce; their qualities.
Senator Douglas. Abolition of the Missouri Compromise. Growth
of ill feeling between North and South. Pro-slavery tendencies
at Yale. Stand against these taken by President Woolsey and
Leonard Bacon. My candidacy or editorship of the ``Yale Literary
Magazine.'' Opposition on account of my anti-Slavery ideas. My
election. Temptations to palter with my conscience; victory over
them. Professor Hadley's view of duty to the Fugitive Slave
Law. Lack of opportunity to present my ideas. My chance on
Commencement Day. ``Modern Oracles.'' Effect of my speech on
Governor Seymour. Invitation to his legation at St. Petersburg
after my graduation. Effect upon me of Governor Seymour's ideas
regarding Jefferson. Difficulties in discussing the slavery
question. My first discovery as to the value of political
criticism in newspapers. Return to America. Presidential
campaign of 1856. Nomination of Fr<e'>mont. My acquaintance
with the Democratic nominee Mr Buchanan. My first vote.
Argument made for the ``American Party.'' Election of Buchanan.
My first visit to Washington. President Pierce at the White
House. Inauguration of the new President. Effect upon me of his
speech and of a first sight of the United States Senate.
Impression made by the Supreme Court. General impression made by
Washington. My first public lecture--``Civilization in Russia'';
its political bearing; attacks upon it and vindications of it.
Its later history.
CHAPTER V. THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD--1857-1864.
My arrival at the University of Michigan. Political side of
professorial life. General purpose of my lectures in the
university and throughout the State. My articles in the
``Atlantic Monthly.'' President Buchanan, John Brown Stephen A.
Douglas, and others. The Chicago Convention. Nomination of
Lincoln. Disappointment of my New York friends. Speeches by
Carl Schurz. Election of Lincoln. Beginnings of Civil War. My
advice to students. Reverses; Bull Run. George Sumner's view.
Preparation for the conflict. Depth of feeling. Pouring out of
my students into the army. Kirby Smith. Conduct of the British
Government. Break in my health. Thurlow Weed's advice to me.
My work in London. Discouragements there. My published answer
to Dr. Russell. Experiences in Ireland and France. My horror of
the French Emperor. Effort to influence opinion in Germany.
William Walton Murphy; his interview with Baron Rothschild.
Fourth of July celebration at Heidelberg in 1863. Turning of the
contest in favor of the United States. My election to the Senate
of the State of New York.
CHAPTER VI. SENATORSHIP AT ALBANY--1864-1865
My arrival at Albany as State Senator. My unfitness. Efforts to
become acquainted with State questions. New acquaintances.
Governor Horatio Seymour, Charles James Folger, Ezra Cornell, and
others on the Republican side; Henry C. Murphy and Thomas C.
Fields on the Democratic side. Daniel Manning. Position
assigned me on committees. My maiden speech. Relations with
Governor Seymour. My chairmanship of the Committee on Education.
The Morrill Act of 1862. Mr. Cornell and myself at loggerheads
Codification of the Educational Laws. State Normal School Bill.
Special Committee on the New York Health Department. Revelations
made to the Committee. The Ward's Island matter. Last great
effort of the State in behalf of the Union. The Bounty Bill.
Opposition of Horace Greeley to it. Embarrassment caused by him
at that period. Senator Allaben's speech against the Bounty
Bill. His reference to French Assignats; my answer; results;
later development of this speech into a political pamphlet on
``Paper Money Inflation in France.'' Baltimore Convention of
1864; its curious characteristics; impression made upon me by it.
Breckinridge, Curtis, and Raymond. Renomination of Lincoln; my
meeting him at the White House. Sundry peculiarities then
revealed by him. His election.
CHAPTER VII. SENATORSHIP AT ALBANY--1865-1867
My second year in the State Senate. Struggle for the Charter of
Cornell University. News of Lee's surrender. Assassination of
Lincoln. Service over his remains at the Capitol in Albany. My
address. Question of my renomination. Elements against me; the
Tammany influence; sundry priests in New York, and clergymen
throughout the State. Senatorial convention; David J. Mitchell;
my renomination and election. My third year of service, 1866.
Speech on the Health Department in New York; monstrous iniquities
in that Department; success in replacing it with a better system.
My Phi Beta Kappa address at Yale; its purpose. My election to a
Professorship at Yale; reasons for declining it. State Senate
sits as Court to try a judge; his offense; pathetic
complications; his removal from office. Arrival of President
Johnson, Secretary Seward, General Grant, and Admiral Farragut in
Albany; their reception by the Governor and Senate; impressions
made on me thereby; part taken by Governor Fenton and Secretary
Seward; Judge Folger's remark to me. Ingratitude of the State
thus far to its two greatest Governors, DeWitt Clinton and
Seward.
CHAPTER VIII. ROSCOE CONKLING AND JUDGE FOLGER--1867-1868
Fourth year in the State Senate, 1867. Election of a United
States Senator; feeling throughout the State regarding Senators
Morgan and Harris; Mr. Cornell's expression of it. The
candidates; characteristics of Senator Harris, of Judge Davis, of
Roscoe Conkling. Services and characteristics of the latter
which led me to support him; hostility of Tammany henchmen
to us both. The legislative caucus. Presentation of candidates;
my presentation of Mr. Conkling; reception by the audience of my
main argument; Mr. Conkling elected. Difficulties between Judge
Folger and myself; question as to testimony in criminal cases;
Judge Folger's view of it; his vexation at my obtaining a
majority against him. Calling of the Constitutional Convention,
Judge Folger's candidacy for its Presidency; curious reason for
Horace Greeley's opposition to him. Another cause of separation
between Judge Folger and myself. Defeat of the Sodus Canal Bill.
Constitutional Convention eminent men in it; Greeley's position
in it; his agency in bringing the Convention into disrepute; his
later regret at his success; the new Constitution voted down.
Visit to Agassiz at Nahant. A day with Longfellow. His
remark regarding Mr. Greeley. Meeting with Judge Rockwood Hoar
at Harvard. Boylston prize competition; the successful
contestant; Judge Hoar's remark regarding one of the speakers.
My part in sundry political meetings. Visit to Senator Conkling.
Rebuff at one of my meetings; its effect upon me.
CHAPTER IX. GENERAL GRANT AND SANTO DOMINGO--1868-1871
Distraction from politics by Cornell University work during two
or three years following my senatorial term. Visits to
scientific and technical schools in Europe. The second political
campaign of General Grant. My visit to Auburn; Mr. Seward's
speech; its unfortunate characteristics; Mr. Cornell's remark on
my proposal to call Mr. Seward as a commencement orator. Great
services of Seward. State Judiciary Convention of 1870; my part
in it; nomination of Judge Andrews and Judge Folger; my part in
the latter; its effect on my relations with Folger. Closer
acquaintance with General Grant. Visit to Dr. Henry Field at
Stockbridge; Burton Harrison's account of the collapse of the
Confederacy and the flight of Jefferson Davis. Story told me by
William Preston Johnston throwing light on the Confederacy in its
last hours. Delegacy to the State Republican Convention of 1870.
Am named as Commissioner to Santo Domingo. First meeting with
Senator Charles Sumner. My acquaintance with Senator McDougal.
His strange characteristics. His famous plea for drunkenness.
My absence in the West Indies.
CHAPTER X. THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN--1872
First meeting with John Hay. Speech of Horace Greeley on his
return from the South; his discussion of national affairs; his
manner and surroundings; last hours and death of Samuel J. May.
The Prudence Crandall portrait. Addresses at the Yale alumni
dinner. Dinner with Longfellow at Craigie House. The State
Convention of 1871; my chairmanship and presidency of it. My
speech; appointment of committees; anti-administration
demonstration; a stormy session; retirement of the
anti-administration forces; attacks in consequence; rally of old
friends to my support. Examples of the futility of such
attacks; Senator Carpenter, Governor Seward, Senator Conklin.
My efforts to interest Conkling in a reform of the civil service.
Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1872; ability
of sundry colored delegates; nomination of Grant and Wilson. Mr.
Greeley's death. Characteristics of General Grant as President.
Reflections on the campaign. Questions asked me by a leading
London journalist regarding the election. My first meeting with
Samuel J. Tilden; low ebb of his fortunes at that period. The
culmination of Tweed. Thomas Nast. Meeting of the Electoral
College at Albany; the ``Winged Victory'' and General Grant's
credentials. My first experience of ``Reconstruction'' in the
South; visit to the State Capitol of South Carolina; rulings of
the colored Speaker of the House, fulfilment of Thomas
Jefferson's inspired prophecy.
CHAPTER XI. GRANT, HAYES, AND GARFIELD--1871-1881
Sundry visits to Washington during General Grant's presidency.
Impression made by President Grant; visit to him in company with
Agassiz; characteristics shown by him at Long Branch; his dealing
with one newspaper correspondent and story regarding another.
His visit to me at Cornell; his remark regarding the annexation
of Santo Domingo, far-sighted reason assigned for it; his feeling
regarding a third presidential term. My journey with him upon
the Rhine. Walks and talks with him in Paris. Persons met at
Senator Conkling's. Story told by Senator Carpenter. The
``Greenback Craze''; its spirit; its strength. Wretched
character of the old banking system. Ability and force
of Mr. Conkling's speech at Ithaca. Its effect. My previous
relations with Garfield. Character and effect of his
speech at Ithaca; his final address to the students of the
University. Our midnight conversation. President Hayes;
impressions regarding him; attacks upon him; favorable judgment
upon him by observant foreigners, excellent impression made by
him upon me at this time and at a later period. The
assassination of General Garfield. Difficulties which thickened
about him toward the end of his career. Characteristics of
President Arthur. Ground taken in my public address at Ithaca at
the service in commemoration of Garfield.
CHAPTER XII. ARTHUR, CLEVELAND, AND BLAINE--1881-1884
President Arthur; course before his Presidency; qualities
revealed afterward; curious circumstances of his nomination.
Reform of the Civil Service. My article in the ``North American
Review.'' Renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. Evarts; his witty
stories. My efforts to interest Senator Platt in civil-service
reform; his slow progress in this respect. Wayne MacVeagh; Judge
Biddle's remark at his table on American feeling regarding
capital punishment. Great defeat of the Republican party in
1882. Judge Folger's unfortunate campaign. Election of Mr.
Cleveland. My address on ``The New Germany'' at New York.
Meeting with General McDowell, the injustice of popular judgment
upon him. Revelation of Tammany frauds. Grover Cleveland, his
early life; his visit to the University; impression made upon me
by him. Senator Morrill's visit; tribute paid him by the
University authorities. My address at Yale on ``The Message of
the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth.'' Addresses by Carl
Schurz and myself at the funeral of Edward Lasker. Election as a
delegate at large to the National Republican Convention at
Chicago, 1884. Difficulties regarding Mr. Blaine; vain efforts
to nominate another candidate; George William Curtis and his
characteristics; tyranny over the Convention by the gallery mob;
nomination of Blaine and Logan. Nomination of Mr. Cleveland by
the Democrats. Tyranny by the Chicago mob at that convention
also. Open letter to Theodore Roosevelt in favor of Mr. Blaine.
Private letter to Mr. Blaine in favor of a reform of the Civil
Service. His acceptance of its suggestions. Wretched character
of the campaign. Presidency of the Republican mass meeting at
Syracuse; experience with a Kentucky orator. Election of Mr.
Cleveland.
CHAPTER XIII. HENDRICKS, JOHN SHERMAN, BANCROFT,
AND OTHERS--1884-1891
Renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland at Washington.
Meeting with Mr. Blaine; his fascinating qualities; his
self-control. William Walter Phelps; his arguments regarding the
treatment of Congressional speakers by the press. Senator
Randall Gibson; meeting at his house with Vice-President
Hendricks; evident disappointment of the Vice-President; his view
of civil-service reform; defense of it by Senator Butler of South
Carolina; reminiscences of odd senators by Senator Jones of
Florida; Gibson's opinion of John Sherman. President Cleveland's
mode of treating office-beggars and the like; Senator Sawyer's
story; Secretary Fairchild's remark; Senators Sherman and Vance.
Secretary Bayard's criticism of applicants for office. Senator
Butler's remark on secession. Renewal of my acquaintance with
George Bancroft. Goldwin Smith in Washington; his favorable
opinion of American crowds. Chief Justice Waite. General
Sheridan; his account of the battle of Gravelotte; discussion
between Sheridan and Goldwin Smith regarding sundry points in
military history. General Schenck; his reminiscences of Corwin
Everett, and others. Resignation of my presidency at Cornell,
1885. President Cleveland's tender of an Interstate Railway
commissionership, my declination. Departure for Europe. Am
tendered nomination for Congress; my discussion of the matter in
London with President Porter of Yale and others; declination.
Visit to Washington under the administration of General Harrison,
January, 1891; presentation of proposals to him regarding
civil-service reform; his speech in reply.
CHAPTER XIV. MCKINLEY AND ROOSEVELT--1891-1904
Candidacy for the governorship of New York; Mr. Platt's relation
to it; my reluctance and opposition; decision of the Rochester
Convention in favor of Mr. Fassett; natural reasons for this.
Lectures at Stanford University. Visit to Mexico and California
with Mr. Andrew Carnegie and his party. President Harrison
tenders me the position of minister to Russia; my retention in
office by Mr. Cleveland. My stay in Italy 1894-1895. President
Cleveland appoints me upon the Venezuelan Boundary Commission,
December, 1895. Presidential campaign of 1896. My unexpected
part in it; nomination of Mr. Bryan by Democrats; publication of
my open letter to sundry Democrats, republication of my ``Paper
Money Inflation in France,'' and its circulation as a campaign
document; election of Mr. McKinley. My address before the State
Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota; strongly favorable
impression made upon me by them; meeting with Mr. Ignatius
Donnelly, his public address to me in the State House of
Minnesota. My addresses at Harvard, Yale, and elsewhere. Am
appointed by President McKinley ambassador to Germany; question
of my asking sanction of Mr. Platt; how settled. Renomination of
McKinley with Mr. Roosevelt as Vice-President. I revisit
America; day with Mr. Roosevelt, visits to Washington; my
impressions of President McKinley; his conversation; his
coolness; tributes from his Cabinet; Secretary Hay's testimony,
Mr. McKinley's refusal to make speeches during his second
campaign; his reasons; his re<e:>lection; how received in Europe.
His assassination; receipt of the news in Germany and Great
Britain. My second visit to America; sadness, mournful
reflections at White House; conversations with President
Roosevelt; message given me by him for the Emperor; its playful
ending. The two rulers compared.
PART III--AS UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
CHAPTER XV. LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN--1857-1864
Early ideals. Gradual changes in these. Attractions of
journalism then and now. New views of life opened to me at Paris
and Berlin. Dreams of aiding the beginnings of a better system
of university education in the United States. Shortcomings of
American instruction, especially regarding history, political
science, and literature, at that period. My article on
``German Instruction in General History'' in ``The New
Englander.'' Influence of Stanley's ``Life of Arnold.'' Turning
point in my life at the Yale Commencement of 1856; Dr. Wayland's
speech. Election to the professorship of history and English
literature at the University of Michigan; my first work in it;
sundry efforts toward reforms, text-books, social relations with
students; use of the Abb<e'> Bautain's book. My courses of
lectures; President Tappan's advice on extemporaneous speaking;
publication of my syllabus; ensuing relations with Charles
Sumner. Growth and use of my private historical library.
Character of my students. Necessity for hard work.
Student discussions.
CHAPTER XVI. UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE WEST--
1857-1864
Some difficulties; youthfulness; struggle against various
combinations, my victory; an enemy made a friend. Lectures
throughout Michigan; main purpose in these; a storm aroused;
vigorous attack upon my politico-economical views; happy results;
revenge upon my assailant; discussion in a County Court House.
Breadth and strength then given to my ideas regarding university
education. President Tappan. Henry Simmons Frieze. Brunnow.
Chief Justice Cooley. Judge Campbell. Distinguishing feature of
the University of Michigan in those days. Dr. Tappan's good
sense in administration; one typical example. Unworthy treatment
of him by the Legislature; some causes of this. Opposition to
the State University by the small sectarian colleges. Dr.
Tappan's prophecy to sundry demagogues; its fulfilment. Sundry
defects of his qualities; the ``Winchell War,'' ``Armed
Neutrality.'' Retirement of President Tappan; its painful
circumstances; amends made later by the citizens of Michigan.
The little city of Ann Arbor; origin of its name. Recreations,
tree planting on the campus; results of this. Exodus of students
into the Civil War. Lectures continued after my resignation. My
affectionate relations with the institution.
PART IV--AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT
CHAPTER XVII. EVOLUTION OF ``THE CORNELL IDEA''--
1850-1865
Development of my ideas on university organization at Hobart
College, at Yale, and abroad. Their further evolution at the
University of Michigan. President Tappan's influence. My plan
of a university at Syracuse. Discussions with George William
Curtis. Proposal to Gerrit Smith; its failure. A new
opportunity opens.
CHAPTER XVIII. EZRA CORNELL--1864-1874
Ezra Cornell. My first impressions regarding him. His public
library. Temporary estrangement between us; regarding the Land
Grant Fund. Our conversation regarding his intended gift. The
State Agricultural College and the ``People's College''; his
final proposal. Drafting of the Cornell University Charter. His
foresight. His views of university education. Struggle for the
charter in the Legislature; our efforts to overcome the coalition
against us; bitter attacks on him; final struggle in the
Assembly, Senate, and before the Board of Regents. Mr. Cornell's
location of the endowment lands. He nominates me to the
University Presidency. His constant liberality and labors. His
previous life; growth of his fortune; his noble use of it; sundry
original ways of his; his enjoyment of the university in its
early days; his mixture of idealism and common sense. First
celebration of Founder's Day. His resistance to unreason.
Bitter attacks upon him in sundry newspapers and in the
Legislature; the investigation; his triumph. His minor
characteristics; the motto ``True and Firm'' on his house. His
last days and hours. His political ideas. His quaint sayings;
intellectual and moral characteristics; equanimity; religious
convictions.
CHAPTER XIX. ORGANIZATION OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY--
1865-1868
Virtual Presidency of Cornell during two years before my actual
election. Division of labor between Mr. Cornell and myself. My
success in thwarting efforts to scatter the Land Grant Fund, and
in impressing three points on the Legislature. Support given by
Horace Greeley to the third of these. Judge Folger's opposition.
Sudden death of Dr. Willard and its effects. Our compromise with
Judge Folger. The founding of Willard Asylum. Continued
opposition to us. Election to the Presidency of the University.
Pressure of my own business. Presentation of my ``Plan of
Organization.'' Selection of Professors; difficulty of such
selection in those days as compared with these; system suggested;
system adopted. Resident and non- resident professorships.
Erection of university buildings; difficulty arising from a
requirement of our charter; general building plan adopted.
My visit to European technical institutions; choice of foreign
professors; purchases of books, apparatus, etc.
CHAPTER XX. THE FIRST YEARS OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY--
1868-1870
Formal opening of the University October 7, 1868. Difficulties,
mishaps, calamities, obstacles. Effect of these on Mr. Cornell
and myself. Opening ceremonies of the morning; Mr. Cornell's
speech and my own; effect of Mr. Cornell's broken health upon me.
The first ringing of the chime; effect of George W. Curtis's
oration; my realization of our difficulties; Mr. Cornell's
physical condition; inadequacy of our resources; impossibility of
selling lands; our necessary unreadiness; haste compelled by our
charter. Mr. Cornell's letter to the ``New York Tribune''
regarding student labor. Dreamers and schemers. Efforts by
``hack'' politicians. Attacks by the press, denominational and
secular. Friction in the University machinery. Difficulty of
the students in choosing courses; improvement in these days
consequent upon improvement of schools. My reprint of John
Foster's ``Essay on Decision of Character''; its good effects.
Compensations; character of the students; few infractions of
discipline; causes of this; effects of liberty of choice between
courses of study. My success in preventing the use of the
faculty as policemen; the Campus Bridge case. Sundry trials of
students by the faculty; the Dundee Lecture case; the ``Mock
Programme'' case; a suspension of class officers; revelation in
all this of a spirit of justice among students. Athletics and
their effects. Boating; General Grant's remark to me on the
Springfield regatta; Cornell's double success at Saratoga; letter
from a Princeton graduate. General improvement in American
university students during the second half of the nineteenth
century.
CHAPTER XXI. DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS AT CORNELL--
1868-1872
Questions regarding courses of instruction. Evils of the old
system of assigning them entirely to resident professors.
Literary instruction at Yale; George William Curtis and John
Lord. Our general scheme. The Arts Course; clinching it into
our system; purchase of the Anthon Library; charges against us on
this score; our vindication. The courses in literature, science
and philosophy; influence of one of Herbert Spencer's ideas upon
the formation of all these; influence of my own experience.
Professor Wilder; his services against fustian and ``tall talk.''
The course in literature; use made of it in promoting the general
culture of students. Technical departments; Civil Engineering;
incidental question of creed in electing a professor to it.
Department of Agriculture; its difficulties; three professors who
tided it through. Department of Mechanic Arts; its peculiar
difficulties and dangers; Mr. Cornell's view regarding college
shop work for bread winning; necessity for practical work in
connection with theoretical; mode of bringing about this
connection. Mr. Sibley's gift. Delay in recognition of our
success. Department of Architecture; origin of my ideas on this
subject; the Trustees accept my architectural library and
establish the Department.
CHAPTER XXII. FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY
COURSES-1870-1872
Establishment of Laboratories. Governor Cleveland's visit.
Department of Electrical Engineering; its origin. Department of
Political Science and History. Influence of my legislative
experience upon it; my report on the Paris Exposition, and
address at Johns Hopkins; a beginning made; excellent work done
by Frank Sanborn. Provision for Political Economy; presentation
of both sides of controverted questions. Instruction in History;
my own part in it; its growth; George Lincoln Burr called into
it; lectures by Goldwin Smith, Freeman, Froude, and others.
Instruction in American History; calling of George W. Greene and
Theodore Dwight as Non-Resident, and finally of Moses Coit Tyler
as Resident Professor. Difficulties in some of these
Departments. Reaction, ``The Oscillatory Law of Human
Progress.'' ``Joe'' Sheldon's ``Professorship of Horse Sense''
needed. First gift of a building--McGraw Hall. Curious passage
in a speech at the laying of its corner-stone. Military
Instruction; peculiar clause regarding it in our Charter; our
broad construction of it; my reasons for this. The Conferring of
Degrees; abuse at sundry American institutions in conferring
honorary degrees why Cornell University confers none. Regular
Degrees; theory originally proposed; theory adopted; recent
change in practice.
CHAPTER XXIII. ``CO-EDUCATION'' AND AN UNSECTARIAN
PULPIT--1871-1904
Admission of women. The Cortland Free Scholarship; the Sage
gift; difficulties and success. Establishment of Sage Chapel;
condition named by me for its acceptance; character of the
building. Establishment of a preachership; my suggestions
regarding it accepted; Phillips Brooks preaches the first sermon,
1875; results of this system. Establishment of Barnes Hall;
its origin and development; services it has rendered.
Development of sundry minor ideas in building up the University;
efforts to develop a recognition of historical and commemorative
features; portraits, tablets, memorial windows, etc. The
beautiful work of Robert Richardson. The Memorial Chapel.
Efforts to preserve the beauty of the grounds and original plan
of buildings; constant necessity for such efforts; dangers
threatening the original plan.
CHAPTER XXIV. ROCKS, STORMS, AND PERIL--1868-1874
Difficulties and discouragements. Very serious character of some
of these. Financial difficulties; our approach, at times, to
ruin. Splendid gifts; their continuance, the ``Ostrander Elms'';
encouragement thus given. Difficulties arising from our Charter;
short time allowed us for opening the University, general plans
laid down for us. Advice, comments, etc., from friends and
enemies; remark of the Johns Hopkins trustees as to their freedom
from oppressive supervision and control; my envy of them. Large
expenditure demanded. Mr. Cornell's burdens. Installation of a
``Business Manager.'' My suspicion as to our finances. Mr.
Cornell's optimism. Discovery of a large debt; Mr. Cornell's
noble proposal; the debt cleared in fifteen minutes by four men.
Ultimate result of this subscription; worst calamities to Cornell
its greatest blessings; example of this in the founding of
fellowships and scholarships. Successful financial management
ever since. Financial difficulties arising from the burden of
the University lands on Mr. Cornell, and from his promotion of
local railways; his good reasons for undertaking these.
Entanglement of the University affairs with those of the State
and of Mr. Cornell. Narrow escape of the institution from a
fatal result. Judge Finch as an adviser; his extrication of the
University and of Mr. Cornell's family; interwoven interests
disentangled. Death of Mr. Cornell, December, 1875. My
depression at this period; refuge in historical work. Another
calamity. Munificence of John McGraw; interest shown in the
institution by his daughter; her relations to the University; her
death; her bequest; my misgivings as to our Charter; personal
complications between the McGraw heirs and some of our trustees;
efforts to bring about a settlement thwarted; ill success of the
University in the ensuing litigation. Disappointment at this
prodigious loss. Compensations for it. Splendid gifts from Mr.
Henry W. Sage, Messrs. Dean and Wm. H. Sage, and others.
Continuance of sectarian attacks; virulent outbursts; we stand on
the defensive. I finally take the offensive in a lecture on
``The Battle-fields of Science''; its purpose, its reception when
repeated and when published; kindness of President Woolsey in the
matter. Gradual expansion of the lecture into a history of ``The
Warfare of Science with Theology''; filtration of the ideas it
represents into public opinion; effect of this in smoothing the
way for the University.
CHAPTER XXV. CONCLUDING YEARS--1881-1885
Evolution of the University administration. The Trustees; new
method of selecting them; Alumni trustees. The Executive
Committee. The Faculty method of its selection; its harmony.
The Students; system of taking them into our confidence. Alumni
associations. Engrossing nature of the administration.
Collateral duties. Addresses to the Legislature, to
associations, to other institutions of learning. Duties as
Professor. Delegation of sundry administrative details.
Inaccessibility of the University in those days; difficulties in
winter. Am appointed Commissioner to Santo Domingo in 1870;
to a commissionership at the Paris Exposition in 1877, and as
Minister to Germany in 1879-1881. Test of the University
organization during these absences; opportunity thus given the
University Faculty to take responsibility in University
government. Ill results, in sundry other institutions, of
holding the President alone responsible. General good results of
our system. Difficulties finally arising. My return. The four
years of my presidency afterward. Resignation in 1885. Kindness
of trustees and students. Am requested to name my successor, and
I nominate Charles Kendall Adams. Transfer of my historical
library to the University. Two visits to Europe; reasons for
them. Lectures at various universities after my return.
Resumption of diplomatic duties. Continued relations to the
University. My feelings toward it on nearing the end of life.
PART V--IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE
CHAPTER XXVI. AS ATTACH<E'> AT ST. PETERSBURG--1854-1855
My first studies in History and International Law. Am appointed
attach<e'> at St. Petersburg. Stay in London. Mr. Buchanan's
reminiscences. Arrival in St. Petersburg. Duty of an
attach<e'>. Effects of the Crimean War on the position of the
American Minister and his suite. Good feeling established
between Russia and the United States. The Emperor Nicholas; his
death; his funeral. Reception of the Diplomatic Corps at the
Winter Palace by Alexander II; his speech; feeling shown by him
toward Austria. Count Nesselrode; his kindness to me. Visits of
sundry Americans to St. Petersburg. Curious discovery at the
Winter Palace among the machines left by Peter the Great.
American sympathizers with Russia in the Crimean War.
Difficulties thus caused for the Minister. Examples of very
original Americans; the Kentucky Colonel; the New York Election
Manager; performance of the latter at a dinner party and display
at the Post House. Feeling of the Government toward the United
States; example of this at the Kazan Cathedral. Household
troubles of the Minister. Baird the Ironmaster; his yacht race
with the Grand Duke Alexander; interesting scenes at his table.
The traveler Atkinson and Siberia.
CHAPTER XXVII. AS ATTACH<E'> AND BEARER OF DESPATCHES
IN WAR-TIME--1855
Blockade of the Neva by the allied fleet. A great opportunity
lost. Russian caricatures during the Crimean War. Visit to
Moscow. Curious features in the Kremlin, the statue of Napoleon;
the Crown, Sceptre, and Constitution of Poland. Evidences of
official stupidity. Journey from St. Petersburg to Warsaw.
Contest with the officials at the frontier; my victory.
Journey across the continent; scene in a railway carriage between
Strasburg and Paris. Delivery of my despatches in Paris. Baron
Seebach. The French Exposition of 1855. Arrival of Horace
Greeley; comical features in his Parisian life; his arrest and
imprisonment; his efforts to learn French in prison and after his
release, especially at the Cr<e'>merie of Madame Busque.
Scenes at the Exposition. Journey through Switzerland.
Experience at the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard, Fanny Kemble
Butler; kind treatment by the monks. My arrival in Berlin as
student.
CHAPTER XXVIII. AS COMMISSIONER TO SANTO DOMINGO--1871
Propositions for the annexation of Santo Domingo to the United
States. I am appointed one of three Commissioners to visit the
island. Position taken by Senator Sumner; my relations with him;
my efforts to reconcile him with the Grant Administration; effort
of Gerrit Smith. Speeches of Senator Schurz. Conversations with
Admiral Porter, Benjamin F. Butler, and others. Discussions with
President Grant; his charge to me. Enlistment of scientific
experts. Direction of them. Our residence at Santo Domingo
city. President Baez; his conversations. Condition of the
Republic; its denudation. Anxiety of the clergy for connection
with the United States. My negotiation with the Papal Nuncio and
Vicar Apostolic; his earnest desire for annexation. Reasons for
this. My expedition across the island. Mishaps. Interview with
guerrilla general in the mountains. His gift. Vain efforts at
diplomacy. Our official inquiries regarding earthquakes; pious
view taken by the Vicar of Cotuy. Visit to Vega. Aid given me
by the French Vicar. Arrival at Puerto Plata. My stay at the
Vice-President's house; a tropical catastrophe; public dinner and
speech under difficulties. Journey in the Nantasket to
Port-au-Prince. Scenes in the Haitian capital; evidences of
revolution; unlimited paper money; effect of these experiences on
Frederick Douglass. Visit to Jamaica; interview with President
Geffrard. Experience of the Commission with a newspaper reporter.
Landing at Charleston. Journey to Washington. Refusal of dinner
to Douglass on the Potomac steamer. Discovery regarding an
assertion in Mr. Sumner's speech on Santo Domingo; his injustice.
Difference of opinion in drawing up our report; we present no
recommendation but simply a statement of facts. Reasons why the
annexation was not accomplished.
CHAPTER XXIX. AS COMMISSIONER TO THE PARIS EXPOSITION--1878
Previous experience on the Educational Jury at the Philadelphia
Exposition. Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil; curious revelation of
his character at Booth's Theater; my after acquaintance with him.
Don Juan Marin, his fine characteristics; his lesson to an
American crowd. Levasseur of the French Institute. Millet.
Gardner Hubbard. My honorary commissionership to the Paris
Exposition. Previous troubles of our Commissioner-General at the
Vienna Exposition. Necessity of avoiding these at Paris.
Membership of the upper jury. Meissonier. Tresca. Jules Simon.
Wischniegradsky. Difficulty regarding the Edison exhibit. My
social life in Paris. The sculptor Story and Judge Daly. A
Swiss-American juryman's efforts to secure the Legion of Honor.
A Fourth of July jubilation; light thrown by it on the
``Temperance Question.'' Henri Martin. Jules Simon pilots me in
Paris. Sainte-Clair Deville. Pasteur. Desjardins. Drouyn de
Lhuys. The reform school at Mettray. My visit to Thiers; his
relations to France as historian and statesman. Duruy; his
remark on rapid changes in French Ministries. Convention on
copyright. Victor Hugo. Louis Blanc, his opinion of Thiers.
Troubles of the American Minister; a socially ambitious American
lady; vexatious plague thus revealed.
CHAPTER XXX. AS MINISTER TO GERMANY--1879-1881
Am appointed by President Hayes. Receiving instructions in
Washington. Mr. Secretary Evarts. Interesting stay in London.
The Lord Mayor at Guildhall. Speeches by Beaconsfield and
others. An animated automaton. An evening drive with Browning.
Arrival in Berlin. Golden wedding festivities of the Emperor
William I. Audiences with various members of the imperial
family. Wedding ceremonies of Prince William, now Emperor
William II. Usual topic of the American representative on
presenting his Letter of Credence from the President to the
Prussian monarch. Prince Bismarck; his greeting; questions
regarding German-Americans. Other difficulties. Baron von
B<u:>low; his conciliatory character. Vexatious cases. Two
complicated marriages. Imperial relations. Superintendence
of consuls. Transmission of important facts to the State
Department. Care for personal interests of Americans. Fugitives
from justice. The selling of sham American diplomas; effective
means taken to stop this. Presentations at court; troublesome
applications; pleasure of aiding legitimate American efforts and
ambitions; discriminations. Curious letters demanding aid or
information. Claims to inheritances. Sundry odd applications.
The ``autograph bed-quilt.'' Associations with the diplomatic
corps. Count Delaunay. Lord Odo Russell. The Methuen episode.
Count de St. Vallier, embarrassing mishap at Nice due to him.
The Turkish and Russian ambassadors. Distressing
Russian-American marriage case. Baron Nothomb, his reminiscences
of Talleyrand. The Saxon representative and the troubles of
American lady students at Leipsic. Quaint discussions of general
politics by sundry diplomatists. The Japanese and Chinese
representatives. Curious experience with a member of the Chinese
Legation at a court reception. Sundry German public men.
CHAPTER XXXI. MEN OF NOTE IN BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE--
1879-1881
My relations with professors at the Berlin University. Lepsius,
Curtius, Gneist, Von Sybel, Droysen. Hermann Grimm and his wife.
Treitschke. Statements of Du Bois-Reymond regarding the
expulsion of the Huguenots from France. Helmholtz and Hoffmann;
a Scotch experience of the latter. Acquaintance with professors
at other universities. Literary men of Berlin. Auerbach. His
story of unveiling the Spinoza statue. Rodenberg. Berlin
artists. Knaus; curious beginning of my acquaintance with him.
Carl Becker. Anton von Werner; his statement regarding his
painting the ``Proclamation of the Empire at Versailles.'' Adolf
Menzel; visit to his studio; his quaint discussions of his own
pictures. Pilgrimage to Oberammergau, impressions, my
acquaintance with the ``Christus'' and the ``Judas''; popular
prejudice against the latter. Excursion to France. Talks with
President Gr<e'>vy and with the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Barth<e'>lemy-Saint-Hilaire. The better side of France.
Talk with M. de Lesseps. The salon of Madame Edmond Adam.
<E'>mile de Girardin. My recollections of Alexander Dumas.
Sainte-Beuve. Visit to Nice. Young Leland Stanford. Visit to
Florence. Ubaldino Peruzzi. Professor Villari. A reproof from
a Harvard professor. Minghetti. Emperor Frederick III; his
visit to the American Fisheries Exposition; the Americans win the
prize. Interest of the Prince in everything American. Kindness
and heartiness of the Emperor William I; his interest in
Bancroft; my final interview with him. Farewell dinner to me by
my Berlin friends.
CHAPTER XXXII. MY RECOLLECTIONS OF BISMARCK--1879-1881
My first sight of him. First interview with him. His feeling
toward German-Americans. His conversation on American questions.
A family dinner at his house. His discussion of various
subjects; his opinions of Thiers and others, conversation on
travel; his opinions of England and Englishmen; curious
reminiscences of his own life; kindly recollections of Bancroft,
Bayard Taylor, and Motley. Visit to him with William D. Kelly;
our walk and talk in the garden. Bismarck's view of financial
questions. Mr. Kelly's letter to the American papers; its effect
in Germany. Bismarck's diplomatic dinners; part taken in them by
the Reichshunde. The Rudhardt episode. Scene in the Prussian
House of Lords. Bismarck's treatment of Lasker; his rejection of
our Congressional Resolutions. Usual absence of Bismarck from
Court. Reasons for it. Festivities at the marriage of the
present Emperor William. A Fackeltanz. Bismarck's fits of
despondency; remark by Gneist. Gneist's story illustrating
Bismarck's drinking habits. Difficulties in German-American
``military cases'' after Baron von B<u:>low's death. A serious
crisis. Bismarck's mingled severity and kindness. His
unyielding attitude toward Russia. Question between us regarding
German interference in South America. My citations from
Washington's Farewell Address and John Quincy Adams's despatches.
Bismarck's appearance in Parliament. His mode of speaking.
Contrast of his speeches with those of Moltke and Windthorst.
Beauty of his family life. My last view of him.
LIST OF PORTRAITS
OF THE AUTHOR
VOLUME I
ITHACA, 1905 Photograph by Robinson, Ithaca
SARATOGA, 1842 From a daguerreotype
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 1878 Photograph by Sarony, New York
VOLUME II
THE HAGUE, 1899 Photograph by Zimmermans, The Hague
OXFORD, 1902 Photograph by Robinson, Ithaca
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
ANDREW DICKSON WHITE
PART I
ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
ANDREW DICKSON WHITE
CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK--1832-1850
At the close of the Revolution which separated the
colonies from the mother country, the legislature of
New York set apart nearly two million acres of land, in the
heart of the State, as bounty to be divided among her soldiers
who had taken part in the war; and this ``Military
Tract,'' having been duly divided into townships, an ill-
inspired official, in lack of names for so many divisions,
sprinkled over the whole region the contents of his classical
dictionary. Thus it was that there fell to a beautiful
valley upon the headwaters of the Susquehanna the
name of ``Homer.'' Fortunately the surveyor-general
left to the mountains, lakes, and rivers the names the
Indians had given them, and so there was still some poetical
element remaining in the midst of that unfortunate
nomenclature. The counties, too, as a rule, took Indian
names, so that the town of Homer, with its neighbors,
Tully, Pompey, Fabius, Lysander, and the rest, were embedded
in the county of Onondaga, in the neighborhood
of lakes Otisco and Skaneateles, and of the rivers Tioughnioga
and Susquehanna.
Hither came, toward the close of the eighteenth century,
a body of sturdy New Englanders, and, among them, my
grandfathers and grandmothers. Those on my father's
side: Asa White and Clara Keep, from Munson, Massa-
chusetts; those on my mother's side, Andrew Dickson,
from Middlefield, Massachusetts, and Ruth Hall from
Guilford, Connecticut. They were all of ``good stock.''
When I was ten years old I saw my great-grandfather at
Middlefield, eighty-two years of age, sturdy and vigorous;
he had mowed a broad field the day before, and he walked
four miles to church the day after. He had done his duty
manfully during the war, had been a member of the
``Great and General Court'' of Massachusetts, and had
held various other offices, which showed that he enjoyed
the confidence of his fellow-citizens. As to the other side
of the house, there was a tradition that we came from
Peregrine White of the Mayflower; but I have never had
time to find whether my doubts on the subject were well
founded or not. Enough for me to know that my yeomen
ancestors did their duty in war and peace, were honest,
straightforward, God-fearing men and women, who
owned their own lands, and never knew what it was to
cringe before any human being.
These New Englanders literally made the New York
wilderness to blossom as the rose; and Homer, at my
birth in 1832, about forty years after the first settlers
came, was, in its way, one of the prettiest villages
imaginable. In the heart of it was the ``Green,'' and along
the middle of this a line of church edifices, and the academy.
In front of the green, parallel to the river, ran,
north and south, the broad main street, beautifully shaded
with maples, and on either side of this, in the middle of
the village, were stores, shops, and the main taverns; while
north and south of these were large and pleasant dwellings,
each in its own garden or grove or orchard, and
separated from the street by light palings,--all, without
exception, neat, trim, and tidy.
My first recollections are of a big, comfortable house
of brick, in what is now called ``colonial style,'' with a
``stoop,'' long and broad, on its southern side, which in
summer was shaded with honeysuckles. Spreading out
southward from this was a spacious garden filled with
old-fashioned flowers, and in this I learned to walk. To
this hour the perfume of a pink brings the whole scene
before me, and proves the justice of Oliver Wendell
Holmes's saying that we remember past scenes more vividly
by the sense of smell than by the sense of sight.
I can claim no merit for clambering out of poverty.
My childhood was happy; my surroundings wholesome;
I was brought up neither in poverty nor riches; my parents
were what were called ``well-to-do-people''; everything
about me was good and substantial; but our mode
of life was frugal; waste or extravagance or pretense was
not permitted for a moment. My paternal grandfather
had been, in the early years of the century, the richest
man in the township; but some time before my birth he
had become one of the poorest; for a fire had consumed
his mills, there was no insurance, and his health gave way.
On my father, Horace White, had fallen, therefore, the
main care of his father's family. It was to the young
man, apparently, a great calamity:--that which grieved
him most being that it took him--a boy not far in his
teens--out of school. But he met the emergency
manfully, was soon known far and wide for his energy,
ability, and integrity, and long before he had reached
middle age was considered one of the leading men of business
in the county.
My mother had a more serene career. In another part
of these Reminiscences, saying something of my religious
and political development, I shall speak again of her and
of her parents. Suffice it here that her father prospered
as a man of business, was known as ``Colonel,'' and also
as ``Squire'' Dickson, and represented his county in the
State legislature. He died when I was about three years
old, and I vaguely remember being brought to him as he
lay upon his death-bed. On one account, above all others,
I have long looked back to him with pride. For the first
public care of the early settlers had been a church, and
the second a school. This school had been speedily
developed into Cortland Academy, which soon became fa-
mous throughout all that region, and, as a boy of five or
six years of age, I was very proud to read on the corner-
stone of the Academy building my grandfather's name
among those of the original founders.
Not unlikely there thus came into my blood the strain
which has led me ever since to feel that the building up of
goodly institutions is more honorable than any other
work,--an idea which was at the bottom of my efforts in
developing the University of Michigan, and in founding
Cornell University.
To Cortland Academy students came from far and
near; and it soon began sending young men into the foremost
places of State and Church. At an early day, too,
it began receiving young women and sending them forth
to become the best of matrons. As my family left the
place when I was seven years old I was never within
its walls as a student, but it acted powerfully on my
education in two ways,--it gave my mother the best of
her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship.
The library and collections, though small, suggested
pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the
public exercises, two or three times a year, led my
thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and
I shall never forget the awe which came over me when
as a child, I saw Principal Woolworth, with his best
students around him on the green, making astronomical
observations through a small telescope.
Thus began my education into that great truth, so
imperfectly understood, as yet, in our country, that stores,
shops, hotels, facilities for travel and traffic are not the
highest things in civilization.
This idea was strengthened in the family. Devoted as
my father was to business, he always showed the greatest
respect for men of thought. I have known him, even
when most absorbed in his pursuits, to watch occasions
for walking homeward with a clergyman or teacher,
whose conversation he especially prized. There was scant
respect in the family for the petty politicians of the
region; but there was great respect for the instructors
of the academy, and for any college professor who happened
to be traveling through the town. I am now in my
sixty-eighth year, and I write these lines from the American
Embassy in Berlin. It is my duty here, as it has
been at other European capitals, to meet various high
officials; but that old feeling, engendered in my childhood,
continues, and I bow to the representatives of
the universities,--to the leaders in science, literature, and
art, with a feeling of awe and respect far greater than
to their so-called superiors,--princelings and high military
or civil officials.
Influences of a more direct sort came from a primary
school. To this I was taken, when about three years old,
for a reason which may strike the present generation
as curious. The colored servant who had charge of me
wished to learn to read--so she slipped into the school and
took me with her. As a result, though my memory runs
back distinctly to events near the beginning of my fourth
year, it holds not the faintest recollection of a time when
I could not read easily. The only studies which I recall
with distinctness, as carried on before my seventh year,
are arithmetic and geography. As to the former, the
multiplication-table was chanted in chorus by the whole
body of children, a rhythmical and varied movement of
the arms being carried on at the same time. These exercises
gave us pleasure and fastened the tables in our
minds. As to geography, that gave pleasure in another
way. The books contained pictures which stimulated my
imagination and prompted me to read the adjacent text.
There was no over-pressure. Mental recreation and
information were obtained in a loose way from ``Rollo
Books,'' ``Peter Parley Books,'' ``Sanford and Merton,''
the ``Children's Magazine,'' and the like. I now
think it a pity that I was not allowed to read, instead of
these, the novels of Scott and Cooper, which I discovered
later. I devoutly thank Heaven that no such thing as
a sensation newspaper was ever brought into the house,--
even if there were one at that time,--which I doubt. As
to physical recreation, there was plenty during the summer
in the fields and woods, and during the winter in
coasting, building huts in the deep snow, and in storming
or defending the snow forts on the village green. One
of these childish sports had a historical connection with
a period which now seems very far away. If any old
settler happened to pass during our snow-balling or
our shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look
on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out,--
``SHOOT BURGOYNE!''--thus recalling his remembrances
of the sharpshooters who brought about the great
surrender at Saratoga.
In my seventh year my father was called to take charge
of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles
distant, and there the family soon joined him. I remember
that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road
between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the
bowers and other decorations which had been used
shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief.
It was the headquarters of the Onondagas,--formerly the
great central tribe of the Iroquois,--the warlike confederacy
of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the
story was told me on that beautiful day in September a
new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian
stories, and especially Cooper's novels, when I was
allowed to read them, took on a new reality.
Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and
twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling
village of about five thousand. After much time lost in
sundry poor ``select schools'' I was sent to one of the
public schools which was very good, and thence, when
about twelve years old, to the preparatory department
of the Syracuse Academy.
There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best
teacher of English branches I have ever known. He had
no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have
no rules, and his system was to have no system. To
genius. He seemed to divine the character and enter into
the purpose of every boy. Work under him was a pleasure.
His methods were very simple. Great attention
was given to reading aloud from a book made up of
selections from the best authors, and to recitals from these.
Thus I stored up not only some of the best things in
the older English writers, but inspiring poems of Bryant,
Whittier, Longfellow, and other moderns. My only regret
is that more of this was not given us. I recall, among
treasures thus gained, which have been precious to me
ever since, in many a weary or sleepless hour on land
and sea, extracts from Shakspere, parts of Milton's
``Samson Agonistes,'' and of his sonnets; Gray's
``Elegy,'' Byron's ``Ode to the Ocean,'' Campbell's
``What's Hallowed Ground?'' Goldsmith's ``Deserted
Village,'' Longfellow's ``Psalm of Life,'' Irving's ``Voyage
to Europe,'' and parts of Webster's ``Reply to Hayne.''
At this school the wretched bugbear of English spelling
was dealt with by a method which, so long as our present
monstrous orthography continues, seems to me the
best possible. During the last half-hour of every day,
each scholar was required to have before him a copy-
book, of which each page was divided into two columns.
At the head of the first column was the word ``Spelling'';
at the head of the second column was the word ``Corrected.''
The teacher then gave out to the school about
twenty of the more important words in the reading-
lesson of the day, and, as he thus dictated each word, each
scholar wrote it in the column headed ``Spelling.'' When
all the words were thus written, the first scholar was asked
to spell from his book the first word; if misspelled, it
was passed to the next, and so on until it was spelled
correctly; whereupon all who had made a mistake in writing
it made the proper correction on the opposite column.
The result of this was that the greater part of us learned
orthography PRACTICALLY. For the practical use of spelling
comes in writing.
The only mistake in Mr. Allen's teaching was too much
attention to English grammar. The order ought to be,
literature first, and grammar afterward. Perhaps there
is no more tiresome trifling in the world for boys and
girls than rote recitations and parsing from one of the
usual grammatical text-books.
As to mathematics, arithmetic was, perhaps, pushed
too far into puzzles; but geometry was made fascinating
by showing its real applications and the beauty of its
reasoning. It is the only mathematical study I ever loved.
In natural science, though most of the apparatus of
schools nowadays was wanting, Mr. Allen's instruction
was far beyond his time. Never shall I forget my excited
interest when, occasionally, the village surgeon came
in, and the whole school was assembled to see him dissect
the eye or ear or heart of an ox. Physics, as then
understood, was studied in a text-book, but there was
illustration by simple apparatus, which fastened firmly
in my mind the main facts and principles.
The best impulse by this means came from the principal
of the academy, Mr. Oren Root,--one of the pioneers
of American science, whose modesty alone stood in
the way of his fame. I was too young to take direct
instruction from him, but the experiments which I saw him
perform led me, with one or two of my mates, to construct
an excellent electrical machine and subsidiary apparatus;
and with these, a small galvanic battery and an extemporized
orrery, I diluted Professor Root's lectures with the
teachings of my little books on natural philosophy and
astronomy to meet the capacities of the younger boys in
our neighborhood.
Salient among my recollections of this period are the
cries and wailing of a newly-born babe in the rooms at
the academy occupied by the principal, and adjacent to
our big school-room. Several decades of years later I had
the honor of speaking on the platform of Cooper Institute
in company with this babe, who, as I write, is, I believe,
the very energetic Secretary of War in the Cabinet
of President McKinley.
Unfortunately for me, Mr. Root was soon afterward
called away to a professorship at Hamilton College, and
so, though living in the best of all regions for geological
study, I was never properly grounded in that science, and
as to botany, I am to this hour utterly ignorant of its
simplest facts and principles. I count this as one of the
mistakes in my education,--resulting in the loss of much
valuable knowledge and high pleasure.
As to physical development, every reasonable encouragement
was given to play. Mr. Allen himself came frequently
to the play-grounds. He was an excellent musician
and a most helpful influence was exerted by singing,
which was a daily exercise of the school. I then began
taking lessons regularly in music and became proficient
enough to play the organ occasionally in church; the best
result of this training being that it gave my life one of its
deepest, purest, and most lasting pleasures.
On the moral side, Mr. Allen influenced many of
us by liberalizing and broadening our horizon. He was
a disciple of Channing and an abolitionist, and, though he
never made the slightest attempt to proselyte any of his
scholars, the very atmosphere of the school made sectarian
bigotry impossible.
As to my general education outside the school I browsed
about as best I could. My passion in those days was for
machinery, and, above all, for steam machinery. The
stationary and locomotive engines upon the newly-
established railways toward Albany on the east and Buffalo
on the west especially aroused my attention, and I came to
know every locomotive, its history, character, and capabilities,
as well as every stationary engine in the whole region.
My holiday excursions, when not employed in boating
or skating on the Onondaga Creek, or upon the lake,
were usually devoted to visiting workshops, where the
engine drivers and stokers seemed glad to talk with a
youngster who took an interest in their business. Especially
interested was I in a rotary engine on ``Barker's
centrifugal principle,'' with which the inventor had prom-
ised to propel locomotives at the rate of a hundred miles
an hour, but which had been degraded to grinding bark in
a tannery. I felt its disgrace keenly, as a piece of gross
injustice; but having obtained a small brass model, fitted
to it a tin boiler and placed it on a little stern-wheel boat,
I speedily discovered the secret of the indignity which
had overtaken the machine, for no boat could carry a
boiler large enough to supply steam for it.
So, too, I knew every water-wheel in that part of the
county, whether overshot, undershot, breast, or turbine.
Everything in the nature of a motor had an especial
fascination for me, and for the men in control of such power
I entertained a respect which approached awe.
Among all these, my especial reverence was given to the
locomotive engineers; in my youthful mind they took on
a heroic character. Often during the night watches I
thought of them as braving storm and peril, responsible
for priceless freights of human lives. Their firm, keen
faces come back to me vividly through the mists of sixty
years, and to this day I look up to their successors at the
throttle with respectful admiration.
After Professor Root's departure the Syracuse Academy
greatly declined, Mr. Allen being the only strong
man left among its teachers, and, as I was to go
to college, I was removed to a ``classical school.'' This
school was not at first very successful. Its teacher was
a good scholar but careless. Under him I repeated the
grammatical forms and rules in Latin and Greek, glibly,
term after term, without really understanding their
value. His great mistake, which seems to me a not
infrequent one, was taking it for granted that repeating
rules and forms means understanding them and their
application. But a catastrophe came. I had been promoted
beyond my deserts from a lower into an upper Latin class,
and at a public examination the Rev. Samuel Joseph
May, who was present, asked me a question, to which I
made an answer revealing utter ignorance of one of the
simplest principles of Latin grammar. He was discon-
certed at the result, I still more so, and our preceptor most
of all. That evening my father very solemnly asked me
about it. I was mortified beyond expression, did not
sleep at all that night, and of my own accord, began
reviewing my Andrews and Stoddard thoroughly and
vigorously. But this did not save the preceptor. A
successor was called, a man who afterward became an
eminent Presbyterian divine and professor in a Southern
university, James W. Hoyt, one of the best and truest
of men, and his manly, moral influence over his scholars
was remarkable. Many of them have reached positions of
usefulness, and I think they will agree that his influence
upon their lives was most happy. The only drawback
was that he was still very young, not yet through his
senior year in Union College, and his methods in classical
teaching were imperfect. He loved his classics and taught
his better students to love them, but he was neither
thorough in grammar, nor sure in translation, and this I
afterward found to my sorrow. My friend and schoolmate
of that time, W. O. S., published a few years since,
in the ``St. Nicholas Magazine,'' an account of this school.
It was somewhat idealized, but we doubtless agree in
thinking that the lack of grammatical drill was more than
made up by the love of manliness, and the dislike of
meanness, which was in those days our very atmosphere.
Probably the best thing for my mental training was that
Mr. Hoyt interested me in my Virgil, Horace, and Xenophon,
and required me to write out my translations in the
best English at my command.
But to all his pupils he did not prove so helpful. One
of them, though he has since become an energetic man
of business on the Pacific Coast, was certainly not helped
into his present position by his Latin; for of all the
translations I have ever heard or read of, one of his was the
worst. Being called to construe the first line of the
Aeneid, he proceeded as follows:
``Arma,--arms; virumque,--and a man; cano,--and a
dog.'' There was a roar, and Mr. Hoyt, though evidently
saddened, kept his temper. He did not, like the great
and good Arnold of Rugby, under similar provocation,
knock the offender down with the text-book.
Still another agency in my development was the debating
club, so inevitable in an American village. Its
discussions were sometimes pretentious and always crude,
but something was gained thereby. I remember that one
of the subjects was stated as follows: ``Which has done
most harm, intemperance or fanaticism.'' The debate
was without any striking feature until my schoolmate,
W. O. S., brought up heavy artillery on the side of the
anti-fanatics: namely, a statement of the ruin wrought
by Mohammedanism in the East, and, above all, the
destruction of the great Alexandrian library by Caliph
Omar; and with such eloquence that all the argumentation
which any of us had learned in the temperance meetings
was paralyzed.
On another occasion we debated the question: ``Was
the British Government justified in its treatment of
Napoleon Bonaparte?'' Much historical lore had been
brought to bear on the question, when an impassioned
young orator wound up a bitter diatribe against the great
emperor as follows: ``The British Government WAS justified,
and if for no other reason, by the Emperor Napoleon's
murder of the `Duck de Engine' '' (Duc d'Enghien).
As to education outside of the school very important
to me had been the discovery, when I was about ten years
old, of `` `The Monastery,' by the author of `Waverley.' ''
Who the ``author of `Waverley' '' was I neither knew nor
cared, but read the book three times, end over end, in a
sort of fascination. Unfortunately, novels and romances
were kept under lock and key, as unfit reading for children,
and it was some years before I reveled in Scott's
other novels. That they would have been thoroughly
good and wholesome reading for me I know, and about
my sixteenth year they opened a new world to me and
gave healthful play to my imagination. I also read and
re-read Bunyan's ``Pilgrim's Progress,'' and, with plea-
sure even more intense, the earlier works of Dickens,
which were then appearing.
My only regret, as regards that time, is that, between the
rather trashy ``boys' books'' on one side and the rather
severe books in the family library on the other, I read
far less of really good literature than I ought to have
done. My reading was absolutely without a guide, hence
fitful and scrappy; parts of Rollin's ``Ancient History''
and Lander's ``Travels in Africa'' being mixed up with
``Robinson Crusoe'' and ``The Scottish Chiefs.'' Reflection
on my experience has convinced me that some
kindly guidance in the reading of a fairly scholarly boy
is of the utmost importance, and never more so than now,
when books are so many and attractive. I should lay
much stress, also, on the hearing of good literature well
read, and the interspersing of such reading with some
remarks by the reader, pointing out the main beauties
of the pieces thus presented.
About my tenth year occurred an event, apparently
trivial, but really very important in my mental
development during many years afterward. My father
brought home one day, as a gift to my mother, a
handsome quarto called ``The Gallery of British Artists.''
It contained engravings from pictures by Turner, Stanfield,
Cattermole, and others, mainly representing scenes
from Shakspere, Scott, Burns, picturesque architecture,
and beautiful views in various parts of Europe. Of this
book I never tired. It aroused in me an intense desire
to know more of the subjects represented, and this desire
has led me since to visit and to study every cathedral,
church, and town hall of any historical or architectural
significance in Europe, outside the Spanish peninsula.
But, far more important, it gave an especial zest to nearly
all Scott's novels, and especially to the one which I have
always thought the most fascinating, ``Quentin Durward.''
This novel led me later, not merely to visit Liege,
and Orl<e'>ans, and Cl<e'>ry, and Tours, but to devour the
chronicles and histories of that period, to become deeply
interested in historical studies, and to learn how great
principles lie hidden beneath the surface of events. The
first of these principles I ever clearly discerned was
during my reading of ``Quentin Durward'' and ``Anne of
Geierstein,'' when there was revealed to me the secret
of the centralization of power in Europe, and of the
triumph of monarchy over feudalism.
In my sixteenth and seventeenth years another element
entered into my education. Syracuse, as the central city
of the State, was the scene of many conventions and public
meetings. That was a time of very deep earnestness in
political matters. The last great efforts were making,
by the more radical, peaceably to prevent the extension
of slavery, and, by the more conservative, peaceably to
preserve the Union. The former of these efforts interested
me most. There were at Syracuse frequent public debates
between the various groups of the anti-slavery
party represented by such men as Gerrit Smith, Wendell
Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, John Parker Hale,
Samuel Joseph May, and Frederick Douglass. They took
strong hold upon me and gave me a higher idea of a man's
best work in life. That was the bloom period of the old
popular lecture. It was the time when lectures were
expected to build character and increase knowledge; the
sensation and buffoon business which destroyed the system
had not yet come in. I feel to this hour the good
influence of lectures then heard, in the old City Hall at
Syracuse, from such men as President Mark Hopkins,
Bishop Alonzo Potter, Senator Hale of New Hampshire,
Emerson, Ware, Whipple, and many others.
As to recreative reading at this period, the author who
exercised the strongest influence over me was Charles
Kingsley. His novels ``Alton Locke'' and ``Yeast''
interested me greatly in efforts for doing away with old
abuses in Europe, and his ``Two Years After'' increased
my hatred for negro slavery in America. His ``Westward
Ho!'' extended my knowledge of the Elizabethan
period and increased my manliness. Of this period, too,
was my reading of Lowell's Poems, many of which I
greatly enjoyed. His ``Biglow Papers'' were a perpetual
delight; the dialect was familiar to me since, in the
little New England town transplanted into the heart of
central New York, in which I was born, the less educated
people used it, and the dry and droll Yankee expressions
of our ``help'' and ``hired man'' were a source of
constant amusement in the family.
In my seventeenth year came a trial. My father had
taken a leading part in establishing a parish school for
St. Paul's church in Syracuse, in accordance with the
High Church views of our rector, Dr. Gregory, and there
was finally called to the mastership a young candidate
for orders, a brilliant scholar and charming man, who has
since become an eminent bishop of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. To him was intrusted my final preparation
for college. I had always intended to enter one
of the larger New England universities, but my teacher
was naturally in favor of his Alma Mater, and the influence
of our bishop, Dr. de Lancey, being also thrown
powerfully into the scale, my father insisted on placing
me at a small Protestant Episcopal college in western
New York. I went most reluctantly. There were in the
faculty several excellent men, one of whom afterward
became a colleague of my own in Cornell University, and
proved of the greatest value to it. Unfortunately, we of
the lower college classes could have very little instruction
from him; still there was good instruction from
others; the tutor in Greek, James Morrison Clarke, was
one of the best scholars I have ever known.
It was in the autumn of 1849 that I went into residence
at the little college and was assigned a very unprepossessing
room in a very ugly barrack. Entering my new
quarters I soon discovered about me various cabalistic
signs, some of them evidently made by heating large iron
keys, and pressing them against the woodwork. On
inquiring I found that the room had been occupied some
years before by no less a personage than Philip Spencer,
a member of the famous Spencer family of Albany, who,
having passed some years at this little college, and never
having been able to get out of the freshman class, had
gone to another institution of about the same grade, had
there founded a Greek letter fraternity which is now
widely spread among American universities, and then,
through the influence of his father, who was Secretary
of War, had been placed as a midshipman under
Commodore McKenzie on the brig-of-war Somers. On the
coast of Africa a mutiny was discovered, and as, on
examination, young Spencer was found at the head of it,
and papers discovered in his cabin revealed the plan of
seizing the ship and using it in a career of piracy, the
young man, in spite of his connection with a member of
the Cabinet, was hanged at the yard-arm with two of his
associates.
The most curious relic of him at the college was
preserved in the library of the Hermean Society. It was a
copy of ``The Pirates' Own Book'': a glorification of the
exploits of ``Blackbeard'' and other great freebooters,
profusely adorned with illustrations of their joys and
triumphs. This volume bore on the fly-leaf the words,
``Presented to the Hermean Society by Philip Spencer,'' and
was in those days shown as a great curiosity.
The college was at its lowest ebb; of discipline there
was none; there were about forty students, the majority
of them, sons of wealthy churchmen, showing no inclination
to work and much tendency to dissipation. The
authorities of the college could not afford to expel or even
offend a student. for its endowment was so small that it
must have all the instruction fees possible, and must keep
on good terms with the wealthy fathers of its scapegrace
students. The scapegraces soon found this out, and the
result was a little pandemonium. Only about a dozen
of our number studied at all; the rest, by translations,
promptings, and evasions escaped without labor. I have
had to do since, as student, professor, or lecturer, with
some half-dozen large universities at home and abroad,
and in all of these together have not seen so much
carousing and wild dissipation as I then saw in this little
``Church college'' of which the especial boast was that,
owing to the small number of its students, it was ``able
to exercise a direct Christian influence upon every young
man committed to its care.''
The evidences of this Christian influence were not clear.
The president of the college, Dr. Benjamin Hale, was a
clergyman of the highest character; a good scholar, an
excellent preacher, and a wise administrator; but his
stature was very small, his girth very large, and his hair
very yellow. When, then, on the thirteenth day of the
month, there was read at chapel from the Psalter the
words, ``And there was little Benjamin, their ruler,''
very irreverent demonstrations were often made by the
students, presumably engaged in worship; demonstrations
so mortifying, indeed, that at last the president frequently
substituted for the regular Psalms of the day one of the
beautiful ``Selections'' of Psalms which the American
Episcopal Church has so wisely incorporated into its
prayer-book.
But this was by no means the worst indignity which
these youth ``under direct Christian influence''
perpetrated upon their reverend instructors. It was my
privilege to behold a professor, an excellent clergyman,
seeking to quell hideous riot in a student's room, buried under
a heap of carpets, mattresses, counterpanes, and blankets;
to see another clerical professor forced to retire through
the panel of a door under a shower of lexicons, boots, and
brushes, and to see even the president himself, on one
occasion, obliged to leave his lecture-room by a ladder from
a window, and, on another, kept at bay by a shower of
beer-bottles.
One favorite occupation was rolling cannon-balls along
the corridors at midnight, with frightful din and much
damage: a tutor, having one night been successful
in catching and confiscating two of these, pounced from
his door the next night upon a third; but this having
been heated nearly to redness and launched from a shovel,
the result was that he wore bandages upon his hands for
many days.
Most ingenious were the methods for ``training freshmen,''--
one of the mildest being the administration of
soot and water by a hose-pipe thrust through the broken
panel of a door. Among general freaks I remember seeing
a horse turned into the chapel, and a stuffed wolf,
dressed in a surplice, placed upon the roof of that sacred
edifice.
But the most elaborate thing of the kind I ever saw
was the breaking up of a ``Second Adventist'' meeting
by a score of student roysterers. An itinerant fanatic had
taken an old wooden meeting-house in the lower part
of the town, had set up on either side of the pulpit large
canvas representations of the man of brass with feet of
clay, and other portentous characters of the prophecies,
and then challenged the clergy to meet him in public
debate. At the appointed time a body of college youth
appeared, most sober in habit and demure in manner,
having at their head ``Bill'' Howell of Black Rock and
``Tom'' Clark of Manlius, the two wildest miscreants in
the sophomore class, each over six feet tall, the latter
dressed as a respectable farmer, and the former as a
country clergyman, wearing a dress-coat, a white cravat,
a tall black hat wrapped in crape, leaning on a heavy,
ivory-knobbed cane, and carrying ostentatiously a Greek
Testament. These disguised malefactors, having taken
their seats in the gallery directly facing the pulpit, the
lecturer expressed his ``satisfaction at seeing clergymen
present,'' and began his demonstrations. For about five
minutes all went well; then ``Bill'' Howell solemnly arose
and, in a snuffling voice, asked permission to submit a few
texts from scripture. Permission being granted, he put
on a huge pair of goggles, solemnly opened his Greek
Testament, read emphatically the first passage which attracted
his attention and impressively asked the lecturer what
he had to say to it. At this, the lecturer, greatly puzzled,
asked what the reverend gentleman was reading. Upon
this Howell read in New Testament Greek another utterly
irrelevant passage. In reply the lecturer said, rather
roughly, ``If you will speak English I will answer you.''
At this Howell said with the most humble suavity, ``Do
I understand that the distinguished gentleman does not
recognize what I have been reading?'' The preacher
answered, ``I don't understand any such gibberish;
speak English.'' Thereupon Howell threw back his long
black hair and launched forth into eloquent denunciation
as follows: ``Sir, is it possible that you come here to
interpret to us the Holy Bible and do not recognize the
language in which that blessed book was written? Sir,
do you dare to call the very words of the Almighty
`gibberish?' '' At this all was let loose; some students put
asafetida on the stove; others threw pigeon-shot against
the ceiling and windows, making a most appalling din,
and one wretch put in deadly work with a syringe thrust
through the canvas representation of the man of brass
with feet of clay. But, alas, Constable John Dey had
recognized Howell and Clark, even amid their disguises.
He had dealt with them too often before. The next
tableau showed them, with their tall hats crushed over their
heads, belaboring John Dey and his myrmidons, and presently,
with half a dozen other ingenuous youth, they were
haled to the office of justice. The young judge who
officiated on this occasion was none other than a personage
who will be mentioned with great respect more than
once in these reminiscences,--Charles James Folger,--
afterward my colleague in the State Senate, Chief Justice
of the State and Secretary of the Treasury of the United
States. He had met Howell often, for they were members
of the same Greek letter fraternity,--the thrice illustrious
Sigma Phi,--and, only a few days before, Howell had
presented me to him; but there was no fraternal bond
visible now; justice was sternly implacable, and good
round fines were imposed upon all the culprits caught.
The philosophy of all this waywardness and dissipation
was very simple. There was no other outlet for the animal
spirits of these youth. Athletics were unknown; there
was no gymnasium, no ball-playing, and, though the college
was situated on the shore of one of the most beautiful
lakes in the world, no boating. As regards my own personal
relation to this condition of things I have pictured, it
was more that of a good-natured spectator than of an active
accomplice. My nearest friends were in the thick of
it, but my tastes kept me out of most of it. I was fond of
books, and, in the little student's library in my college
building I reveled. Moreover, I then began to accumulate
for myself the library which has since grown to such large
proportions. Still the whole life of the place became more
and more unsatisfactory to me, and I determined, at any
cost, to escape from it and find some seat of learning where
there was less frolic and more study.
CHAPTER II
YALE AND EUROPE--1850-1857
At the close of my year at the little Western New York
College I felt that it was enough time wasted, and,
anxious to try for something better, urged upon my father
my desire to go to one of the larger New England universities.
But to this he would not listen. He was assured by
the authorities of the little college that I had been doing
well, and his churchmanship, as well as his respect for the
bishop, led him to do what was very unusual with him--to
refuse my request. Up to this period he had allowed me to
take my own course; but now he was determined that I
should take his. He was one of the kindest of men, but he
had stern ideas as to proper subordination, and these he
felt it his duty to maintain. I was obliged to make a coup
d'<e'>tat, and for a time it cost me dear. Braving the
censure of family and friends, in the early autumn of 1850 I
deliberately left the college, and took refuge with my old
instructor P----, who had prepared me for college at
Syracuse, and who was now principal of the academy at
Moravia, near the head of Owasco Lake, some fifty miles
distant. To thus defy the wishes of those dearest to me
was a serious matter. My father at first took it deeply to
heart. His letters were very severe. He thought my
career wrecked, avowed that he had lost all interest in it,
and declared that he would rather have received news of
my death than of such a disgrace. But I knew that my dear
mother was on my side. Her letters remained as affectionate
as ever; and I determined to atone for my disobe-
dience by severe and systematic work. I began to study
more earnestly than ever before, reviewed my mathematics
and classics vigorously, and began a course of reading
which has had great influence on all my life since.
Among my books was D'Aubigne's ``History of the Reformation.''
Its deficiencies were not of a sort to harm me,
its vigor and enthusiasm gave me a great impulse. I not
only read but studied it, and followed it with every other
book on the subject that I could find. No reading ever did
a man more good. It not only strengthened and deepened
my better purposes, but it continued powerfully the impulse
given me by the historical novels of Scott, and led
directly to my devoting myself to the study and teaching
of modern history. Of other books which influenced me
about this period, Emerson's ``Representative Men'' was
one; another was Carlyle's ``Past and Present,'' in which
the old Abbot of Bury became one of my ideals; still
another was Buskin's ``Seven Lamps of Architecture'';
and to such a degree that this art has given to my life some
of its greatest pleasures. Ruskin was then at his best.
He had not yet been swept from his bearings by popular
applause, or intoxicated by his own verbosity. In later
years he lost all influence over me, for, in spite of his
wonderful style, he became trivial, whimsical, peevish,
goody-goody;--talking to grown men and women as a
dyspeptic Sunday-school teacher might lay down the
law to classes of little girls. As regards this later
period, Max Nordau is undoubtedly right in speaking of
Ruskin's mind as ``turbid and fallacious''; but the time
of which I speak was his best, and his influence upon
me was good. I remember especially that his ``Lamp
of Power'' made a very deep impression upon me. Carlyle,
too, was at his best. He was the simple, strong
preacher;--with nothing of the spoiled cynic he afterward
became.
The stay of three months with my friend--the future
bishop--in the little country town, was also good for me
physically. In our hours of recreation we roamed through
the neighboring woods, shooting squirrels and pigeons
with excellent effect on my health. Meantime I kept up
my correspondence with all the members of the family
save my father;--from him there was no sign. But at last
came a piece of good news. He was very fond of music,
and on the arrival of Jenny Lind in the United States he
went to New York to attend her concerts. During one of
these my mother turned suddenly toward him and said:
``What a pity that the boy cannot hear this; how he would
enjoy it!'' My father answered, ``Tell him to come
home and see us.'' My mother, of course, was not slow in
writing me, and a few days later my father cordially
greeted my home-coming, and all difficulties seemed over.
Shortly after Christmas he started with me for Yale; but
there soon appeared a lion in the path. Our route lay
through Hartford, the seat of Trinity College, and to my
consternation I found at the last moment that he had
letters from our rector and others to the president and
professors of that institution. Still more alarming, we
had hardly entered the train when my father discovered
a Trinity student on board. Of course, the youth spoke
in the highest terms of his college and of his faculty, and
more and more my father was pleased with the idea of
staying a day or two at Hartford, taking a look at Trinity,
and presenting our letters of introduction. During a
considerably extended career in the diplomatic service I have
had various occasions to exercise tact, care, and discretion,
but I do not think that my efforts on all these together
equaled those which I then put forth to avoid stopping
at Hartford. At last my father asked me, rather severely,
why I cared so much about going to New Haven, and I
framed an answer offhand to meet the case, saying that
Yale had an infinitely finer library than Trinity. Thereupon
he said, ``My boy, if you will go to Trinity College
I will give you the best private library in the United
States.'' I said, ``No, I am going to New Haven; I started
for New Haven, and I will go there.'' I had never braved
him before. He said not a word. We passed quietly
through Hartford, and a day or two later I was entered
at Yale.
It was a happy change. I respected the institution, for
its discipline, though at times harsh, was, on the whole,
just, and thereby came a great gain to my own self-respect.
But as to the education given, never was a man more
disappointed at first. The president and professors were
men of high character and attainments; but to the lower
classes the instruction was given almost entirely by tutors,
who took up teaching for bread-winning while going
through the divinity school. Naturally most of the
work done under these was perfunctory. There was too
much reciting by rote and too little real intercourse
between teacher and taught. The instructor sat in a box,
heard students' translations without indicating anything
better, and their answers to questions with very few
suggestions or remarks. The first text-book in Greek was
Xenophon's ``Memorabilia,'' and one of the first men
called up was my classmate Delano Goddard. He made an
excellent translation,--clean, clear, in thoroughly good
English; but he elicited no attention from the instructor,
and was then put through sundry grammatical puzzles,
among which he floundered until stopped by the word,
``Sufficient.'' Soon afterward another was called up who
rattled off glibly a translation without one particle of
literary merit, and was then plied with the usual grammatical
questions. Being asked to ``synopsize'' the Greek verb,
he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts
of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue
rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my
next neighbor said to me, ``that man will be our
valedictorian.'' This disgusted me. If that was the style of
classical scholarship at Yale, I knew that there was nothing
in it for me. It turned out as my friend said. That
glib reciter did become the valedictorian of the class, but
stepped from the commencement stage into nothingness,
and was never heard of more. Goddard became the
editor of one of the most important metropolitan news-
papers of the United States, and, before his early death,
distinguished himself as a writer on political and historical
topics.
Nor was it any better in Latin. We were reading, during
that term the ``De Senectute'' of Cicero,--a beautiful
book; but to our tutor it was neither more nor less than
a series of pegs on which to hang Zumpt's rules for the
subjunctive mood. The translation was hurried through,
as of little account. Then came questions regarding the
subjunctives;--questions to which very few members of
the class gave any real attention. The best Latin scholar
in the class, G. W. S----, since so distinguished as the
London correspondent of the ``New York Tribune,'' and,
at present, as the New York correspondent of the London
``Times,'' having one day announced to some of us,--with
a very round expletive,--that he would answer no more
such foolish questions, the tutor soon discovered his
recalcitrancy, and thenceforward plied him with such
questions and nothing else. S---- always answered that he
was not prepared on them; with the result that at the
Junior Exhibition he received no place on the programme.
In the junior year matters improved somewhat; but,
though the professors were most of them really distinguished
men, and one at least, James Hadley, a scholar
who, at Berlin or Leipsic, would have drawn throngs of
students from all Christendom, they were fettered by a
system which made everything of gerund-grinding and
nothing of literature.
The worst feature of the junior year was the fact that
through two terms, during five hours each week, ``recitations''
were heard by a tutor in ``Olmsted's Natural Philosophy.''
The text-book was simply repeated by rote. Not
one student in fifty took the least interest in it; and
the man who could give the words of the text most glibly
secured the best marks. One exceedingly unfortunate
result of this kind of instruction was that it so disgusted
the class with the whole subject, that the really excellent
lectures of Professor Olmsted, illustrated by probably
the best apparatus then possessed by any American
university, were voted a bore. Almost as bad was the
historical instruction given by Professor James Hadley. It
consisted simply in hearing the student repeat from memory
the dates from ``P<u:>tz's Ancient History.'' How a man
so gifted as Hadley could have allowed any part of his
work to be so worthless, it is hard to understand. And,
worse remained behind. He had charge of the class in
Thucydides; but with every gift for making it a means
of great good to us, he taught it in the perfunctory way of
that period;--calling on each student to construe a few
lines, asking a few grammatical questions, and then, with
hardly ever a note or comment, allowing him to sit down.
Two or three times during a term something would occur
to draw Hadley out, and then it delighted us all to hear
him. I recall, to this hour, with the utmost pleasure, some
of his remarks which threw bright light into the general
subject; but alas! they were few and far between.
The same thing must be said of Professor Thatcher's
instruction in Tacitus. It was always the same mechanical
sort of thing, with, occasionally, a few remarks which
really aroused interest.
In the senior year the influence of President Woolsey
and Professor Porter was strong for good. Though the
``Yale system'' fettered them somewhat, their personality
often broke through it. Yet it amazes me to remember
that during a considerable portion of our senior year no
less a man than Woolsey gave instruction in history by
hearing men recite the words of a text-book;--and that
text-book the Rev. John Lord's little, popular treatise
on the ``Modern History of Europe!'' Far better was
Woolsey's instruction in Guizot. That was stimulating.
It not only gave some knowledge of history, but suggested
thought upon it. In this he was at his best. He had not
at that time begun his new career as a professor of
International Law, and that subject was treated by a kindly
old governor of the State, in a brief course of instruction,
which was, on the whole, rather inadequate. Professor
Porter's instruction in philosophy opened our eyes and
led us to do some thinking for ourselves. In political
economy, during the senior year, President Woolsey heard the
senior class ``recite'' from Wayland's small treatise,
which was simply an abridged presentation of the Manchester
view, the most valuable part of this instruction
being the remarks by Woolsey himself, who discussed
controverted questions briefly but well. He also delivered,
during one term, a course of lectures upon the historical
relations between the German States, which had some
interest, but, not being connected with our previous
instruction, took little hold upon us. As to natural science,
we had in chemistry and geology, doubtless, the best
courses then offered in the United States. The first was
given by Benjamin Silliman, the elder, an American pioneer
in science, and a really great character; the second,
by James Dwight Dana, and in his lecture-room one felt
himself in the hands of a master. I cannot forgive myself
for having yielded to the general indifference of the
class toward all this instruction. It was listlessly heard,
and grievously neglected. The fault was mainly our own;
--but it was partly due to ``The System,'' which led
students to neglect all studies which did not tell upon
``marks'' and ``standing.''
Strange to say, there was not, during my whole course
at Yale, a lecture upon any period, subject, or person in
literature, ancient or modern:--our only resource, in this
field, being the popular lecture courses in the town each
winter, which generally contained one or two presentations
of literary subjects. Of these, that which made the
greatest impression upon me was by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Sundry lectures in my junior year, by Whipple, and
at a later period by George William Curtis, also influenced
me. It was one of the golden periods of English literature,
the climax of the Victorian epoch;--the period of
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and the Brownings, of Thackeray
and Dickens, of Macaulay and Carlyle on one side
of the Atlantic, and of Emerson, Irving, Hawthorne, Ban-
croft, Prescott, Motley, Lowell, Longfellow, Horace
Bushnell, and their compeers on the other. Hence came strong
influences; but in dealing with them we were left to ourselves.
Very important in shaping my intellectual development
at this time were my fellow-students. The class of 1853
was a very large one for that day, and embraced far more
than the usual proportion of active-minded men. Walks
and talks with these were of great value to me; thence
came some of my best impulses and suggestions to reading
and thought.
Especially fortunate was I in my ``chum,'' the friend
that stood closest to me. He was the most conservative
young man I ever knew, and at the very opposite pole
from me on every conceivable subject. But his deeply
religious character, his thorough scholarship, and his real
devotion to my welfare, were very precious to me. Our
very differences were useful, since they obliged me to
revise with especial care all my main convictions and
trains of thought. He is now, at this present writing, the
Bishop of Michigan, and a most noble and affectionate
pastor of his flock.
The main subjects of interest to us all had a political
bearing. Literature was considered as mainly subsidiary
to political discussion. The great themes, in the minds
of those who tried to do any thinking, were connected with
the tremendous political struggle then drawing toward
its climax in civil war. Valuable to me was my membership
of sundry student fraternities. They were vealy,
but there was some nourishment in them; by far the best
of all being a senior club which, though it had adopted
a hideous emblem, was devoted to offhand discussions of
social and political questions;--on the whole, the best club
I have ever known.
The studies which interested me most were political and
historical; from classical studies the gerund-grinding and
reciting by rote had completely weaned me. One of our
Latin tutors, having said to me: ``If you would try you
could become a first-rate classical scholar,'' I answered:
``Mr. B----, I have no ambition to become a classical
scholar, as scholarship is understood here.''
I devoted myself all the more assiduously to study on
my own lines, especially in connection with the subjects
taught by President Woolsey in the senior year, and the
one thing which encouraged me was that, at the public
reading of essays, mine seemed to interest the class. Yet
my first trial of strength with my classmates in this
respect did not apparently turn out very well. It was at
a prize debate, in one of the large open societies, but
while I had prepared my speech with care, I had given
no thought to its presentation, and, as a result, the judges
passed me by. Next day a tutor told me that Professor
Porter wished to see me. He had been one of the judges,
but it never occurred to me that he could have summoned
me for anything save some transgression of college rules.
But, on my arrival at his room, he began discussing my
speech, said some very kind things of its matter, alluded
to some defects in its manner, and all with a kindness
which won my heart. Thus began a warm personal friendship
which lasted through his professorship and presidency
to the end of his life. His kindly criticism was
worth everything to me; it did far more for me than any
prize could have done. Few professors realize how much
a little friendly recognition may do for a student. To
this hour I bless Dr. Porter's memory.
Nor did my second effort, a competition in essay-writing,
turn out much better. My essay was too labored, too
long, too crabbedly written, and it brought me only half
a third prize.
This was in the sophomore year. But in the junior year
came a far more important competition; that for the Yale
Literary Gold Medal, and without any notice of my
intention to any person, I determined to try for it. Being
open to the entire university, the universal expectation
was that it would be awarded to a senior, as had hitherto
been the case, and speculations were rife as to what mem-
ber of the graduating class would take it. When the committee
made their award to the essay on ``The Greater
Distinctions in Statesmanship,'' opened the sealed
envelopes and assigned the prize to me, a junior, there was
great surprise. The encouragement came to me just at
the right time, and did me great good. Later, there were
awarded to me the first Clarke Prize for the discussion
of a political subject, and the De Forest Gold Medal, then
the most important premium awarded in the university,
my subject being, ``The Diplomatic History of Modern
Times.'' Some details regarding this latter success may
serve to show certain ways in which influence can be
exerted powerfully upon a young man. The subject had
been suggested to me by hearing Edwin Forrest in Bulwer's
drama of ``Richelieu.'' The character of the great
cardinal, the greatest statesman that France has produced,
made a deep impression upon me, and suggested the
subjects in both the Yale Literary and the De Forest
competitions, giving me not only the initial impulse, but
maintaining that interest to which my success was largely due.
Another spur to success was even more effective. Having
one day received a telegram from my father, asking me
to meet him in New York, I did so, and passed an hour
with him, all the time at a loss to know why he had sent
for me. But, finally, just as I was leaving the hotel to
return to New Haven, he said, ``By the way, there is still
another prize to be competed for, the largest of all.''
``Yes,'' I answered, ``the De Forest; but I have little
chance for that; for though I shall probably be one of the
six Townsend prize men admitted to the competition, there
are other speakers so much better, that I have little hope
of taking it.'' He gave me rather a contemptuous look,
and said, somewhat scornfully: ``If I were one of the first
SIX competitors, in a class of over a hundred men, I would
try hard to be the first ONE.'' That was all. He said
nothing more, except good-bye. On my way to New Haven
I thought much of this, and on arriving, went to a student,
who had some reputation as an elocutionist, and engaged
him for a course in vocal gymnastics. When he wished
me to recite my oration before him, I declined, saying that
it must be spoken in my own way, not in his; that his
way might be better, but that mine was my own, and I
would have no other. He confined himself, therefore, to
a course of vocal gymnastics, and the result was a
surprise to myself and all my friends. My voice, from
being weak and hollow, became round, strong, and flexible.
I then went to a student in the class above my own, a
natural and forcible speaker, and made an arrangement
with him to hear me pronounce my oration, from time to
time, and to criticize it in a common-sense way. This he
did. At passages where he thought my manner wrong,
he raised his finger, gave me an imitation of my manner,
then gave the passage in the way he thought best, and
allowed me to choose between his and mine. The result was
that, at the public competition, I was successful. This
experience taught me what I conceive to be the true theory
of elocutionary training in our universities--vocal
gymnastics, on one side; common-sense criticism, on the other.
As to my physical education: with a constitution far
from robust, there was need of special care. Fortunately,
I took to boating. In an eight-oared boat, spinning down
the harbor or up the river, with G. W. S---- at the stroke
--as earnest and determined in the Undine then as in the
New York office of the London ``Times'' now, every condition
was satisfied for bodily exercise and mental recreation.
I cannot refrain from mentioning that our club sent
the first challenge to row that ever passed between Yale
and Harvard, even though I am obliged to confess that we
were soundly beaten; but neither that defeat at Lake
Quinsigamond, nor the many absurdities which have grown out
of such competitions since, have prevented my remaining
an apostle of college boating from that day to this. If
guarded by common-sense rules enforced with firmness
by college faculties, it gives the maximum of healthful
exercise, with a minimum of danger. The most detestable
product of college life is the sickly cynic; and a thor-
ough course in boating, under a good stroke oar, does as
much as anything to make him impossible.
At the close of my undergraduate life at Yale I went
abroad for nearly three years, and fortunately had, for
a time, one of the best of companions, my college mate,
Gilman, later president of Johns Hopkins University, and
now of the Carnegie Institution, who was then, as he has
been ever since, a source of good inspirations to me,--
especially in the formation of my ideas regarding
education. During the few weeks I then passed in England I
saw much which broadened my views in various ways.
History was made alive to me by rapid studies of persons
and places while traveling, and especially was this the
case during a short visit to Oxford, where I received some
strong impressions, which will be referred to in another
chapter. Dining at Christ Church with Osborne Gordon,
an eminent tutor of that period, I was especially interested
in his accounts of John Ruskin, who had been his pupil.
Then, and afterward, while enjoying the hospitalities of
various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, I saw the
excellencies of their tutorial system, but also had my eyes
opened to some of their deficiencies.
Going thence to Paris I settled down in the family of
a very intelligent French professor, where I remained
nearly a year. Not a word of English was spoken in the
family; and, with the daily lesson in a French method,
and lectures at the Sorbonne and Coll<e!>ge de France, the
new language soon became familiar. The lectures then
heard strengthened my conception of what a university
should be. Among my professors were such men as St.
Marc Girardin, Arnould, and, at a later period, Laboulaye.
In connection with the lecture-room work, my studies in
modern history were continued, especially by reading Guizot,
Thierry, Mignet, Thiers, Ch<a^>teaubriand, and others,
besides hearing various masterpieces in French dramatic
literature, as given at the Th<e'><a^>tre Fran<c,>ais, where
Rachel was then in her glory, and at the Od<e'>on, where Mlle.
Georges, who had begun her career under the first Napoleon,
was ending it under Napoleon III.
My favorite subject of study was the French Revolution,
and, in the intervals of reading and lectures, I sought
out not only the spots noted in its history, but the men
who had taken part in it. At the H<o^>tel des Invalides I
talked with old soldiers, veterans of the Republic and of
the Napoleonic period, discussing with them the events
through which they had passed; and, at various other
places and times, with civilians who had heard orations
at the Jacobin and Cordelier clubs, and had seen the
guillotine at work. The most interesting of my old soldiers
at the Invalides wore upon his breast the cross of the
Legion of Honor, which he had received from Napoleon
at Austerlitz. Still another had made the frightful
marches through the Spanish Peninsula under Soult, and
evidently felt very humble in the presence of those who
had taken part in the more famous campaigns under Napoleon
himself. The history of another of my old soldiers
was pathetic. He was led daily into the cabaret, where my
guests were wont to fight their battles o'er again, his eyes
absolutely sightless, and his hair as white as snow. Getting
into conversation with him I learned that he had gone
to Egypt with Bonaparte, had fought at the Battle of the
Pyramids, had been blinded by the glaring sun on the
sand of the desert, and had been an inmate at the Invalides
ever since;--more than half a century. At a later period
I heard from another of my acquaintances how, as a
schoolboy, he saw Napoleon beside his camp-fire at
Cannes, just after his landing from Elba.
There still remained at Paris, in those days, one main
connecting link between the second empire and the first,
and this was the most contemptible of all the Bonapartes,--
the younger brother of the great Napoleon,--
J<e'>rome, ex-king of Westphalia. I saw him, from time to
time, and was much struck by his resemblance to the first
emperor. Though taller, he still had something of that
Roman imperial look, so remarkable in the founder of the
family; but in J<e'>rome, it always recalled to me such
Caesars as Tiberius and Vitellius.
It was well known that the ex-king, as well as his son,
Prince J<e'>rome Napoleon, were thorns in the side of
Napoleon III, and many stories illustrating this were
current during my stay in Paris, the best, perhaps, being an
answer made by Napoleon III to another representative
of his family. The question having been asked, ``What
is the difference between an accident and a misfortune
(un accident et un malheur)?'' the emperor answered.
``If my cousin, Prince Napoleon, should fall into the
Seine, it would be an ACCIDENT; if anybody were to pull him
out, it would be a MISFORTUNE.'' Although this cousin had
some oratorical ability, both he and his father were most
thoroughly despised. The son bore the nickname of
``Plon-Plon,'' probably with some reference to his reputation
for cowardice; the father had won the appellation
of ``Le Roi Loustic,'' and, indeed, had the credit of
introducing into the French language the word ``loustic,''
derived from the fact that, during his short reign at Cassel,
King J<e'>rome was wont, after the nightly orgies at his
palace, to dismiss his courtiers with the words: ``Morgen
wieder loustic, Messieurs.''
During the summer of 1854 I employed my vacation in
long walks and drives with a college classmate through
northern, western, and central France, including Picardy,
Normandy, Brittany, and Touraine, visiting the spots
of most historical and architectural interest. There were,
at that time, few railways in those regions, so we put on
blouses and took to the road, sending our light baggage
ahead of us, and carrying only knapsacks. In every way
it proved a most valuable experience. Pleasantly come
back to me my walks and talks with the peasantry, and
vividly dwell in my memory the cathedrals of Beauvais,
Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances, Le Mans, Tours,
Chartres, and Orl<e'>ans, the fortress of Mont St. Michel,
the Ch<a^>teaux of Chenonceaux, Chambord, Nantes, Am-
boise, and Angers, the tombs of the Angevine kings at
Fontevrault, and the stone cottage of Louis XI at Cl<e'>ry.
Visiting the grave of Ch<a^>teaubriand at St. Malo, we met
a little old gentleman, bent with age, but very brisk and
chatty. He was standing with a party of friends on one
side of the tomb, while we stood on the other. Presently,
one of the gentlemen in his company came over and asked
our names, saying that his aged companion was a great
admirer of Ch<a^>teaubriand, and was anxious to know something
of his fellow pilgrims. To this I made answer, when
my interlocutor informed me that the old gentleman was
the Prince de Rohan-Soubise. Shortly afterward the old
gentleman came round to us and began conversation, and
on my making answer in a way which showed that I knew
his title, he turned rather sharply on me and said, ``How
do you know that?'' To this I made answer that even
in America we had heard the verse:
``Roi, je ne puis,
Prince ne daigne,
Rohan je suis.''
At this he seemed greatly pleased, grasped my hand, and
launched at once into extended conversation. His great
anxiety was to know who was to be the future king of
our Republic, and he asked especially whether Washington
had left any direct descendants. On my answering in the
negative, he insisted that we would have to find some
descendant in the collateral line, ``for,'' said he, ``you can't
escape it; no nation can get along for any considerable
time without a monarch.''
Returning to Paris I resumed my studies, and, at the
request of Mr. Randall, the biographer of Jefferson,
made some search in the French archives for correspondence
between Jefferson and Robespierre,--search made
rather to put an end to calumny than for any other
purpose.
At the close of this stay in France, by the kindness of
the American minister to Russia, Governor Seymour, of
Connecticut, I was invited to St. Petersburg, as an attach<e'>
of the American Legation, and resided for over six months
in his household. It was a most interesting period. The
Crimean War was going on, and the death of the Emperor
Nicholas, during my stay, enabled me to see how a great
change in autocratic administration is accomplished. An
important part of my duty was to accompany the minister
as an interpreter, not only at court, but in his interviews
with Nesselrode, Gortschakoff, and others then in power.
This gave me some chance also to make my historical
studies more real by close observation of a certain sort
of men who have had the making of far too much history;
but books interested me none the less. An epoch in my
development, intellectual and moral, was made at this time
by my reading large parts of Gibbon, and especially by
a very careful study of Guizot's ``History of Civilization
in France,'' which greatly deepened and strengthened the
impression made by his ``History of Civilization in
Europe,'' as read under President Woolsey at Yale. During
those seven months in St. Petersburg and Moscow, I read
much in modern European history, paying considerable
attention to the political development and condition of
Russia, and, for the first time, learned the pleasures of
investigating the history of our own country. Governor
Seymour was especially devoted to the ideas of Thomas
Jefferson, and late at night, as we sat before the fire, after
returning from festivities or official interviews, we
frequently discussed the democratic system, as advocated by
Jefferson, and the autocratic system, as we saw it in the
capital of the Czar. The result was that my beginning
of real study in American history was made by a very
close examination of the life and writings of Thomas
Jefferson, including his letters, messages, and other papers,
and of the diplomatic history revealed in the volumes of
correspondence preserved in the Legation. The general
result was to strengthen and deepen my democratic creed,
and a special result was the preparation of an article on
``Jefferson and Slavery,'' which, having been at a later
period refused by the ``New Englander,'' at New Haven,
on account of its too pronounced sympathy with democracy
against federalism, was published by the ``Atlantic
Monthly,'' and led to some acquaintances of value to me
afterward.
Returning from St. Petersburg, I was matriculated at
the University of Berlin, and entered the family of a
very scholarly gymnasial professor, where nothing but
German was spoken. During this stay at the Prussian
capital, in the years 1855 and 1856, I heard the lectures of
Lepsius, on Egyptology; August Boeckh, on the History
of Greece; Friedrich von Raumer, on the History of Italy;
Hirsch, on Modern History in general; and Carl Ritter,
on Physical Geography. The lectures of Ranke, the most
eminent of German historians, I could not follow. He had
a habit of becoming so absorbed in his subject, as to slide
down in his chair, hold his finger up toward the ceiling,
and then, with his eye fastened on the tip of it, to go
mumbling through a kind of rhapsody, which most of my
German fellow-students confessed they could not understand.
It was a comical sight: half a dozen students
crowding around his desk, listening as priests might listen
to the sibyl on her tripod, the other students being
scattered through the room, in various stages of
discouragement. My studies at this period were mainly in the
direction of history, though with considerable reading on
art and literature. Valuable and interesting to me at this
time were the representations of the best dramas of Goethe,
Schiller, Lessing, and Gutzkow, at the Berlin theaters.
Then, too, really began my education in Shakspere, and
the representations of his plays (in Schlegel and Tieck's
version) were, on the whole, the most satisfactory I have
ever known. I thus heard plays of Shakspere which, in
English-speaking countries, are never presented, and,
even into those better known, wonderful light was at times
thrown from this new point of view.
As to music, the Berlin Opera was then at the height
of its reputation, the leading singer being the famous
Joanna Wagner. But my greatest satisfaction was derived
from the ``Liebig Classical Concerts.'' These were,
undoubtedly, the best instrumental music then given in
Europe, and a small party of us were very assiduous in
our attendance. Three afternoons a week we were, as a
rule, gathered about our table in the garden where the
concerts were given, and, in the midst of us, Alexander
Thayer, the biographer of Beethoven, who discussed the
music with us during its intervals. Beethoven was, for
him, the one personage in human history, and Beethoven's
music the only worthy object of human concern. He knew
every composition, every note, every variant, and had
wrestled for years with their profound meanings. Many
of his explanations were fantastic, but some were
suggestive and all were interesting. Even more inspiring
was another new-found friend, Henry Simmons Frieze; a
thorough musician, and a most lovely character. He
broached no theories, uttered no comments, but sat rapt
by the melody and harmony--transfigured--``his face as
it had been the face of an angel.'' In these Liebig
concerts we then heard, for the first time, the music of a
new composer,--one Wagner,--and agreed that while it
was all very strange, there was really something in the
overture to ``Tannh<a:>user.''
At the close of this stay in Berlin, I went with a party
of fellow-students through Austria to Italy. The whole
journey was a delight, and the passage by steamer from
Trieste to Venice was made noteworthy by a new
acquaintance,--James Russell Lowell. As he had already
written the ``Vision of Sir Launfal,'' the ``Fable for
Critics,'' and the ``Biglow Papers,'' I stood in great awe of
him; but this feeling rapidly disappeared in his genial
presence. He was a student like the rest of us,--for
he had been passing the winter at Dresden, working
in German literature, as a preparation for succeeding
Longfellow in the professorship at Harvard. He
came to our rooms, and there linger delightfully in
my memory his humorous accounts of Italian life as he
had known it.
During the whole of the journey, it was my exceeding
good fortune to be thrown into very close relations with
two of our party, both of whom became eminent Latin
professors, and one of whom,--already referred to,--
Frieze, from his lecture-room in the University of
Michigan, afterward did more than any other man within my
knowledge to make classical scholarship a means of culture
throughout our Western States. My excursions in
Rome, under that guidance, I have always looked upon
as among the fortunate things of life. The day was given
to exploration, the evening to discussion, not merely of
archaeological theories, but of the weightier matters
pertaining to the history of Roman civilization and its
influence. Dear Frieze and Fishburne! How vividly come
back the days in the tower of the Croce di Malta, at Genoa,
in our sky-parlor of the Piazza di Spagna at Rome, and
in the old ``Capuchin Hotel'' at Amalfi, when we held high
debate on the analogies between the Roman Empire and
the British, and upon various kindred subjects.
An episode, of much importance to me at this time,
was my meeting our American minister at Naples, Robert
Dale Owen. His talks on the political state of Italy, and
his pictures of the monstrous despotism of ``King
Bomba'' took strong hold upon me. Not even the pages
of Colletta or of Settembrini have done so much to arouse
in me a sense of the moral value of political history.
Then, too, I made the first of my many excursions
through the historic towns of Italy. My reading of
Sismondi's ``Italian Republics'' had deeply interested me in
their history, and had peopled them again with their old
turbulent population. I seemed to see going on before my
eyes the old struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines,
and between the demagogues and the city tyrants. In the
midst of such scenes my passion for historical reading
was strengthened, and the whole subject took on new and
deeper meanings.
On my way northward, excursions among the cities
of southern France, especially Nismes, Arles, and Orange,
gave me a far better conception of Roman imperial power
than could be obtained in Italy alone, and Avignon,
Bourges, and Toulouse deepened my conceptions of
mediaeval history.
Having returned to America in the summer of 1856
and met my class, assembled to take the master's degree
in course at Yale, I was urged by my old Yale friends,
especially by Porter and Gilman, to remain in New Haven.
They virtually pledged me a position in the school of art
about to be established; but my belief was in the value
of historical studies, and I accepted an election to a
professorship of history at the University of Michigan. The
work there was a joy to me from first to last, and my
relations with my students of that period, before I had
become distracted from them by the cares of an executive
position, were among the most delightful of my life.
Then, perhaps, began the most real part of my education.
The historical works of Buckle, Lecky, and Draper, which
were then appearing, gave me a new and fruitful impulse;
but most stimulating of all was the atmosphere coming
from the great thought of Darwin and Herbert Spencer,--
an atmosphere in which history became less and less a
matter of annals, and more and more a record of the
unfolding of humanity. Then, too, was borne in upon
me the meaning of the proverb docendo disces. I found
energetic Western men in my classes ready to discuss
historical questions, and discovered that in order to keep
up my part of the discussions, as well as to fit myself for
my class-room duties, I must work as I had never worked
before. The education I then received from my classes at
the University of Michigan was perhaps the most effective
of all.
PART II
POLITICAL LIFE
CHAPTER III
FROM JACKSON TO FILLMORE--1832-1851
My arrival in this world took place at one of the
stormy periods of American political history. It
was on the third of the three election days which carried
Andrew Jackson a second time into the Presidency.
Since that period, the election, with its paralysis of
business, ghastly campaign lying, and monstrous vilification
of candidates, has been concentrated into one day; but at
that time all the evil passions of a presidential election
were allowed to ferment and gather vitriolic strength
during three days.
I was born into a politically divided family. My
grandfather, on my mother's side, whose name I was destined
to bear, was an ardent Democrat; had, as such, represented
his district in the State legislature, and other public
bodies; took his political creed from Thomas Jefferson, and
adored Andrew Jackson. My father, on the other hand,
was in all his antecedents and his personal convictions, a
devoted Whig, taking his creed from Alexander Hamilton,
and worshiping Henry Clay.
This opposition between my father and grandfather did
not degenerate into personal bitterness; but it was very
earnest, and, in later years, my mother told me that when
Hayne, of South Carolina, made his famous speech,
charging the North with ill-treatment of the South, my
grandfather sent a copy of it to my father, as unanswerable;
but that, shortly afterward, my father sent to my
grandfather the speech of Daniel Webster, in reply, and
that, when this was read, the family allowed that the
latter had the better of the argument. I cannot help thinking
that my grandfather must have agreed with them, tacitly,
if not openly. He loved the Hampshire Hills of
Massachusetts, from which he came. Year after year he took
long journeys to visit them, and Webster's magnificent
reference to the ``Old Bay State'' must have aroused his
sympathy and pride.
Fortunately, at that election, as at so many others since,
the good sense of the nation promptly accepted the result,
and after its short carnival of political passion, dismissed
the whole subject; the minority simply leaving the responsibility
of public affairs to the majority, and all betaking
themselves again to their accustomed vocations.
I do not remember, during the first seven years of my
life, ever hearing any mention of political questions. The
only thing I heard during that period which brings back a
chapter in American politics, was when, at the age of five
years, I attended an infant school and took part in a sort
of catechism, all the children rising and replying to the
teacher's questions. Among these were the following:
Q. Who is President of the United States?
A. Martin Van Buren.
Q. Who is governor of the State of New York?
A. William L. Marcy.
This is to me somewhat puzzling, for I was four years
old when Martin Van Buren was elected, and my father
was his very earnest opponent, yet, though I recall easily
various things which occurred at that age and even earlier,
I have no remembrance of any general election before
1840, and my only recollection of the first New York
statesman elected to the Presidency is this mention of his
name, in a child's catechism.
My recollections of American polities begin, then, with
the famous campaign of 1840, and of that they are vivid.
Our family had, in 1839, removed to Syracuse, which,
although now a city of about one hundred and twenty
thousand inhabitants, was then a village of fewer than six
thousand; but, as the central town of the State, it was
already a noted gathering-place for political conventions
and meetings. The great Whig mass-meeting held there,
in 1840, was long famous as the culmination of the
campaign between General Harrison and Martin Van Buren.
As a President, Mr. Van Buren had fallen on evil times.
It was a period of political finance; of demagogical
methods in public business; and the result was ``hard
times,'' with an intense desire throughout the nation for a
change. This desire was represented especially by the
Whig party. General Harrison had been taken up as its
candidate, not merely because he had proved his worth
as governor of the Northwestern Territory, and as a
senator in Congress, but especially as the hero of sundry
fights with the Indians, and, above all, of the plucky little
battle at Tippecanoe. The most popular campaign song,
which I soon learned to sing lustily, was ``Tippecanoe and
Tyler, Too,'' and sundry lines of it expressed, not only
my own deepest political convictions and aspirations, but
also those cherished by myriads of children of far larger
growth. They ran as follows:
``Oh, have you heard the great commotion-motion-motion
Rolling the country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,
For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too;
And with them we 'll beat little Van;
Van, Van is a used up man;
And with them we 'll beat little Van.''
The campaign was an apotheosis of tom-foolery.
General Harrison had lived the life, mainly, of a Western
farmer, and for a time, doubtless, exercised amid his rude
surroundings the primitive hospitality natural to sturdy
Western pioneers. On these facts the changes were rung.
In every town and village a log cabin was erected where
the Whigs held their meetings; and the bringing of logs,
with singing and shouting, to build it, was a great event;
its front door must have a wooden latch on the inside;
but the latch-string must run through the door; for the
claim which the friends of General Harrison especially
insisted upon was that he not only lived in a log cabin, but
that his latch-string was always out, in token that all his
fellow-citizens were welcome at his fireside.
Another element in the campaign was hard cider.
Every log cabin must have its barrel of this acrid fluid,
as the antithesis of the alleged beverage of President Van
Buren at the White House. He, it was asserted, drank
champagne, and on this point I remember that a verse
was sung at log-cabin meetings which, after describing,
in a prophetic way the arrival of the ``Farmer of North
Bend'' at the White House, ran as follows:
``They were all very merry, and drinking champagne
When the Farmer, impatient, knocked louder again;
Oh, Oh, said Prince John, I very much fear
We must quit this place the very next year.''
``Prince John'' was President Van Buren's brilliant
son; famous for his wit and eloquence, who, in after years,
rose to be attorney-general of the State of New York, and
who might have risen to far higher positions had his
principles equaled his talents.
Another feature at the log cabin, and in all political
processions, was at least one raccoon; and if not a live
raccoon in a cage, at least a raccoon skin nailed upon the
outside of the cabin. This gave local color, but hence
came sundry jibes from the Democrats, for they were
wont to refer to the Whigs as ``coons,'' and to their log
cabins as ``coon pens.'' Against all these elements of
success, added to promises of better times, the Democratic
party could make little headway. Martin Van Buren,
though an admirable public servant in many ways, was
discredited. M. de Bacourt, the French Minister at
Washington, during his administration, was, it is true, very
fond of him, and this cynical scion of French nobility
wrote in a private letter, which has been published in these
latter days, ``M. Van Buren is the most perfect imitation
of a gentleman I ever saw.'' But this commendation had
not then come to light, and the main reliance of the Democrats
in capturing the popular good-will was their candidate
for the Vice-Presidency, Colonel Richard M. Johnson,
of Kentucky. He, too, had fought in the Indian wars,
and bravely. Therefore it was that one of the Whig songs
which especially rejoiced me, ran:
``They shout and sing, Oh humpsy dumpsy,
Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.''
Among the features of that period which excited my
imagination were the enormous mass meetings, with
processions, coming in from all points of the compass, miles
in length, and bearing every patriotic device and political
emblem. Here the Whigs had infinitely the advantage.
Their campaign was positive and aggressive. On platform-
wagons were men working at every trade which expected
to be benefited by Whig success; log cabins of all
sorts and sizes, hard-cider barrels, coon pens, great
canvas balls, which were kept ``a-rolling on,'' canoes, such
as General Harrison had used in crossing Western rivers,
eagles that screamed in defiance, and cocks that crowed
for victory. The turning ball had reference to sundry
lines in the foremost campaign song. For the October
election in Maine having gone Whig by a large majority,
clearly indicating what the general result was to be in
November, the opening lines ran as follows:
``Oh, have you heard the news from Maine--Maine--Maine?
Rolling the country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.''
&c., &c., &c.
Against all this the Democrats, with their negative and
defensive platform, found themselves more and more at
a disadvantage; they fought with desperation, but in vain,
and one of their most unlucky ventures to recover their
position was an effort to undermine General Harrison's
military reputation. For this purpose they looked about,
and finally found one of their younger congressional
representatives, considered to be a rising man, who, having
gained some little experience in the Western militia, had
received the honorary title of ``General,'' Isaac M. Crary,
of Michigan; him they selected to make a speech in Congress
exhibiting and exploding General Harrison's military
record. He was very reluctant to undertake it, but
at last yielded, and, after elaborate preparation, made an
argument loud and long, to show that General Harrison
was a military ignoramus. The result was both comic
and pathetic. There was then in Congress the most famous
stump-speaker of his time, and perhaps of all times,
a man of great physical, intellectual, and moral vigor;
powerful in argument, sympathetic in manner, of infinite
wit and humor, and, unfortunately for General Crary,
a Whig,--Thomas Corwin, of Ohio. Mr. Crary's heavy,
tedious, perfunctory arraignment of General Harrison
being ended, Corwin rose and began an offhand speech
on ``The Military Services of General Isaac M. Crary.''
In a few minutes he had as his audience, not only the House
of Representatives, but as many members of the Senate,
of the Supreme Court, and visitors to the city, as could
be crowded into the congressional chamber, and, of all
humorous speeches ever delivered in Congress, this of
Corwin has come down to us as the most successful. Long
afterward, parts of it lingered in our ``speakers' manuals''
and were declaimed in the public schools as examples
of witty oratory. Many years later, when the
House of Representatives left the old chamber and went
into that which it now occupies, Thurlow Weed wrote
an interesting article on scenes he had witnessed in the old
hall, and most vivid of all was his picture of this speech
by Corwin. His delineations of Crary's brilliant exploits,
his portrayal of the valiant charges made by Crary's
troops on muster days upon the watermelon patches of
Michigan, not only convulsed his audience, but were
echoed throughout the nation, Whigs and Democrats
laughing alike; and when John Quincy Adams, in a speech
shortly afterward, referred to the man who brought on
this tempest of fun as ``the late General Crary,'' there
was a feeling that the adjective indicated a fact. It really
was so; Crary, although a man of merit, never returned
to Congress, but was thenceforth dropped from political
life. More than twenty years afterward, as I was passing
through Western Michigan, a friend pointed out to me
his tombstone, in a little village cemetery, with comments,
half comic, half pathetic; and I also recall a mournful
feeling when one day, in going over the roll of my
students at the University of Michigan, I came upon one who
bore the baptismal name of Isaac Crary. Evidently, the
blighted young statesman had a daughter who, in all this
storm of ridicule and contempt, stood by him, loved him,
and proudly named her son after him.
Another feature in the campaign also impressed me.
A blackguard orator, on the Whig side, one of those
whom great audiences applaud for the moment and ever
afterward despise,--a man named Ogle,--made a speech
which depicted the luxury prevailing at the White House,
and among other evidences of it, dwelt upon the ``gold
spoons'' used at the President's table, denouncing their
use with such unction that, for the time, unthinking
people regarded Martin Van Buren as a sort of American
Vitellius. As a matter of fact, the scanty silver-gilt table
utensils at the White House have been shown, in these
latter days, in some very pleasing articles written by
General Harrison's grandson, after this grandson had
himself retired from the Presidency, to have been, for the
most part, bought long before;--and by order of General
Washington.
The only matter of political importance which, as a boy
eight years old, I seized upon, and which dwells in my
memory, was the creation of the ``Sub-Treasury.'' That
this was a wise measure seems now proven by the fact that
through all the vicissitudes of politics, from that day to
this, it has remained and rendered admirable service. But
at that time it was used as a weapon against the
Democratic party, and came to be considered by feather-
brained partizans, young and old, as the culmination of
human wickedness. As to what the ``Sub-Treasury''
really was I had not the remotest idea; but this I knew;--
that it was the most wicked outrage ever committed by a
remorseless tyrant upon a long-suffering people.
In November of 1840 General Harrison was elected. In
the following spring he was inaugurated, and the Whigs
being now for the first time in power, the rush for office
was fearful. It was undoubtedly this crushing pressure
upon the kindly old man that caused his death. What
British soldiers, and Indian warriors, and fire, flood, and
swamp fevers could not accomplish in over sixty years,
was achieved by the office-seeking hordes in just one
month. He was inaugurated on the fourth of March and
died early in April.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, my dear mother
coming to my bedside, early in the morning, and saying
to me, ``President Harrison is dead.'' I wondered what
was to become of us. He was the first President who had
died during his term of service, and a great feeling of
relief came over me when I learned that his high office
had devolved upon the Vice-President.
But now came a new trouble, and my youthful mind was
soon sadly agitated. The Whig papers, especially the
``New York Express'' and ``Albany Evening Journal,''
began to bring depressing accounts of the new President,
--tidings of extensive changes in the offices throughout the
country, and especially in the post-offices. At first the
Whig papers published these under the heading
``Appointments by the President.'' But soon the heading
changed; it became ``Appointments by Judas Iscariot,''
or ``Appointments by Benedict Arnold,'' and war was
declared against President Tyler by the party that elected
him. Certain it is that no party ever found itself in a
worse position than did the Whigs, when their Vice-President
came into the Chief Magistracy; and equally certain
is it that this position was the richly earned punishment
of their own folly.
I have several times since had occasion to note the
carelessness of National and State conventions in nominating
a candidate for the second place upon the ticket--whether
Vice-President or Lieutenant-Governor. It would seem
that the question of questions--the nomination to the
first office--having been settled, there comes a sort of
collapse in these great popular assemblies, and that then,
for the second office, it is very often anybody's race and
mainly a matter of chance. In this way alone can be
explained several nominations which have been made to
second offices, and above all, that of John Tyler. As a
matter of fact, he was not commended to the Whig party
on any solid grounds. His whole political life had shown
him an opponent of their main ideas; he was, in fact, a
Southern doctrinaire, and frequently suffered from acute
attacks of that very troublesome political disease,
Virginia metaphysics. As President he attempted to enforce
his doctrines, and when Whig leaders, and above all
Henry Clay attempted, not only to resist, but to crush him,
he asserted his dignity at the cost of his party, and finally
tried that which other accidental Presidents have since
tried with no better success, namely, to build up a party
of his own by a new distribution of offices. Never was a
greater failure. Mr. Tyler was dropped by both parties
and disappeared from American political life forever.
I can now see that he was a man obedient to his convictions
of duty, such as they were, and in revolt against
attempts of Whig leaders to humiliate him; but then, to
my youthful mind, he appeared the very incarnation of
evil.
My next recollections are of the campaign of 1844.
Again the Whig party took courage, and having, as a boy
of twelve years, acquired more earnest ideas regarding
the questions at issue, I helped, with other Whig boys,
to raise ash-poles, and to hurrah lustily for Clay at public
meetings. On the other hand, the Democratic boys hurrahed
as lustily around their hickory poles and, as was
finally proved, to much better purpose. They sang doggerel
which, to me, was blasphemous, and especially a song
with the following refrain:
``Alas poor Cooney Clay,
Alas poor Cooney Clay,
You never can be President,
For so the people say.''
The ash-poles had reference to Ashland, Clay's Kentucky
estate; and the hickory poles recalled General Jackson's
sobriquet, ``Old Hickory.'' For the Democratic candidate
in 1844, James Knox Polk, was considered heir to
Jackson's political ideas. The campaign of 1844 was not
made so interesting by spectacular outbursts of tom-foolery
as the campaign of 1840 had been. The sober second
thought of the country had rather sickened people of that
sort of thing; still, there was quite enough of it, especially
as shown in caricatures and songs. The poorest of the
latter was perhaps one on the Democratic side, for as the
Democratic candidates were Polk of Tennessee and Dallas
of Pennsylvania, one line of the song embraced probably
the worst pun ever made, namely--
``PORK in the barrel, and DOLLARS in the pocket.''
It was at this period that the feeling against the extension
of slavery, especially as indicated in the proposed
annexation of Texas, began to appear largely in politics,
and though Clay at heart detested slavery and always
refused to do the bidding of its supporters beyond what he
thought absolutely necessary in preserving the Union, an
unfortunate letter of his led great numbers of anti-
slavery men to support a separate anti-slavery ticket, the
candidate being James G. Birney. The result was that
the election of Clay became impossible. Mr. Polk was
elected, and under him came the admission of Texas,
which caused the Mexican War, and gave slavery a new
lease of life. The main result, in my own environment,
was that my father and his friends, thenceforward for a
considerable time, though detesting slavery, held all
abolitionists and anti-slavery men in contempt,--as unpatriotic
because they had defeated Henry Clay, and as idiotic
because they had brought on the annexation of Texas and
thereby the supremacy of the slave States.
But the flame of liberty could not be smothered by
friends or blown out by enemies; it was kept alive by
vigorous counterblasts in the press, and especially fed by
the lecture system, which was then at the height of its
efficiency. Among the most powerful of lecturers was
John Parker Hale, senator of the United States from
New Hampshire, his subject being, ``The Last Gladiatorial
Combat at Rome.'' Taking from Gibbon the story of
the monk Telemachus, who ended the combats in the arena
by throwing himself into them and sacrificing his life, Hale
suggested to his large audiences an argument that if men
wished to get rid of slavery in our country they must be
ready to sacrifice themselves if need be. His words sank
deep into my mind, and I have sometimes thought that
they may have had something to do in leading John
Brown to make his desperate attempt on slavery at
Harper's Ferry.
How blind we all were! Henry Clay, a Kentucky slave-
holder, would have saved us. Infinitely better than the
violent solutions proposed to us was his large statesman-
like plan of purchasing the slave children as they were
born and setting them free. Without bloodshed, and at
cost of the merest nothing as compared to the cost of the
Civil War, he would thus have solved the problem; but
it was not so to be. The guilt of the nation was not to be
so cheaply atoned for. Fanatics, North and South,
opposed him and, as a youth, I yielded to their arguments.
Four years later, in 1848, came a very different sort of
election. General Zachary Taylor, who had shown ster-
ling qualities in the Mexican War, was now the candidate
of the Whigs, and against him was nominated Mr.
Cass, a general of the War of 1812, afterward governor
of the Northwestern Territory, and senator from
Michigan. As a youth of sixteen, who by that time had become
earnestly interested in politics, I was especially struck
by one event in this campaign. The Democrats of course
realized that General Taylor, with the prestige gained in
the Mexican War, was a very formidable opponent. Still,
if they could keep their party together, they had hopes of
beating him. But a very large element in their party
had opposed the annexation of Texas and strongly disliked
the extension of slavery;--this wing of the party
in New York being known as the ``Barn Burners,'' because
it was asserted that they ``believed in burning the
barn to drive the rats out.'' The question was what these
radical gentlemen would do. That question was answered
when a convention, controlled largely by the anti-slavery
Democrats of New York and other States, met at Buffalo
and nominated Martin Van Buren to the Presidency.
For a time it was doubtful whether he would accept the
nomination. On one side it was argued that he could not
afford to do so, since he had no chance of an election,
and would thereby forever lose his hold upon the Democratic
party; but, on the other hand, it was said that he
was already an old man; that he realized perfectly the
impossibility of his re<e:>lection, and that he had a bitter
grudge against the Democratic candidate, General Cass,
who had voted against confirming him when he was sent
as minister to Great Britain, thus obliging him to return
home ingloriously. He accepted the nomination.
On the very day which brought the news of this
acceptance, General Cass arrived in Syracuse, on his way
to his home at Detroit. I saw him welcomed by a great
procession of Democrats, and marched under a broiling
sun, through dusty streets, to the City Hall, where he was
forced to listen and reply to fulsome speeches prophesying
his election, which he and all present knew to be impos-
sible. For Mr. Van Buren's acceptance of the ``free soil''
nomination was sure to divide the Democratic vote of the
State of New York, thus giving the State to the Whigs;
and in those days the proverb held good, ``As New York
goes, so goes the Union.''
For years afterward there dwelt vividly in my mind
the picture of this old, sad man marching through the
streets, listening gloomily to the speeches, forced to
appear confident of victory, yet evidently disheartened and
disgusted.
Very vivid are my recollections of State conventions
at this period. Syracuse, as the ``Central City,'' was a
favorite place for them, and, as they came during the
summer vacations, boys of my age and tastes were able
to admire the great men of the hour,--now, alas, utterly
forgotten. We saw and heard the leaders of all parties.
Many impressed me; but one dwells in my memory, on
account of a story which was told of him. This was a
very solemn, elderly gentleman who always looked very
wise but said nothing,--William Bouck of Schoharie
County. He had white hair and whiskers, and having
been appointed canal commissioner of the State, had
discharged his duties by driving his old white family nag
and buggy along the towing-path the whole length of the
canals, keeping careful watch of the contractors, and so,
in his simple, honest way, had saved the State much money.
The result was the nickname of the ``Old White Hoss of
Schoharie,'' and a reputation for simplicity and honesty
which made him for a short time governor of the State.
A story then told of him reveals something of his
character. Being informed that Bishop Hughes of New York
was coming to Albany, and that it would be well to treat
him with especial courtesy, the governor prepared himself
to be more than gracious, and, on the arrival of the
bishop, greeted him most cordially with the words, ``How
do you do, Bishop; I hope you are well. How did you
leave Mrs. Hughes and your family?'' To this the bishop
answered, ``Governor, I am very well, but there is no
Mrs. Hughes; bishops in our church don't marry.''
``Good gracious,'' answered the governor, ``you don't
say so; how long has that been?'' The bishop must have
thoroughly enjoyed this. His Irish wit made him quick
both at comprehension and repartee. During a debate
on the school question a leading Presbyterian merchant
of New York, Mr. Hiram Ketchum, made a very earnest
speech against separate schools for Roman Catholics, and
presently, turning to Bishop Hughes, said, ``Sir, we
respect you, sir, but, sir, we can't go your purgatory, sir.''
To this the bishop quietly replied, ``You might go further
and fare worse.''
Another leading figure, but on the Whig side, was a
State senator, commonly known as ``Bray'' Dickinson,
to distinguish him from D. S. Dickinson who had been a
senator of the United States, and a candidate for the
Presidency. ``Bray'' Dickinson was a most earnest
supporter of Mr. Seward; staunch, prompt, vigorous, and
really devoted to the public good. One story regarding
him shows his rough-and-readiness.
During a political debate in the old Whig days, one
of his Democratic brother senators made a long harangue
in favor of Martin Van Buren as a candidate for the
Presidency, and in the course of his speech referred to
Mr. Van Buren as ``the Curtius of the Republic.'' Upon
this Dickinson jumped up, went to some member better
educated in the classics than himself, and said, ``Who in
thunder is this Curtis that this man is talking about?'' ``It
isn't Curtis, it 's Curtius, ``was the reply. ``Well, now, ``
said Dickinson, ``what did Curtius do?'' ``Oh,'' said his
informant, ``he threw himself into an abyss to save
the Roman Republic.'' Upon this Dickinson returned to
his seat, and as soon as the Democratic speaker had
finished, arose and said: ``Mr. President, I deny the justice
of the gentleman's reference to Curtius and Martin Van
Buren. What did Curtius do? He threw himself, sir,
into an abyss to save his country. What, sir, did Martin
Van Buren do? He threw his country into an abyss to
save himself.''
Rarely, if ever, has any scholar used a bit of classical
knowledge to better purpose.
Another leading figure, at a later period, was a Democrat,
Fernando Wood, mayor of New York, a brilliant
desperado; and on one occasion I saw the henchmen whom
he had brought with him take possession of a State
convention and deliberately knock its president, one of the
most respected men in the State, off the platform. It was
an unfortunate performance for Mayor Wood, since the
disgust and reaction thereby aroused led all factions of
the Democratic party to unite against him.
Other leading men were such as Charles O'Conor and
John Van Buren; the former learned and generous, but
impracticable; the latter brilliant beyond belief, but not
considered as representing any permanent ideas or principles.
During the campaign of 1848, as a youth of sixteen,
I took the liberty of breaking from the paternal party;
my father voting for General Taylor, I hurrahing for
Martin Van Buren. I remember well how one day my
father earnestly remonstrated against this. He said, ``My
dear boy, you cheer Martin Van Buren's name because
you believe that if he is elected he will do something
against slavery: in the first place, he cannot be elected;
and in the second place, if you knew him as we older
people do, you would not believe in his attachment to any
good cause whatever.''
The result of the campaign was that General Taylor
was elected, and I recall the feeling of awe and hope with
which I gazed upon his war-worn face, for the first and
last time, as he stopped to receive the congratulations of
the citizens of Syracuse;--hope, alas, soon brought to
naught, for he, too, soon succumbed to the pressure of
official care, and Millard Fillmore of New York, the Vice-
President, reigned in his stead.
I remember Mr. Fillmore well. He was a tall, large,
fine-looking man, with a face intelligent and kindly, and
he was noted both as an excellent public servant and an
effective public speaker. He had been comptroller of
the State of New York,--then the most important of State
offices, had been defeated as Whig candidate for governor,
and had been a representative in Congress. He was the
second of the accidental Presidents, and soon felt it his
duty to array himself on the side of those who, by
compromise with the South on the slavery question, sought
to maintain and strengthen the Federal Union. Under
him came the compromise measures on which our great
statesmen of the middle period of the nineteenth century,
Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and Benton, made their last
speeches. Mr. Fillmore was undoubtedly led mainly by
patriotic motives, in promoting the series of measures
which were expected to end all trouble between the North
and South, but which, unfortunately, embraced the Fugitive
Slave Law; yet this, as I then thought, rendered him
accursed. I remember feeling an abhorrence for his very
name, and this feeling was increased when there took
place, in the city of Syracuse, the famous ``Jerry Rescue.''
CHAPTER IV
EARLY MANHOOD--1851-1857
On the first day of October, 1851, there was shuffling
about the streets of Syracuse, in the quiet pursuit
of his simple avocations, a colored person, as nearly ``of
no account'' as any ever seen. So far as was known
he had no surname, and, indeed, no Christian name, save
the fragment and travesty,--``Jerry.''
Yet before that day was done he was famous; his name,
such as it was, resounded through the land; and he had
become, in all seriousness, a weighty personage in American
history.
Under the law recently passed, he was arrested, openly
and in broad daylight, as a fugitive slave, and was carried
before the United States commissioner, Mr. Joseph
Sabine, a most kindly public officer, who in this matter
was sadly embarrassed by the antagonism between his
sworn duty and his personal convictions.
Thereby, as was supposed, were fulfilled the Law and the
Prophets--the Law being the fugitive slave law recently
enacted, and the Prophets being no less than Henry Clay
and Daniel Webster.
For, as if to prepare the little city to sacrifice its
cherished beliefs, Mr. Clay had some time before made a
speech from the piazza of the Syracuse House, urging
upon his fellow-citizens the compromises of the
Constitution; and some months later Mr. Webster appeared,
spoke from a balcony near the City Hall, and to the same
purpose; but more so. The latter statesman was prophetic,
not only in the hortatory, but in the predictive
sense; for he declared not only that the Fugitive Slave
Law must be enforced, but that it WOULD be enforced, and
he added, in substance: ``it will be enforced throughout
the North in spite of all opposition--even in this city--
even in the midst of your abolition conventions.'' This
piece of prophecy was accompanied by a gesture which
seemed to mean much; for the great man's hand was
waved toward the City Hall just across the square--the
classic seat and center of abolition conventions.
How true is the warning, ``Don't prophesy unless you
know!'' The arrest of Jerry took place within six months
after Mr. Webster's speech, and indeed while an abolition
convention was in session at that same City Hall;
but when the news came the convention immediately
dissolved, the fire-bells began to ring, a crowd moved upon
the commissioner's office, surged into it, and swept Jerry
out of the hands of the officers. The authorities having
rallied, re-arrested the fugitive, and put him in confinement
and in irons. But in the evening the assailants returned
to the assault, carried the jail by storm, rescued
Jerry for good, and spirited him off safe and sound to
Canada, thus bringing to nought the fugitive slave law,
as well as the exhortations of Mr. Clay and the predictions
of Mr. Webster.
This rescue produced great excitement throughout the
nation. Various persons were arrested for taking part
in it, and their trials were adjourned from place to place,
to the great hardship of all concerned. During a college
vacation I was present at one of these trials at Canandaigua,
the United States Judge, before whom it was held,
being the Hon. N. K. Hall, who had been Mr. Fillmore's
law partner in Buffalo. The evening before the trial an
anti-slavery meeting was held, which I attended. It was
opened with prayer by a bishop of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, Loguen, and of all prayers I have
ever heard, this dwells in my mind as perhaps the most
impressive. The colored minister's petitions for his race,
bond and free, for Jerry and for those who had sought
to rescue him, for the souls of the kidnappers, and for
the country which was to his people a land of bondage,
were most pathetic. Then arose Gerrit Smith. Of all
Tribunes of the People I have ever known he dwells in
my memory as possessing the greatest variety of gifts.
He had the prestige given by great wealth, by lavish
generosity, by transparent honesty, by earnestness of
purpose, by advocacy of every good cause, by a superb
presence, and by natural eloquence of a very high order. He
was very tall and large, with a noble head, an earnest, yet
kindly face, and of all human voices I have ever heard
his was the most remarkable for its richness, depth, and
strength. I remember seeing and hearing him once at
a Republican State Convention in the City Hall at Syracuse,
when, having come in for a few moments as a spectator,
he was recognized by the crowd and greeted
with overwhelming calls for a speech. He was standing
at the entrance door, towering above all about him, and
there was a general cry for him to come forward to
the platform. He declined to come forward; but finally
observed to those near him, in his quiet, natural way,
with the utmost simplicity, ``Oh, I shall be heard.'' At
this a shout went up from the entire audience; for every
human being in that great hall had heard these words
perfectly, though uttered in his usual conversational
voice.
I also remember once entering the old Delavan House
at Albany, with a college friend of mine, afterward
Bishop of Maine, and seeing, at the other end of a long
hall, Gerrit Smith in quiet conversation. In a moment
we heard his voice, and my friend was greatly impressed
by it, declaring he had never imagined such
an utterance possible. It was indeed amazing; it was
like the deep, clear, rich tone from the pedal bass
of a cathedral organ. During his career in Congress,
it was noted that he was the only speaker within
remembrance who without effort made himself heard in every
part of the old chamber of the House of Representatives,
which was acoustically one of the worst halls ever
devised. And it was not a case of voice and nothing else;
his strength of argument, his gift of fit expression, and
his wealth of illustration were no less extraordinary.
On this occasion at Canandaigua he rose to speak, and
every word went to the hearts of his audience. ``Why,''
he began, ``do they conduct these harassing proceedings
against these men? If any one is guilty, I am guilty.
With Samuel J. May I proposed the Jerry Rescue. We
are responsible for it; why do they not prosecute us?''
And these words were followed by a train of cogent
reasoning and stirring appeal.
The Jerry Rescue trials only made matters worse.
Their injustice disgusted the North, and their futility
angered the South. They revealed one fact which especially
vexed the Southern wing of the Democratic party, and
this was, that their Northern allies could not be depended
upon to execute the new compromise. In this Syracuse
rescue one of the most determined leaders was a rough
burly butcher, who had been all his life one of the loudest
of pro-slavery Democrats, and who, until he saw Jerry
dragged in manacles through the streets, had been most
violent in his support of the fugitive slave law. The
trials also stimulated the anti-slavery leaders and orators
to new vigor. Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Sumner,
and Seward aroused the anti-slavery forces as never
before, and the ``Biglow Papers'' of James Russell Lowell,
which made Northern pro-slavery men ridiculous, were
read with more zest than ever.
But the abolition forces had the defects of their
qualities, and their main difficulty really arose from the
stimulus given to a thin fanaticism. There followed, in
the train of the nobler thinkers and orators, the ``Fool
Reformers,''--sundry long-haired men and short-haired
women, who thought it their duty to stir good Christian
people with blasphemy, to deluge the founders of the
Republic with blackguardism, and to invent ever more
and more ingenious ways for driving every sober-minded
man and woman out of the anti-slavery fold. More than
once in those days I hung my head in disgust as I listened
to these people, and wondered, for the moment, whether,
after all, even the supremacy of slaveholders might not
be more tolerable than the new heavens and the new earth,
in which should dwell such bedraggled, screaming,
denunciatory creatures.
At the next national election the Whigs nominated
General Scott, a man of extraordinary merit and of
grandiose appearance; but of both these qualities he was
himself unfortunately too well aware; as a result the
Democrats gave him the name of ``Old Fuss and Feathers,'' and
a few unfortunate speeches, in one of which he expressed
his joy at hearing that ``sweet Irish brogue,'' brought
the laugh of the campaign upon him.
On the other hand the Democrats nominated Franklin
Pierce; a man greatly inferior to General Scott in military
matters, but who had served well in the State politics
of New Hampshire and in Congress, was widely beloved,
of especially attractive manners, and of high personal
character.
He also had been in the Mexican War, but though he
had risen to be brigadier-general, his military record
amounted to very little. There was in him, no doubt,
some alloy of personal with public motives, but it would
be unjust to say that selfishness was the only source of
his political ideas. He was greatly impressed by the
necessity of yielding to the South in order to save the
Union, and had shown this by his utterances and votes in
Congress: the South, therefore, accepted him against
General Scott, who was supposed to have moderate anti-
slavery views.
General Pierce was elected; the policy of his
administration became more and more deeply pro-slavery; and
now appeared upon the scene Stephen Arnold Douglas--
senator from Illinois, a man of remarkable ability,--a
brilliant thinker and most effective speaker, with an
extraordinary power of swaying men. I heard him at vari-
ous times; and even after he had committed what seemed
to me the unpardonable sin, it was hard to resist his
eloquence. He it was who, doubtless from a mixture of
motives, personal and public, had proposed the abolition of
the Missouri Compromise, which since the year 1820 had
been the bulwark of the new territories against the
encroachments of slavery. The whole anti-slavery sentiment
of the North was thereby intensified, and as the
establishment of north polarity at one end of the magnet
excites south polarity at the other, so Southern feeling
in favor of slavery was thereby increased. Up to a recent
period Southern leaders had, as a rule, deprecated
slavery, and hoped for its abolition; now they as generally
advocated it as good in itself;--the main foundation of
civil liberty; the normal condition of the working classes
of every nation; and some of them urged the revival of
the African slave-trade. The struggle became more and
more bitter. I was during that time at Yale, and the general
sentiment of that university in those days favored
almost any concession to save the Union. The venerable
Silliman, and a great majority of the older professors
spoke at public meetings in favor of the pro-slavery
compromise measures which they fondly hoped would settle
the difficulty between North and South and re<e:>stablish
the Union on firm foundations. The new compromise was
indeed a bitter dose for them, since it contained the
fugitive slave law in its most drastic form; and every one
of them, with the exception of a few theological doctrinaires
who found slavery in the Bible, abhorred the whole
slave system. The Yale faculty, as a rule, took ground
against anti-slavery effort, and, among other ways of
propagating what they considered right opinions, there
was freely distributed among the students a sermon by
the Rev. Dr. Boardman of Philadelphia, which went to
extremes in advocating compromise with slavery and the
slave power.
The great body of the students, also, from North and
South, took the same side. It is a suggestive fact that
whereas European students are generally inclined to
radicalism, American students have been, since the war of
the Revolution, eminently conservative.
To this pro-slavery tendency at Yale, in hope of saving
the Union, there were two remarkable exceptions, one
being the beloved and respected president of the university,
Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, and the other his
classmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor
of the great Center Church of New Haven, and frequently
spoken of as the ``Congregational Pope of New
England.'' They were indeed a remarkable pair; Woolsey,
quiet and scholarly, at times irascible, but always kind
and just; Bacon a rugged, leonine sort of man who, when
he shook his mane in the pulpit and addressed the New
England conscience, was heard throughout the nation.
These two, especially, braved public sentiment, as well
as the opinion of their colleagues, and were supposed,
at the time, to endanger the interests of Yale by standing
against the fugitive slave law and other concessions to
slavery and its extension. As a result Yale fell into
disrepute in the South, which had, up to that time, sent large
bodies of students to it, and I remember that a classmate
of mine, a tall, harum-scarum, big-hearted, sandy-haired
Georgian known as ``Jim'' Hamilton, left Yale in disgust,
returned to his native heath, and was there welcomed with
great jubilation. A poem was sent me, written by some
ardent admirer of his, beginning with the words:
``God bless thee, noble Hamilton,'' &c.
On the other hand I was one of the small minority of
students who remained uncompromisingly anti-slavery,
and whenever I returned from Syracuse, my classmates
and friends used to greet me in a jolly way by asking me
``How are you, Gerrit; how did you leave the Rev.
Antoinette Brown and brother Fred Douglas?'' In consequence
I came very near being, in a small way, a martyr
to my principles. Having had some success in winning
essay prizes during my sophomore and junior years, my
name was naturally mentioned in connection with the election
of editors for the ``Yale Literary Magazine.'' At this
a very considerable body of Southern students and their
Northern adherents declared against me. I neither said
nor did anything in the premises, but two of my most
conservative friends wrought valiantly in my behalf.
One was my dear old chum, Davies, the present Bishop
of Michigan, at the very antipodes from myself on every
possible question; and the other my life-long friend,
Randall Lee Gibson of Kentucky, himself a large slaveholder,
afterward a general in the Confederate service, and
finally, at his lamented death a few years since, United
States senator from Louisiana. Both these friends
championed my cause, with the result that they saved me by a
small majority.
As editor of the ``Yale Literary Magazine,'' through
my senior year, I could publish nothing in behalf of my
cherished anti-slavery ideas, since a decided majority
of my fellow-editors would have certainly refused
admission to any obnoxious article, and I therefore confined
myself, in my editorial capacity, to literary and abstract
matters; but with my college exercises it was different.
Professor Larned, who was charged with the criticism
of our essays and speeches, though a very quiet man, was
at heart deeply anti-slavery, and therefore it was that in
sundry class-room essays, as well as in speeches at the
junior exhibition and at commencement, I was able to
pour forth my ideas against what was stigmatized as the
``sum of human villainies.''
I was not free from temptation to an opposite course.
My experience at the college election had more than once
suggested to my mind the idea that possibly I might be
wrong, after all; that perhaps the voice of the people was
really the voice of God; that if one wishes to accomplish
anything he must work in harmony with the popular will;
and that perhaps the best way would be to conform to
the general opinion. To do so seemed, certainly, the only
road to preferment of any kind. Such were the
temptations which, in those days, beset every young man who
dreamed of accomplishing something in life, and they
beset me in my turn; but there came a day when I dealt
with them decisively. I had come up across New Haven
Green thinking them over, and perhaps paltering rather
contemptibly with my conscience; but arriving at the door
of North College, I stopped a moment, ran through the
whole subject in an instant, and then and there, on the
stairway leading to my room, silently vowed that, come
what might, I would never be an apologist for slavery
or for its extension, and that what little I could do against
both should be done.
I may add that my conscience was somewhat aided by
a piece of casuistry from the most brilliant scholar in
the Yale faculty of that time, Professor James Hadley.
I had been brought up with a strong conviction of the
necessity of obedience to law as the first requirement in
any State, and especially in a Republic; but here was the
fugitive slave law. What was our duty regarding it?
This question having come up in one of our division-
room debates, Professor Hadley, presiding, gave a decision
to the following effect: ``On the statute books of all
countries are many laws, obsolete and obsolescent; to
disobey an obsolete law is frequently a necessity and never
a crime. As to disobedience to an obsolescent law, the
question in every man's mind must be as to the degree
of its obsolescence. Laws are made obsolescent by change
of circumstances, by the growth of convictions which render
their execution impossible, and the like. Every man,
therefore, must solemnly decide for himself at what
period a law is virtually obsolete.''
I must confess that the doctrine seems to me now
rather dangerous, but at that time I welcomed it as a very
serviceable piece of casuistry, and felt that there was
indeed, as Mr. Seward had declared, a ``higher law'' than
the iniquitous enactment which allowed the taking of a
peaceful citizen back into slavery, without any of the
safeguards which had been developed under Anglo-Saxon
liberty.
Though my political feelings throughout the senior
year grew more and more intense, there was no chance
for their expression either in competition for the Clarke
Essay Prize or for the De Forest Oration Gold Medal,
the subjects of both being assigned by the faculty; and
though I afterward had the satisfaction of taking both
these, my exultation was greatly alloyed by the thought
that the ideas I most cherished could find little, if any,
expression in them.
But on Commencement Day my chance came. Then I
chose my own theme, and on the subject of ``Modern
Oracles'' poured forth my views to a church full of people;
many evidently disgusted, but a few as evidently
pleased. I dwelt especially upon sundry utterances of
John Quincy Adams, who had died not long before, and
who had been, during all his later years, a most earnest
opponent of slavery, and I argued that these, with the
declarations of other statesmen of like tendencies, were the
oracles to which the nation should listen.
Curiously enough this commencement speech secured
for me the friendship of a man who was opposed to my
ideas, but seemed to like my presenting them then and
there--the governor of the State, Colonel Thomas
Seymour. He had served with distinction in the Mexican
War, had been elected and re<e:>lected, again and again,
governor of Connecticut, was devotedly pro-slavery, in
the interest, as he thought, of preserving the Union; but
he remembered my speech, and afterward, when he was
made minister to Russia, invited me to go with him,
attached me to his Legation, and became one of the dearest
friends I have ever had.
Of the diplomatic phase of my life into which he
initiated me, I shall speak in another chapter; but, as
regards my political life, he influenced me decidedly, for
his conversation and the reading he suggested led me to
study closely the writings of Jefferson. The impulse
thus given my mind was not spent until the Civil War,
which, betraying the ultimate results of sundry Jeffersonian
ideas, led me to revise my opinions somewhat and
to moderate my admiration for the founder of American
``Democracy,'' though I have ever since retained a strong
interest in his teaching.
But deeply as both the governor and myself felt on the
slavery question, we both avoided it in our conversation.
Each knew how earnestly the other felt regarding it, and
each, as if by instinct, kept clear of a discussion which
could not change our opinions, and might wreck our
friendship. The result was, that, so far as I remember,
we never even alluded to it during the whole year we were
together. Every other subject we discussed freely but
this we never touched. The nearest approach to a
discussion was when one day in the Legation Chancery at
St. Petersburg, Mr. Erving, also a devoted Union pro-
slavery Democrat, pointing to a map of the United States
hanging on the wall, went into a rhapsody over the
extension of the power and wealth of our country. I answered,
``If our country could get rid of slavery in all
that beautiful region of the South, such a riddance would
be cheap at the cost of fifty thousand lives and a hundred
millions of dollars.'' At this Erving burst forth
into a torrent of brotherly anger. ``There was no
conceivable cause,'' he said, ``worth the sacrifice of fifty
thousand lives, and the loss of a hundred millions of
dollars would mean the blotting out of the whole prosperity
of the nation.'' His deep earnestness showed me
the impossibility of converting a man of his opinions,
and the danger of wrecking our friendship by attempting
it. Little did either of us dream that within ten years
from that day slavery was to be abolished in the United
States, at the sacrifice not of fifty thousand, but of nearly
a million lives, and at the cost not merely of a hundred
millions, but, when all is told, of at least ten thousand
millions of dollars!
I may mention here that it was in this companionship,
at St. Petersburg, that I began to learn why newspaper
criticism has, in our country, so little permanent effect on
the reputation of eminent men. During four years before
coming abroad I had read, in leading Republican journals
of New York and New Haven, denunciations of Governor
Thomas Hart Seymour as an ignoramus, a pretender,
a blatant demagogue, a sot and companion of sots, an
associate, and fit associate, for the most worthless of the
populace. I had now found him a man of real convictions,
thoroughly a gentleman, quiet, conscientious, kindly,
studious, thoughtful, modest, abstemious, hardly ever
touching a glass of wine, a man esteemed and beloved by all
who really knew him. Thus was first revealed to me
what, in my opinion, is the worst evil in American public
life,--that facility for unlimited slander, of which the first
result is to degrade our public men, and the second result
is to rob the press of that confidence among thinking
people, and that power for good and against evil which it
really ought to exercise. Since that time I have seen
many other examples strengthening the same conviction.
Leaving St. Petersburg, I followed historical and, to
some extent, political studies at the University of Berlin,
having previously given attention to them in France; and
finally, traveling in Italy, became acquainted with a man
who made a strong impression upon me. This was
Mr. Robert Dale Owen, then the American minister at
Naples, whose pictures of Neapolitan despotism, as it
then existed, made me even a stronger Republican than I
had been before.
Returning to America I found myself on the eve of the
new presidential election. The Republicans had nominated
John C. Fr<e'>mont, of whom all I knew was gathered
from his books of travel. The Democrats had nominated
James Buchanan, whom I, as an attach<e'> of the legation
at St. Petersburg, had met while he was minister of the
United States at London. He was a most kindly and
impressive old gentleman, had welcomed me cordially at
his legation, and at a large dinner given by Mr. George
Peabody, at that time the American Amphitryon in the
British metropolis, discussed current questions in a way
that fascinated me. Of that I may speak in another chapter;
suffice it here that he was one of the most attractive
men in conversation I have ever met, and that is saying
much.
I took but slight part in the campaign; in fact, a natural
diffidence kept me aloof from active politics. Having
given up all hope or desire for political preferment, and
chosen a university career, I merely published a few newspaper
and magazine articles, in the general interest of anti-
slavery ideas, but made no speeches, feeling myself, in fact,
unfit to make them.
But I shared more and more the feelings of those who
supported Fr<e'>mont.
Mr. Buchanan, though personal acquaintance had
taught me to like him as a man, and the reading of his
despatches in the archives of our legation at St. Petersburg
had forced me to respect him as a statesman, represented
to me the encroachments and domination of American
slavery, while Fr<e'>mont represented resistance to such
encroachments, and the perpetuity of freedom upon the
American Continent.
On election day, 1856, I went to the polls at the City
Hall of Syracuse to cast my first vote. There I chanced
to meet an old schoolmate who had become a brilliant
young lawyer, Victor Gardner, with whom, in the old
days, I had often discussed political questions, he being
a Democrat and I a Republican. But he had now come
upon new ground, and, wishing me to do the same, he
tendered me what was known as ``The American Ticket,''
bearing at its head the name of Millard Fillmore. He
claimed that it represented resistance to the encroachments
and dangers which he saw in the enormous foreign
immigration of the period, and above all in the
increasing despotism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy
controlling the Irish vote. Most eloquently did my old
friend discourse on the dangers from this source. He
insisted that Roman Catholic bishops and priests had
wrecked every country in which they had ever gained
control; that they had aided in turning the mediaeval
republics into despotisms; that they had ruined Spain and
the South American republics; that they had rendered
Poland and Ireland unable to resist oppression; that they
had hopelessly enfeebled Austria and Italy; that by St.
Bartholomew massacres and clearing out of Huguenots
they had made, first, terrorism, and, finally, despotism
necessary in France; that they had rendered every people
they had controlled careless of truth and inclined to
despotism,--either of monarchs or ``bosses'';--that our
prisons were filled with the youth whom they had trained in
religion and morals; that they were ready to ravage the
world with fire and sword to gain the slightest point for
the Papacy; that they were the sworn foes of our public-
school system, without which no such thing as republican
government could exist among us; that, in fact, their
bishops and priests were the enemies of everything we
Americans should hold dear, and that their church was
not so much a religious organization as a political
conspiracy against the best that mankind had achieved.
``Look at the Italians, Spanish, French to-day, ``he
said. ``The Church has had them under its complete control
fifteen hundred years, and you see the result. Look
at the Irish all about us;--always screaming for liberty,
yet the most abject slaves of their passions and of their
priesthood.''
He spoke with the deepest earnestness and even
eloquence; others gathered round, and some took his tickets.
I refused them, saying, ``No. The question of all questions
to me is whether slavery or freedom is to rule this
Republic,'' and, having taken a Republican ticket, I went
up-stairs to the polls. On my arrival at the ballot-box
came a most exasperating thing. A drunken Irish Democrat
standing there challenged my vote. He had, perhaps,
not been in the country six months; I had lived
in that very ward since my childhood, knew and was
known by every other person present; and such was my
disgust that it is not at all unlikely that if one of
Gardner's tickets had been in my pocket, it would have gone
into the ballot-box. But persons standing by,--Democrats
as well as Republicans,--having quieted this perfervid
patriot, and saved me from the ignominy of swearing
in my vote, I carried out my original intention, and
cast my first vote for the Republican candidate.
Certainly Providence was kind to the United States
in that contest. For Fr<e'>mont was not elected. Looking
back over the history of the United States I see, thus far,
no instant when everything we hold dear was so much in
peril as on that election day.
We of the Republican party were fearfully mistaken,
and among many evidences in history that there is ``a
Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness,'' I think that the non-election of Fr<e'>mont
is one of the most convincing. His election would have
precipitated the contest brought on four years later by
the election of Lincoln. But the Northern States had in
1856 no such preponderance as they had four years later.
No series of events had then occurred to arouse and
consolidate anti-slavery feeling like those between 1856 and
1860. Moreover, of all candidates for the Presidency ever
formally nominated by either of the great parties up to
that time, Fr<e'>mont was probably the most unfit. He had
gained credit for his expedition across the plains to
California, and deservedly; his popular name of ``Pathfinder''
might have been of some little use in a political campaign,
and some romantic interest attached to him on account of
his marriage with Jessie Benton, daughter of the burly,
doughty, honest-purposed, headstrong senator from Missouri.
But his earlier career, when closely examined, and,
even more than that, his later career, during the Civil
War, showed doubtful fitness for any duties demanding
clear purpose, consecutive thought, adhesion to a broad
policy, wisdom in counsel, or steadiness in action. Had
he been elected in 1856 one of two things would
undoubtedly have followed: either the Union would have
been permanently dissolved, or it would have been
reestablished by anchoring slavery forever in the
Constitution. Never was there a greater escape.
On March 1, 1857, I visited Washington for the first
time. It was indeed the first time I had ever trodden
the soil of a slave State, and, going through Baltimore,
a sense of this gave me a feeling of horror. The whole
atmosphere of that city seemed gloomy, and the city of
Washington no better. Our little company established
itself at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, then
a famous hostelry. Henry Clay had died there not long
before, and various eminent statesmen had made it, and
were then making it, their headquarters.
On the evening of my arrival a curious occurrence
showed me the difference between Northern and Southern
civilization. As I sat in the reading-room, there rattled
upon my ear utterances betokening a vigorous dispute in
the adjoining bar-room, and, as they were loud and long,
I rose and walked toward the disputants, as men are wont
to do on such occasions in the North; when, to my surprise
I found that, though the voices were growing steadily
louder, people were very generally leaving the room;
presently, the reason dawned upon me: it was a case in
which revolvers might be drawn at any moment, and the
bystanders evidently thought life and limb more valuable
than any information they were likely to obtain by remaining.
On the evening of the third of March I went with the
crowd to the White House. We were marshalled through
the halls, President Pierce standing in the small chamber
adjoining the East Room to receive the guests, around
him being members of the Cabinet, with others distinguished
in the civil, military, and naval service, and,
among them, especially prominent, Senator Douglas, then
at the height of his career. Persons in the procession
were formally presented, receiving a kindly handshake,
and then allowed to pass on. My abhorrence of the Presi-
dent and of Douglas was so bitter that I did a thing for
which the only excuse was my youth:--I held my right
hand by my side, walked by and refused to be presented.
Next morning I was in the crowd at the east front of the
Capitol, and, at the time appointed, Mr. Buchanan came
forth and took the oath administered to him by the Chief
Justice, Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland. Though
Taney was very decrepit and feeble, I looked at him much
as a Spanish Protestant in the sixteenth century would
have looked at Torquemada; for, as Chief Justice, he
was understood to be in the forefront of those who would
fasten African slavery on the whole country; and this
view of him seemed justified when, two days after the
inauguration, he gave forth the Dred Scott decision,
which interpreted the Constitution in accordance with
the ultra pro-slavery theory of Calhoun.
Having taken the oath, Mr. Buchanan delivered the
inaugural address, and it made a deep impression upon me.
I began to suspect then, and I fully believe now, that
he was sincere, as, indeed, were most of those whom
men of my way of thinking in those days attacked as
pro-slavery tools and ridiculed as ``doughfaces.'' We
who had lived remote from the scene of action, and apart
from pressing responsibility, had not realized the danger
of civil war and disunion. Mr. Buchanan, and men
like him, in Congress, constantly associating with Southern
men, realized both these dangers. They honestly and
patriotically shrank from this horrible prospect; and so,
had we realized what was to come, would most of us have
done. I did not see this then, but looking back across
the abyss of years I distinctly see it now. The leaders
on both sides were honest and patriotic, and, as I firmly
believe, instruments of that ``Power in the universe, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness.''
There was in Mr. Buchanan's inaugural address a tone
of deep earnestness. He declared that all his efforts
should be given to restore the Union, and to re<e:>stablish
it upon permanent foundations; besought his fellow-citizens
throughout the Union to second him in this effort,
and promised that under no circumstances would he be
a candidate for re<e:>lection. My anti-slavery feelings
remained as deep as ever, but, hearing this speech, there
came into my mind an inkling of the truth: ``Hinter dem
Berge sind auch Leute.''
During my stay in Washington I several times visited
the Senate and the House, in the old quarters which they
shortly afterward vacated in order to enter the more
commodious rooms of the Capitol, then nearly finished.
The Senate was in the room at present occupied by the
Supreme Court, and from the gallery I looked down
upon it with mingled feelings of awe, distrust, and
aversion. There, as its president, sat Mason of Virginia,
author of the fugitive slave law; there, at the desk in
front of him, sat Cass of Michigan, who, for years, had
been especially subservient to the slave power; Douglas
of Illinois, who had brought about the destruction of the
Missouri Compromise; Butler of South Carolina, who
represented in perfection the slave-owning aristocracy;
Slidell and Benjamin of Louisiana, destined soon to play
leading parts in the disruption of the Union.
But there were others. There was Seward, of my own
State, whom I had been brought up to revere, and who
seemed to me, in the struggle then going on, the
incarnation of righteousness; there was Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts, just recovering from the murderous
blows given him by Preston Brooks of South Carolina,
--a martyr, as I held, to his devotion to freedom; there
was John Parker Hale of New Hampshire, who had
been virtually threatened with murder, as a penalty for
his opposition to slavery; and there was bluff Ben Wade
of Ohio, whose courage strengthened the whole North.
The House of Representatives interested me less. In
it there sat various men now mainly passed out of
human memory; and, unfortunately, the hall, though
one of the finest, architecturally, in the world, was one
of the least suited to its purpose. To hear anything
either in the galleries or on the floor was almost an
impossibility.
The Supreme Court, though sitting in a wretched
room in the basement, made a far deeper impression
upon me. The judges, seated in a row, and wearing
their simple, silken gowns, seemed to me, in their quiet
dignity, what the highest court of a great republic ought
to be; though I looked at Chief Justice Taney and his
pro-slavery associates much as a Hindoo regards his
destructive gods.
The general impression made upon me at Washington
was discouraging. It drove out from my mind the last
lingering desire to take any part in politics. The whole
life there was repulsive to me, and when I reflected that
a stay of a few years in that forlorn, decaying, reeking
city was the goal of political ambition, the whole thing
seemed to me utterly worthless. The whole life there
bore the impress of the slipshod habits engendered by
slavery, and it seemed a civilization rotting before
ripeness. The city was certainly, at that time, the most
wretched capital in Christendom. Pennsylvania Avenue
was a sort of Slough of Despond,--with ruts and mud-
holes from the unfinished Capitol, at one end, to the
unfinished Treasury building, at the other, and bounded
on both sides with cheap brick tenements. The extensive
new residence quarter and better hotels of these
days had not been dreamed of. The ``National,'' where
we were living, was esteemed the best hotel, and it was
abominable. Just before we arrived, what was known
as the ``National Hotel Disease'' had broken out in it;--
by some imputed to an attempt to poison the incoming
President, in order to bring the Vice-President into his
place. But that was the mere wild surmise of a political
pessimist. The fact clearly was that the wretched
sewage of Washington, in those days, which was betrayed
in all parts of the hotel by every kind of noisome odor,
had at last begun to do its work. Curiously enough there
was an interregnum in the reign of sickness and death,
probably owing to some temporary sanitary efforts, and
that interregnum, fortunately for us, was coincident with
our stay there. But the disease set in again shortly
afterward, and a college friend of mine, who arrived on the
day of our departure, was detained in the hotel for many
weeks with the fever then contracted. The number of
deaths was considerable, but, in the interest of the hotel,
the matter was hushed up, as far as possible.
The following autumn I returned to New Haven as a
resident graduate, and, the popular lecture system being
then at its height, was invited to become one of the
lecturers in the course of that winter. I prepared my
discourse with great care, basing it upon studies and
observations during my recent stay in the land of the
Czar, and gave it the title of ``Civilization in Russia.''
I remember feeling greatly honored by the fact that
my predecessor in the course was Theodore Parker, and
my successor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both talked with
me much about my subject, and Parker surprised me.
He was the nearest approach to omniscience I had ever
seen. He was able to read, not only Russian, but the
Old Slavonic. He discussed the most intimate details of
things in Russia, until, at last, I said to him, ``Mr.
Parker, I would much rather sit at your feet and listen
to your information regarding Russia, than endeavor
to give you any of my own.'' He was especially
interested in the ethnology of the empire, and had an
immense knowledge of the different peoples inhabiting
it, and of their characteristics. Finally, he asked me
what chance I thought there was for the growth of
anything like free institutions in Russia. To this I
answered that the best thing they had was their system
of local peasant meetings for the repartition of their
lands, and for the discussion of subjects connected with
them, and that this seemed to me something like a germ
of what might, in future generations, become a sort of
town-meeting system, like that of New England. This
let me out of the discussion very satisfactorily, for
Parker told me that he had arrived at the same
conclusion, after talking with Count Gurowski, who was, in
those days, an especial authority.
In due time came the evening for my lecture. As it
was the first occasion since leaving college that I had
appeared on any stage, a considerable number of my old
college associates and friends, including Professor
(afterward President) Porter, Dr. Bacon, and Mr. (afterward
Bishop) Littlejohn, were there among the foremost, and
after I had finished they said some kindly things, which
encouraged me.
In this lecture I made no mention of American slavery,
but into an account of the events of my stay at St.
Petersburg and Moscow during the Crimean War, and
of the death and funeral of the Emperor Nicholas, with
the accession and first public address of Alexander II,
I sketched, in broad strokes, the effects of the serf
system,--effects not merely upon the serfs, but upon the
serf owners, and upon the whole condition of the empire.
I made it black indeed, as it deserved, and though
not a word was said regarding things in America, every
thoughtful man present must have felt that it was the
strongest indictment against our own system of slavery
which my powers enabled me to make.
Next day came a curious episode. A classmate of mine,
never distinguished for logical acuteness, came out in a
leading daily paper with a violent attack upon me and
my lecture. He lamented the fact that one who, as he said,
had, while in college, shown much devotion to the anti-
slavery cause, had now faced about, had no longer the
courage of his opinions, and had not dared say a word
against slavery in the United States. The article was
laughable. It would have been easy to attack slavery and
thus at once shut the minds and hearts of a large majority
of the audience. But I felt then, as I have generally felt
since, that the first and best thing to do is to SET PEOPLE AT
THINKING, and to let them discover, or think that they
discover, the truth for themselves. I made no reply, but an
eminent clergyman of New Haven took up the cudgels in
my favor, covered my opponent with ridicule, and did me
the honor to declare that my
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