STATESMEN
If one were asked to name the most remarkable all-around genius this
country has produced, the answer would be Benjamin Franklin--whose life
was perhaps the fullest, happiest and most useful ever lived in America.
There are half a dozen chapters of this series in which he might
rightfully find a place, and in which, indeed, it will be necessary to
refer to him, for he was an inventor, a scientist, a man of letters, a
philanthropist, a man of affairs, a reformer, and a great many other
things besides. But first and greatest of all, he was a benign,
humorous, kind-hearted philosopher, who devoted the greater portion of
his life to the service of his country and of humanity.
Benjamin Franklin was born at Boston in 1706, the fifteenth of a family
of seventeen children. His father was a soap-boiler, and was kept pretty
busy providing for his family, none of whom, with the exception of
Benjamin, ever attained any especial distinction; this being one of
those mysteries of nature, which no one has ever been able to explain,
and yet which happens so often--the production of an eagle in a brood of
common barnyard fowls--a miracle, however, which never happens except
when the barnyard fowls are of the human species. Benjamin himself, at
first, was only an ugly duckling in no way remarkable.
At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to his brother, who was a printer,
and needed a boy to do the dirty work around the office, and thought
there was no need of paying good money to an outsider, when it might
just as well be kept in the family. So Benjamin went to work sweeping
out, and washing up the dirty presses, and making himself generally
useful during the day; but--and here is the first gleam of the eagle's
feather--instead of going to bed with the sun as most boys did, he sat
up most of the night reading such books and papers as he was able to get
hold of at the office, or himself writing short articles for the paper
which his brother published. These he slipped unsigned under the front
door of the office, so that his brother would not suspect they came from
him; for no man is a prophet to his own family, and these contributions
would have promptly gone into the waste basket had his brother suspected
their source. As it was, however, they were printed, and not until
Benjamin revealed their authorship did his brother discover how bad they
were.
After he had served in the printing office for seven years, Benjamin
came to the conclusion that his family would never appreciate him at his
real worth. He was like most boys in this, differing from them only in
being right. So he sold some of his books, and without saying anything
to his father or brother, who would probably have reasoned him out of
his purpose with a cowhide whip, he hid himself on board a boat bound
for New York. Arrived there, he soon discovered that printers and
budding geniuses were in no great demand, and so proceeded on to
Philadelphia, partly on foot and partly by water.
Everyone knows the story of how he landed there, with only a few pennies
in his pocket, but with a sublime confidence in his ability to make
more; how he proceeded to the nearest bakeshop, asked for three pennies'
worth of bread, and when he was given three loaves, took them rather
than reveal his ignorance by confessing that he really wanted only one
loaf, and walked up Market street, with a loaf under each arm, and
eating the third. He has told the story in his inimitable way in his
autobiography, a work which gives him high place among American men of
letters. Small wonder that red-cheeked Deborah Reed smiled at him from
the door of her father's house--but Franklin saw the smile and
remembered it, and though it brought them both distress enough at first,
he asked Deborah to be his wife, six years later, and she consented, and
a good wife she made him. Years afterward, when he was Ambassador to
France and the pet of the French court, the centre of perhaps the most
brilliant and witty circle in Europe, the talk, one day, chanced to turn
upon tailors, of whom the company expressed the utmost detestation.
Franklin listened with a quiet smile, which some one at last observed.
"Don't you agree," he was asked, "that tailors are a conscienceless and
extortionate class?"
"No," he answered, still smiling; "how could I? You see, I'm in love
with mine."
And he told proudly and with shining eyes how the clothes he wore had
been spun into thread and woven into cloth and cut out and fitted and
sewed together by his wife's own hands; and it was no doubt Deborah he
had in mind when he said: "God bless all good women who help men to do
their work."
The young adventurer had no difficulty in finding employment as a
printer, for printers were in demand in that Quaker city. He prospered
from the first, and at the age of twenty-four, had a little business of
his own, and was editing the _Pennsylvania Gazette_. Two years later, he
began the publication of an almanac purporting to be written by one
Richard Saunders, and which soon won an immense reputation as "Poor
Richard's Almanac." As an almanac, it did not differ much from others,
but, in addition to the usual information about the tides and changes of
the moon and seasons of the year, it contained a wealth of wise and
witty sayings, many of which have passed into proverbs and are in common
use to-day. Here are a few of them:
Virtue and a trade are a child's best portions.
Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
The way to be safe is never to be secure.
When you are good to others, you are best to yourself.
Well done is better than well said.
God helps them that help themselves.
Wish not so much to live long as to live well.
He that won't be counselled can't be helped.
That he was a philosopher in deed as well as in word was soon to be
proved, for, at the age of forty-two, he did the wisest thing a man can
do, but for which very few have courage. He had won an established
position in the world and as much wealth as he felt he needed, so he
sold his business, intending to devote the remainder of his life to
science, of which he had always been passionately fond. Already he had
founded the Philadelphia Library and the American Philosophical Society,
had invented the Franklin stove, and served as postmaster of
Philadelphia, and a few years later, he established the institution
which is now the University of Pennsylvania. It was at about this time
that, by experimenting with a kite, he proved lightning to be a
discharge of electricity, and suggested the use of lightning rods.
[Illustration: FRANKLIN]
But his scientific studies were destined to be interrupted, for his
country called him, and the remainder of his life was passed in her
service, first as agent in London for Pennsylvania, where he did
everything possible to avert the Revolution; then as a member of the
Continental Congress, and one of the committee of five which drew up the
Declaration of Independence; then as ambassador to France, where,
practically unaided, he succeeded in effecting the alliance between the
two countries which secured the independence of the colonies; and
finally as President of Pennsylvania and a member of the Constitutional
Convention. His last public act was to petition Congress to abolish
slavery in the United States. If one were asked to name the three men
who did most to secure the independence of their country, they would be
George Washington, who fought her battles, Robert Morris, who financed
them, and Benjamin Franklin, who secured the aid of France. When Thomas
Jefferson, who had been selected as minister to France, appeared at the
court of Louis XVI, he presented his papers to the Comte de Vergennes.
"You replace Mr. Franklin?" inquired the nobleman, glancing at the
papers.
"No, monsieur," Jefferson replied, "I succeed him. No one could replace
him."
And that answer had more truth than wit.
Honors came to Franklin such as no other American has ever received, but
he remained from first to last the same quiet, deep-hearted, and
unselfish man, whose chief motive was the promotion of human welfare. He
had his faults and made his mistakes; but time has sloughed them all
away, and there are few sources of inspiration which can compare with
the study of his life.
* * * * *
No family has loomed larger in American affairs than the Adams family of
Massachusetts. John Adams, President himself and living to see his own
son President--an experience which, probably no other man will ever
enjoy--had a second cousin who played a much more important part than he
did in securing the independence of the United States. His name was
Samuel Adams, and when he graduated from Harvard in 1740, at the age of
eighteen, his thesis discussed the question, "Whether it be lawful to
resist the supreme magistrate if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be
preserved," and answered it in the affirmative.
Samuel Adams was a silent, stern and deeply religious man, something of
a dreamer, a bad manager and constantly in debt; but he was perhaps the
first in America to conceive the idea of absolute independence from
Great Britain, and he worked for this end unceasingly and to good
purpose. The wealthy John Hancock was one of his converts, and it was
partly to warn these two of the troops sent out to capture them that
Paul Revere took that famous ride to Lexington on the night of April 18,
1775. A month later, when General Gage offered amnesty to all the
rebels, Hancock and Adams were especially excepted.
It was Samuel Adams who, perceiving that Virginia was apt to be lukewarm
in aiding a war which was to be fought mostly in the North, suggested
the appointment of Virginia's favorite son, George Washington, as
commander-in-chief of the American army, and who seconded the motion to
that effect made by John Adams. He lived to see his dream of
independence realized, and his grave in the old Granary burying ground
at Boston is one of the pilgrimage places of America.
With his name that of John Hancock is, as we have seen, closely
associated. The worldly circumstances of the two were very different,
for Samuel Adams was always poor, while John Hancock had fallen heir to
one of the greatest fortunes in New England. He was only twenty-seven at
the time, and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way
of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met
Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and
regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something
about him which touched Hancock's imagination--and touched his
pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow money
from him.
Hancock was no doubt glad to lend the money, for he had more than he
knew what to do with, and spent it in such a lavish manner that he was
soon one of the most popular men in Boston. So when one of his ships was
seized for smuggling in a cargo of wine, all his friends and employees
got together and paraded the streets, and a lot of boys and loafers
joined them, for drink was flowing freely, and pretty soon there was a
riot, and the troops were called out and fired a volley and killed five
men, and the rest of the mob decided that it was time to go home, and
went. And that was the Boston massacre about which you have heard so
much that it would almost seem to rank with that of St. Bartholomew.
But, as the Irishman remarked, the man who gets his finger pinched makes
a lot more racket than the one who gets his head cut off; and the Boston
massacre, for all the hullabaloo that was raised about it, was merely
an insignificant street riot. No doubt Samuel Adams did his full share
in fanning that little spark into a conflagration!
For Adams had acquired great influence over Hancock, and that vapid
young man was fond of being seen in the company of the older one. Adams
was anxious to secure Hancock for the revolutionary cause, and soon had
him so hopelessly entangled that there was no escape for him. On the
anniversary of the Boston massacre, he persuaded Hancock to deliver a
revolutionary speech, which he had himself prepared, and after that
there was a British order out for Hancock's arrest; Adams contrived that
Hancock should be one of the three delegates from Massachusetts to the
Continental Congress--John and Samuel Adams were the other two--and
Hancock was deeply impressed by the honor; at the second Congress, Adams
saw to it that his friend was chosen President. In consequence, Hancock
was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, the incident
which is the best known in his career. He signed the document in great
sprawly letters, remarking grandiloquently, as he did so, "I guess King
George can read that without spectacles," and for many years, "John
Hancock" was the synonym for a bold signature. He was afterwards
governor of Massachusetts for more than a decade, and on one occasion
attempted to snub Washington, with very poor success. His body lies in
the old Granary burying-ground, only a step from that of Samuel Adams.
* * * * *
One day, while Thomas Jefferson was a student at William and Mary
College, at Williamsburg, a young friend named Patrick Henry dropped in
to see him, and announced that he had come to Williamsburg to be
admitted to the bar.
"How long have you studied law?" Jefferson inquired.
"Oh, for over six weeks," Henry answered.
The story goes that Jefferson advised his friend to go home and study
for at least a fortnight longer; but Henry declared that the only way to
learn law was to practice it, and went ahead and took the examination,
such as it was, and passed!
That was in 1760, and Patrick Henry was twenty-four years old at the
time. He had been a wild boy, cared little for books, and had failed as
a farmer and as a merchant before turning to law as a last resort. Nor
as a lawyer was he a great success, the truth being that he lacked the
industry and diligence which are essential to success in any profession;
but he had one supreme gift, that of lofty and impassioned oratory. In
1765, as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, he made the
rafters ring and his auditors turn pale by his famous speech against the
stamp act; as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1774, he made
the only real speech of the Congress, arousing the delegates from an
attitude of mutual suspicion to one of patriotic ardor for a common
cause.
"Government," said he, "is dissolved. Where are your landmarks, your
boundaries of colonies? The distinctions between Virginians,
Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a
Virginian, but an American."
Samuel Adams said afterwards that, but for that speech, which drew the
delegates together and made them forget their differences, the Congress
would probably have ended in a wrangle. And a year later, again in
Virginia, in defense of his resolution to arm the militia, he gave
utterance to the most famous speech of all, starting quietly with the
sentence, "Mr. President, it is natural for man to indulge in the
illusions of hope," and ending with the tremendous cry: "I know not what
course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me
death!"
That was the supreme moment of Patrick Henry's life. He did a great work
after that, as member of the Continental Congress, as commander-in-chief
of the Virginia forces, and as governor of the Commonwealth, but never
again did he come so near the stars--as, indeed, few men ever do.
* * * * *
You have all heard the story of Damon and Pythias, true type of devoted
friendship, and history abounds in such examples; but sometimes it shows
a darker side, and the controlling force in two men's lives will be hate
instead of love, and the end will be shipwreck and tragedy. Such a story
we are to tell briefly here of the lives of Alexander Hamilton and
Aaron Burr.
They were born a year apart. Burr in 1756, at Newark, New Jersey;
Hamilton, in 1757, on the little West Indian island of Nevis. Burr was
of a distinguished ancestry, his grandfather being the famous Jonathan
Edwards; Hamilton's father was an obscure planter whose first name has
been lost to history. Burr graduated at Princeton, entered the army,
rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and resigned in 1777 to study
law, being admitted to the New York bar five years later. Hamilton was
sent to New York, entered King's, now Columbia, College, got caught in
the rising tide of Revolution, proved himself uncommonly ready with
tongue and pen, enlisted, saw the battles of Long Island, Trenton, and
Princeton, was appointed aide-de-camp to Washington and acted as his
secretary, filling the post admirably, but resigned in a fit of pique
over a fancied slight, and repaired to New York to study law. Such, in
outline, is the history of these two men until Fate threw them in each
other's way.
New York City was the arena where the battle was fought. Within a few
years, Hamilton and Burr were the most famous men in the town. They
resembled each other strongly in temperament and disposition; each was
"passionate, brooking no rivalry; ambitious, faltering at no obstacle;
proud with a fiery and aggressive pride; eloquent with the quick wit,
the natural vivacity, and the lofty certainty of the true orator." They
were too nearly alike to be friends; they became instinctive enemies.
Each felt that the other was in the way.
For sixteen years, Burr practiced law in New York, growing steadily in
influence. For five of those years, Hamilton did the same. They were the
foremost lawyers in the city. No man could stand before them, and when
they met on opposite sides of a case, it was, indeed, a meeting of
giants. But in 1789, Washington appointed Hamilton his secretary of the
treasury, and leaving New York, Hamilton applied himself to the great
task of establishing the public credit, laying the basis for the
financial system of the nation, which endures until this day. It was a
splendid task, splendidly performed, and Hamilton emerged from it the
leader of the powerful Federal party.
In 1800, two men were candidates for the presidency. One was Thomas
Jefferson and the other was Aaron Burr. Instead of being overwhelmed by
the great Virginian, Burr received an equal number of electoral votes,
and the contest was referred to Congress for decision. As a Federalist,
Burr felt that he should have Hamilton's support, but Hamilton used his
great influence against him, stigmatizing him as "a dangerous man," and
Jefferson was elected. Four years later, Burr was a candidate for
governor of New York, and again Hamilton openly, bitterly, and
successfully opposed him, again speaking of him as "a dangerous man."
Smarting under the sting of this second defeat, Burr sent a note to
Hamilton asking if the expression, "a dangerous man," referred to him
politically or personally. Hamilton sent a sneering reply, and expressed
himself as willing to abide by the consequences. It was "fighting
language between fighting men"--a quarrel which Hamilton had been
seeking for five years and which he had done everything in his power to
provoke--and Burr promptly sent a challenge. Hamilton as promptly
accepted it, named pistols at ten paces as the weapons, and at seven
o'clock on the morning of July 11, 1804, the two men faced each other on
the heights of Weehawken, overlooking New York bay. Both fired at the
word; Burr's bullet passed through Hamilton's body; Hamilton's cut a
twig above Burr's head. Hamilton died next day, and Burr, his political
career at an end, buried himself in the West.
Three years later, he was arrested, charged with treason, for attempting
to found an independent state within the borders of the Union. He had a
wild dream of establishing a great empire to the west of the
Mississippi, and had collected arms and men for the expedition, and was
on his way down the Mississippi when he was arrested and taken back to
Richmond for trial. But his plan could not be proved to be treasonable;
indeed, his arrest was due more to the animosity which Jefferson felt
toward him, than from any other cause, and, brought to trial a year
later, he was acquitted. But his reputation was ruined, there was no
hope for him in public life, and his remaining years were spent quietly
in the practice of his profession, partly abroad and partly in New
York.
It has been too much the habit to picture Burr as a thoroughgoing
scoundrel who murdered an innocent man and conspired against his
country. As a matter of fact, he did neither. Of the charge of treason
he was acquitted, even at a time when public feeling ran high against
him, and in the quarrel with Hamilton, it was Hamilton who was at all
times the aggressor. Both were brilliant, accomplished and courtly
men--even, perhaps, men of genius--but Fate spread a net for their feet,
blindly they stumbled into it, and, too proud to retrace their steps,
pushed on to the tragic end.
The presiding judge at Burr's trial, not the least of whose achievements
was the holding level of the scales of justice on that memorable
occasion, was the last of that great school of statesmen who had fought
for their country's independence, and who had seen the states united
under a common Constitution. John Marshall lived well into the
nineteenth century, and his great work was to interpret that
Constitution to the country, to give it the meaning which it has for us
to-day. Marshall was a Virginian, was just of age at the outbreak of the
Revolution, and served in the American army for five years, enlisting as
a private and rising to the rank of captain. At the close of the war, he
studied law, gained a prominent place in the politics of his state, drew
the attention of Washington by his unusual ability, and in 1800 was
appointed by him secretary of state. A year later he was made chief
justice of the Supreme Court--an appointment little less than inspired
in its wisdom.
For thirty-four years, John Marshall occupied that exalted position,
interpreting to the new country its organic law, and the decisions
handed down by him remain the standard authority on constitutional
questions. In clearness of thought, breadth of view, and strength of
logic they have never been surpassed. His service to his country was of
incalculable value, for he built for the national government a firm,
foundation which has stood unshaken through the years.
* * * * *
So we come to a new era in American history--an era marked by unexampled
bitterness of feeling and culminating in the great struggle for the
preservation of the Union. Across this era, three mighty giants cast
their shadows--Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.
Closely and curiously intertwined were the destinies of these three men,
Clay was born in 1777; Webster and Calhoun five years later. Calhoun and
Clay were Irishmen and hated England; Webster was a Scotchman, and
Scotchmen were usually Tories. Calhoun and Clay were southerners, but
with a difference, for Calhoun was born in the very sanctum sanctorum of
the South, South Carolina, while Clay's life was spent in the border
state of Kentucky, so removed from the South that it did not secede from
the Union. Webster was a product of Massachusetts. Calhoun and Webster
were, in temperament and belief, as far apart as the poles; Clay stood
between them, "the great compromiser." Calhoun and Webster were greater
than Clay, for they possessed a larger genius and a broader culture; and
Webster was a greater man than Calhoun, because he possessed the truer
vision. Calhoun died in 1850; Clay and Webster in 1852. For the forty
years previous to that, these three men were in every way the most
famous and conspicuous in America. Others flashed, meteor-like, into a
brief brilliance; but these three burned steady as the stars. They had
no real rivals. And yet, though each of them was consumed by an ambition
to be President, not one was able to realize that ambition, and their
last years were embittered by defeat.
As has been said, Clay was the smallest man of the three. His reputation
rests, not upon constructive statesmanship, but upon his ability as a
party leader, in which respect he has had few equals in American
history, and upon his success in proposing compromises. Born in
Virginia, and admitted to the bar in 1797, he moved the same year to
Lexington, Kentucky, where his practice brought him rapid and brilliant
success. His personality, too, won him many friends, and it was so all
his life. "To come within reach of the snare of his speech was to love
him," and even to this day Kentucky believes that no statesman ever
lived who equalled this adopted son of hers, nor doubts the entire
sincerity of his famous boast that he would rather be right than
President.
Of course he got into politics. That was his natural and inevitable
field. As early as 1806 he was sent to the Senate, and afterwards to the
House, of which he was speaker for thirteen years. Three times was he a
candidate for the presidency, defeated once by John Quincy Adams, once
by Andrew Jackson, and once, when victory seemed almost his, by William
Henry Harrison. That other great party leader, James G. Blaine, was to
meet a similar fate years later. Henry Clay lacked the deep foresight,
the prophetic intuition necessary to statesmanship of the first rank,
and some of the achievements which he considered the greatest of his
life were in reality blunders which had afterwards to be corrected. But
as a compromiser, as a rider of troubled waters, and a pilot at a time
when shipwreck seemed imminent and unavoidable, he proved his consummate
ability, and merits the gratitude of his country.
Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were leaders in the same great party, and
were, for the most part, personal friends as well as political allies.
But Webster overshadowed Clay in intellect, however he may have been
outdistanced by him in political astuteness. If Clay were the fox,
Webster was the lion. As a constitutional lawyer, he has never been
excelled; as an orator, no other American has ever equalled him. He had
in supreme degree the orator's equipment of a dominant and impressive
personality, a moving voice, an eloquent countenance, and a command of
words little less than inspired. The last sentences of his reply to
Hayne have come ringing down the years, and stand unequalled as sheer
eloquence:
"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun
in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored
fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered,
discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds or
drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and
lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic,
now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high
advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre,
not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured,
bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is
all this worth'? nor those other words of delusion and folly,
'Liberty first and Union afterwards'; but everywhere, spread all
over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds,
as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind
under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true
American heart--Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable!"
The great audience that listened spellbound to that oration, arose and
left the Capitol like persons in a dream. Never were they to forget the
effect of that tremendous speech.
But the last years of his life were ruined by his ambition to be
President. In spite of his commanding talents, or, perhaps, because of
them, he never at any time had a chance of receiving the nomination of
his party, and his final defeat in 1852, by Winfield Scott, practically
killed him.
[Illustration: WEBSTER]
Webster was the son of a New Hampshire farmer, who managed to send him
to Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1801. Four years later
he was admitted to the bar at Boston, and in 1812 he was elected to
Congress. We find him at once violently opposing the second war with
England, for which Clay was working so aggressively. For ten years after
that, he devoted himself to the practice of his profession, and soon
became the foremost lawyer of New England, especially on constitutional
questions. In 1823, he was again sent to Congress; entered the Senate in
1828, and remained in public life practically until his death.
It was in 1830 that he delivered the speech already referred to--perhaps
the most remarkable ever heard within the walls of the Capitol. Senator
Hayne, of South Carolina, had made a remarkable address, lasting two
days, advocating the right of a state to render null and void an
unconstitutional law of Congress--in other words, the right of secession
from the Union. Two days later, Webster rose to reply. His appearance,
always impressive, was unusually so that day; his argument, always
close-knit and logical, was the very summation of these qualities; his
words seemed edged with fire as he argued that the Constitution is
supreme, the Union indissoluble, and that no state has, or can have the
right to resist or nullify a national law. It was the greatest oration
of America's greatest orator.
Of its effect upon the people who heard it we have spoken; throughout
the country it produced a profound impression. The North felt that a new
prophet had arisen; the South, a new foeman. The great advocate of
nullification, however, was not Hayne, who would be scarcely remembered
to-day but for the fact that it was to him Webster addressed his reply,
but that formidable giant of a man, John C. Calhoun--the man whom the
South felt to be her peculiar representative on the question of state
rights, of nullification, and, at last, of slavery. His fate was one of
the saddest in American history, for the cause he fought for was a
doomed cause, and as he sank into his grave, he saw tottering down upon
him the great structure which he had devoted his whole life to
upholding.
Not much is known of Calhoun's youth. He was the grandson of an Irish
immigrant who had settled in South Carolina, graduated from Yale in
1804, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and, returning to his native
state, was, in 1811, elected a member of Congress. That was the
beginning of a public career which was to last until his death.
Almost from the first, he was consumed with an ambition to be President,
and perhaps would have been, but for an incident so trivial that, under
ordinary circumstances, it would have had no consequences. In 1818, as
Monroe's secretary of war, Calhoun had occasion at a cabinet meeting to
express some censure of Andrew Jackson's conduct of the Seminole war--a
censure which was deserved, since Jackson had violated the law of
nations in pursuing his enemy into a foreign country. Twelve years
later, when Jackson was President and Calhoun, as Vice-President, was in
direct line of succession, so to speak, Jackson heard of Calhoun's
remarks, flew into a violent rage, came out as Calhoun's declared enemy,
and dealt the death-blow to his presidential aspirations.
Smarting from this injustice, Calhoun turned his attention to the
question of state sovereignty, and in February, 1833, South Carolina
passed the nullification ordinance to which we have already referred.
Calhoun at once resigned the vice-presidency and took his seat in the
Senate, prepared to defend the attitude of his state. But Jackson did
not wait for that. Seeing that here was an opportunity to strike his
enemy, he ordered troops to South Carolina, and threatened to hang
Calhoun as high as Haman--a threat which he very possibly would have
attempted to carry out had not hostilities been averted by the genius
for compromise of Henry Clay. From that time forward, Calhoun became the
high priest of the doctrine of state rights and the great defender of
slavery. He fought inch by inch the growing sentiment against it; he
knew it was a losing fight, and almost the last words uttered by his
dying lips were, "The South! The poor South! God knows what will become
of her!"
* * * * *
The great triumvirate left no successors to compare with them in
prestige or power. Two survivals from the war of 1812 were still on the
scene, Thomas Hart Benton and Lewis Cass. Benton was a North Carolina
man who had removed to Nashville, and at the outbreak of the war,
enlisted under Andrew Jackson, and got into a disgraceful street fight
with him, in the course of which Jackson was nearly killed. Strange to
say, that doughty old hero chose to forget the matter long years
afterwards, when Benton was in the Senate--a Union senator from the
slave state of Missouri.
Cass also served through the war, but at the North; was involved in
Hull's surrender of Detroit and broke his sword in rage at the disgrace
of it; and was afterwards governor of Michigan and Jackson's secretary
of war; then, in 1848, Democratic nominee for President and defeated
because of Martin Van Buren's disaffection; finally, in 1857, Buchanan's
secretary of state, resigning, in 1860, because that shilly-shally
President could not make up his mind to send reinforcements to Bob
Anderson at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. A man who played many
parts, filled many positions, and filled them well, Cass's name deserves
to be more widely remembered than it is.
In those days, a strange, pompous and ineffective figure was flitting
across the stage, impressing men with a respect and significance which
it did not possess, its name, Stephen A. Douglas, nicknamed "The Little
Giant," but giant in little else than power to create disturbance.
Perhaps no other man ever possessed that power in quite the same degree;
nor possessed in a greater degree that fascination of personality which
makes friends and gains adherents.
Consumed by a gnawing desire of the presidency, beaten for the
nomination in 1852, destroying the serenity of the land two years later
by contending that Congress had no right to limit slavery in the
territories, in the vain hope of winning southern support, but finding
himself instead dubbed traitor and Judas Iscariot, receiving thirty
pieces of silver from a club of Ohio women, travelling from Boston to
Chicago "by the light of his own effigies," which yelling crowds were
burning at the stake, and finally hooted off the stage in his own city,
certainly it would seem that Douglas's public career was over forever.
But he managed to live down his blunder and to regain much of his old
strength by reason of his winning personality; yet made another blunder
when he agreed to meet Abraham Lincoln in debate--and one which cost him
the presidency. For his opponent drove him into corners from which he
could find no way out except at the risk of offending the South. In
those days, one had to be either for or against slavery; there was no
middle course, and the man who attempted to find one, fell between two
stools, as Douglas himself soon learned.
Last scene of all, pitted against that same Abraham Lincoln who had
greased the plank for him and shorn him of his southern support, in the
presidential contest of 1860, defeated and wounded to death by it, for
he knew that never again would he be within sight of that long-sought
prize; yet rising nobly at the last to a height of purest patriotism,
declaring for the Union, pledging his support to Lincoln, pointing the
way of duty to his million followers, and destroying at a blow the
South's hope of a divided North--let us do Stephen A. Douglas, that
justice, and render him that meed of praise; for whatever the mistakes
and turnings and evasions of his career, that last great work of his
outweighed them all.
A man who had a great reputation in his own day as an orator and
statesman, but whose polished periods appeal less and less to succeeding
generations was Edward Everett--an evidence, perhaps, that the head
alone can never win lasting fame. Everett was a New Englander; a Harvard
man, graduating with the highest honors; and two years later, pastor of
a Unitarian church in Boston. There his eloquence soon attracted
attention, and won him a wide reputation. At the age of twenty-one, he
was appointed professor of Greek at Harvard; and in 1824, at the age of
thirty, he was chosen to represent the Boston district in Congress. He
remained there for ten years, served four terms as governor of
Massachusetts, was ambassador to England, and then, president of Harvard
from 1846-1849; was appointed secretary of state on the death of Daniel
Webster in 1852; and finally, in the following year, was elected to the
Senate, but was soon forced to resign on account of ill-health.
Soon afterwards, he threw himself into the project to purchase Mount
Vernon by private subscription, delivered his oration on Washington 122
times, netting more than $58,000 toward the project; obtained another
$10,000 from the _Public Ledger_ by writing for it a weekly article for
the period of a year, and added $3,000 more, secured from the readers of
that paper. From that time on, he delivered various lectures for
philanthropic causes, the receipts aggregating nearly a hundred thousand
dollars. They are little read to-day because, in spite of his erudition,
polish and high attainments, Everett really had no new message to
deliver.
* * * * *
With the coming of the Civil War, another triumvirate emerges to control
the destinies of the nation--Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and
William Henry Seward. Stevens and Seward had been introduced to politics
by the ineffectual and absurd anti-Masonic party, which flitted across
the stage in the early thirties. In 1851, Massachusetts rebuked Daniel
Webster for his supposed surrender to the slavery party, made in hope of
attaining the presidency, by placing Sumner in his seat in the Senate,
and retiring him to private life, where he still remained the most
commanding figure in the country.
Seward was already in the Senate, had spoken in reply to Webster, and
assumed the leadership which Webster forfeited. In the House, too, was
Stevens, who soon gained prominence by a certain vitriolic force which
was in him, and these three men labored unceasingly for the defeat of
the South--indeed, for more than its defeat--for payment, to the last
drop, for the sins it had committed. They were bound together by party
ties and in other ways, but most closely of all by a hatred of slavery,
which, with Stevens and Sumner, mounted at times to fanaticism and led
them into the errors always awaiting the fanatic.
Thaddeus Stevens, the oldest of the three, had been born in Vermont, but
removed to Pennsylvania at the age of twenty-two, and began to practice
law there. In 1831, he was one of the moving spirits in the formation of
the anti-Masonic party, which fancied it saw, in the spread of Masonry,
a grave danger to the republic. Two years later, Stevens was chosen a
member of the Pennsylvania legislature, but his career did not really
begin until, in 1848, at the age of fifty-seven, he was elected a member
of the national House of Representatives, where he soon took his place
as the leader of the anti-slavery faction. From that time forward, he
was unceasing in his warfare against slavery, frequently going to
lengths where few cared to follow, and which would seem to indicate that
there was a trace of madness in the man. He developed an exaggerated and
sentimental regard for the negro, and grew radical and relentless toward
the South.
At the close of the war, he regarded the southern states as conquered
territory, to be treated as such, and his ideas of treatment seem to
have been founded upon those of the Middle Ages. He wished to confiscate
the property of all Confederates; endeavored to impeach President
Johnson, who was trying to enforce a system of reconstruction which was
at least better than that which Stevens advocated. For a time he seemed
to suffer from a very vertigo of hatred, which ate into his soul and
destroyed him. The plan of reconstruction adopted by Congress was an
embodiment of his ideas; but Johnson was acquitted of the charges
Stevens brought against him, and Stevens's poison, as it were, turned in
upon himself and killed him. His last request, that his body be buried
in an obscure private cemetery, because public cemeteries excluded
negroes, shows the man's unbalanced condition, the length to which his
ideas had led him.
Charles Sumner, who was to the Senate much what Stevens was to the
House, although a larger and better-balanced man, was a typical
Bostonian and inheritor of the New England conscience, which, of course,
meant that he was opposed through and through to slavery. He was a
successful lawyer, and as his sentiments were well known, he was chosen
to succeed Webster when the latter wavered on the anti-slavery question,
and threw some pledges of assistance to the South. There was never any
doubt about Sumner's position, no sign of wavering or coquetting with
the enemy, and in 1856, he was assaulted by a southern senator and so
severely injured that three years passed before he could resume his
seat.
He did so in time to oppose any compromise with slavery or the slave
power, which the threatening attitude of the South had almost scared the
North into considering, and urged the immediate emancipation of the
slaves. When this had been accomplished, his first thought was to make
sure that the slaves would remain free, and he began the contest for
negro suffrage, as the only guarantee of negro freedom, which he finally
won. In the reconstruction period following the war, he was inevitably
an ally of Thaddeus Stevens, though the latter far surpassed him in
vindictiveness toward the South.
Let us not forget that the South had shown itself blind to its own
interests when, as soon as reconstructed by Andrew Johnson, it had,
state by state, adopted laws virtually enslaving the black man again.
But for this fatuity, there would probably have been no such feeling of
vindictiveness at the North as soon developed there; certainly there
would have been no excuse for such severity as was afterwards exhibited.
So it is true in a sense that the South has itself to blame for the
horrors of the reconstruction period, and for the suspicion with which
its good faith toward the negro was for many years regarded. Sumner was
not a vindictive man, and in his last years, incurred a vote of censure
from his own State for offering a bill to remove the names of battles of
the Civil War from the Army Register and from the regimental colors of
the United States. He practically died in harness in 1874. Looking back
at him, one sees how much larger he looms than Stevens; one cannot but
admire his courage and honesty of purpose; his public life was a
continual struggle for the right, as he saw it, and, remembering that,
his faults need not trouble us.
When Sumner arrived in the Senate, he found William H. Seward, of New
York, already there. Seward, who had been admitted to the bar in 1822,
at the age of twenty-one, was carried into the New York legislature by
the anti-Masonic wave of 1830. Eight years later, he was the Whig
governor of the state, and in 1849 was sent to the Senate. There he soon
rivetted attention by his rebuke of Webster for condoning the Fugitive
Slave Law, and caught the reins of party leadership as they fell from
Webster's hands. It was then that he made his famous statement that the
war against slavery was waged under a "higher law than the
Constitution," and that the fall of slavery was inevitable.
In 1856, when the newly-formed anti-slavery party, known as the
Republican, met to name a national ticket, Seward was the logical
candidate, but refused to allow his name to be considered, and the
choice fell upon that brilliant adventurer, John C. Frémont. Frémont
was, of course, defeated, and Seward continued to be the leader of
Republican thought, and the chief originator of Republican doctrine.
Indeed, he was, in a sense, the Republican party, so that, four years
later, he seemed not only the logical but the inevitable choice of the
party for President. His most formidable opponent was Abraham Lincoln,
of Illinois, who had been carefully working for the nomination, and who
was blessed with the shrewdest of campaign managers. Seward led on the
first ballot, and would have won but for the expert trading already
referred to in the story of Lincoln's nomination.
It was natural that Lincoln should offer him the state portfolio, and
Seward accepted it. From first to last, he held true to the President,
and the services he rendered the country were second only to those of
Lincoln himself. When Lincoln was killed, an attempt was also made to
murder Seward, and was very nearly successful--so nearly that for days
Seward lingered between life and death. He recovered, however, to resume
his place in Johnson's cabinet. Over the new President he had great
influence; he had long been an advocate of mercy toward the South, and
he did much to persuade the President to the course he followed in
restoring the southern states to the Union, without reference to the
wishes of Congress. Even John Sherman pronounced the plan "wise and
judicious," but Stevens, Sumner, and their powerful coterie in Congress
violently opposed it, and Seward came in for his share of the
vituperation and bitter accusation which the plan called forth.
Johnson's defeat closed his political career, and the last years of his
life were spent in travel.
The very cause of his downfall marks him as the greatest of the three,
for he placed justice above expediency, and not even the attempt upon
his life changed his feeling toward the South. Perhaps the wisdom of his
judgment was never better exemplified than in his purchase from Russia
of the great territory known as Alaska, for the sum of $7,200,000.
Alaska was regarded at the time as an icy desert of no economic value,
but time has changed that estimate, and the discovery of gold there made
it one of the richest of the country's possessions.
Outside of Seward, Sumner and Stevens, the most prominent public man of
the time was Salmon P. Chase, an Ohioan who had for many years taken an
important part in the anti-slavery controversy. Although sent to the
Senate in 1849 as a Democrat, he left the party on the nomination of
Pierce in 1852, when it stood committed to the support and extension of
slavery. Three years later, he was elected governor of Ohio by the
Republicans. He was Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, and financed
the country during its most trying period in a way that compelled the
admiration even of his enemies. He served afterwards as Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, dying in 1873. He was another man whose life was
embittered by failure to attain the prize of the presidency. Three times
he tried for it, in 1860, in 1864, and in 1868, but he never came within
measurable distance of it. For he lacked the capacity for making
friends, and repelled rather than attracted by a studiously impressive
demeanor, a painful decorousness, and an unbending dignity, which was,
of course, no true dignity at all, but merely a bad imitation of it. In
a word, he lacked the saving sense of humor--the quality which endeared
Abraham Lincoln to the whole nation.
Another Ohioan who loomed large in the history of the time was John
Sherman, a lawyer like all the rest, a member of Congress since 1855,
not at first a great opponent of slavery, but drawn into the battle by
his allegiance to the Republican party, forming an alliance with
Thaddeus Stevens, and collaborating with him in the production of the
reconstruction act. He was appointed secretary of the treasury by
President Hayes, in 1876, and his great work for the country was done in
that office, in re-establishing the credit which the Civil War had
shaken. He, also, was bitten by the presidential bacillus, and was a
candidate for the nomination at three conventions, but each time fell
short of the goal--once when he had it seemingly within his grasp. A
stern, forceful, capable man, he left his impress upon the times.
* * * * *
Of the men who guided the fortunes of the Confederacy, only two need be
mentioned here--Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens; for, rich as
the Confederacy was in generals, it was undeniably poor in statesmen.
The golden age of the South had departed; with John C. Calhoun passed
away the last really commanding figure among Dixie's statesmen, and from
him to Jefferson Davis is a long step downward.
Davis's early life was romantic enough. Born in 1808 in Kentucky, of a
father who had served in the Revolution, appointed to the National
Military Academy by President Monroe; graduating there in 1828 and
serving through the Black Hawk war; then abruptly resigning from the
army to elope with the daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor, and settling
near Vicksburg, Mississippi, to embark in cotton planting; drawn
irresistibly into politics and sent to Congress, but resigning to accept
command of the First Mississippi Rifles and serving with great
distinction through the war with Mexico; and, finally, in 1847, sent to
the Senate--such was Davis's history up to the time he became involved
in the maelstrom of the slavery question.
From the first, he was an ardent advocate of the state-rights theory of
government, and the right of secession, and for thirteen years he
defended these theories in the Senate, gradually emerging as the most
capable advocate the South possessed. That fiery and impulsive people,
looking always for a hero to worship, found one in Jefferson Davis, and
he soon gained an immense prestige among them. On January 9, 1861, his
state seceded from the Union, and he withdrew from the Senate. Before he
reached home, he was elected commander-in-chief of the Army of the
Mississippi, and a few days later, he was chosen President of the
Confederate States.
From the first, his task was a difficult one, and it grew increasingly
so as the war went on. That he performed it well, there can be no
question. He was the government, was practically dictator, for he
dominated the Confederate Congress absolutely, and its principal
business was to pass the laws which he prepared. Only toward the close
of the war did it, in a measure, free itself from this control, and,
finally, in 1865, it passed a resolution attributing Confederate
disaster to Davis's incompetency as commander-in-chief, a position which
he had insisted on occupying; removing him from that position and
conferring it upon General Lee, giving the latter, at the same time,
unlimited powers in disposing of the army.
But it was too late. Even Lee himself could not ward off the inevitable.
On the morning of Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis sat in his pew
at church in the city of Richmond, when an officer handed him a
telegram. It was from Lee, and read, "Richmond must be evacuated this
evening," Lee had fought and lost the battle of Petersburg, and was in
full retreat. Davis left the church quietly, called his cabinet
together, packed up the government archives, and boarded a train for the
South. For over a month, he moved from place to place endeavoring to
escape capture, his party melting away until it comprised only his
family and a few servants; and finally, on May 9th, he was surprised and
taken by a company of Union cavalry near Irwinsville, in southern
Georgia. Davis was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe for two years--a
thoroughly senseless procedure which only served to keep open a painful
wound--and on Christmas Day, 1868, was pardoned by President Johnson.
Davis's imprisonment had added immensely to his prestige. The South
forgot his blunders and short-comings, seeing in him only the martyr who
had suffered for his people, and welcomed him with a kind of hysterical
adoration, which lasted until his death. The last years of his life were
passed quietly on his estate in Mississippi.
When Davis was chosen President of the Confederacy, Alexander H.
Stephens was chosen Vice-President. Stephens had also had a picturesque
career. Left an orphan, without means, at the age of fifteen he had
nevertheless secured an education, and, in 1834, after two months'
study, was admitted to the Georgia bar. He at once began to win a more
than local reputation, for he was a man of unusual ability, and in 1836,
he was elected to the Legislature, though an avowed opponent of
nullification.
Seven years later, he was sent to Congress, and continued to oppose the
secession movement; but he saw whither things were trending, and in 1859
he resigned from Congress, remarking that he knew there was going to be
a smash-up and thought he would better get off while there was time. In
1860 he made a great Union speech; and it is a remarkable proof of the
hold he had upon the people of the South, that, in spite of this, and of
his well-known convictions, he was chosen Vice-President of the
Confederacy a year later. He accepted, but within a year he had
quarrelled with Jefferson Davis on the question of state rights, and in
1864, organized the Georgia Peace party. From that time on to the close
of the war, he labored to bring about a treaty of peace, but in vain.
He was imprisoned for a few months after the downfall of the
Confederacy, but was soon released and was prominent in the political
life of Georgia for fifteen years thereafter, being governor of the
state at the time of his death in 1883. A more contradictory, obstinate,
prickly-conscienced man never appeared in American politics.
* * * * *
So passed the era of the Civil War. Have we had any great statesmen
since? Some near-great ones, perhaps, but none of the very first rank.
Great men are moulded by great events, or, at least, require great
events to prove their greatness. Let us pause a moment, however, to pay
tribute to one of the most accomplished party leaders in American
history--a man almost to rank with Henry Clay--James G. Blaine.
As a young editor from Maine, he had entered Congress in 1863. There he
had encountered another fiery youngster in Roscoe Conkling, and an
intense rivalry sprang up between them. They were very different in
temperament, Blaine being the more popular, Conkling the more brilliant.
Blaine had a genius for making friends and keeping them; Conkling's
quick temper and hasty tongue frequently cost him his most powerful
adherents. Three years later, this rivalry came to an open clash, in
which each denounced the other on the floor of the House in words as
stinging as parliamentary law permitted. Blaine's tirade was so bitter
that Conkling became an implacable enemy and never again spoke to him.
It was almost the story of Hamilton and Burr over again, except that the
age of duelling had passed.
That quarrel on the floor of the House was to have momentous
consequences. Blaine became speaker of the House and the most popular
and powerful man in his party, so that it seemed that nothing could
stand between him and the desire for the presidency which gnawed at his
heart, just as it had at Henry Clay's. But always in the way stood
Conkling.
In 1876, at Cincinnati, Blaine was nominated by Robert G. Ingersoll in
one of the most eloquent addresses ever delivered on the floor of a
national convention, and on the first ballot fell only a few votes short
of a majority. But his enemies were at work, and on the seventh ballot,
succeeded in stampeding the convention to Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes,
however, was pledged to a single term, and Blaine was hailed as the
nominee in 1880; but when the convention assembled, there was Conkling
with a solid phalanx of over three hundred delegates for Grant. The
result was that neither Blaine nor Grant could get a majority of the
votes, and the nomination fell to Garfield. Finally, by tireless work,
Blaine laid his plans so well that he secured the nomination four years
later, only to have New York State thrown against him by Conkling and to
go down to defeat. Conkling had his revenge, and Blaine's career was
practically at an end, for he was an old and broken man.
Let us add frankly that there were many within his own party who
mistrusted him--who believed him insincere, if not actually dishonest,
and refused to support him. For a fourth time, in 1892, he attempted to
get the nomination, but his name had lost its wizardry, and he was
defeated by Benjamin Harrison. There are few more pitiful stories in
American politics than that of this brilliant and able man, consumed by
the desire for a great prize which seemed always within his grasp and
yet which always eluded him. For a quarter of a century, he chased this
will-o'-the-wisp, only to be led by it into a bog and left to perish
there.
There are a few names on the later pages of American statesmanship which
stand for notable achievement, more especially in the line of diplomacy,
the two greatest of which are those of John Hay and Elihu Root. Both of
these men, as secretary of state, did memorable work; not the sort of
work which appeals to popular imagination, for there was nothing
spectacular about it; but quiet and effective work in the forming of
informal alliances and treaties with foreign nations, maintaining
America's position as a world power, and making her the friend of all
the world. That is the position she should occupy, since she has no
quarrel with any one; and it is with its maintenance that the
statesmanship of the present day is principally concerned.
* * * * *
So we close this chapter on American Statesmen. It is a tragic
chapter--tragic because of thwarted ambitions, and unfulfilled desires.
Of them all, Benjamin Franklin was the only one whose life was from
first to last happy and contented, who realized his ideals and who died
in peace; and this, I think, because he asked nothing for himself,
hungered for no preferment, was consumed by no ambition, sacrificed
nothing to expediency, but accepted life with large philosophy and
never-failing humor, realizing that in serving others he was best
serving himself, and whose inward peace was manifest in his placid and
smiling countenance. Upon the rocks of ambition the greatest of those
who followed him dashed themselves to pieces.
SUMMARY
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN. Born at Boston, January 17, 1706; established the
_Pennsylvania Gazette_, 1729; founded Philadelphia library, 1731; began
publication of "Poor Richard's Almanac," 1732; postmaster of
Philadelphia, 1737; founded American Philosophical Society and
University of Pennsylvania, 1743; demonstrated by means of a kite that
lightning is a discharge of electricity, 1752; deputy postmaster-general
for British colonies in America, 1753-74; colonial agent for
Pennsylvania in England, 1757-75; elected to second Continental
Congress, 1775; ambassador to France, 1776-85; negotiated treaty with
France, February 6, 1778; concluded treaty of peace with England, in
conjunction with Jay and Adams, September 3, 1783; returned to America,
1785; President of Pennsylvania, 1785-88; delegate to Constitutional
Convention, 1787; died at Philadelphia, April 17, 1790.
ADAMS, SAMUEL. Born at Boston, September 27, 1722; delegate to first and
second Continental Congress, 1775-76; lieutenant-governor of
Massachusetts, 1789-94; governor of Massachusetts, 1794-97; died at
Boston, October 2, 1803.
HANCOCK, JOHN. Born at Quincy, Massachusetts, January 12, 1837;
President of the Provincial Congress, 1774-75; President of Continental
Congress, 1775-77; governor of Massachusetts, 1780-85 and 1787-93; died
at Quincy, October 8, 1793.
HENRY, PATRICK. Born at Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, May 20, 1736;
admitted to the bar, 1760; entered Virginia House of Burgesses, 1765;
member of Continental Congress, 1774; of Virginia Convention, 1775;
governor of Virginia, 1776-79 and 1784-86; died at Red Hill, Charlotte
County, Virginia, June 6, 1799.
HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. Born in the island of Nevis, West Indies, January
11, 1757; settled in New York, 1772; entered Continental service as
captain of artillery, 1776; on Washington's staff, 1777-81; member of
Continental Congress, 1782-83; of the Constitutional Convention, 1787;
secretary of the treasury, 1789-95; appointed commander-in-chief of the
army, 1799; mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr, July 11, 1804,
and died the following day.
BURR, AARON. Born at Newark, New Jersey, February 6, 1756; served with
distinction in the Canada expedition in 1775 and at Monmouth in 1778;
began practice of law in New York, 1783; United States senator, 1791-97;
Vice-President, 1801-05; killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, July 11,
1804; in 1805, conceived plan of conquering Texas and perhaps Mexico and
establishing a great empire in the South-west; arrested in Mississippi
Territory, January 14, 1807; indicted for treason at Richmond,
Virginia, May 22, and acquitted, September 1, 1807; died at Port
Richmond, Staten Island, September 14, 1836.
MARSHALL, JOHN. Born in Fauquier County, Virginia, September 24, 1755;
served in the Revolution; United States envoy to France, 1797-98; member
of Congress, 1799-1800; secretary of state, 1800-01; chief justice of
the United States Supreme Court, 1801-35; died at Philadelphia, July 6,
1835.
CLAY, HENRY. Born in Hanover County, near Richmond, Virginia, April 12,
1777; United States senator from Kentucky, 1806-07 and 1809-11; member
of Congress, 1811-21 and 1823-25; peace commissioner at Ghent, 1814;
candidate for President, 1824; secretary of state, 1825-29; senator,
1832-42 and 1849-52; Whig candidate for President, 1832 and 1844; chief
designer of the "Missouri Compromise" of 1820, of the compromise of
1850, and of the compromise tariff of 1832-33; died at Washington, June
29, 1852.
WEBSTER, DANIEL. Born at Salisbury, now Franklin, New Hampshire, January
18, 1782; graduated at Dartmouth College, 1801; admitted to the bar at
Boston, 1805; Federalist member of Congress from New Hampshire, 1813-17;
removed to Boston, 1816; member of Congress from Massachusetts, 1823-27;
Whig United States senator, 1827-41; received several electoral votes
for President, 1836, and unsuccessful candidate for Whig nomination
until death; secretary of state, 1841-43; senator, 1845-50; secretary of
state, 1850-52; died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 24, 1852.
CALHOUN, JOHN CALDWELL. Born in Abbeville District, South Carolina,
March 18, 1782; graduated at Yale, 1804; admitted to the bar, 1807;
member of the South Carolina general assembly, 1808-09; member of
Congress, 1811-17; secretary of war in Monroe's cabinet, 1817-24;
Vice-President, 1825-32; United States senator, 1832-43; secretary of
state under Tyler, 1844-45; re-elected to the Senate of which he
remained a member until his death, at Washington, March 31, 1850.
BENTON, THOMAS HART. Born at Hillsborough, North Carolina, March 14,
1782; United States senator from Missouri, 1821-51; member of Congress,
1853-55; died at Washington, April 10, 1858.
CASS, LEWIS. Born at Exeter, New Hampshire, October 9, 1782; served in
the second war with England; governor of Michigan Territory, 1813-31;
secretary of war, 1831-36; minister to France, 1836-42; United States
senator, 1845-48; Democratic candidate for President, 1848; senator,
1849-57; secretary of state, 1857-60; died at Detroit, Michigan, June
17, 1866.
DOUGLAS, STEPHEN ARNOLD. Born at Brandon, Vermont, April 23, 1813; judge
of the Supreme Court of Illinois, 1841; member of Congress, 1843-47;
United States senator, 1847-61; Democratic candidate for President,
1860; died at Chicago, June 3, 1861.
EVERETT, EDWARD. Born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 11, 1794;
professor of Greek at Harvard, 1819-25; editor the _North American
Review_, 1819-24; member of Congress, 1825-35; governor of
Massachusetts, 1836-40; minister to England, 1841-45; president of
Harvard College, 1846-49; secretary of state, 1852-53; senator, 1853-54;
candidate of Constitutional Union party for Vice-President, 1860; died
at Boston, January 15, 1865.
STEVENS, THADDEUS. Born in Caledonia County, Vermont, April 4, 1792;
graduated at Dartmouth College, 1814; removed to Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, and admitted to the bar, 1816; Whig member of Congress,
1849-53; Republican member of Congress, 1859-68; proposed impeachment of
President Johnson, 1868; died at Washington, April 11, 1868.
SUMNER, CHARLES. Born at Boston, January 6, 1811; graduated at Harvard,
1830; admitted to the bar, 1834; United States senator, 1851-74;
assaulted in Senate chamber by Preston Brooks, May 22, 1856; chairman of
committee on foreign affairs, 1861-71; died at Washington, March 11,
1874.
SEWARD, WILLIAM HENRY. Born at Florida, Orange County, New York, May 16,
1801; graduated at Union College, 1820; admitted to the bar, 1822;
member State Senate, 1830-34; Whig governor of New York, 1838-43; United
States senator, 1849-61; candidate for Republican nomination for
President, 1860; secretary of state, 1861-69; died at Auburn, New York,
October 10, 1872.
CHASE, SALMON PORTLAND. Born at Cornish, New Hampshire, January 13,
1808; United States senator from Ohio, 1849-55; governor of Ohio,
1856-60; secretary of the treasury, 1861-64; chief justice of the
Supreme Court, 1864-73; died at New York City, May 7, 1873.
SHERMAN, JOHN. Born at Lancaster, Ohio, May 10, 1823; admitted to the
bar, 1844; Republican member of Congress from Ohio, 1855-61; senator,
1861-77; secretary of the treasury, 1877-81; senator, 1881-97;
secretary of state, 1897-98; candidate for presidential nomination in
1884 and 1888; died at Washington, October 22, 1900.
DAVIS, JEFFERSON. Born in Christian County, Kentucky, June 3, 1808;
graduated at West Point, 1828; Democratic member of Congress from
Mississippi, 1845-46; served in Mexican war, 1846-47; United States
senator, 1847-51; secretary of war, 1853-57; senator, 1857-61; resigned
his seat, January 21, 1861; inaugurated President of the Confederacy,
February 22, 1862; arrested near Irwinsville, Georgia, May 10, 1865;
imprisoned at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, 1865-67; amnestied, 1868; died
at New Orleans, December 6, 1889.
STEPHENS, ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Born near Crawfordville, Georgia, February
11, 1812; graduated at University of Georgia, 1832; member of State
legislature, 1836; member of Congress, 1843-59; Vice-President of the
Confederacy, 1861-65; imprisoned in Fort Warren, Boston harbor,
May-October, 1865; member of Congress, 1873-82; governor of Georgia,
1883; died at Atlanta, Georgia, March 4, 1883.
BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE. Born at West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, January
31, 1830; member of Congress from Maine, 1862-76; senator, 1876-81;
secretary of state, 1881 and 1889-92; unsuccessful candidate of
Republican party for President, 1884; died at Washington, January 27,
1893.
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