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 lecture was one of the most
effective anti-slavery arguments ever made in that city.
With this, I retired from the field well satisfied.
The lecture was asked for in various parts of the country,
was delivered at various colleges and universities, and
in many cities of western New York, Michigan, and Ohio;
and finally, after the emancipation of the serfs, was re-
cast and republished in the ``Atlantic Monthly'' under the
title of ``The Rise and Decline of the Serf System in
Russia.''
And now occurred a great change in my career which,
as I fully believed, was to cut me off from all political life
thoroughly and permanently. This was my election to
the professorship of history and English literature in the
University of Michigan.