John Kelly Elected Sheriff of New York.—Difficult Duties of
the Office.—He Masters Them.—The Sheriff’s Jury.—Rosewell
G. Rolston.—His Opinion of John Kelly.—The Sheriff
Becomes a Favorite Among Lawyers.—Kelly the Only
Sheriff Ever Re-elected.—Nominated for Mayor.—Supported
by Nelson J. Waterbury.—The _Herald_ upon Kelly
and A. Oakey Hall.—The Tweed Ring.—Kelly and Tilden
Oppose it Vigorously.—Kelly’s Health Fails.—Loses His
Family by Death.—Goes to Europe.—Visits Holy Land.—Allegory
On the Cross.—Kelly No Longer Interested in
the Busy Trifles of Politicians.—Enjoys a Contemplative
Life.—Rumors of his Retirement from the World.—How
They Originated.—His Inner Life.—His Charities and
Munificent Gifts.—Bishop Ireland upon John Kelly’s
Noble Character.—His Conduct During the War Between
the States.—Visits the Army of the Potomac.—Harsh
Treatment and Sufferings of the Waring Family.—John
Kelly Petitions for Justice and Mercy.—Stanton Obdurate.—Montgomery
Blair Co-operates with Kelly.—Returns to
New York from Europe.—Becomes Leader of Tammany
Hall.—Greatest Work of His Life.—O’Conor, Tilden and
Kelly Destroy the Tweed Ring.—Tammany Sachems for
1871 and 1872.—The Story of a Great Revolution.—Death
of His Two Daughters.—Declines Chairmanship of National
Democratic Committee in 1872.—Mayor Havemeyer.—Commissioners
Charlick and Gardner.—The
Mayor’s Death.—Unfortunate Faction Fights in New
York Politics.—Kelly the First Man to Bring out Tilden
for Governor.—The Truth of History Vindicated.—Tilden
Calls upon Kelly in 1876 Immediately Before
the St. Louis Convention.—Kelly’s Pledges at the Convention.—The
Election of Tilden. He Declares Tammany
“the Right Wing of the Democratic Army.”—John
Kelly Comptroller of New York.—Comments of the
Press upon His Appointment.—His Second Marriage.—His
Witty Speech at the Lotos Club Dinner.—The Presidential
Election of 1884.—Kelly Holds His Forces in
Hand Magnificently at the Decisive Point of the Battle,
and Does for Cleveland What he had Done Before for
Tilden.—A Democratic President at Last.—Kelly’s Health
Impaired.—New York _Times_ on John Kelly’s Political
Shoes.—Conclusion. 244
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
John Kelly is the best abused man in America. Fifty or sixty years ago
Andrew Jackson was subjected to similar treatment. The hero of New
Orleans lived down the slanders which were hurled thick and fast upon
him by political opponents. Mr. Kelly will do the same thing, for the
people, though easily imposed upon for the moment by artful men, soon
correct their own misconceptions, and invariably render justice to
public characters. The malice which invents slanders is incapable of
transmitting them into history.
Fugitive and imperfect sketches of John Kelly’s career have appeared
from time to time in the newspapers. No detailed narrative of his life
has hitherto been submitted to the public. The writer of these pages
is conscious of the difficulty of portraying the character of a living
man. Appreciation of merit should not run into panegyric; condemnation
of faults should not be spared where faults are found. The advantages
possessed by the present writer to discharge the task he has undertaken
have been derived from an acquaintance with Mr. Kelly extending over
thirty years, and from participation in public affairs in which that
gentleman has been a conspicuous actor. Mr. Kelly has figured in
transactions which will form an interesting chapter in the history
of the present times. The testimony of a contemporary who preserves
a distinct recollection of the events he describes will always be an
aid to the historian of the next age, who must sift evidence in order
to get at the truth, and who should reject whatever falls below that
standard. There would not be so many fictions in American biography,
if those who have participated in the scenes would record their honest
recollection of them. The testimony of an eye-witness is in the nature
of primary evidence, and the historian can have no more helpful
auxiliary than such a reminiscent. The following pages are offered to
the public as the contribution to American biography of one who has
enjoyed unusual advantages of knowing the man he writes about.
Mr. Kelly is one of the few remarkable men the present political
generation has produced. The public has read so much about him both
of pure fiction and coarse abuse, that an outline sketch of his life
will no doubt prove acceptable to candid readers, and furnish, at the
same time, a corrective of current misrepresentations. It might seem
strange to those who do not stop to consider the causes of it, that
a life-long citizen of New York, who has acted a prominent part in
its affairs, should have come to be misunderstood by so many people.
But to those who look into the matter more closely the explanation is
not difficult to find. Mr. Kelly is a man of very positive character.
He has antagonized powerful men, and on several memorable occasions
thwarted their schemes of ambition and self-aggrandizement. He has thus
excited resentments, and in their disappointment his opponents have
sought revenge. Some of these gentlemen control great combinations of
corporate wealth, and possess enormous private fortunes. They have
not found it difficult to enlist a large section of the press into a
species of anti-Kelly crusade. The weapons of partisan warfare are not
very choice, and this crusade has been carried on without much regard
to the amenities of journalism, but with a resolute and persistent
attention to the main idea, namely, the elimination of Mr. Kelly as a
political leader, by proclaiming him to be the representative of one
of the worst elements of American politics. But this mode of attack,
while it may answer a temporary purpose, is always in the end a weak
one. Intelligent people become interested to know more of a man who
excites his opponents into storms of abuse, torrents of invective, and
hurricanes, as it were, of rage. Is it all real, or does it cover a
purpose? That becomes the question which the public soon ask, and its
answer is always favorable to truth, and fatal to the manipulators of
an artificial excitement, for intelligent people have an independent
way of getting at the truth the moment they suspect it is being kept
back, and get at it they will, and they do.
In this manner John Kelly’s political opponents have really done him a
service. The universal gaze has been directed towards the man, and the
monster painted by reckless partisans of other and rival politicians
has been found to be no monster at all, but a plain, quiet man, honest
and straightforward as old Nat. Macon himself—to whom he was once
likened by the late Alexander H. Stephens—of very original and rugged
order of mind, of powers of command scarcely equalled by any other
statesmen in the United States to-day, a foe to humbug, a terror to
corruptionists—one, in short, to inspire love and respect rather than
hatred and ill-will in the minds of disinterested people.
The writer thinks he knows John Kelly intimately and thoroughly.
His mind is powerful, without the acuteness of a Calhoun, or the
imagination of a Webster, but as far as he sees his objects he sees
with the eye of a statesman, and no judgment was ever sounder. Of ideas
in their simplicity men in general have but a partial cognition, an
apperception of consciousness, as philosophers term it, and not the
clear perception. But the perceptive faculty is Mr. Kelly’s pre-eminent
feature. He is deliberate in mental operation, trusting nothing to
fancy or imagination, and not distinguished for impulsive celerity of
action, but almost invariably sure in his conclusions. Thus it has
been sometimes, that his plans, when suddenly deranged in action by
unforeseen circumstances, were not rapidly reformed, and defeat came
upon him. But when he is in rest, and left to himself to devise and
map out movements, his judicious arrangement and skill in deciding
upon what is best to do have proved almost faultless. Incapable of
fear, he has seemed to some to go forward to his objects with blind
obstinacy. But those who think so have a superficial knowledge of the
man, for prudence is his controlling quality. Before he reaches a
decision, every circumstance and consideration is maturely weighed, all
suggestions are patiently heard, all doubts exert restraint upon him.
Indeed, his prudence has exposed him to the charge by more hot-headed
men of being a plodder, so carefully does he labor to mature plans. It
is only when he has reached a decision that his purpose becomes fixed
and immovable, and he goes through with it, no matter what obstacles
beset his path, or what less courageous friends may advise to change
his resolution. Mr. Kelly has, in fine, granite firmness, and there is
a broad distinction between firmness and doggedness.
Nature has given him a high temper, but reflection and habits of
self-command have reduced it to almost perfect subjection. If aroused,
however, and goaded to passion, he is one of the most tremendous men
in his wrath, and one of the most formidable in his mode of delivering
battle. A man of warm affections and commanding presence, his personal
magnetism is simply wonderful. His name, wherever he is well-known,
is never mentioned at public meetings without storms of applause
immediately breaking forth. His appearance at public gatherings is
always the signal for hand clapping and expressions of welcome of that
unmistakable sort only bestowed on a favorite. In this respect John
Kelly almost rivals Henry Clay, and since the death of the illustrious
Mill Boy of the Slashes no other man in America has had such an
enthusiastic personal following.
While his liberality is great it is unpretentious. Publicity in
well-doing is repulsive to his nature. His charity, which is almost
ceaseless, is consequently always silent. The solidest kind of man
in build and character, he delights in action more than words, and
is known in New York as the safe leader. His natural ascendency over
men is instinctively recognized. For these and kindred qualities his
influence in American politics is as potent as that of any other
statesman in public life, and the reader of the following pages will
find, it is believed, that this influence has been always beneficially
exerted.
CHAPTER II.
HIS PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE—SCHOOL DAYS—EMPLOYED BY JAMES GORDON
BENNETT—APPRENTICED TO JACOB B. CREAMER—DAVID C. BRODERICK—KELLY,
CAPTAIN OF EMMET GUARDS—ATHLETIC SPORTS—HIS FONDNESS FOR PRIVATE
THEATRICALS—RELIGIOUS STRIFE—A BATTLE AT THE POLLS—KELLY AS LEADER—THE
KNOW-NOTHING PARTY.
John Kelly was born in the city of New York, April 20, 1822. The home
of his parents and spot of his nativity was in Hester Street near Mott,
in the old Sixth, afterwards changed into the Fourteenth Ward, famous
for its politicians. He springs from that stalwart race of men who have
played so conspicuous a part in the history of the United States—Tyrone
County Irishmen. From Tyrone County came Richard Montgomery, whom
Bancroft places second only to Washington as the military genius of the
Revolutionary War; thence also came Alexander Porter, the illustrious
Louisiana statesman, and one of the great lights of the United States
Senate in its palmiest days. Archbishop Hughes, who left his impress
on the age in which he lived as one of its most remarkable men, and
General James Shields, one of the heroes of two American wars, who
enjoyed the unprecedented distinction of having been elected to the
United States Senate at various times by three great States of the
Union, were both emigrants from Tyrone County, Ireland. Out of this
Milesian hive, seeking his fortunes in the New World in the early part
of the present century, came Hugh Kelly, father of the subject of
this memoir. He married Sarah Donnelly, of County Fermanagh, a small
county adjoining Tyrone. The marriage took place in Ireland. There were
seven children born to the parents, of whom John was the fourth. The
others were five daughters and a son, the last named after the father,
Hugh. Old New Yorkers, who were acquainted with the mother of John
Kelly, have informed the writer of this memoir that she was a woman of
remarkable force of character, a devout Christian, and a mother who
brought up her children in the love and fear of God. The children were
all vivacious, and very communicative among themselves in the family
circle, with the exception of John, who was quiet and thoughtful,
and a better listener than talker. On one occasion a neighbor paid a
visit to the Kellys, and brought news of an excursion, a pic-nic, or
some such affair, that pleased and greatly excited the little ones,
each of whom, save John, had something to say about it. At length the
neighbor looked over at John, who had remained a silent listener, and
exclaimed, “Look at John there, with his big head, taking it all in,
and not saying a word.” “Oh, yes,” said the mother, “that is his way;
he thinks a great deal more than he talks, but be sure he is not dumb.”
A New York newspaper once cynically characterized him as an ox, but
the dumb ox, to use the figure of Albertus Magnus, has given a bellow
which has been heard round the world. The devotion of Mrs. Kelly to
her elder son was peculiarly tender. At one time, when he was a small
boy, he had to cross the East River daily. The mother would often
accompany him to the boat in the morning, and always went to meet him
on his return in the afternoon. Other boys going and returning at the
same time observed that young Kelly’s mother never failed to be at the
landing in the afternoon to accompany her son home. The mischievous
boys sometimes cracked jokes at his expense, and teased him about his
mother’s apron strings. He stood the bantering well enough for a time,
but at length grew tired of it. One of the tallest and strongest of the
boys hearing that Kelly had threatened to thrash the next fellow that
annoyed him on the subject, took it into his head to try his mettle.
“Say, Kelly,” exclaimed this one, “how’s your mother? Boys, he’s got a
good mother, sure. She won’t let him go running about the streets with
the gang for fear he might learn something wicked, but comes for him
and takes her little boy home every night. Come along, Johnny, and be
tucked in your little bed. Bah!” A flushed face and clenched fist told
that Kelly would stand no more raillery of that sort. A smart battle
took place on the spot between the two youngsters, and ended in the
discomfiture of the larger boy. Kelly’s victory made him a favorite
among his companions, and they all soon came to look upon him as a
sort of leader, although he would not loiter with the crowd at street
corners of evenings, nor haunt the purlieus of the city where youth
loses its innocence, and flaunting vice slopes the way to ruin. Such a
mother is a guardian angel to her children, and Mrs. Kelly’s afternoon
escort to her son provoked no more jibes at the expense of the latter.
This incident affords an insight into the methods of his boyhood, and
shows how, under the fostering hand of his mother, the character of
the future man was moulded. The American sin of cursing and swearing
is first picked up by children running idly about the streets into all
sorts of company. John Kelly was never addicted to this bad habit, and
it may be doubted whether his most intimate friend of to-day ever heard
him utter a profane oath. The Psalmist’s aspiration to walk soberly and
chastely in the day before the Divine Face should be the aim of the
rising generation. With that object in view children should be kept out
of temptation in the pitfalls of a great city. After awhile, when the
habits of a promising youth are formed on the right side, temptation
assails him in vain, and whether it be from the cot of poverty or the
mansion of wealth, a hero steps forth for life’s battle, who may be
depended upon to make his way, and render a good account of himself.
In the case of young Kelly, it was from the cot of poverty he emerged.
His father’s and mother’s business of a small retail grocery store
afforded the family a modest but comfortable living. But while John
was still a small boy of eight years his father died, and the widow
and her elder son had to become the bread-winners—the former managing
the store, and the latter, when about ten years old, going out in
quest of employment. John had attended for some two or three years
the parochial school attached to old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Mott
Street. Now he had to give up the school and go to work. It was a sore
trial to him, for he was ambitious of book learning, and the dream
of his life was to get a good education. But he started out with a
brave resolution to seek employment. For a long time the search was
tedious and unsuccessful. He had to take many surly replies from
ill-bred people, and often went home tired at night after a fruitless
day’s rounds, to begin the work over again in the morning. But he
told his disappointments to no one, unless indeed to whisper them to
the fond mother whose strong heart went out in such sympathy with
his own, and whose sound practical sense helped him to form some new
plan for the morrow. It is probable that the lesson he learned then
of “man’s inhumanity to man” during his first humble trials to make
his way in life was never forgotten. When the day came for himself to
mount to power, and to be called upon by many young and old seeking a
friendly hand to help them to their feet, John Kelly proved to be a
real philanthropist, uttering the gentle word, cheering the drooping
heart by the overflowing generosity and charity of his own, and never
allowing a human being to pass out of his doorway without feeling
better and stronger for having carried his sorrow to him.
One day John went into the _Herald_ office, then in its infancy,
and asked James Gordon Bennett whether he wanted an office boy. Mr.
Bennett scanned the boy over from head to foot without making a reply.
Seemingly satisfied with the first scrutiny, he began a conversation
with him, which continued for five or ten minutes. There was no better
judge of character than the elder Bennett, and he was always quick in
making a decision. “Come in here, my lad, and take off your hat and get
to work,” said he, and John Kelly found himself an employé forthwith of
the great editor. No two men have ever made their mark more thoroughly
in the metropolis of the United States than James Gordon Bennett and
John Kelly. Did the editor descry in that first glance at the boy the
latent powers which ultimately have made Kelly so distinguished? “It
is said,” remarked the editor of the _Utica Observer_, in a notice of
Mr. John Kelly in that paper, “that old James Gordon Bennett took a
great fancy to him. This speaks much in his praise, for the founder
of the _Herald_ was quick to see the possibilities of greatness or
usefulness in an undeveloped youth.”[1]
Evening schools then but recently had been established in New York, and
the youth was quick to avail himself of the advantages they afforded to
boys in his situation for acquiring an education. He became a regular
attendant at one of those night schools, was a diligent and close
student, and, like the great Sir Thomas More, “rather greedily devoured
than leisurely chewed his grammar rules.” The editor of the _Utica
Observer_, one of Mr. Kelly’s most energetic opponents and Governor
Robinson’s ablest advocate in the press, during the celebrated New
York gubernatorial struggle of 1879, declared of Kelly, in the heat of
that campaign, and in an article containing an attack upon him, “that
there is a great deal to admire in the character of John Kelly.” Of
his education the editor added: “His thirst for learning had not been
satisfied in his youth, and he proceeded by study to enlarge the scope
of his understanding. He became a good scholar in French, as well as in
English, and for twenty years he has devoted several hours of every
day to the pursuit of literature and science. If anybody has imbibed
the impression that Mr. Kelly is an ignorant man, he does not want
to confront that delusion with an actual examination of Mr. Kelly’s
acquirements. A Utica man who met him once in the presence of Prof.
Bonamy Price, of Oxford, says that he held his own in a discussion on
Political Economy with England’s foremost teacher of that science.”[2]
He proved to be an excellent office-boy, was always at his post, and
was as punctual as the clock in fulfilling engagements. He became
a great favorite with Mr. Bennett, and when, at length, as he grew
older he resolved to give up his employment in the _Herald_ office in
order to learn some regular business or trade, Mr. Bennett tried to
dissuade him from his purpose, and offered additional compensation
as an inducement for him to remain. But while greatly appreciating
his employer’s kindness, young Kelly replied that his mother and her
large family mainly looked to him, the elder brother, for support,
and that it had always been his intention to go into business on his
own account. The time had now come to carry out that purpose. Mr.
Bennett, in his brusque but kindly Scotch voice, gave John some parting
advice and wished him well, predicting that success awaited him in his
future career. The boy now apprenticed himself to Jacob B. Creamer,
a grate-setter and soap-stone cutter at 346 Broome Street, then on
the corner of Broome and Elizabeth, and speedily learned that trade.
He had grown to be a large boy, with the thews and sinews of a young
Hercules, and although he was not quarrelsome, he was high spirited
and courageous, and would brook no insult from anyone. In the factory
where he worked there was another young man, three or four years older
than himself, a dark complexioned powerful fellow, of a domineering
temper, with a reputation for fisticuffs. One day this person got
angry with Kelly and struck him. Kelly returned the blow. The men in
the establishment separated them, but the blood of both was up, and a
fight was agreed upon between them as soon as the bell should be rung
for dinner. They went into the factory yard and prepared for battle.
The hands about the establishment finding the boys meant to fight,
undertook to secure fair play in the encounter. Kelly was much shorter
than his antagonist, and no one supposed he had any chance to win. At
it they went pell mell, with a lively interchange of heavy thuds. The
older youth fought rapidly, and brought Kelly down several times with
furious blows. Fighting was not allowed while either of the boys was on
the ground, and in this way matters progressed for fifteen or twenty
minutes, Kelly getting the worst of it all the time, but showing great
endurance, and urging that no one should interfere. He had made thus
far but very little impression on his antagonist. He observed, however,
that one of his chance blows had caused the other to wince with pain.
From that moment he took all the punishment the larger boy could
inflict, and made the battle one of strategy, reserving himself to give
a blow in the same place, which he found to be the other’s weak spot.
The tide now began to turn, and it soon became evident to the onlookers
that the big swarthy fellow was no match either in courage or endurance
for Kelly. The latter, selecting the weak spot, laid his antagonist on
his back several times by well-directed blows. The last time he fell
both his strength and courage collapsed, and he bellowed out crying
that he was whipped and would fight no more. One of the men who had
witnessed the encounter with the closest attention from beginning to
end, and saw that Kelly had won it by superior intelligence, now rushed
up to him, and taking his hand exclaimed, “Well Johnny, my boy, you are
a born general sure, and you will yet be a great general over men when
you grow up to be a man yourself.” A few years ago an aged man entered
Mr. Kelly’s crowded office at 117 Nassau street, and sent in his name
with the rest. When his turn came he was admitted. “Do you not know me,
Mr. Kelly?” said the old man. “No,” was the reply, “I do not recall
you.” “Do you remember when you were a boy the fight you had with that
big swarthy fellow in Creamer’s factory yard, when one of the men told
you you would one day become a great general over men? Well, I was that
very man, and didn’t I tell the truth, sir?” Mr. Kelly remembered the
occurrence and his visitor too, immediately, whom he had not seen for
many years, and laughed heartily over the reminiscence of his youth as
he shook the old man’s hand.
He worked industriously at his new occupation, and is said to have
displayed mechanical skill of no mean order. In due time he set up in
business for himself, made friends rapidly, and secured an excellent
line of custom. He became a prosperous young man, and was remarked upon
for sobriety, modesty of deportment and attention to business. It was
not long before he found himself able to branch out on a more extensive
scale, for his friends were numerous and willing to lend him a helping
hand when the needs of his business made it expedient to ask credit.
While yet a very young man, his success was sufficiently assured to
justify him in establishing a soap-stone and grate factory at 40
Elizabeth street, and he also opened an office where he took business
orders, in a frame building on Broome street, next door to the church
over which Dr. Maclay at that time presided, and of which Dr. Cohen, in
subsequent years, became the pastor. Among his customers were Thomas
O’Conor, father of Charles O’Conor, the lawyer; John A. Dix, afterward
Governor of New York; Horace F. Clark, and many other influential
people. John Kelly had now become a prosperous man. His first care was
for the beloved mother who had shaped the days of his youth in the
ways he should walk, but who departed this life in the most edifying
sentiments of piety when he was quite a young man, scarcely twenty-one
years of age. His next care was for his younger brother and five
sisters, towards whom he acted as a father, and for whose education
and welfare he was now able to provide in a suitable manner. His own
early struggles for education had taught him to appreciate it highly
in others, and he secured to his brother and sisters advantages which
disciplined their youthful years and qualified them for the duties of
after life. Later on he took his brother into partnership with him, but
that brother and all his sisters, save one, Mrs. Thomas, who lives near
Mexico, in Oswego County, New York, died many years ago. Mr. Kelly,
as already mentioned, owed to his mother’s care the blessing of right
training in his youth, and the consequent formation of his character
in the practice of the Christian virtues. An old New Yorker who knew
his mother, has told the writer she was a thorough disciplinarian,
and taught her children to love the truth in all things, and that the
beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. His mother died before
her son’s brilliant success began; she who had equipped him for the
battle stayed not to enjoy its triumphs.
At this period of his life John Kelly had not a dream of ever entering
upon a political career. In this respect he resembled another
distinguished New York statesman, the late Daniel S. Dickinson, who
began life as a mechanic, became a woollen manufacturer, and, beyond
being an earnest Democrat, passed several years with no inclination
whatever for the field of politics. It was true, however, that even
from his boyhood John Kelly displayed rare capacity to lead others, and
he now found himself, in spite of preoccupation in the manufacturing
business, constantly called on by neighbors seeking his advice and
instinctively following him. He was once asked by a newspaper reporter
if he ever sowed wild oats in his youth. “That may be called a leading
question,” he replied; “I was in a gambling-house once in my life,
but it was on business—not to gamble. And I never was in a house of
assignation in my life. I don’t know what the inside of such a house
is.” “It is charged against you,” the reporter said, “that you attend
church very regularly, and that you do it for effect.” “Well,” Mr.
Kelly said, “that’s a queer charge to make against any one. I had a
good careful mother who sent me to the Sunday-school regularly. I have
been to church regularly ever since. Under such training, no doubt, I
ought to be a great deal better Christian than I am. I suppose I have
been very wicked sometimes, and yet I can’t recall any time when I have
been wilfully bad.”[3]
“During Tweed’s ascendancy in New York politics,” said the well
informed Utica editor, in the article already quoted from, “Mr.
Kelly retired from Tammany Hall. Between him and Tweed the bitterest
hostility always existed. It is pleasant to believe that Kelly’s
superior virtue made him distasteful to the burly champion of
corruption. But that does not account for their feud. During the glow
of his guilty glory, Tweed’s ambition was to secure the endorsement of
men of unimpeachable character. By turning back a page in political
history, we might show how well he succeeded. But he could not make
terms with John Kelly, for Mr. Kelly would accept no position but that
of ruler. William M. Tweed swore a solemn oath that John Kelly never
should control Tammany Hall—and we all know what came of it.”
Shortly before his death, while he was a prisoner in Ludlow Street
Jail, Tweed was interviewed by a New York _Herald_ reporter, and gave
with undeserved freedom his impressions of the leading men he had known
in politics. “Whom,” said the reporter, “do you regard as the most
successful city politician of New York in the thirty years of your
experience?” “John Kelly,” said Tweed. “He was always a plodder—always
saving something and learning something. He stood well with the
Church—rather a high class man in the Church—and got his support there.
I never did but one thing for him; twenty years ago I helped him beat
Walsh for Congress.” “When you came to politics,” asked the reporter,
“did you ever remotely entertain the idea of such proportions as the
Ring afterwards assumed?” “No,” said Tweed. “The fact is, New York
politics were always dishonest—long before my time. There never was a
time when you couldn’t buy the Board of Aldermen, except now. If it
wasn’t for John Kelly’s severity, you could buy them now.”[4]
The reporter of the _World_, with an odd sort of unconscious humor in
his interview, not unlike Tweed’s commercial valuation of piety as an
investment, so naively suggested by the words, “rather a high class man
in the Church,” bluntly told Mr. Kelly that it was not only complained
against him that he attended Church, but that he aggravated the matter
by attending it very regularly. No wonder Kelly should have thought
that a “queer charge” to make against him.
An old citizen of New York, acquainted with him from his youth, is
authority for the statement that Kelly was as fully a leader of the
young men of his neighborhood when he first grew up, as he became of
the Tammany Democrats at a later day. He was of a social disposition,
and while always temperate in his habits, he would go occasionally,
after getting through with his day’s work, to the Ivy Green, a famous
hostelry in those days in Elm street, kept by Malachi Fallon, who went
to California in 1849, and which was afterward kept by John Lord. The
Ivy Green, like Stonehall’s in Fulton Street, was a popular gathering
place for politicians and their friends. John Clancy, Peter B. Sweeny,
Matthew Brennan, David C. Broderick, and many other active young
fellows, who afterwards became prominent in politics, were in the habit
of visiting the Ivy Green, and John Kelly would sometimes call there
for a chat with the boys. Less frequently, but once in a great while,
Kelly and Broderick, the latter being a warm friend of Kelly’s, also
dropped in at the Comet, another place of resort of the same kind, kept
by Manus Kelly on Mott street, where they would meet the same jolly
crowd that frequented the Ivy Green, and whither came quite often the
celebrated Tom Hyer, Yankee Sullivan, and other champions of the manly
art of self-defence. “But,” said the writer’s informant, “none of these
fighting men ever intermeddled with Kelly or Broderick. The best of
them would have had his hands full if he had done so.” Poor Broderick,
who afterwards became a United States Senator from California, finally
fell in a duel in that State.
Young Kelly was very fond of athletic sports. He was a good oarsman,
was often on the water, and pulled a shell with the best. There was a
crack company called the Emmet Guards in New York, when Kelly was a
young man. He was first lieutenant of this company during the captaincy
of James McGrath, upon whose death he was elected captain, and being
fond of military matters, he brought his company to a high state of
efficiency. Captain Kelly retained the command until he was elected
Alderman in 1853. The Old Volunteer Fire Department was then in its
zenith. He was a member of it, and one of its leading spirits. While
he was in the Fire Department an incident occurred which has exercised
a restraining influence over him through life. At a fireman’s parade,
while he was in line of March, a burly truckman attempted to drive
through the ranks. Kelly was near the horses and kept them back. The
driver sprang to the ground, and made a furious attack on the young
fire laddie. He received in return a blow from Kelly’s fist which ended
the battle by rendering the truckman insensible. He was borne to a
neighboring doctor’s office, and was resuscitated with much difficulty.
For two or three days the truckman was disabled. Kelly, who had acted
strictly on the defensive, nevertheless was greatly distressed for his
antagonist. He had been unaware of the almost phenomenal force of his
own blow, and his tremendous hitting power was first fully revealed to
him by the effect of his fist on the truckman. To one of his intimate
friends he declared that he deeply regretted this affair, but that,
perhaps, it had served a good purpose, for he was now unalterably
resolved never again as long as he lived to strike any man with all his
force, no matter what the provocation might be.
His herculean strength and known courage have sometimes been seized
upon by opponents for disparaging paragraphs in the newspapers, just
as the combativeness of Andrew Jackson, in his earlier days, was
often commented upon to his detriment. But as there was nothing mean
or domineering in the temper of Jackson, any more than there is in
Kelly, only the high and unconquerable spirit that felt “the rapture of
the strife,” Old Hickory did not suffer in popular esteem on account
of his early scrimmages. In 1828 Dr. James L. Armstrong, one of his
old opponents in Tennessee, gathered up and published as a political
nosegay a list of nearly one hundred pistol, sword and fist fights in
which Jackson had been engaged between the ages of 23 and 60. Jackson
replied to this by promising to cudgel Armstrong on sight. The courage
of some men is so conspicuous that they are recognized at once as
heroes. In his admirable life of Nelson, Southey relates many acts of
apparently reckless intrepidity on the part of the hero of Trafalgar;
but, as it was with Jackson, so was it with Nelson, his conduct was
not the result of real recklessness; it was not the courage of the
bull-dog, the maddened bull or the enraged lion, but rather the play
of a spirit which rose with the occasion, the exhibition of a will not
to be appalled by dangers common natures shrink from. It was such a
courage the poet had in view when he made Brutus say—
“Set honor in one eye, and death i’ the other,
And I will look on both indifferently.”
On several occasions in his career John Kelly has exhibited this
heroic quality. Through his agency, at a stormy political convention
in New York, when several of the most notorious partisans of Tweed,
while clutching to retain the power which had been wrested from their
fallen chief, were beaten at every point, a resort to brute force
was threatened, and several of the vilest desperadoes in the city
were despatched from the hall to waylay Kelly and take his life as he
passed along the street. Some of his friends divined the purpose of
the would-be-assassins, and admonished Mr. Kelly of their movements. A
carriage was sent for, and he was urged to get into it and be driven
home, in order to avoid the bravos. Augustus Schell, Horace F. Clark,
and several other friends tried to persuade him to enter the carriage.
Mr. Kelly replied that he generally went home by a certain route,
pointing to the street where the thugs were in hiding, and it was his
intention to go that way then. If anybody wanted to kill him, the
opportunity would be given, as he would neither seek nor avoid such
miscreants. “My friends,” he quietly remarked, “if you run away from
a dog, he will be very apt to bite you.” He went out of the hall and
approached the corner, keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the sinister
group gathered there like beasts of prey, passed on, and was not
molested. Determined to take his life, but deterred by cowardice when
Kelly confronted them, the villains made a plan to secrete themselves
in a small unoccupied frame house on Lexington Avenue, between 33d
and 34th streets, on the following morning, and to shoot him as he
went down town to business. An old man living in the neighborhood,
by the merest accident overheard a part of the muttered plot of the
conspirators, and saw them early next morning enter the deserted house.
He was a friend of Mr. Kelly, and suspected that he was to be attacked.
He went out, and meeting Mr. Kelly, told him of his suspicion, and
pointed out the house in which the men were concealed. John Kelly
crossed the street, and proceeded deliberately to enter the house and
room from which the Ring desperadoes in dumb astonishment watched his
approach. Thinking they had been betrayed—for it must have flashed upon
them that Kelly would not have the madness to do such a thing unless
he had assistance at hand—the terrified assassins fled from the rear of
the house as he entered at the front. He went into the room they had
just quit, and saw four men running through a vacant lot as fast as
their legs could carry them into the next street. Alone and absolutely
unassisted, save by the cool judgment and unflinching courage which
eminently distinguish his character, he adopted this hazardous line of
conduct as the most effective way of confounding a gang of murderous
ruffians, and stamping out their cowardly plots. He succeeded. The Ring
men beset his path no more.
Those acquainted with John Kelly are aware that there is a humorous
side to his character, and that he possesses mimic powers of a high
order. It is not generally known, but it is a fact however, that
when he first grew up to manhood he was one of the organizers of an
Amateur Dramatic Association, which had its headquarters in a hall
at the corner of Elm and Canal Streets, and which sent forth several
professional actors who afterwards attained eminence on the stage.
Charles Place, Samuel Truesdale, Mr. Godwin, John Kelly and other well
known citizens of New York were members of this company; and several
great tragedies, notably some of the now neglected ones of Shakespeare,
were essayed by these aspiring youths. “Many of Mr. Kelly’s friends,”
said a writer in September, 1880, in a New York weekly paper called
_The Hour_, “will be surprised to learn that he once, in the character
of Macbeth, sturdily challenged Macduff to ‘lay on’; that as the
sable-clad Hamlet he was accustomed to win applause as he expressed
the wish that his ‘too, too solid flesh would melt’; and that his
passionate outbursts as the jealous Moor in ‘Othello’, were wont to
bring down the house. Equally astonished will they be to hear that, in
the versatility of his genius, he was as much a favorite in ‘Toodles’
and other of Burton’s eccentric comedy parts as in the higher walk of
tragedy.”
In Kelly’s younger days religious persecution and hostility to
foreigners had begun to be shown in not a few localities. This
intolerant spirit, which had lain dormant in America from the days of
Washington to the end of Monroe’s administration, broke forth with
great fury in several parts of the country after the close of the
“era of good feeling.” The fathers of the Republic were liberal men
who kept this spirit at a distance. Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore,
the friend of Washington, was chosen by a unanimous resolution of
Congress, and in compliance with the desire of the clergy and laity
of all denominations, to deliver the first anniversary address upon
the father of his country after his death. The address was delivered
February 22, 1800, and is still preserved. Bishop Cheverus of Boston,
afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, France, was the warm
personal friend of John Adams, and when the Bishop was about to build
a church in Boston, the first name on the list of his subscribers was
that of President Adams. When Bishop Dubois, the friend of Lafayette,
was driven into exile by the French Revolution, he found a place of
refuge in Virginia, a home in the private residence of James Monroe,
afterwards President, friends in his host and Patrick Henry, and,
having no church of his own, a chapel in the capitol at Richmond
which the legislature of Virginia placed at his disposal to be used
for the offices of religion. These halcyon days of Christian charity
and toleration in America were now about to be rudely interrupted. In
1831, the same Dubois, then Bishop of New York, had the mortification
to see his church of St. Mary’s, in that city, set on fire by an
incendiary and burned down. The first Catholic college in the State
of New York was built in the neighborhood of Nyack, on the Hudson, in
1833, by this prelate. Religious bigotry incited by Rev. Dr. Brownlee
and other enemies of the Catholics, soon applied the torch to the
structure and reduced it to ashes. In 1834 the Ursuline Convent at
Charlestown, Massachusetts, was burned and sacked. Two or three years
later an anti-Catholic mob formed the design of burning St. Patrick’s
Cathedral in New York. A pious churchman, Bishop Dubois was also a
man of courage. If the civil authorities would not stay the fury of
the mob, he determined to protect himself, and defend his church
from destruction. John Kelly, then a well grown youth and a favorite
of Bishop Dubois, was selected by him on account of his prudence
and extraordinary courage as a sort of _aid de-camp_ to Lawrence
Langdon, the leader of a large body of citizens who assembled in the
vicinity of the Cathedral for defense. The streets were torn up for a
considerable distance; paving stones, wagons and omnibuses were used
for barricades; armed men filled the Cathedral, and the walls of the
adjoining grave-yard glistened with swords and bayonets. The Bishop
enjoined the utmost forbearance upon his people, and gave them positive
orders not to begin the assault, and to avoid collision with the mob
until the Cathedral might be attacked. Conspicuous in carrying out the
orders of the leader, and in directing the movements of the defending
party, and maintaining constant communication between Langdon and
his followers, was young John Kelly of the Fourteenth Ward. The mob
approached through Broadway, a dense body extending for several blocks,
marching in solid line and filling the street from one side to the
other. They turned into Prince Street and approached the Cathedral.
Kelly carried the order at this moment for the defenders to lie down
in the grave-yard and keep perfectly quiet. It was night, and the mob
marched on until stopped by the barricades, when they found the whole
neighborhood in a state of siege. The ample preparations to receive
them disconcerted the church-burners, and the silence of the defending
party, of whose presence they had become aware, made the incendiaries
wary and apprehensive. They faltered and lost heart, and slunk away
in the direction of the Bowery, terrified from their wicked design by
the intrepid courage of one old Bishop. They passed along the sidewalk
adjoining the burial-ground in lines six deep, with frightful oaths
upon their lips, while the men in the city of the dead remained as
still and motionless as the tenants of the tombs below, but every
finger was on a trigger, and every heart beat high with resolve to
defend St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the graves of their fathers from
sacrilege and desecration. Driven by cowardly fear from the church, the
mob crossed to the Bowery, wrecking the houses of several Irishmen,
and the tavern called the Green Dragon, on the way, and finally their
fury was let loose on the private residence of Mr. Arthur Tappan, the
famous abolitionist, whose windows and doors they broke, and otherwise
injured his property. Thus by the prudence of the Cathedral defenders
in avoiding collision with the mob, a terrible sacrifice of life
was escaped, and young John Kelly, inspired by the counsel of the
Bishop and his own coolness and sagacity, played a prominent part in
preventing bloodshed and saving the Cathedral.
The prejudice against foreigners, an outgrowth of that aversion which
the old Federal party leaders manifested towards Frenchmen, Germans
and Irishmen, indeed to all foreigners except Englishmen, continued to
increase in bitterness after the close of the “era of good feeling.” A
political party was at last organized on a platform of disfranchisement
of the Irish and “the Dutch,” the latter being a commonly used misnomer
for the Germans. This party took the name of Native Americans. It
advocated laws prohibiting Irish and German emigrants from landing on
these shores, and practical denial of the right of suffrage, or of
holding office, to those already here. For some years this unwise and
unstatesmanlike policy of exclusion and proscription seriously checked
the tide of emigration from Europe. Had the Native Americans prevailed,
instead of the fifty odd millions of population in the United States
to-day, there would have been less than twenty millions, and the wealth
and greatness of the country would be diminished in like proportion.
Instead of being, perhaps, the greatest nation in the world, the United
States would occupy the position of a fourth or fifth-rate power,
a little but not much ahead of Canada on the north, and the South
American governments on the south.
As the greater number of the foreign population were Roman Catholics,
a sectarian element was infused into the new party, and with bigotry
superadded to a widespread jealousy of foreigners, the Native American
party soon signalized itself by burning down Catholic churches and
colleges, and by bloody chance-medleys and deliberate riots with German
and Irish adopted citizens. In the year 1844 these disturbances reached
a climax. A terrible riot occurred that year in Philadelphia, in which
many lives were sacrificed, and the Catholic church of St. Augustine
was laid in ashes by the mob. The scenes in that city bore resemblance
to some of the godless excesses in Paris during the reign of terror. To
be a foreigner was to brave death, to be a Catholic to court martyrdom
in free America.
It was at this juncture the Native American party in the city of New
York again threatened the destruction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The New York _Courier and Enquirer_, and _Evening Express_ fanned
the passions of the people to white heat by appeals to sectarian and
race prejudices. But there was a man then at the head of the Catholic
Church in New York who possessed many of the qualities for which
Andrew Jackson was distinguished. Bishop Hughes belonged to the tribe
of the lions. He perceived that it was the favorite policy of the
Native Americans to make New York city an anti-foreign stronghold.
There, Catholics and adopted citizens were powerful; crushed there,
it would be an easy matter to prostrate them everywhere. In the month
of May, 1844, the Native American leaders in New York, invited their
brethren of Philadelphia, who had most distinguished themselves in the
deplorable events in that city, to visit New York, and to bring with
them emblems of the horrible scenes in Kensington at the time of the
burning of the church of St. Augustine, the better to fire the New York
heart. A delegation of Philadelphians promised to accept the invitation
and carry on the emblems. A public reception, and a procession through
the streets, were to take place. It became evident that the purpose of
this sinister movement was to re-enact in New York the scenes which
had just disgraced Philadelphia. Bishop Hughes took decisive action.
He admonished Catholics to keep away from public meetings and unusual
gatherings of the populace, and, to avoid in a special manner, all
disturbers of the peace. That great man, in looking over the city for
prudent and conservative persons to aid him in carrying out his policy
of forbearance, found no one on whom he more implicitly relied, and
who proved more effective in the emergency than John Kelly. Bishop
Hughes and John Kelly’s father were natives of the same county and
neighborhood in Ireland. Between the Bishop and his fellow countryman’s
son a warm friendship existed. They were both endowed with minds of
singular originality and power, both natural leaders of men, both
possessed a remarkable hold on the respect and affections of the
people. Among the Whigs, at this perilous juncture, Bishop Hughes
also found several powerful supporters, chief among whom were William
H. Seward, Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. As the time drew near for
the Native American demonstration, popular excitement and fears of a
terrible riot increased. Bishop Hughes now called on the Mayor of the
city, Robert H. Morris, and advised him not to allow the demonstration
to take place. “Are you afraid that some of your churches may be
burned?” the Mayor asked. “No, sir, but I am afraid that some of yours
will be burned,” the Bishop said; “we can protect our own. I came to
warn you for your own good.” “Do you think, Bishop, that your people
would attack the procession?” “I do not; but the Native Americans want
to provoke a Catholic riot, and if they can do it in no other way, I
believe they would not scruple to attack the procession themselves, for
the sake of making it appear that the Catholics had assailed them.”
“What, then, would you have me do?” asked the Mayor. “I did not come to
tell you what to do,” the Bishop said. “I am a Churchman, not the Mayor
of New York; but if I were the Mayor, I would examine the laws of the
State and see if there were not attached to the police force a battery
of artillery, and a company or so of infantry, and a squadron of horse;
and I think I should find that there were; and if so, I should call
them out. Moreover, I should send to Mr. Harper, the Mayor-elect, who
has been chosen by the votes of this party. I should remind him that
these men are his supporters; I should warn him that if they carry out
their designs there will be a riot; and I should urge him to use his
influence in preventing the public reception of the delegates.”[5]
This characteristic stand of Bishop Hughes had its effect. No public
reception of the church burners took place, but for nearly two weeks
the Cathedral was guarded every night, and the mob which threatened its
destruction was kept at bay. During those dark days Bishop Hughes found
John Kelly to be one of the most prudent young men in the Cathedral
parish, energetic in danger, conservative in conduct, and always
responsive to the call of duty. His manly bearing then may be said to
have laid the foundation of that enduring confidence in his judgment,
and respect for his character, which the Bishop ever afterwards felt
and expressed. Mr. Kelly was not a zealot, and there is not a tinge
of bigotry in his nature. He was then, as he is now, a true liberal,
and has always declared that religion and politics should be kept as
wide apart as the poles. But he is the foe of intolerance, and while
despising the arts of the demagogue, no man in New York has done more
to uphold foreign citizens in their rights, and to emancipate the
ballot-box from persecution on the one hand, and fraudulent voting on
the other.
The Native American party finally developed into the notorious
Know-Nothing movement, the party of grips, and signs, and
dark-lanterns. In many of the election districts of New York no
foreigner dared approach the polls. The primaries were even worse,
and were conducted in defiant disregard of the election laws. In John
Kelly’s ward, which was a fair illustration of every other ward in the
city, any Irishman or German risked his life by going to the polls.
Gangs of repeaters and thugs, as far as they could, kept all foreigners
from the primaries. These tools of the Know-Nothing leaders would fill
the room where the election was held, take possession of the line,
crowd out their opponents by threats or violence, return again and
again, force their way, after passing the spot where the votes were
received, once more into the line, and repeat the farcical act of
voting a second and third time, keeping up the villany until relieved
by another squad of repeaters, who continued to enact the same scenes
until the close of the polls. A friendly police force connived at these
rascalities, and openly backed up the repeaters and ballot-box stuffers
whenever a determined citizen, in the exercise of his rights, resisted
expulsion from the line, or attempted to defend himself from assault.
So great became the terror these law-breakers inspired, that opposition
to them was practically at an end. This state of affairs was more
humiliating, since the majority of voters in the Fourteenth Ward were
known to be Democrats. John Kelly protested against these outrages as a
private citizen, and at a meeting of Democrats declared his intention
of attending the next primary election in the Fourteenth Ward, then
near at hand, and exercising his right of voting at all hazards. Those
who knew the man knew this was not an idle boast, but many tried to
dissuade him from the rash attempt, which, if persisted in, would
likely enough cost him his life.
The primary election was to take place in a hall, long since removed,
in the march of the city, which then stood on the corner of Grand and
Elizabeth Streets. The part of the room for the inspectors’ seats was
protected by a high partition, and a box desk, like a bank teller’s
window, with a hole only large enough for a voter’s hand to be put
through in handing his ballot, to the receiving inspector, was placed
at one side of the partition. A narrow path in the main room, fenced in
by high rails, to allow but one voter to approach at a time, afforded
the only means of access to the polls. When the voter handed in his
ballot, that was the last he saw of it, as the partition effectually
shut off observation from without. As a matter of fact it was the
practice of the inspector to throw the vote into a waste basket, on
the floor at his feet, if it was not of the approved sort. This mode
of taking the _vox populi_ had long been in practice, and was not
only an open evasion of the statute, which provided for the presence
of watchers for the several parties, whose legal right it was to see
that all had a fair opportunity to vote, but it was adopted with
the deliberate purpose of protecting the swindling inspectors from
detection while engaged in the nefarious work of making way with legal
ballots. On the day of the election John Kelly was early on the scene,
and was accompanied by a large number of the lawful voters of the ward,
who appointed him as their watcher at the polls. He and his friends
forced their way into the hall, and as the black hole, behind which
the frauds were practiced, was there in violation of the statute, it
was straightway demolished, in order to secure at least a semblance of
fairness to the voting about to take place. The Know-Nothings were at
first struck dumb with astonishment at this bold step on the part of
the Democrats. To defend themselves from violence was as much as the
latter had previously attempted. Rage soon took the place of surprise,
and a furious attack was made on those who had removed the box screen
from about the inspectors’ desk. John Kelly, who had been recognized
as a Democratic watcher, was also set upon by the gang of ballot-box
stuffers. A fierce scuffle ensued. But the Democrats outnumbered the
Know-Nothings, and drove them from the hall. The leaders of the latter
party, uttering vows of vengeance, declared they would soon return
with reinforcements, and make short work of Kelly and his party. They
repaired to the ship-carpenters’ quarters at the foot of Delaney
street, and soon the news of their discomfiture was spread abroad among
the thousands of mechanics in that part of the city. These mechanics
were, for the most part, engaged in ship building, for those were
the days when New York’s famous clipper ships whitened the seas and
brought back cargoes of commerce from all parts of the world. The
ship carpenters constituted a formidable body of athletic men, whose
influence at elections was cast on the side of the Know-Nothings. It
was not long before a body of these mechanics, over a thousand in
number, was drummed up in Delaney street and vicinity, and marshalled
by notorious Know-Nothing bullies, the crowd started for the hall in
Grand street to inflict condign punishment upon John Kelly and the
Fourteenth Ward Democrats, who had shown the unprecedented audacity of
interfering with the usual Know-Nothing methods of carrying elections
in that ward. In the meantime the Democrats had not been idle, but had
recruited their own ranks to prepare for the threatened attack. Soon
the two parties came into collision, and a desperate encounter took
place. But for a second time the victory remained with the Democrats.
The Know-Nothings, unaccustomed to serious opposition, were not
prepared for it now, and advanced in a promiscuous manner, expecting
to bear down opposition and to have everything their own way. The
Democrats presented a compact front, and fought in companies of ten
each. The hall was cleared a second time of the assailing party. A
great multitude was now gathered in the streets threatening to tear
down or burn the building, when the Democrats suddenly sallied forth
with the precision of veterans, and struck the Know-Nothing mob at a
dozen different points simultaneously. The mob being gathered from
all parts of the city greatly exceeded the Democrats in numbers, but
the sub-divisions of tens on the part of the latter worked so well
that their onslaught became irresistible. Soon the mob were flying
in all directions, some seeking refuge in stores, others in private
houses, and the rest were pursued into and through the Bowery with
great impetuosity. “The hour was come and the man.” None knew it better
than the Know-Nothing Dirk Hatteraicks of New York. The effect of that
day’s work in the Fourteenth Ward was felt all over the city of New
York for years afterwards, and its immediate consequence was to break
the backbone of Know-Nothingism in the ward in which it occurred.
Thereafter Democrats, whether native or foreign born, were not afraid
to appear at election places. The moral effect was salutary. The timid
were reassured, the indifferent were roused into interest in public
affairs, and fair elections became more frequent in New York city.
The one strong man who had worked this revolution was John Kelly. The
Irish and German population looked upon him as their deliverer, and
from that day forth the Know-Nothing power on the East side of the city
dwindled into insignificance, and no further attempts to stifle the
voice of the majority took place. Kelly became identified in the minds
of the adopted citizens of all nationalities, but especially of the
Irish, who were chiefly aimed at, as their champion. Henceforth it was
not possible for this strong man, this born leader of his fellows, to
follow the bent of his inclinations and remain in a private station.
He was elected to the Board of Aldermen, and next to the Congress of
the United States. The Know-Nothings, by their excesses in New York,
had raised up an adversary to their oath-bound secret organization who
was destined to accomplish as much in the Empire State for equal rights
to all citizens, native and foreign-born, as Alexander H. Stephens, in
a similar contest, wrought out in Georgia, and Henry A. Wise, by his
great anti-Know-Nothing campaign accomplished in Virginia.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Utica Observer_, Sept. 16, 1879.
[2] _Utica Observer_, Sept. 16, 1879.
[3] New York _World_, Oct. 18, 1875.
[4] New York _Herald_ October 26, 1877.
[5] Clarke’s Lives of the Deceased Bishops, vol. ii., pp. 111-112.
CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT COMMONER OF GEORGIA—SPEECH OF A. H. STEPHENS—HENRY A. WISE
OF ACCOMAC—HENRY WINTER DAVIS—HIS CHARACTER—JOHN KELLY MEETS HIM
IN DEBATE—KELLY’S STANDING IN CONGRESS—HIS CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY
LEWIS CASS, BY A. H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT—THE ERA OF
KNOW-NOTHINGISM—KELLY’S PART IN ITS OVERTHROW.
The future historian of the United States, when he comes to
treat of that extraordinary movement in American politics called
Know-Nothingism, will not do justice to the subject unless he
assigns the post of honor in the work of its overthrow as a national
organization to Stephens of Georgia, Wise of Virginia, and Kelly of New
York. A glance at the great work accomplished by these three men is all
that can be attempted in this memoir.
“True Americanism,” said Alexander H. Stephens in his memorable
Anti-Know-Nothing contest in Georgia in 1855, “as I have learned it, is
like true Christianity—disciples in neither are confined to any nation,
clime or soil whatever. Americanism is not the product of the soil;
it springs not from the land or the ground; it is not of the earth,
or earthy; it emanates from the head and the heart; it looks upward,
and onward and outward; its life and soul are those grand ideas of
government which characterize our institutions, and distinguish us from
all other people; and there are no two features in our system which so
signally distinguish us from all other nations as _free toleration_ of
religion and the doctrine of _expatriation_—the right of a man to throw
off his allegiance to any and every other State, prince or potentate
whatsoever, and by _naturalization_ to be incorporated as a citizen
into our body politic. Both these principles are specially provided
for and firmly established in our Constitution. But these American
ideas which were proclaimed in 1789 by our ‘sires of ’76’ are by
their ‘sons’ at this day derided and scoffed at. We are now told that
‘naturalization’ is a ‘humbug,’ and that it is an impossibility. So did
not our fathers think. This ‘humbug’ and ‘impossibility’ they planted
in the Constitution; and a vindication of the same principle was one of
the causes of our second war of independence. Let no man, then, barely
because he was born in America, presume to be imbued with real and true
‘Americanism,’ who either ignores the direct and positive obligations
of the Constitution, or ignores this, one of its most striking
characteristics. An Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, or Russian, can be
as thoroughly American as if he had been born within the walls of the
old Independence Hall itself. Which was the ‘true American,’ Arnold or
Hamilton? The one was a native, the other an adopted son.”[6]
Mr. Stephens had declined to be a candidate for Congress in 1855,
and the Know-Nothings taunted him with cowardice, because, they
said, if he should run he knew he was doomed to defeat. His letter
on Know-Nothingism to Judge Thomas, from which the preceding extract
is quoted, was denounced furiously by the Know-Nothings, who
loudly predicted that the letter would prove to be his political
winding-sheet. These taunts were published throughout the country, and
induced Mr. Stephens to change his mind, and re-enter the field as
a candidate for the Thirty-fourth Congress. In a speech at Augusta,
Georgia, in which he announced this purpose, he said: “I have heard
that it has been said that I declined being a candidate, because a
majority of the district were Know-Nothings, and I was afraid of being
beaten. Now, to all men who entertain any such opinion of me, I wish to
say that I was influenced by no such motive. I am afraid of nothing on
earth, or above the earth, or under the earth, except to do wrong—the
path of duty I shall ever endeavor to travel, ‘fearing no evil,’ and
dreading no consequences. Let time-servers, and those whose whole
object is to see and find out which way the popular current for the
day and hour runs, that they may float upon it, fear or dread defeat
if they please. I would rather be defeated in a good cause than to
triumph in a bad one. I would not give a fig for a man who would shrink
from the discharge of duty for fear of defeat. All is not gold that
glitters, and there is no telling the pure from the base until it is
submitted to the fiery ordeal of the crucible and the furnace. The best
test of a man’s integrity and the soundness of his principles is the
furnace of popular opinion, and the hotter the furnace the better the
test. I have traveled from a distant part of the State, where I first
heard these floating taunts of fear—as coming from this district—for
the sole and express purpose of announcing to you, one and all, and
in this most public way to announce to the other counties, without
distinction of party, that I am again a candidate for Congress in this
district. The announcement I now make. My name is hereby presented to
the district; not by any convention under a majority or a two-third
rule—but by myself.
“I know, fellow-citizens, that many of you differ with me upon those
exciting questions which are now dividing—and most unhappily, too, as
I conceive—dividing our people. It is easy to join the shouts of the
multitude, but it is hard to say to a multitude that they are wrong.
I would be willing to go into one of your Know-Nothing lodges or
councils, where every man would be against me, if I could be admitted
without first having to put myself under obligations never to tell
what occurred therein, and there speak the same sentiments that I shall
utter here this night. Bear with me, then, while I proceed.[7] It is to
exhibit and hold up even to yourselves the great evils and dangers to
be apprehended from this ‘new,’ and, I think, most vicious political
‘monster,’ that I would address you; and against the influences of
which I would warn and guard you, as well as the rest of our people.
While the specious outside title of the party is that ‘Americans shall
rule America,’ when we come to look at its secret objects as they leak
out, we find that one of its main purposes is, not that ‘Americans
shall rule America,’ but that those of a particular religious faith,
though as good Americans as any others, shall be ruled by the rest.
“But it is said the ‘proscription’ is not against a religious but a
political enemy, and the Roman Church is a political party, dangerous
and powerful. Was a bolder assertion, without one fact to rest upon,
ever attempted to be palmed off upon a confiding people? The Roman
Church a political party! Where are its candidates? How many do they
number in our State Legislatures or in Congress? What dangers are
they threatening, or what have they ever plotted? Let them be named.
Was it when Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, established the colony of
Maryland, and for the first time on this continent established the
principle of free toleration in religious worship? Was it when Charles
Carroll, a Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence? But it
is said that great danger is to be apprehended from the Catholics
because of a ‘secret order’ amongst them, known as Jesuits. ‘No one,’
says a Know-Nothing writer, ‘knows, or possibly can know, the extent
of their influence in this country. One of them may eat at your
table, instruct your children, and profess to be a good Protestant,
and you never suspect him. Their great aim is to make their mark in
America. Perjury to them is no sin, if the object of it be to spread
Catholicism or acquire political influence in the country.’ Whether
this be true of the Jesuits or not I cannot say. But I submit it to
the consideration of candid minds how far it is true of the new order
of Know-Nothings, which is now so strenuously endeavoring to make its
mark in America, and to gain political influence in the country, not
only by putting down all foreigners, and all native-born citizens who
may be of Catholic faith, but also all other native-born citizens who
will not take upon their necks the yoke of their power. Do not hundreds
and thousands of them go about daily and hourly, denying that they
belong to the order, or that they know anything about it? May they
not, and do they not ‘eat at your table,’ attend your sick, and some
of them preach from your pulpits, and yet deny that they know anything
about that ‘order’ which they are making such efforts to spread in the
land? I do not say all of them do this; but is it not common with the
‘order,’ thus by some sort of equivocation and slippery construction,
to mislead and deceive those with whom they converse? There is
nothing worse that can be said of any man or any people indicating a
destruction of morals or personal degradation, than that ‘the truth
is not in him.’ It is the life and soul of all the virtues, human or
divine. Tell me not that any party will effect reformation of any
sort, bad as we now are in this land, which brings into disrepute this
principle upon which rests all our hopes on earth, and all our hopes
for immortality. And my opinion is that the Protestant ministers of
the Gospel in this country, instead of joining in this New England,
puritanical, proscriptive crusade against Catholics, could not render a
better service to their churches, as well as the State, in the present
condition of morals amongst us, than to appoint a day for everyone of
them to preach to their respective congregations from this text, ‘What
is truth?’ Let it also be a day set aside for fasting, humiliation and
prayer—for repentance in sackcloth and ashes—on account of the alarming
prevalence of the enormous sin of lying! Was there ever such a state of
general distrust between man and man before? Could it ever have been
said of a Georgia gentleman, until within a few months past, that he
says so and so, but I don’t know whether to believe him or not? Is it
not bringing Protestantism, and Christianity itself, into disgrace when
such remarks are daily made, and not without just cause, about Church
communicants of all our Protestant denominations—and by one church
member even about his fellow-member? Where is this state of things to
lead to, or end, but in general deception, hypocrisy, knavery, and
universal treachery?
“Was ever such tyranny heard of in any old party in this country as
that which this new ‘order’ sets up? Every one of them knows, and
whether they deny it or not, there is a secret monitor within that
tells them that they have pledged themselves never to vote for any
Roman Catholic to any office of profit or trust. They have thus pledged
themselves to set up a religious test in qualifications for office
against the express words of the Constitution of the United States.
Their very organization is not only anti-American, anti-republican,
but at war with the fundamental law of the Union, and, therefore,
revolutionary in its character, thus silently and secretly to effect
for all practical purposes a change in our form of government. And what
is this but revolution? Not an open and manly rebellion, but a secret
and covert attempt to undermine the very corner-stone of the temple of
our liberties.
“Whenever any government denies to any class of its citizens an equal
participation in the privileges, immunities, and honors enjoyed by all
others, it parts with all just claim to their allegiance. Allegiance
is due only so long as protection is extended; and protection
necessarily implies an equality of right to stand or fall, according
to merit, amongst all the members of society, or the citizens of
the commonwealth. The best of men, after all, have enough of the
old leaven of human nature left about them to fight when they feel
aggrieved, outraged and trampled upon; and strange to say, where men
get to fighting about religion they fight harder, and longer and more
exterminatingly than upon any other subject. The history of the world
teaches this. Already we see the spirit abroad which is to enkindle
the fires and set the fagots a blazing—not by the Catholics, they are
comparatively few and weak; their only safety is in the shield of
the constitutional guarantee; minorities seldom assail majorities;
and persecutions always begin with the larger numbers against the
smaller. But this spirit is evinced by one of the numerous replies to
my letter. The writer says: ‘We call upon the children of the Puritans
of the North, and the Huguenots of the South, by the remembrance of
the fires of Smithfield, and the bloody St. Bartholomew, to lay down
for once all sectional difficulties,’ etc., and to join in this great
American movement of proscribing Catholics. What is this but the
tocsin of intestine strife? Why call up the remembrance of the fires
of Smithfield but to whet the Protestant appetite for vengeance? Why
stir up the quiet ashes of bloody St. Bartholomew, but for the hope,
perhaps, of finding therein a slumbering spark from which new fires
may be started? Why exhume the atrocities, cruelties, and barbarities
of ages gone by from the repose in which they have been buried for
hundreds of years, unless it be to reproduce the seed, and spread
amongst us the same moral infection and loathsome contagion?—just as it
is said the plague is sometimes occasioned in London by disentombing
and exposing to the atmosphere the latent virus of the fell disease
still lingering in the dusty bones of those who died of it centuries
ago. Fellow citizens, Fellow Protestants, Fellow Americans—all who
reverence the constitution of your country—I entreat you, and I envoke
you to give no listening ear to such fanatical appeals.
“When the principles of the Constitution are disregarded, when those
‘checks and restraints,’ put in it as Mr. Madison has told us, for
‘a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and
delusions,’ are broken down and swept away, when the whole country
shall have been brought under the influence of the third degree of this
Know-Nothing order, if that time shall ever come, then, indeed may the
days of this Republic, too, be considered as numbered.
“I wish to say something to you about this third degree, the union
degree, as it is called. For under this specious title, name or guise,
the arch-tempter again approaches us, quite as subtly as under the
other of ‘Americans shall rule America.’ The obligation taken in
this degree is ‘to uphold, maintain and defend’ the Union, without
one word being said about the Constitution. Now, as much as we all,
I trust, are devoted to the Union, who would have it without the
Constitution? This is the life and soul of it—this is its animating
spirit. It is this that gives it vitality, health, vigor, strength,
growth, development and power. Without it the Union could never have
been formed, and without it it cannot be maintained or held together.
Where the animating principle of any living organism is extinguished,
this is death, and dissolution is inevitable. You might just as well
expect that the component parts of your bodies could be held together
by some senseless incantations after the vital spark has departed, as
that this Union can be held together by any Know-Nothing oaths when
the Constitution is gone. Congress is to be done away with, except in
so far as its members may be necessary, as the dumb instruments for
registering the edicts of an invisible but all-powerful oligarchy. Our
present Government is to be paralyzed by this boa-constrictor, which is
now entwining its coils around it. It is to be supplanted and displaced
by another self-constituted and secretly organized body to rise up in
its stead, a political ‘monster,’ more terrible to contemplate than the
seven-headed beast spoken of in the Apocalypse.
“I have seen it stated in the newspapers by some unknown writer, that
my letter to Col. Thomas will be my political winding-sheet. If you
and the other voters of the Eighth Congressional District so will it,
so let it be; there is but one other I should prefer—and that is the
Constitution of my country; let me be first wrapped in this, and then
covered over with that letter, and the principles I have announced this
night; and thus shrouded I shall be content to be laid away, when the
time comes, in my last resting-place without asking any other epitaph
but the simple inscription carved upon the headstone that marks the
spot—‘Here sleep the remains of one who dared to tell the people they
were wrong when he believed so, and who never intentionally deceived a
friend, or betrayed even an enemy.’”[8]
Thus spoke Alexander H. Stephens, Georgia’s greatest statesman, of
the pernicious tendencies of the Know-Nothing party. On that speech
he ran for Congress and was elected by three thousand majority.
Know-Nothingism was thus slain in Georgia. Since the death of Mr.
Stephens some scribbler with a talent for forgery has taken the
quotation marks from the paragraph about the Jesuits in the foregoing
speech, affixed Mr. Stephens’s name to it, and sent it on its rounds
through the press as the declared opinion of the dead statesman
concerning the followers of Loyola. Mr. Stephens quoted the paragraph
from a Know-Nothing writer, not to approve the attack on the Jesuits,
but for the opposite purpose of showing it applied to the Know-Nothings
themselves. No man in this country could use the weapon of retort
with more effect than Alexander H. Stephens, and his remarks on the
paragraph in question afford a favorable instance of his power in that
line. That this stupid calumny on the great man who battled so nobly
for the equal rights of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles,
foreign born and native Americans, should have been palmed off on the
public, is less surprising than that it should have found its way into
certain Catholic newspapers, in the columns of at least one of which
the present writer read it shortly after the death of Mr. Stephens.
The ever memorable conflict in Virginia of 1855, between the
Know-Nothings and Democrats, was led on the part of the latter by
the gallant Henry A. Wise. That conflict was one of great national
magnitude. If the Know-Nothings, theretofore victorious, had then
succeeded, it is likely a civil war precipitated by religious
fanaticism would have followed, not to be conducted between the States,
as later unfortunately occurred, but between citizens of the same
cities, and towns and neighborhoods throughout the Union, with a fury
to make humanity shudder—in every sense of the word a civil war. The
Virginia election of that year was, therefore, watched with intense
interest by the whole American people, and a feeling of feverish
excitement was everywhere visible. Henry A. Wise, the uncompromising
enemy of the Know-Nothings, was named as the Democratic candidate
for Governor of Virginia. Never was such a canvass before. He went
everywhere, pouring out fiery eloquence in the Western Mountains, in
the Blue Ridge that milks the clouds, upon the Potomac, lovely River of
Swans, on the Rappahannock, the Piankatank, Mob Jack Bay, James River,
Elizabeth River, down to the North Carolina line; and wherever he went
this second Patrick Henry stirred the people’s hearts as they had not
been stirred before. One of the best stump speeches ever heard in this
country was made by Mr. Wise at Alexandria. He had declared hostility
to the Know-Nothings in a letter to a citizen of Virginia, written
September 18, 1854.
In that letter he said: “I am a native Virginian; my ancestors on
both sides for two hundred years were citizens of this country and
this State—half English, half Scotch. I am a Protestant by birth, by
baptism, by intellectual belief, and by education and by adoption. I
am an American, in every fibre and in every feeling an American; yet
in every character, in every relation, in every sense, with all my
head and all my heart, and all my might, I protest against this secret
organization of native Americans and of Protestants to proscribe Roman
Catholic and naturalized citizens. As early as 1787 we established a
great land ordinance, the most perfect system of eminent domain, of
proprietary titles, and of territorial settlements, which the world
had ever beheld to bless the homeless children of men. It had the very
house-warming of hospitality in it. It wielded the logwood axe, and
cleared a continent of forests. It made an exodus in the old world, and
dotted the new with log-cabins, around the hearths of which the tears
of the aged and the oppressed were wiped away, and cherub children were
born to liberty, and sang its songs, and have grown up in its strength
and might and majesty. It brought together foreigners of every country
and clime—immigrants from Europe of every language and religion, and
its most wonderful effect has been to assimilate all races. Irish
and German, English and French, Scotch and Spaniard, have met on the
Western prairies, in the Western woods, and have peopled villages and
towns and cities—queen cities, rivalling the marts of Eastern commerce;
and the Teutonic and Celtic and Anglo-Saxon races have in a day mingled
into one undistinguishable mass—and that one is American. The children
of all are crossed in blood in the first generation, so that ethnology
can’t tell of what parentage they are—they all become brother and
sister Jonathans. As in the colonies, as in the revolution, as in the
last war, so have foreigners and immigrants of every religion and
tongue contributed to build up the temple of American law and liberty
until its spire reaches to heaven, whilst its shadow rests on earth. If
there has been a turnpike road to be beaten out of the rocky metal, or
a canal to be dug, foreigners and immigrants have been armed with the
mattock and the spade and if a battle on sea and land had to be fought,
foreigners and immigrants have been armed with the musket and the blade.
“We can name the very hour of our birth as a people. We need recur to
no fable of a wolf to whelp us into existence. As a nation we are but
seventy-eight years of age. Many persons are now living who were alive
before this nation was born. And the ancestors of this people about
two centuries only ago were foreigners, every one of them coming to
the shores of this country to take it away from the aborigines, and to
take possession of it by authority either directly or derivatively of
Papal Power. His Holiness the Pope was the great grantor of all the
new countries of North America. Foreigners in the name of the Pope and
Mother Church took possession of North America, to have and to hold the
same to their heirs against the heathen forever. And now already their
descendants are for excluding foreigners, and the Pope’s followers
from an equal enjoyment of this same possession. So strange is human
history. Christopher Columbus! Ferdinand and Isabella! What would they
have thought of this had they foreseen it when they touched a continent
and called it theirs in the name of the Holy Trinity, by authority
of the keeper of the keys of Heaven, and of the great grantor of the
empire and domain of earth? What would have become of our national
titles to northeastern and northwestern boundaries, but for the plea of
this authority, valid of old among all Christian powers?”
Writing thus in September, 1854, Mr. Wise, although he had been a Whig
years before, was nominated for Governor by the Democrats in December
of the same year. In his famous Alexandria speech, before discussing
Know-Nothingism, he told the people some practical truths explanatory
of the decadence of the prosperity of Virginia, of the causes producing
it, and the remedies to be applied. “You have,” he said, “the bowels of
your Western mountains rich in iron, in copper, in coal, in salt, in
gypsum, and the very earth is so rich in oil that it sets the rivers in
flame. You have the line of the Alleghany, that beautiful Blue Ridge
which stands placed there by the Almighty, not to obstruct the way of
the people to market, but placed there in the very bounty of Providence
to milk the clouds, to make the sweet springs which are the sources
of your rivers. And at the head of every stream is the waterfall
murmuring the very music of your power to put spindles in motion. And
yet commerce has long ago spread her sails and sailed away from you;
you have not as yet dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at
your own hearths; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows
worthy of gods in the iron foundries. You have not yet spun more than
coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own
slaves. You have had no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have
relied alone on the single power of agriculture; and such agriculture!
Your sedge patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only
source of wealth has scarred the very bosom of mother earth. Instead
of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase
the stump-tailed steer through the sedge patches to procure a tough
beef-steak. You are in the habit of discussing Federal politics; and
permit me to say to you, very honestly and very openly, that next to
brandy, next to card playing, next to horse-racing, the thing that has
done more harm to Virginia than any other in the course of her past
history, has been her insatiable appetite for Federal politics. She has
given all her great men to the Union. Her Washington, her Jefferson,
her Madison, her Marshall, her galaxy of great men she has given to the
Union. Richmond, instead of attending to Richmond’s business, has been
too much in the habit of attending to the affairs of Washington city,
when there are plenty there, God knows, to attend to them themselves.
* * “Puritanism,” said Mr. Wise, has disappeared, and we have in place
of it Unitarianism, Universalism, Fourierism, Millerism, Mormonism—all
the odds and ends of isms—until at last you have a grand fusion of all
those odds and ends of isms in the _omnium gatherum_ of isms called
Know-Nothingism. Having swept the North, the question was: How can this
ism be wedged in in the South? And the devil was at the elbow of these
preachers of ‘Christian politics’ to tell them precisely how.” [At this
point Mr. Wise was interrupted by cat-calls, derisive cheers and other
manifestations of the Know-Nothing element of the meeting.] “There were
three elements in the South,” continued the speaker, “and in Virginia
particularly, to which they might apply themselves. There is the
religious element, the 103,000 Presbyterians, the 300,000 Baptists, the
300,000 Methodists of Virginia. Well, how were they to reach them? Why,
just by raising a hell of a fuss about the Pope!
“Cæsar’s kingdom is political, is a carnal kingdom. And I tell you
that if I stood alone in the State of Virginia, and if priestcraft—if
the priests of my own Mother Church dared to lay their hands on the
political power of our people, or to use their churches to wield
political influence, I would stand, in feeble imitation it may be, but
I would stand, even if I stood alone, as Patrick Henry stood in the
Revolution, between the parsons and the people. These men, many of
whom are neither Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists,
Congregationalists, Lutherans, nor what not—who are men of no religion,
who have no church, who do not say their prayers, who do not read their
Bible, who live God-defying lives every day of their existence, are
now seen with faces as long as their dark-lanterns, with the whites
of their eyes turned up in holy fear lest the Bible should be shut
up by the Pope! You tell the people that Catholics never gave aid to
civil liberty; that they never yet struck a blow for the freedom of
mankind. Who gave you alliance against the crown of England? Who but
that Catholic king, Louis XVI. He sent you from the Court of Versailles
Lafayette, the boy of Washington’s camp, a foreigner who never was
naturalized, but who bled at the redoubt of Yorktown, when Arnold, a
native, like Absalom proved traitor.
“And, Sir, before George Washington was born, before Lafayette wielded
the sword, or Charles Carroll the pen for his country, six hundred and
forty years ago, on the 16th of June, 1214, there was another scene
enacted on the face of the globe, when the general charter of all
charters of freedom was gained, when one man, a man called Stephen
Langton, swore the Barons of England for the people against the power
of the King—swore the Barons on the high altar of the Catholic Church
at St. Edmundsbury, that they would have Magna Charta or die for it.
The charter which secures to every one of you to-day trial by jury,
freedom of the press, freedom of the pen, the confronting of witnesses
with the accused, and the opening of secret dungeons—that charter was
obtained by Stephen Langton against the King of England, and if you
Know-Nothings don’t know who Stephen Langton was, you know nothing sure
enough. He was a Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. I come here not to
praise the Catholics, but I come here to acknowledge historical truths,
and to ask of Protestants—what has heretofore been the pride and boast
of Protestants—tolerance of opinion in religious faith.
“All that I have to say to the Democracy is that you want active,
earnest organization. Remember that if these Know-Nothings hold
together they are sworn compact committees of vigilance. Go to work
then. Organize actively everywhere. Appoint your vigilance committees,
but take especial care that no Know-Nothings are secretly and unknown
to you upon them. Be prepared. I have gone through most of Eastern
Virginia, and in spite of their vaunting I defy them to defeat me.
There are Indians in the bushes, but I’ll whack on the bayonet, and
lunge at every shrub in the State till I drive them out. I tell them
distinctly there shall be no compromise, no parley. I will come to no
terms. They shall either crush me, or I will crush them in this State.”
Mr. Wise, though his health was impaired, conducted his campaign with
extraordinary energy, travelling about 3000 miles, to every point
in the State, and speaking fifty times before the election. He was
triumphantly elected Governor of Virginia, receiving upwards of ten
thousand majority over his Know-Nothing competitor. The impartial
verdict of history is that Henry A. Wise did more to kill the
Know-Nothing party than any other man in the United States.
Many Know-Nothings were elected to Congress from the Northern States,
and a few from the Southern States. In the Senate and House of
Representatives there were seventy-eight members of that party in 1855.
Conspicuous among them all, on account of his prejudices no less than
his ability, was Henry Winter Davis, a member of the Thirty-fourth and
Thirty-fifth Congresses from Baltimore.
The celebrated controversy upon the floor of Congress between Davis
and John Kelly on the Know-Nothing question entitles the Know-Nothing
leader to some notice here.
Henry Winter Davis was born at Annapolis, Maryland, August 16, 1817,
and received his education at Kenyon College, Ohio, where he was
graduated in 1837. His father was an Episcopalian minister. Young
Davis was sent to the University of Virginia in 1839 by his aunt, a
Miss Winter of Alexandria, Virginia, and entered upon his preparatory
legal studies at that institution. He afterwards opened a law office
at Alexandria, where he struggled with poverty for some years, making
but little mark in that community, save as an occasional contributor
of political essays to the Alexandria _Gazette_, but applying himself
closely to his studies, and becoming an able lawyer. Reverdy Johnson
recognized his talents and advised him to remove to Baltimore, where
he would find a wider field for their display. Mr. Davis acted on this
advice, and made Baltimore his home. He had married a Miss Cazenove
of Alexandria, who soon died, and subsequently he married a daughter
of John S. Morris, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Baltimore. Mr.
Morris opposed the marriage on account of Davis’s peculiar political
views.
Henry Winter Davis was a man of genius, with a natural bent for an
opposition leader. In person he was handsome, in manners haughty and
reserved, in demeanor elegant; and he possessed the gift of a fine
oratory, both logical and persuasive. A morose temper and a cynical
and cold nature served to heighten the picturesque effect of his
character, and to make him delight in fomenting discord and violence.
“The ignorant Dutch and infuriated Irish, let them beware lest they
press the bosses of the buckler too far,” is said to have been a form
of expression he applied to Germans and Irishmen in the course of
one of his invectives on the stump in Baltimore. He soon became an
acknowledged leader of the Know-Nothings, and no man knew better how
to fire the rage and incite to acts of bloodshed the Plug Uglies of
that city. Had Davis lived during the era of the Alien and Sedition
Laws, his genius probably would have placed him at the head of that
conspiracy, and his name would have become famous in history. He was a
contemner of the sanctions of authority. The sacredness of institutions
handed down from generation to generation unimpaired by the ravages of
time, awakened no sense of reverence in the mind of this iconoclast.
Burke’s beautiful allusion to the bulwarks of civil society which have
been stamped with the “mysterious virtue of wax and parchment,” must
have appeared to him only as a figure of rhetoric or a ridiculous
fetich. How contemptuously he regarded the warning of Washington to his
countrymen in the Farewell Address against entangling alliances with
the nations of Europe is discovered in the following passage, found at
page 367, of a book written by Mr. Davis, called “The War of Ormuzd and
Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century.”
“They who stand with their backs to the future and their faces to the
past, wise only after the event, and refusing to believe in dangers
they have not felt, clamorously invoke the name of Washington in their
protest against interference in the concerns of Europe. With such it
is useless to argue till they learn the meaning of the language they
repeat.”
With many similar sophistries he declared it would be wise policy on
the part of the United States to take part in European controversies,
and pretended to find warrant in the Monroe doctrine for this radical
reversal of Washington’s maxim. But that Davis was a demagogue in
the offensive sense of the word is evident from the fact that the
very advice of General Washington against foreign influence, which he
scouted at in his book, was soon after relied upon by the same Davis as
his chief argument in Congress for the exclusion of foreigners from the
rights and privileges of citizenship. In the course of a Know-Nothing
speech, delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6th, 1857,
he said: “Foreign allies have decided the government of the country.
* * * * Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of
having the balance of power held by foreigners. Recall the warnings of
Washington against foreign influence, here in our midst, wielding part
of our sovereignty; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall
the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and
power.” The insincerity of Davis is further shown from his conduct in
regard to the Republican party. He denounced that party in the speech
above quoted from, saying, among other things, “the Republican party
has nothing to do and can do nothing. It has no future. Why cumbers
it the ground?” In the course of a few years he became a Republican,
and notwithstanding his former denunciation of them, swallowing at a
single breath the most ultra tenets of that party. Consistent only in
his inconsistencies, he again prepared to bolt from the Republican
organization shortly before his death, and was the author of the
celebrated Wade-Davis Manifesto in 1864, against the renomination of
Abraham Lincoln. Once having been invited by a literary society of
the University of Virginia to deliver the annual address before that
body, he took up some eccentric line of political conduct before the
commencement day occurred, and compelled the society in self-respect
to revoke its invitation. He affected the Byronic manner, and the
contagion spread to other members of Congress. Roscoe Conkling, after
he entered the House of Representatives, is said to have become a
great admirer of Henry Winter Davis, and to have fallen into his
peculiarities of style as a public speaker. Mr. Conkling’s famous
parliamentary quarrel with Mr. Blaine soon after occurred.
Such was the man the Know-Nothings recognized as their leader in the
House of Representatives when John Kelly entered that body. In the
early part of 1857 Mr. Kelly replied to a sneering assault of Mr.
Davis on the Irish Brigade, and in the debate which followed not only
proved himself able to cope with the Know-Nothing leader, but in a
running debate with Mr. Kennett of Missouri, Mr. Akers of the same
State, and Mr. Campbell of Ohio, who entered the lists against him,
Kelly established his reputation as one of the best off-hand debaters
in Congress.
A few extracts from the speeches on the occasion, which are taken
from the _Congressional Globe_, will furnish an idea of the style of
the speakers, and the merits of the controversy. In referring to the
Presidential election of 1856, and the victory of the Democrats, Mr.
Davis said: “The Irish Brigade stood firm and saved the Democrats from
annihilation, and the foreign recruits in Pennsylvania turned the fate
of the day. They have elected, by these foreigners, by a minority
of the American people, a President to represent their divisions.
The first levee of President Buchanan will be a curious scene. He is
a quiet, simple, fair-spoken gentleman, versed in the by-paths and
indirect crooked ways whereby he met this crown, and he will soon know
how uneasy it sits upon his head. Some future Walpole may detail the
curious greetings, the unexpected meetings, the cross purposes and
shocked prejudices of the gentlemen who cross that threshold. Some
honest Democrat from the South will thank God for the Union preserved.
A gentleman of the disunionist school will congratulate the President
on the defeat of Mr. Fillmore. The Northern gentlemen will whisper
‘Buchanan, Breckenridge and Free Kansas’ in the presidential ear,
and beg without scandal the confirmation of their hopes. * * But how
to divide the spoils among this motley crew—ah! there’s the rub.
Sir, I envy not the nice and delicate scales which must distribute
the patronage amid the jarring elements of that conglomerate, as
fierce against each other as clubs in cards are against spades. * *
The clamors of the foreign legion will add to the interest of the
scene. They may not be disregarded, for but for them Pennsylvania was
lost, and with it the day. Yet what will satisfy these indispensable
allies, now conscious of their power? That, Sir, is the exact
condition of things which will be found in the ante-chamber—exorbitant
demands, limited means, irreconcilable divisions, strife, disunion,
dissolution—whenever the President shall have taken the solemn oath of
office and darkened the doors of the White House.
“The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil
against which the American party protested. Foreign allies have decided
the government of the country—men naturalized in thousands on the eve
of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have
forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious
influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast
multitudes of foreign born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American
interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies,
to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact,
accomplished the present result.”
Mr. Kelly replied to the Know-Nothing leader. He said: “I rise for the
purpose of submitting as briefly as I can a few remarks in reply to
the very extraordinary speech of the honorable member from Baltimore
city. In the great abundance of his zeal to assail the President of
the United States, the gentlemen from Baltimore could not permit so
good an occasion to pass without hurling his pointless invectives
against my constituents, in terms and temper which demand a reply. * *
* His ambition seems restless and insatiable, for he cannot conclude
his speech without trying a bout with what he denominates the ‘Irish
Brigade.’ What particular class of our fellow-citizens this fling
was aimed at, I am at a loss to conjecture. There is a body known to
history under that appellation—a body of historical reputation, whose
deeds of bravery on every battle-field of Europe have long formed
the glowing theme for the poet’s genius and the sculptor’s art. But,
sir, they were too pure to be reached by the gentleman’s sarcasm—too
patriotic to be measured by his well conned calculation of the ‘loaves
and fishes’ which have unfortunately slipped through his fingers—too
brave to be terrified by the menaces or insults of those who would
justify brutal murder—the murder of defenceless women and helpless
children—the sacking of dwellings and the burning of churches, under
the insolent plea of ‘summary punishment.’ Sir, the Irish Brigade of
history was composed of patriots whom oppression in the land of their
birth had driven to foreign countries, to carve out a home and a name
by their valor and their swords. The brightest page of the history of
France is that which records the deeds and the names of the ‘Irish
Brigade.’ France, however, was not the only country in which the
Irish Brigade signalized its devotion to liberty, and its bravery in
achieving it. Sir, the father of your own navy was one of that glorious
band of heroes who shed lustre on the land of their birth, while they
poured out their life-blood for the country of their adoption. John
Barry was a member of the Irish Brigade in America—he, who when tempted
by Lord Howe with gold to his heart’s content, and the command of a
line-of-battle-ship, spurned the offer with these noble words: ‘I have
devoted myself to the cause of my adopted country, and not the value
or command of the whole British fleet could seduce me from it.’ He,
who when hailed by the British frigates in the West Indies and asked
the usual questions as to the ship and captain, answered: ‘The United
States ship Alliance, saucy Jack Barry, half-Irishman, half-Yankee.
Who are you?’ Sir, saucy Jack Barry, as he styled himself, was the
first American officer that ever hoisted the Stars and Stripes of our
country on board a vessel of war. So soon as the flag of the Union was
agreed on, it floated from the mast-head of the Lexington, Captain John
Barry. But Captain John Barry was not the only member of the ‘Irish
Brigade’ whose name comes down to us with the story of the privations
and bravery of our revolutionary struggle. Colonel John Fitzgerald
was also a member of that immortal band. Of this member of the ‘Irish
Brigade’ I will let the still living member of Washington’s own
household, the eloquent and venerable Custis speak:
“‘Col. Fitzgerald,’ says G. W. P. Custis in his memoirs of
Revolutionary Heroes, ‘was an Irish officer in the Blue and Buffs,
the first volunteer company raised in the South, in the dawn of the
Revolution, and commanded by Washington. In the campaign of 1778 and
retreat through the Jerseys, Fitzgerald was appointed aid-de-camp to
Washington. At the battle of Princeton occurred that touching scene,
consecrated by history to everlasting remembrance. The American
troops, worn down by hardships, exhausting marches and want of food,
on the fall of their leader, that brave old Scotchman, General Mercer,
recoiled before the bayonets of the veteran foe. Washington spurred
his horse into the interval between the hostile lines, reigning up
with the charger’s head to the foe, and calling to his soldiers, ‘Will
you give up your General to the enemy?’ The appeal was not made in
vain. The Americans faced about and the arms were leveled on both
side—Washington between them—even as though he had been placed as a
target for both. It was at this moment Colonel Fitzgerald returned
from conveying an order to the rear—and here let us use the gallant
veteran’s own words. He said: ‘On my return, I perceived the General
immediately between our line and that of the enemy, both lines leveling
for the decisive fire that was to decide the fortunes of the day.
Instantly there was a roar of musketry followed by a shout. It was the
shout of victory. On raising my eyes I discovered the enemy broken
and flying, while dimly, amid the glimpses of the smoke, was seen
Washington alive and unharmed, waving his hat and cheering his comrades
to the pursuit. I dashed my rowels into my charger’s flanks and flew to
his side, exclaiming, ‘Thank God, your Excellency’s safe.’ I wept like
a child for joy.’”
“This is what history tells us of another member of the ‘Irish
Brigade.’ Now, Sir, if the gentleman from Maryland will only suppress
his horror, and listen with patience, I will tell him what tradition
adds concerning this brave aid-de-camp of Washington—this bold and
intrepid Irishman. After peace was proclaimed and our independence
achieved—after the Constitution had been put in operation, and
Washington filled the office of chief-magistrate of the nation—he sent
for his old companion in arms, then living in Washington’s own county
of Fairfax, and invited him to accept the lucrative office of collector
of the customs for the port of Alexandria. This tradition will be found
to correspond with the records of the Treasury Department, on which may
be read the entry that Colonel John Fitzgerald was appointed collector
of the customs at Alexandria, Virginia, by George Washington, President
of the United States, April 12, 1792. Thus we find that the Father of
his country, were he now living, would come under the denunciations
of the gentleman from Maryland, and his Know-Nothing associates, for
conferring office on one of the ‘Irish Brigade.’
“The gentleman from Baltimore city professes great devotion to the
memory and fame of the illustrious Clay. He was the gentleman’s
oracle while living. Hear his eloquent voice coming up to us as if
from his honored grave. He, too, is speaking of the ‘Irish Brigade,’
and in his warm, honest and manly soul the only words which he can
find sufficiently ardent to express his feelings are ‘bone of our
bone, and flesh of our flesh.’ ‘That Ireland,’ exclaims the orator of
America in a speech delivered as late as 1847, ‘which has been in all
the vicissitudes of our national existence our friend, and has ever
extended to us her warmest sympathy—those Irishmen who in every war
in which we have been engaged, on every battle-field from Quebec to
Monterey, have stood by us shoulder to shoulder and shared in all the
perils and fortunes of the conflict.’ If anything, Mr. Chairman, were
wanting after this to ennoble the ‘Irish Brigade,’ and give it its
proper and constitutional position in the family of American freemen,
it is the obloquy of His Excellency Henry J. Gardner of Massachusetts,
and the Hon. Henry Winter Davis, of Baltimore.
“I now propose, Mr. Chairman, to address myself for a few moments to
the honorable gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akers), who is, I learn, a
minister of the gospel. While his friend from Baltimore city exhausts
all his powers upon the ‘Irish Brigade,’ he, with an equal stretch of
fancy, but a much vaster stride over space, obtrudes himself at a bound
into the cabins of the Irish peasantry, far away across the Atlantic.
Hailing from a State first settled by Catholics, whose chief city was
named by its pious founders after the sainted crusader King of France,
the gentleman from Missouri calls on you to hear the Irish priest
beyond the Atlantic holding converse with his enslaved parishioners.
Mr. Chairman, from boyhood to manhood, I have known more priests of
native and foreign birth than Mr. Akers ever saw. I have seen them at
the cradle of infancy; I have been with them at the death-bed of old
age; but, sir, my ears are only those of a man; I never heard a word
of the speeches the gentleman from Missouri puts into their lips. Is it
not known, sir, to every candid and impartial traveler who has visited
that beautiful but ill-fated Island that the only true, devoted, loyal,
self-sacrificing friend that the Irish peasant has in the land of his
birth is the Catholic priest? He stands between him and the oppression
of his haughty, blood-stained rulers; and when he cannot ameliorate his
condition he bears on his own shoulders his full share of the burden.
In suffering and misfortune he administers to him the consolations of
his religion and the counsel of a friend; he sympathizes with him in
all his trials, and when the minister of a strange faith, armed with
all the terrors of the law, sends his bailiffs and his minions to seize
the very bed on which his sick wife is preparing to meet the God of
her fathers—when under the maddening spectacle a momentary burning for
revenge perhaps seizes upon his agonized soul—the priest is by his side
whispering in his ear ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord’; takes him by
the hand, provides with his last penny for the safe removal of the sick
and the helpless, and leaves them not until the hour of their trial
is passed—a trial that will continue to harrass and oppress the Irish
Catholic so long as the national Church of England prolongs a life of
debauchery and vice on the plunder and pillage of the Irish peasant.”
Mr. Kelly made a deep impression on the House. The Know-Nothing
members held a consultation while he was speaking, and decided that
he must be interrupted and overcome if possible by a running fire of
cross-questions. Luther M. Kennett of Missouri, formerly Mayor of St.
Louis, and Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio, Chairman of the Committee of Ways
and Means, were selected to open fire upon him. Mr. Kennett began by
saying, “Will the gentleman from New York allow me to interrupt him for
a moment?”
Mr. Kelly: “Certainly, sir.”
Mr. Kennett: “I see, Mr. Chairman, that my colleague to whom the
gentleman refers, is not in his seat. I will, therefore, with his
permission, say that I think he has unintentionally misinterpreted my
colleague’s remarks. The inference which I drew from the argument of my
colleague on this floor was that he was opposed to the consolidation of
political and religious questions and to the proscribing of any man on
account of his religious belief—and such are the principles and policy
of the American Party. My colleague said further that the American
Party was the first party that ever introduced that principle in their
political platform.”
Mr. Kelly: “I must insist, Mr. Chairman, with all deference to the
gentleman from Missouri, that I have not misunderstood the remarks of
his colleague. I listened to his speech, as I have already said, with
attention, and read it very carefully as it is printed in the _Globe_,
and as it now appears in that paper to speak for itself. While I admit
an apparent effort on the part of the gentleman from Missouri to _look_
liberal, I must be permitted to remark that he seems no way solicitous
to _talk_ liberal, and an unbiased perusal of the gross libel which he
has published in the _Globe_ concerning the Irish Catholic priesthood
will lead his colleague, however reluctantly, to the same conclusion.
But the gentleman only acts out the principles and ritual of the
midnight order, which conceals all it can, and denies everything.”
Mr. Kennett: “I will answer the gentleman more fully in my own speech,
and will here state that I am ready to answer any question he may
propound.”
Mr. Kelly: “Then I ask the gentleman did he or does he now give his
adhesion to the platform of principles adopted by the American Party in
Philadelphia in February, 1856? If so, does not the gentleman by his
own showing concur in the principle of proscribing Catholics because of
their religious belief? I allude to the fifth article of the American
platform.”
Mr. Kennett: “I will answer the gentlemen by referring him to the
platform laid down by the American Party of my State which proscribes
no man because of his religious belief. And now let me further say
that the gentleman is in error when he asserts that this debate was
commenced by my colleague. It was introduced by Mr. Bowie of Maryland,
in his animadversions upon his colleague, Mr. Davis.”
Mr. Kelly: “The gentleman certainly is in error, for Mr. Davis himself
in his wild foray against the ‘Foreign Brigade,’ unnecessarily and
unfoundedly attributed the defeat of his party in the last election to
the ‘religious influences’ which brought so many alien citizens to the
polls. The gentleman has not, however, yet answered my question.”