N'ATION'AL
POETEAIT GALLEEY
or
INCLUDINa
OEATORS, STATESMEN, NAVAL AND MILITARY HEROES, JURISTS, AUTHORS, ETC., ETC.,
^rom ©rigiual full f^u||t| fahtiuu^ hi
ALONZO CHAPPEL.
WITH
BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVES,
BY
EVERT A. DUYCKINCK,
EDITOB OP "OTOLOP^DIA OP AMEKIOAN LITERATCBE," Eia
IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL. IL
NEW YOEK: JOHNSON, FRY & COMPANY,
27 BEEKMAN STREET.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by lOHNSON, FRY & COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.
4
CONTENTS.
VOLUME TWO.
BIOGRAPHIES.
PAGE
LVIII.— JOHN QUINCT ADAMS, ^
LIX.— DAVID PORTER,
LX JOHN JACOB ASTOR
LXI JAMES KENT,
LXn JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, ^"^
LXm.— DEWITT CLINTON
LXIV.— OLIVER HAZARD PERRY,
LXV— JAMES LAWRENCE,
LXVL— THOMAS MACDONOUGH
LXVII JOHN RANDOLPH,
LXVin.— WASHINGTON IRVING,
LXIX.— ABBOTT LAWRENCE, - ^^'^
LXX.— ANDREW JACKSON,
, LXXI.— HENRY CLAY,
LXXII JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN, l'^^
LXXm.— DANIEL WEBSTER, 1'^^
LXXIV THOMAS HART BENTON 19"
LXXV JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, 199
LXXVL— WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 211
LXXVII.— WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, 221
LXXVin.— ZACHARY TAYLOR, ; 231
LXXIX.— JAMES KNOX POLK, 247
LXXX.— RUFUS CHOATE, 253
LXXXI.-JOHN ANTHONY QUITMAN, 264
LXXXH.— STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS, 273
LXXXIH JOHN J. CRITTENDEN, 277
LXXXIV.— WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 280
LXXXV.— ELISHA KENT KANE, 284
LXXXVI.— CHARLES WILKES, 298
LXXXVn.— WILLIAM JENKINS WORTH, " 301
LXXXVHI.— EDWIN VOSE SUMNER, 308
LXXXIX— MARTIN VAN BUREN, 310
iU
iv CONTENTS.
PAoa
XC— SALMON PORTLAND CHASE, 320
XCL— JOHN TYLER, 322
XCn — JOHN CHARLES FREMONT, 329
XCm— FRANKLIN PIERCE 333
XCIV.— ANDREW HULL FOOTE, 34O
XCV — JAMES BUCHANAN, 343
XCVI.— MILLARD FILLMORE, 347
XCVII.— NATHANIEL LYON, 361
XCVIU.— LEWIS CASS, 355
xcrx.— ORMSBY Mcknight mitchel 362
C— JOHN E. WOOL, 366
CI.— ABRAHAM LINCOLN 373
CII.— WINFIELD SCOTT, 376
CHI— GEORGE BANCROFT, 396
CIV EDWARD EVERETT, 400
CV.— GEORGE BRINTON McCLELLAN, , 408
CVI.— HENRY WAGER HALLECK 412
CVH.— AMBROSE EVERETT BURNSIDE, 416
CVm JOSEPH HOOKER, 419
CIX BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, 423
ex.— JAMES SHIELDS, 428
CXI.— THOMAS FRANCIS DUPONT, 432
CXIL— DAVIE GLASCOB FARRAGUT, 436
CXIIL— DAVID D. PORTER, 440
CXrV.— HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, 444
CXV.— WILLIAM STARKE ROSECRANS, 451
CXVL— ULYSSES S. GRANT, 456
CXVH.— NATHANIEL PRENTISS BANKS, 459
CXVIIL— ANDREW JOHNSON, 462
CXIX.— WILLIAM CULLEN RRYANT, 464
5. a . Ai
From' the. ori.gm/zl painting Chappel. zn. the. possessw^t of &ie p/jMisA^rs.
JoTinsoii.Try Co, Publisliers.l^Tew York. ^'izered ai:cordin^ effo^fr Congress AJ3 ISff/. hy Johns ff*uF7y &Cb,in. t'm clerks a/Hce o^thc distrwC court far tJu; JOiU^iorn, disiria of N'mr'idr'k.
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JOHN QUINCY ADAMS..
We liave already traced tlie lineage of Jolin Qnincy Adams. He comes nobly heralded upon tlie scene of our Revolutionary annals. His stirring re- lative, tlie zealous and always consist- ent Samuel Adams, the very front and seed-plot of obstinate rebellion, had tauo-ht the mechanics of Boston to resist, and his eloquence had reached the ears of men of influence throughout the colony and nation. His father, John Adams, thirty-two years old at the time of his birth, deeply grounded in the history of constitutional liberty and with the generous flame of freedom burning brightly in his bosom from boyhood, was already prepared for that warm, enlightened, steady career of patriotism — never swerving, always true to his land — which bore him aloffc, the chosen representative of New Eng- land to the Congress of his country, and ultimately to her highest authority ; while the nation in turn adopted him her express image in the important ne- gotiations at three of the great courts of Europe.
Nor should we forget the tender, heroic mother, the child of sensibility and genius, hardened into the maturity and perfection of the female character by the fire of the Revolution, the gen- tle Abigail, in whose fair friendship n.— 1
and sympathies and feminine graceful ness posterity has an ever-living parti- cipation through the delightful pages of her " Correspondence."
Of that family, in a house adjoining the old paternal Braintree home, in the present town of Quincy, at this immi- nent moment of the Revolution, John Quincy Adams, the eldest son, was born July 11, 1767. He derived his baptismal name from his great-grand- father, John Quincy, the time-honored representative of Quincy in the Colo- nial Legislature. The name was given by his grandmother, as her husband was dying. The incident was not for- gotten by the man. He recurred to it with emotion, fortified by a sense of duty. In a sentence cited by his recent biographer, the venerable Josiah Quin- cy, he says : " This fact, recorded by my father at the time, is not without a moral to my heart, and has connected with that portion of my name a charm of mingled sensibility and devotion. It was filial tenderness that gave the name — it was the name of one passing from earth to immortality. These have been through life, perpetual admoni- tions to do nothing unworthy of it."
It is interesting to trace the progress of the child in his mother's correspond- ence, from the infant lullaby which 'sh*^
6
JOHN QTJINCY ADAMS.
prattles to her husband, when " our daughter rocks hira to sleep with the song, ' Come, papa, come home to bro- ther Johnny.' The boy has just en- year, and his father is on his way to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, when she writes: "I have taken a very great fondness for reading Eollin's 'Ancient History,' since you left me. I am determined to go through with it if possible, in these my days of solitude. I find great plea- sure and entertainment from it, and I have persuaded Johnny to read me a page or two every day, and hope he will, from his desire to oblige me, en- tertain a fondness for it." The child had some instruction at the villao-e school, but he was especially taught by his father's law students, in the house. As the pressure of war increases, this resource is broken up. The anxious mother writes, " I feel somewhat lonely. Mr. Thaxter is gone home. Mr. Rice is going into the army as captain of a company. We have no school. I know not what to do with John." In the summer of this year, IT 7 5, " stand- ing," we are told, "with her on the summit of Penn's Hill, he heard the cannon booming from the battle of Bunker's Hill, and saw the flames and smoke of burning Charlestown. Dur- ing the siege of Boston he often climbed the same eminence alone, to watch the shells and rockets thrown by the Ame- rican army." ^ A letter from the boy himself, two years later, then at the age of ten, exhibits his youthful precocity. " I love," he writes to his father, " to
receive letters very well — much better than I love to wiite them. I make but a poor figure at composition ; my head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after birds' eggs, play and tri- fles, till I get vexed with myself Mam- ma has a troublesome task to keep me steady, and I own I am ashamed of myself I have but just entered the third volume of Smollett, thouo-h I had designed to have got half through it by this time. I have determined this week to be more diligent, as Mr. Thax- ter will be absent at court, and I can- not pursue my other studies. I have set myself a stint, and determined to read the third volume half out." He asks for directions to proportion his time between play and writing, and in a postscript says, " Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe the most remark- able occurrences I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind." ^
In this letter we may read the aged man backward, from his steadfast, methodical desk in the House of Representatives, to the little boy at his mother's side in Braintree. The "childhood shows the man as morn- ing shows the day." He was an old- fashioned, studious youth, nurtui'ed amidst grave scenes of duty, early in harness, a resolute worker from his cra- dle to his grave.
The next year the boy is taken with his father, on board the frigate Boston, on his first mission to France ; followed, in her first letter after the separation,
' Quincy's Memoir, p. 8.
' This letter appears from the manuscript in Mr. Ed- vard Everett's eloquent Faneuil Hall eulogy on Adams.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
7
by tins noble injunction of tlie mother: " Enjoin it upon liim never to disgrace his mother, and to behave worthily of his father." The boy is a little man on the voyage, securing the favor of the French gentlemen on board, who teach him theii- language. In a perilous storm which arose, his fiither records his inexpressible satisftiction at his be- havior, " bearing it with a manly pa- tience, very attentive to me, and his thoughts constantly running in a serious strain." "When they arrive in France, and take up their lodgings with Ben- jamin Franklin at Passy, he is put to school with the sage's grandson, Benja- min Franklin Bache, in the neighbor- hood. At the close of this short sojourn abroad, his father sums up his advan- tages : " My son has had a great oppor- tunity to see this country ; but this has unavoidably retarded his education in some other things. He has enjoyed perfect health from first to last, and is respected wherever he goes for his vigor and vivacity, both of mind and body, for his constant good humor and for his rapid progress in French as well as his general knowledge, which, for his ao-e, is uncommon." ^ On the return voyage, in the Sensible, the Chevalier de la Luzerne, the minister to the Unit- ed States, and his secretary, M. Marbois, " are in raptures with my son. They get him to teach them the language. I found, this morning, the ambassador seated on. the cushion in our state-room, M. Marbois in his cot, at his left hand, and my son stretched out in his, at his right ; the ambassador reading out
' Letters of John Adams to his wife, II. 54.
loud in Blackstone's Discourse at liis en- trance on his professorship of the com- mon law at the University, and my son correcting the pronunciation of every word and syllable and letter." ^
In November, father and son are at sea ao-ain in the Sensible, on their re- turn to France. This time they are landed in Gallicia, and pursue their way through the northern provinces of Spain to the French frontier. When the boy's Diary shall be published, that gigantic work which we are told he commenced on this second voyage, and continued, with few interruptions, through life, the world will doubtless get some picturesque notices of these foreign scenes, so happily sketched in his father's note-book. The boy was again at school in France, and on his father's mission to Amsterdam, in tlie summer, was placed with an instructor under the wing of the venerable uni- versity of Leyden, where in January, 1*781, with Franklin's coiTespondent, Benjamin Waterhouse,- then a student of medicine, he went before the Kector Magnificus and vvas duly matriculated. His father's object in taking him to Leyden was to escape " the mean-spirit- ed wretches," as he describes them, the teachers of the public schools at Am- sterdam.
The youth, however, was not long at the University. His father's secretary, Francis Dana, having received the ap- pointment of minister to St. Petersburg^ in July, took the boy of fourteen with him as Ms secretary. " In this capa- city," says Mr. Everett, " he was recog-
' John Adams' Sea Diary, June 19, 1119. Works, III. 214.
8
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
nized by Congress ; and there is, per- haps, no other case of a person so young being employed in a civil office of trust, under the government of the United States. But in Mr. Adams' career there was no boyhood." His know- ledge of French, indeed, appears to have been of real service in interpret- ing between his chief and the French minister, the Marquis de Verac, with whom the negotiations were conducted at the Russian capital. In the autumn of the succeeding year he left St. Peters- burg for a winter in Stockholm, and in the spring travelled alone through Sweden, Denmark and Germany to the Hague, where in May, lYYS, we hear of him in his father's correspondence, as again " pursuing his studies with great ardor." He was present with his father at the concluding peace negotia- tions at Paris, where he witnessed the signing of the memorable final treaty. The greater part of the next two years was passed in London and Paris, where he had now the society of his mother. He is still the same vigilant student, while he assists his father as his secre- tary. " He is a noble fellow," writes John Adams from Auteuil to Francis Dana at the close of 1784, "and will make a good Greek or Roman, I hope, for he spends his whole time in their company, when he is not writing for . me." 1
When his father was appointed the first minister plenipotentiary to Eng- land, it was l)ut natural to suppose that the secretary who had shared his hum- bler labors would have desired to par- ticipate in the full-blown honors of the
' John Adams' Works, IX. 527.
royal court. There is not one youth in a thousand who would have resisted the temptation. For what does John Quincy Adams, at the age of eighteen, after his responsible duties in Russia, his independent sojourn in Stockholm, and intercourse with the brilliant Ame- rican circles in Paris, with Franklin at the centre, exchange the splendid pro- spect of life in the British metropolis ? For the leading-strings and restraints of Harvard, and a toilsome pupilage at the bar. The choice between inclina- tion and duty never was more tempt- ingly jDresented. His own expression of the resolve is too memorable to be omitted. "I have been seven years travelling in Europe," he writes, " see- ing the world and in its society. If I return to the United States, I must be subject, one or two years, to the rules of a college, pass three more in the tedious study of the law, before I can hope to bring myself into professional notice. The prospect is discouraging. If I accompany my father to London, my satisfaction would probably be greater than by returning to the United States ; but I shall loiter away my pre- cious time, and not go home until I am forced to it. My father has been all his lifetime occupied by the interests of the public. His own fortune has suffered. His children must provide for themselves. I am determined to get my own living, and to be depend- ent upon no one. With a tolerable share of common sense, I hope in Ame- rica to be independent and free. Ra ther than live otherwise, I would wish to die before my time." ^
' Quincy's Memoir, p. 5.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
With this creditable resolve lie bore witli hi 111 from his father a letter to Benjamin Waterhoiise, touching his ex- amination at Harvard. The solicitous parent, who had read some of the classics with his son, and forsaking the card-table, attempted even an introduc- tion to the higher mathematics, in which he foiled, candidly admitting that these abstruse studies had quite departed from him in thirty years' ut- ter unconsciousness of them, is anxious to impress upon his friend those gene- ral acquisitions which might be ob- scured at an examination for want of some of the technicalities of instruction. Thus, while he had steadily pursued his studies, and made written transla- tions of the JEneid, Suetonius, Sallust, Tacitus' Agiicola and Germany, and portions of thfe Annals, with a good part of Horace, he might be defective in quantities and parsing. Harvard, however, was not likely to be too inex- orable in her demands ; nor was the pupil likely to fall short of them. Af- ter a few months' reading with the Rev. Mr. Shaw of Haverhill, he was admitted to the junior class in March, 1Y86, and continuing in the University long enough to leave a fragrant memo- ry of his scholarship and good princi- ples, received his degree the following year. His commencement oration, which was published, was on " The Im- portance and Necessity of Public Faith to the Well-being of a Community." .
He now engaged in a three years' com-se of the study of the law, with Tlieophilus Parsons, at Newburyport, in which he must have heard much from his vigorous-minded preceptor,
who afterwards became chief justice of the State, of the struggle then going on for the adoption of the Constitution. Adams was admitted to the bar in 1790, and at once, as he long afterwards expressed it, " commenced what I can hardly call the practice of the law in the city of Boston." For the first three years he had the usual opportunity of young lawyers for further study ; and unlike many of them, he availed him- self of it. A portion of his leisui'e was spent in the discussion of the impor- tant political questions of the day. He answered the plausible sophistries on government, of Paine's " Rights of Man," in a series of essays published in Rus- sell's "Columbian Centinel," signed Publicola ; and in 1793, in the same journal, urged neutrality upon the country in the contest between Eng- land and France, and attacked the in- solent Genet in terms of wholesome indignation. This service, and doubt- less his father's great successes in Hol- land, led Washington's administration to appoint him, in 1794, minister to the Netherlands. His acceptance of this honorable position was at the cost of a rapidly developing legal practice. Ar- riving in London in time to confer with Jay, whose British treaty was then getting adjusted, he reached Hol- land in season to witness the occupa- tion of the country by the French pro- pagandists. He remained at the Hague, availing himself of the opportunities and leisure of the place to add to those stores of knowledge already consider able, which he had accumulated, with the exception of a few months passed in diplomatic business in England till
10
JOHN QTJINCr ADAMS.
the summer of 1*797, wlien lie received tJie appointment of minister to Portu- gal. On his father's occupancy of the Presidenc}'- this was changed to the mission to Berlin. Before proceeding to his new post he passed over to Eng- land to claim the hand of a lady to whom he had become engaged on a former visit, Miss Louisa Catharine J olmson, the daughter of the American consul at London.
Adams felt at first a natural reluc- tance to accept an important office at the hands of his father ; but his inde- pendence was reconciled to the step when he learned that it had been urged by Washington himself, who considered him fully entitled by his previous ser- vices, to dijDlomatic promotion. Lie now took up his residence at Berlin. He was engaged in this mission to the close of his father's administration. During this time he negotiated a treaty of commerce with Prussia, and in the summer of 1800 made a considerable tour in Silesia. A number of letters' addressed to his brother in America, descrij)tive of this country, were pub- lished without his advice in the " Port Folio," and a few years after were - issued in a volume by a London pub- lisher. In this collection they form a methodically written work, descriptive of the industry and resources of an in- teresting country with a comprehensive account of its history and geography.
Adams also, during his residence at Berlin, employed himself in several literary compositions, of which the most important was a poetical version of Wieland's " Oberon." He intended this for publication, but found that
Sotheby, the English translator, had anticipated him. Several satires of Juvenal were also among his transla- tions. He moreover prepared for pub- lication in America, a treatise of Frede- rick de Gentz, "On the Origin and Principles of the American Eevolution," which interested him by its apprecia- tion of American principles of liberty, as contradistinguished from the license of the French Eevolution,
On his return to Boston, he turned his attention again to the study and re- sumed the practice of the law. He was not, however, suffered to remain long free from official employment. A few months after his arrival he was called to the Senate of Massachusetts, and almost immediately chosen to the Sen- ate of the United States. It was at that period of the disintegration of the federal party when the old order of things was fast going out, and the new was not fully established. Adains, who was always inclined to think for himself, chose an independent position. In some things, as the constitutionality of taking possession of Louisiana, in the way in which it was done, he op- posed the administration ; in voting for the appropriation of the purchase mo- ney, he was with it. When the promi- nent measures of Jefferson's administra- tion in reference to England began to take shape in the Embargo, he was at variance with, his colleague, Mr. Pick- ering. He was of opinion that submis- sion to British, aggression was no longer a virtue. His course, which was considered a renunciation of federalism, created a storm in Massachusetts, where the legislature, in anticipation of the
JOnN QUINCY ADAMS.
usual period, elected a succes^jor to Lis senatorial term. Upon tliis censure he iniiuediately resigned.
His retirement Avas cliaracteristic enouo-li. He liad been some time he- fore, in 1805, cliosen professor of rhet- oric and oratory on tlie Boylston foun- dation at Harvard, and had delivered his Inaugural the following year. The preparation of these lectures, in the de- livery of which he now continued to be employed, called for fresh classical stu- dies ; but to study he was never averse, and it is the memorable lesson of his career, that the pursuits of literature are not only the ornament of political life, but the best safeguards of the per- sonal dignity of the politician, when, as must sometimes happen with an inde- pendent man, he is temporarily thrown out of office by party distractions. If he is then found, as Adams always was, making new acquisitions of learning, and preparing anew for public useful- ness, he must and will be respected, whichever way the popular favor of the moment may blow. Mr. Adams con- tinued his duties at Harvard, reading lectures and presiding over the exer- cises in elocution till the summer of 1809. In the following year, his " Lec- tures on Oratory, delivered to the Sen- ior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University," were published at Cam- brido-e. Mr. Edward Everett, who was at the time one of the younger students, bears mtness to the interest with which these discourses were received, not merely by the collegians but by various voluntary listeners from the neighborhood. "They formed," he says, " an era in the University, and
11
were," he thinks, " the first successful attempt in the country at this form of instruction in any department of litera- ture."
Immediately upon the entrance of Madison upon the Presidency, Adams received the appointment of minister to Russia, the court which he had ap- proached, in his boyish secretaryship, durino; the Revolution, with Dana. He sailed from Boston early in August, 1809, in a merchant ship, for St. Peters- burg ; but from various detentions, a rough passage, and the vexatious exam- inations of the British cruisers in the Baltic, then blockading Denmark, he did not arrive in Russia till October. The commercial embarrassments, in the complicated relations of the great 'Na.- poleonic wars of the time, witnessed on the voyage, in the detention and oppression of American ships, furnished his chief diplomatic business at the imperial court. As much as any man, perhaps, he aided in solving these international difficulties. He had a cordial reception at court on his first arrival, and as time wore on, having prepared the way by his interviews with Count Romanzoff, the chancellor of the empire, received a proffer of mediation fi^om the Emperor Alexan- der, between Great Britain and the United States, in the war which had now broken out. The offer was ac- cepted at home, and in the summer of 1813, he was joined at St. Petersburg by his fellow commissioners, Bayard and Gallatin, appointed for the negotia- ' tion. The mediation was not, however, accepted by Great Britain, though it I proved a step forward to the final con-
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JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
ferences and adjustment at Ghent. England proposed to treat dii-ectly at Grottenbnrg or London. The American government cliose the former, and Adams was placed on the commission with Bayard, Clay, Kussell and Galla- tin, to negotiate. Before his arrival on the spot, he learnt that the conference was appointed at Ghent, whither he proceeded in the summer of 1814 ; 'and, after a protracted round of diplomacy, had the satisfaction of signing the Treaty of Peace the day before Christ- mas of that year. The scene of this event in that region which had wit- nessed his father's successes, and his early entrance upon the world, and above all, the event itself closing the gates of war, as his father again had signed the great pacification of 1783, must have been peculiarly gratifying, not merely to his patriotic pride, but to the love of method which character- ized his life. He may readily have recognized in it that courteous fate which so often marked the career of his family. If there is a political as well as a poetical justice, it was cer- tainly exhibited in the history of John Quincy Adams, and his illustrious father. The coincidences are most striking.
Adams having now closed his mis- sion to St. Petersburg, and having "been appointed minister to Great Britain, was joined by his family from Russia, in Paris, where he witnessed the return of Napoleon from Elba, and the com- mencement of the Hundred Days. It was one of those dramatic surprises of Parisian life, which we may expect to be faithfully represented in Mr. Adams'
Diary, when it shall be given to the world. We get, perhaps, a glimpse of his record in his biographer, Mr. Quin- cy's narrative. Napoleon, we are told, " alighted so silently, that Mr. Adams, who was at the Theatre Franpais, not a quarter of a mile distant, was una- ware of the fact till the next day, when the gazettes of Paris, which had show- ered execrations upon him, announced ' the arrival of his majesty, the empe- ror, at Ms palace of the Tuileries.' In the Place du Carousel, Mr. Adams, in his morning walk, saw regiments of cavalry belonging to the garrison of Paris, which had been sent out to oppose Napoleon, pass in review before him, their helmets and the clasps of their belts yet glowing with the arms of the Bourbons. The theatres assumed the title of Imperial, and at the opera in the evening, the arms of the Empe- ror were placed on the curtain, and on the royal box."
Adams, again respecting his father's precedents, took up his residence with his family in London. He was the American representative at the court of St. James for two years, when he was called by President Monroe to his cabinet as Secretary of State. His time in England was passed in the best society of books, things and men. After concluding the commercial rela- tions of the treaty, he removed from London to a retired residence, at Bos- ton House, Ealing, nine miles distant, where he found time — he could always make time — for his liberal studies.
The year 1817 saw him again in America, at Washington, the leading member of the new administration, in
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the direct line of promotion to the Presidency. Okl part}^ lines were be- coming, or had already become extinct. It was a period of fusion, " an era of
■ good feeling," as it came to be called on the quiet reelection of Monroe. The chief diplomatic measures of Adams' secretaryship, had reference to Spain. He was always spirited in his assertions of the foreign policy of the country, and on this occasion was greatly instrumental in the negotiations Avhich ended in the cession of Florida. One of his special services was the pre- paration of an elaborate Eeport on Weio-hts and Measures, at the call of Cono-ress. He devoted six months of continuous labor to this production, entering into the subject philosophi- cally, and in its historical and practical relations. The report was made to Congress in February, 1821.
Adams continued to hold his secre- taryship through both terms of Mon-
■ roe's administration. At its close, he was chosen by the House of Represen- tatives his successor in the Presidency, the vote being divided between Jack- son, himself, Crawford and Clay, who decided the choice by throwing the vote of Kentucky in his favor. His adndnistration, says Mr. Everett, in the address already cited, "was, in its prin- ciples and policy, a continuation of Mr. Monroe's. The special object which he proposed to himself was to bind the distant parts of the country together, and promote their mutual prosperity by increased facilities of communica- tion." There were many elements of opposition at work against a reelection, in the complicated struggles of the
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times. Adams encountered a full mea sure of unpopularity and retired — in political disaster, as well as in diplo- matic triumph, like his father — to the shades of Quincy — that long retire- ment which had only recently ended in death. ' The departure from the world of the elder Adams, occurred in the second year of his son's Presidency.
Unlike the father, however, he was not to sit brooding over the past. Work, persistent work, was the secret of John Quincy Adams' life. Of a touo-h mental fibre, there was no such thino; as defeat, while he had a mind to contrive, a tongue to utter, or a hand to hold the pen. He was sixty-two at his retirement from the Presidency, within a few years of the age when his father was succeeded by Jelferson. Both felt the storm of unprecedented party spirit, and annoyance, and both yielded to great popular heroes.
Literatiwe again offered her hand to her assiduous son. " His active, ener- getic spirit," we are told, "required neither indulgence nor rest, and he immediately directed his attention to those philosophical, literary and reli- gious researches, in which he took un- ceasing delight. The works of Cicero became the object of study, analysis and criticism. Commentaries on that master-mind of antiquity were among his daily labors. The translation of the Psalms of David into English verse was a frequent exercise ; and his study of the Scriptures was accompanied by critical remarks, pursued in the spirit of free inquiry, chastened by a solemn reference to their origin and influence on the conduct and hopes of human
14
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
life. His favorite science, astronomy, led to tlie frequent observation of the planets and stars ; and his attention was also called to agricultm^e and hor- ticulture. He collected and planted tlie seeds of forest trees, and kept a record of their development; and, in the summer season, labored two or three hours daily in his garden. With these pursuits were combined sketches preparatory to a full biography of his father, which he then contemplated as one of his chief future employments."^ He was, however, again soon called into action, being elected, in November, 1830, by his district, to the House of Representatives. It was a novel spec- tacle—an ex-president of the United States sitting in the lower house, but it was fully in accordance with the spirit of our institutions, which honor all faithful servants of the public. Nor is it to be denied that at least equal talent may be called for, and equal influence exerted in the discharge of duties of public life, which to the eye of the world have a comparative inferiority of position. Power may be wielded by a representative which may govern the administration itself There are many acts of our legislative bodies more potential than the simple acquies- cence of the Executive ; as the origina- tor of a measure or line of policy must be of more consequence than the instru- ment which gives it effect. For more than sixteen years Adams labored at his seat in the House. He was the most punctual man of the assembly, always on the alert ; cool, resolute, even
Josiah Quiucy's Biography, p. 175-6.
pugnacious. There was scarcely a ques- tion, involving a point of morality, of national honor, or of literary and philo- sophical culture, on which his voice was not heard. He supported the de- mands of J ackson upon France ; he asserted and successfully maintained the right of petition against vast obloquy and opposition; he was especially in- strumental in the establishment of the National Observatory, and the Smithso- nian Institution. A bare enumeration of his speeches, writings and addresses, would fill the space assigned to this sketch — lectures and addresses on points of law, government, history, biography and science, moral and social, local and national, before sena- tors and before youths, on anniversa- ries of towns, on eras of the State* eulogies on the illustrious dead, on Madison, Monroe, Lafayette, the oration at the Jubilee of the Constitution.
As he had lived, so he died in har- ness. Death found him where he could have wished its approach, in the halls of Congress. His robust powers of body and mind had held out surpris- ingly, as his vigor, no less than his venerable appearance in the House, enforced an authority not always read- ily conceded to the persistence in unpopular appeals of "the old man eloquent." He was approaching eighty : still in the exercise of his extraordinary faculties, when, in a recess of Congress, walking in the streets of Boston, in November, 1846, he was stricken by paralysis, from which, nevertheless, he recovered in time to take his seat in Congress early in the year. The House rose to greet him, and he was conducted
JOHN QUmCY ADAMS.
15
to his chair with marked honors. He felt, however, his approach to the grave. There is a most touching evi- dence of this in the anecdote rehited by Mr. Everett. His journal, the diary of his long life, interrupted the day of his attack, was resumed after an inter- val of nearly foui* months, with the title, " Posthumous Memoir." Writing in its now darkened pages, he says of the day when it was interrupted, "From that hour I date my decease, and consider myself, for every useful purpose to myself and fellow creatures, dead; and hence I call this, and what I may hereafter write, a posthumous memoir."
. He continued in the House another year, when the final messenger came, on Monday morning, the twenty-first of February, 1848. After passing a Sunday in harmony with his elevated religious life, he was observed to ascend the steps of the Gapitol vnth his accus- tomed alacrity. As he rose, with a paper in his hand, to address the Speaker in the House, he was seized by a return of paralysis, and fell, uttering, "this is the last of earth — I am content." He was taken, as the House adjourned^" to an adja- cent room, where he lingered over Washington's bii-thday till the twenty-
third, when he died in the speaker's apartment, under the roof of the Cap itol. His remains were taken to Bos- ton, reposed in state in old Faneuil Hall, and were quietly laid by the side of his parents, in a grave at Quincy.
The lesson of such a life is plain. Labor, conscientiousness, religious duty; talent borne out to its utmost stretch of performance by the industrious im- provement of every opportunity; the self-rewarding pursuits of letters and science, in the gratification of an insar tiable desire for knowledge ; a constant invigoration of the moral powers by the strenuous discharge of duty; inde- pendence bought by self-denial and prudence, enjoying its wealth — the calm temper, the untroubled life — in the very means of acquiring it. How noble an illustration of the powers of life ! When the correspondence and Di- ary, which Adams maintained through his long life, shall be published — when his writings shall be collected from the stray sheets in which they have been given to the winds, when the literary aids, due to his memory, shall be gathered in the library about his fair fame, there will be seen an enduring monument of a most honorable life of public service and mental activity.
DAVID PORTER.
This adventurous liero, the " Paul Jones of the second war of Indepen- dence, witli a more capacious and bet- ter regulated mind," was born in Bos- ton, February 1, 1*780. His father. Captain David Porter, commanded a merchant ship out of that port, and was distinguished as an officer of ener- gy and activity in the naval service of the Revolutionary war. At the con- clusion of the struggle the family re- moved to Baltimore, where the father commanded a revenue cutter, and be- came eno-ag-ed. in the West India trade. It was in one of these latter voyages that his son, at the age of sixteen, was introduced to the service of the ocean.
Thus launched on the deep, a youth of courage and mettle, he made the element his home, and speedily famil- iarized himself with its scenes of peril and warfare. It was at that unsettled period of our foreign relations, when our shipping was oppressed alike by our old enemy, England, and our recent ally, France. Aggression was rife on all sides. On this first voyage, young Porter was witness to one of those in- sults and assaults. While in port at the island of St. Domingo, a press gang endeavored to board his father's vessel. The assailants were manfully resisted, with slaughter on both sides. A man
16
was shot down by the side of the youth. Such was his introduction to the mer- cantile service in 1796. On his next voyage to the same island, which he made in the capacity of mate, he was t-wice impressed by the British, and each time contrived to make his escape, reduced, however, to such circumstances of privation, that in his need he was compelled to work his passage home- ward in the winter season, ill clad, and exposed to all the rigors of a northern icy coast.
Soon after reaching home he applied for admission into the navy, obtained a midshipman's warrant and joined the Constellation, Captain Truxton, then recently put in commission, and already distinguished by her services on the coast. In the famous action of this vessel,' in February, 1799, with the French frigate^ the Insurgente, which ended in the capture of the latter, mid- shipman David Porter had command of the foretop, a position, as it turned out, of peril and responsibility in the engagement. When the prize was taken. Porter was sent on board of her "with Lieutenant Rodgers and eleven men to take possession and remove her prisoners. Before this duty could be discharged, night came on, and fi heavy blow separated the vessel from the
4
DAVID PORTER.
17
Constellation, leaving tliis little guard to control one hundred and seventy- tLree unfettered Frenclnnen. The hand- ful of American seamen, however, were well officered ; the prisoners were got into the hold, and though eager to escape, kept there by the superior resolution and vigilance of their cap- tors, who, besides their duty of work- ing the ship, watched as a guard at the hatchways for three days, till the vessel was brought safely to the Constellation at St. Kitt's. For this brilliant service, Porter, at the time, received no promo- tion. Before the close of the year, however, he Avas made lieutenant. He served with honor and distinction in the West India service, till the termination of this quasi-war with France.
The terms of peace with that nation were settled early in 1801, and in the spring of the same year a new field for our infant navy was opened in a dis- tant quarter of the world, in the aggres- sions and defiance of the bashaw of Tripoli. Porter sailed to the Mediter- ranean in the Enterprise, in Commo- dore Dale's squadron, and assisted in the capture of a Tripolitan vessel of some note. In May, 1803, we find him first lieutenant of Commodore Morris' flag-ship, the New York, engaged in a brilliant adventure in the harbor of old Tripoli, in reconnoitering and setting on fire a number of feluccas laden with wheat, which had taken refuge under the batteries of the town. In this affau' he received a slight wound in the right, and a musket ball in the left thigh. These wounds were inflicted at the outset of the attack ; yet he cou
tinned in command to the close of the action.
On his recovery he was transferred, in September, to Captain Bainbridge's frigate, the Philadelphia, at Gibraltar, and speedily returned in that vessel to the scene of his late enterprise off Tri- poli. He was thus engaged in the blockade, when the Philadelphia had the misfortune, in chasing a vessel of the enemy, to be thrown upon a reef at the entrance of the harbor. After the most heroic efi^orts to escape, and fio-htinff to the uttermost, the frigate was compelled to surrender, and her officers and crew to go into captivity. The story of that imprisonment, pro- tracted for more than a year and a half, is a memorable event in our national annals. Its tedious, monotonous en- durance was broken by many noble attempts at rescue on the part of the American fleet, and by the gallant act of Decatur, in the burning of the cap- tured vessel in the harbor ; the arrival of the Constitution, and the successive bombardments of Commodore Preble ; the fatal explosion of the Intrepid in the harbor, sweeping the noble Somers to an untimely end — ^incidents all of which occurred within sight and hear- ino- of the prisoners. Within, the cap- tives bore their imprisonment with equanimity, and waited for a better day. They even availed themselves of this dismal leisure to strengthen them- selves in the duties of their profession for future service. By the kindness of M. Nissen, the Danish consul, an excel- lent supply of books was furnished them. These were read with avidity i and a systematic course of instruction
18
DAVID PORTER.
entered upon "by the younger officers. Lieutenant Porter directed these stu- dies, and made various acquisitions of his own in general literature, the French language, and drawing.
The repeated attacks of Preble, and other operations of the war, finally brought the stubborn Tripolitans to terms of surrender. Peace was con- cluded June 3, 1805, and the prisoners released. A naval court of inquiry was then held at Syi'acuse, which exon- erated the officers from censure in the loss of the Philadelphia, after which Lieutenant Porter was appointed to the command of the Enterprise, and cruised along the African coast in the neighborhood of Tripoli, stopping to indulge his historical and antiquarian tastes in a scholar's admiration of the Roman remains of Leptis Magna. An incident which occurred at Malta, illus- trates the temper of the times with re- spect to England and the resolute spirit of the young heroes of the American navy. A foul-mouthed British sailor came alongside the Enterprise, abusing the officers and crew, for which Captain Porter promptly ordered him seized and flogged at the gangway. The governor, naturally indignant, ordered the vessel to be detained ; but Porter, . with lighted matches and the men at their posts, swept by the forts without interruption. His last adventure in the Mediterranean was a conflict with twelve Spanish gunboats, which he soundly punished for their rashness in attacking him, in sight of Gibraltar.
After five years' absence from home in the Mediterranean, he returned to Ameiica, and signalized a brief interval
of leisure by marriage to Miss Ander- son, a lady of Pennsylvania. He was then appointed to the New Orleans station, where he was employed in en- forcing the embargo and non-inter- course laws. It may be noted as a curious coincidence, that his father, an officer in the service, died while under his command on this sta- tion. Desirous of exchanging this locality, which was injurious to his health, for another, he was appointed to the command of the Essex, a small frigate of thirty-two guns. The actual breaking out of the war which had been long impending with England, found him, at the time of the declara- tion of hostilities, in June, 1812, refit- ting his ship at New York. In a few days he was at sea, leaving Sandy Hook on the third of July and cruis- ing to the southward. He took some prizes, and was then compelled by stress of weather to change his course to the north. While off the banks, as he was going before a southerly wind, he came up with an English fleet, con- sisting of a frigate and bomb-vessel con- ducting several transports. It was at night, towards morning, with a dull moon feebly lighting the sea. Coming up first with one of the transports, he learnt the nature of the fleet, and as the ships were sailing widely apart, he determined to push his vessel, a fast sailer, to the frigate in the van, and encounter her as a prize worthy of his steel. The second transport, as he came up, was suspicious of his movements, and was about to give the alarm, when he threatened a broadside and quietly gained possession of her. She ,was
DAVID PORTER.
found to be filled with troops. Tlie convoy sliip mennwliile sailed away.
A few days' sailing bronglit tlie Essex Avitliin view of a British frigate, which pi'oved to be the Alert, of twen- ty guns. Captain Pointer's vessel was at the time disguised as a merchant- man, " her gun-deck ports in, top-gal- lant masts housed, and sails trimmed in a slovenly manner." The English vessel consequently bore down upon her expecting an easy prize, when the Essex knocked out her ports, opened fire, and in emht minutes reduced her adversary to a sinking condition. The Alert, thus captured, was the first ship of war taken in the contest. She was sent as a cartel into St. Johns, with the prisoners. Captain Porter shortly after turned into the Delaware to re- plenish his ship's water and stores.
The Essex was now attached to the squadron of Captain Bainbridge, his command consisting, in addition, of the Constitution and Hornet. The whole were to cruise on the coast of Brazil, and thence cross the Atlantic to intercept the homeward-bound East India ships. Bainbridge sailed from, Boston with his flag-ship and the Hor- net, on the 26th October, directing that the Essex should follow him from the Delaware, stopping at certain appoint- ed stations of rendezvous on his grand route. The Essex accordingly sailed two days after the other vessels, tra- versing the long distance to the equator without the opportunity of making a priae. Shortly after passing that line, however, on the twelfth of December, she captm-ed the JSTocton, a British gov- ernment packet, which yielded fifty-five
thousand dollars in specie to his trea sury. Being heavily laden, the Essex did not overtake her companions at the first appointed station, at the island Fernando Neronha, which was reached a few days after the capture just men- tioned. They were making their way to St. Salvador, both ships to secure their triumphs on the South American coast : one in the conquest of the J ava ; the other, of the Peacock.
Capt. Porter, after beating about for some time, in vain efforts to join his comrades of the squadron, the ground, meanwhile, becoming more dangerous, from the presence of British cruisers, took the responsibility of deciding upon his movements for himself. He continued a southerly course, and the eastern parts of the continent being in the English interest, and consequent! j; closed to him, he determined to double Cape Horn, and forage upon the com- merce of the enemy in the Pacific. This resolution was formed after he had failed to secure adequate supplies at the island of St. Catherines, the last place of rendezvous on the coast of Brazil, and in face of the thickening dangers which beset him. " The sea son, to be sure," says he in his journal of the 26th of January, 1813, the date of his leaving the island, " was far ad- vanced for doubling Cape Horn ; our stock of provisions was short, and the ship in other respects not well supplied for so long a cruise — to the poit of Concepcion, on the coast of Chili — ^but there appeared no other choice left for me, except capture, starvation or block- ade ; and this course, of all others, ap- peared to me the most justifiable, as it
20
DAVID PORTER.
accorded with the views of the honor- able Secretary of the Navy, as well as those of my immediate commander."
The Pacific project had, in fact, been submitted to the Secretary of the Navy before the declaration of war, and met with his approval, and Commodore Bai abridge had concurred in the idea, provided the necessaiy supply of pro- v^isions could be obtained. It was not, therefore, an entirely unauthorized ad- venture upon which the Essex was pro- ceeding.
The voyage round Cape Horn was a rough prelude to its better fortunes. For more than a month in those south- ern latitudes, on either side of the ex- tremity of the continent, the Essex was tempest tossed in that stormy sea.
At length the coast of Chili was reached, and on the sixth of March a landing made at the island of Mocha, a not unfriendly though deserted station, aifording a supply of fresh provisions to the crew, in the horses and hogs Avhich ran wild over its surface. From ^this place the Essex ran down the coast with the hope of meeting some of the enemy's vessels from which supplies might be obtained ; and failing in this, struck boldly into the port of Valpa- raiso, the captain reluctantly feeling himself comjDelled to resort to the ten- der mercies of the Spanish officials, from whom little friendship was to be anticipated. Great was his gratifica- tion on being received with eminent distinction. The Chilians had just thrown off their allegiance to Spain, and set up their independence, They hailed his national vessel as a timely visitant from a sister republic. Hos-
pitalities were freely extended, and every facility afforded of replenishing his stores. Intent upon the grand ob- ject of his voyage, he did not, of course, lino;er long; amidst these seductions.
Stored with a superfluity of jerked beef and other provisions, the Essex left the port eager for approaching con- flicts. Overhauling a whale-ship, the Charles, of Nantucket, information was had from the captain that two of his consorts, the Barclay and the Walker, had been taken possession of by a Spanish and an English ship near the port of Coquimbo. The Essex was accordingly hastened on her way, in search of the aggressors. In no long time she fell in with a ship of war disguised as a whaler, the real character of which was at once detected by Captain Porter. He had now raised the English flag, and hailed the vessel, when a shot was fired from her which passed the bow of the Essex. It was responded to by a few shot over the deck of the stranger, which brought alongside a boat, that was sent back with orders to her captain to run along- side, and come on board with his papers and offer an apology for his rudeness to an English frigate. The ruse succeeded perfectly. The captain was ill, but a lieutenant arrrived and disburdened himself not only of the required apology, but of much informa- tion of a character exceedingly agreea- ble to the ears of Captain Porter. He was informed that the vessel before him was the Peruvian privateer Nerey^ da, of fifteen guns, out on a cruise for American vessels ; that she had recent- ly cap+ured the two whalers of which
DAVID PORTER.
lie had lieard, and that one of tliem, tlie Walker, had been taken from her bv a British letter-of marque, the Nim- rod, and that, supposing Porter's vessel might be that aggressor, the shot had been fired. The privateer, apart from this, professed the greatest respect for the English flag; his sole object, in fact, on the cruise was the capture of American vessels, of which, though he had been four months out, he had taken but the two alluded to, and that the captain of one of them was now on board his vesseL Upon hearing this. Porter sent for the American captain, and, closeted with him in his cabin, had the whole candid revelation con- firmed. He then hoisted the American flag, to legalize the capture, and, firing a couple of guns, the "fTereyda struck her colors. She was stripped to her topsails and courses, and in that condi- tion sent back to Oallao with her crew of Spaniards, bearing a message to the viceroy of Peru, from Captain Porter, commendinor her commander to such punishment at the hands of his excel- lency as as his violation of American commerce mig-ht deserve. The Ameri- cans on board the privateer were liber- ated ; a portion of them joining the Charles, the rest volunteering for ser- vice in the Essex. The latter then bore up for the northwest, and at the entrance to Callao rescued the Barclay, one of the whalers which had been cap- tured by the Nereyda. This vessel now oined the Essex, and her captain proved of eminent service in directing the cruiser to the haunts of the enemy.
He was unintentionally seconded in this good work by the master of a n.— 3
21
Spanish brig from Callao, whieli the Essex met with. The latter, under the English flag, enjoyed again the most confidential communication with the unsuspecting Spaniard, who imparted much interesting information regarding the Eno-lish and other vessels she had left in port.
The Essex continued her voyage along the coast, and meeting with no- thing of importance turned her course to the Gallipagos Islands, near the Equator, a favorite resort of the whal- ers. Chatham Island, the most easterly of this group, was made on the 17th of April, and Charles and Albemarle were visited in succession, without re- sult beyond a curious inspection of these remarkable volcanic islands and the capture of an occasional turtle or land tortoise, till the morning of the twenty-ninth brought a long-coveted sail in sight, which proved to be the whale-ship Montezuma, with fourteen hundred barrels of spermaceti oil. She was spoken under British colors, and the captain, being invited on board, gave such information in the cabin as he had to communicate, while his crew were quietly taken from his vessel to the deck of the Essex. There were two other vessels in sight, the Georgiana, of six eighteen pounders, twenty-five men, and two hundred and eighty tons, and the Policy, of ten six-pounders, twenty-six men and one hundred and seventy-five tons. Both these vessels surrendered an easy prey to a boarding party led by Lieutenant Downes, in the boats of the Essex, the wind be- coming too light for the latter to follow in pursuit.
DAVID PORTER.
t
22
The gallant leader of this daring ad- venture was a man of comprehensive mind, whose plans, rapid and flourish- ing as were his fortunes, always went beyond them. In his gigantic enter- prise, his single small frigate expanded as if by a miracle into a fleet, destined not onJy to sweep the commerce of a great nation from an ocean, but to con- trol her armed cruisers. The Essex s^ve])t on her way with a tributary train of British vessels behind, some converted into storeships, others fitted up as supplementary vessels of war. The Georgiana became thus as formid- able, in point of armament, as any of the British privateers afloat in those waters. This prize was commanded by Lieutenant Downes, who, parting from the Essex, in a cruise among the islands, made three important captures, with two of which, dismissing the third with his prisoners on parole, he very skilfully managed to join Captain Por- ter, falling in with him again at Tum- bez, in the gulf of Guayaquil, whi- ther he had gone to procure water for his fleet. The Essex meanwhile had added to her conquests two other Brit- ish whalers, the Atlantic and Green- wich, respectively of 355 and 338 tons, 24 and 25 men, and eight and ten guns. The Atlantic having proved her qualities as a good sailer, and being, in every way, a better ship than the Geor- giana, was fitted up with twenty guns, christened the Essex Junior, and given to Lieutenant Downes as her comman- der. A few days after leaving the har- bor, the Fourth of July was celebrated by a salute of seventeen guns fired from the Essex, Essex Junior, and
Greenwich, the crews spending the day in " the utmost conviviality," by aid of a bountiful supply of spirits furnished by the enemy's stores. The Essex Jun- ior, being now fully equipped, was pre- sently sent with four of the prize ships to Valparaiso, that they might be sold with their cargoes ; and this being ac- complished, Lieutenant Downes was directed to sail with supplies to join him either at Banks Island or at one of the Marquesas, whither Captain Por- ter would proceed with the Essex, which now stood in need of a thorough refitting.
The latter, having with him the Georgiana and the Greenmch, now sailed for the old whaling rendezvous of the Gallipagos, in the waters of which, off Banks Bay, a favorite resort, he made three fresh captures, including the Seringapatam, of fourteen guns, " the finest British ship in those seas," having been built as a man of war for the renowned Tippoo Saib, and now commanded by an enterprising captain, who had already taken a Nantucket whaler. Some six weeks afterwards, in September, the Essex had the good fortune to fall in with the anned whaler, Sir Andrew Hammond, of 301 tons, twelve guns and thirty-one men. She was overtaken off the island of Albemarle, while engaged in cutting up whales. Her capture completed a list of twelve British privateering ves- sels taken in a few months by Captain Porter and his companions in the Paci- fic. Proceeding to Banks Bay to rejoin his prizes, he was there joined by Lieu- tenant Downes, on his return from Val- paraiso, in the Essex Junior. With
DAVID PORTER.
23
tliat vessel and liis little fleet of prizes, now consisting of tlie storesliip Green- wich, tlie Seringapataiu, tlie Hammond, aiid New Zealander — tlie Georgiana and another havino' been freie-hted with oil and dispatched to the United States, two dismissed with the prison- ers on parole, and the rest being at Valparaiso — Captain Porter proceeded to the group of tlie Marquesas, which he reached on the twenty-tliird of Oc- tober, the very montli in which, a year before, lie had sailed from tlie Dela- ware.
The first land which they made of the islands was one of the group claimed to be discovered some twenty years before by Captain Roberts, of Boston, and patriotically named by him the Washington Islands. There was some intercourse of a friendly character with the natives before the little fleet sailed into its resting-place, a few leagnes further to the westward, in the bay of Nooalieevah. Here Cap- tain Porter, finding the anchorage good, the disposition of the inhabitants favor- able to his views, and the land abun- dantly stored with the fresh provisions of which he stood so much in need, determined to remain till the object of his visit, in refitting his vessel, was accomplished. His plans at the outset were greatly facilitated by the pre- sence of an Englishman, who, having been many years on the island, was perfectly familiar with the language, and who showed himself quite willing to act as interpreter. He also found there, oddly enough, a midshipman of the United States navy on furlough, who had been left by a Canton trader
to collect sandal-wood against his re- turn. With these introductions, and the easy manners of the tribe who oc- cupied the bay, the party soon felt themselves quite at home. The only difiSlculty which theyjhad to anticipate was from the tribes who were at war with one another in the valleys which seamed the mountainous surface of the island — the Happahs, and more formid- able Typees. With his usual direct- ness, Captain Porter soon taught these belligerents a lesson of fear by an armed incursion into their territories, after which he was perfectly secure in £is little settlement on the shore, and the whole island was tributary to his larder.
It was, in fact, something more than a temporary resting-place which he pro- posed to establish while his frigate was undergoing repairs. He meditated no- thing less than a permanent occupa- tion for his countrymen, and for this purpose, on. the 19th November, when he had become somewhat acquainted with the people, took possession of the island, with a formal declaration, in which he set forth the usual claim to priority of discovery, conquest and pos- session ; the customary good will of the natives who welcomed his protection, and the imposing ceremonial of raising the flag, firing a salute from a fort which he had armed from the ships' guns, and burying a copy of the instru- ment, with several United States coins, in a bottle at the foot of the flagstaff. This is the ready way in which empires then and since have been created on the bosom of the broad Pacific. The proceeding was completed by naming
DAVID
PORTER.
the island, in honor of the war Presi- dent at home, Madison ; the fort. Fort Madison ; the village, Madison's Ville, and the bay, Massachusetts Bay — names, we fear, quite lost sight of by the French, who have since enacted their ceremonies in their turn, and who now hold possession.
Six weeks were passed at the island, in refitting the Essex and in various intercourse with the natives, which was of so enticing a nature that it required all the commander's energy to with- draw his men from this seductive rest- ing-place. After this exercise of au- thority, leaving three of the prizes moored under the guns of the fort, to which he detailed a small force under Lieutenant Gamble, and forwarding the fourth prize to the United States, he set sail from the pleasant bay in company with the Essex Junior, in quest of more stirring adventures on the coast of Chili.
Captain Porter, indeed, was already aware, by information brought him on the return of Lieutenant Downes from Valparaiso, of the warlike preparations making by the British to drive him from the ocean. The frigate Phoebe, thirty-six guns, and the Raccoon and Cherub, of twenty-four each, were, he knew, in search of him ; and he had no disposition, under tolerably equal circumstances, to thwart their endea- vors. Nor was he unwilling to seek an opportunity of acquiring greater glory in a conflict with an armed fri- gate, than could accrue from conquests, however numerous, over less powerfully protected merchantmen. He accord- ingly sailed along the South American
ports, looking in at Concepcion and other harbors, and finally anchoring, on the third of February, 1814, in the bay of Valparaiso. The Essex Junior was left to watch outside for the arri- val of the enemy, who might naturally be expected at the port. With his usual gallantry. Commodore Porter, again welcomed to the city, was bent upon returning the courtesies of the townspeople, whose entertainment on board his vessel had been inter- rupted on his previous visit. The ladies, this time, were not disap- pointed of their dance. Before, how- ever, the awnings and flags which had been set up for the occasion could be cleared away, a signal from the Essex Junior announced the arrival of the enemy's ships, the Phoebe, Captain Hill- yer, and her consort, the Cherub. Both vessels of Porter's command awaited their arrival in the harbor, ready for action should an attack be made, but unwilling to take the initiative, out of respect for the neutral port. As it proved, Captain Porter's generous for- bearance on the occasion was entirely misplaced. The Phoebe came up in ad vance of her consort, fully prepared foi action, drawing close alongside the Es- sex as if for attack, which was every moment expected. As she continued to approach. Captain Porter " observed " to Captain Hillyer, who had politely inquired after Ms health — the two hav- ing been previously on the best of terms in the Mediterranean— that he was ready for action if attacked, receiv- ing the reply, " Oh, sir, I have no in- tention of getting on board of you." To this Porter answered, if he did
DAVID PORTER.
25
there would be mucli bloodslied, Tlie Britisli officer tlieii renewed liis assur- ances, but kept neariug, clumsily bring- ing the jib-boom of his vessel across the forecastle of the Essex. This posi- tion seemed to demand prompt action from the American, and her boarders were ready for their work, when Cap- tain Hillyer protested so vigorously that the attack was suspended. " At that moment," says Porter, " not a gun from the Phoebe could be brought to bear on the Essex or Essex Junior, while her bow was exposed to the rak- ino- fire of the one, and her stern to that of the other. Her consort was too far off to afford any assistance. The Phoebe was completely at my mer- cy. I could have destroyed her in fif- teen minutes." We shall see how this forbearance was rewarded.
The four vessels were now together in harbor, floating side by side in armed neutrality, enlivened, however, by frequent intimations of defiance. The Phoebe, for instance, would hoist a flaof bearino; the motto, " God and country ; British sailors' best I'ights ; traitors offend both," — which, it was alleged, was in reply to Porter's favor- ite motto, " Free trade and sailors' rights." This defiance was met by the American with the counter motto, " God, oui' country and liberty — tyrants of- fend them." While these taunts were spread to the breeze aloft, Jack below was engaged in a pastoral contest of ri- val songs, sounded from deck to deck of the hostile vessels. Spnie of these were original ; others selected for their suitability, from the copious stock of the forecastle. " The songs from the
Cherub," says Porter, in the interesting narrative of the Cruise of the Essex, which he subsequently published, " were better sung, but those of the Essex were more witty and more to the point. The national tune of Yankee Doodle was the vehicle through which the crew of the Essex, in full chorus, conveyed their nautical sarcasms ; while The Sweet Little Cherub that Sits up Aloft, was generally selected by their rivals. These things were not only tolerated, but encouraged by the officers, through the Avhole of the first watch of the calm, delightful nights of Chili, much to the amusement of the people of Val- paraiso, and the frequent annoyance of the crew of the Cherub." Captain Hillyer was inclined to check this con- test, but Captain Porter, anxious to provoke an engagement, was quite dis- posed to encourage it ; so it was kept up, " the poetical effusions of our op- ponents," humorously records Porter himself, " becoming so highly meritori- ous as to cause a suspicion of their being the production of Captain Hill- yer himself."
Various attempts were made by Cap- tain Porter to provoke a challenge, or gain an opportunity for an engagement between the Essex and Phoebe. The advantage of armament, it should be observed, was on the side of the latter ; the force of the Essex consisting of forty thirty-two pound carronades, and six long twelves, with . a crew of two hundred and fifty-five men ; the Phoebe mounting thirty long eighteen pounders, sixteen thirty-two pound carronades, one howitzer, and six three-pounders in the tops, with a complement of three
36 DAVID
hundred and twenty men. But not- withstanding tliis inequality, the wary Captain Hillyer would only contend wlien he had clearly an overpowering superiority. The Cherub, which he kept alongside of him, was far more powerful than the Essex Junior. In vain Porter would run out, and seek to engage the Phoebe alone; on one occa- sion, provoking an encounter by defi- antly towing out one of his prizes, and burning the vessel in sight of the ene- my. This came near bringing on an engagement, when the Phoebe, as usual, ran for her consort. Captain Hillyer was prudently waiting for reinforce- ments to secure his prize. Fully aware of the toils which were closing in upon him, and trusting to the superior sail- ing qualities of his ship. Porter at length determined to put to sea, draw- ing the British vessels after him, while the Essex Junior could escape at her leisure. On the twenty-eighth of March, the desired opportunity seemed to have arrived. There was a fresh wind from the southward which carried the Essex to the mouth of the harbor, where the enemy were lying in wait. Unhappily, as the American was rounding the point of the bay, she was struck by a heavy squall, which carried away the main-top-mast, throwing the men who were aloft into the sea, where they were drowned. Both ships then chased the Essex into the neutral waters of the bay, where she took refuge, within three miles of the town, under the guns of a fort, within pistol shot of the shore.
It was evident' from the display of uurtos and jacks on board the Phoebe,
PORTER.
that she was moving on to the attack. Captain Porter, consequently, prepared the Essex for action, and was endeavor- ing to get a spring on his cable, when the Phcebe, about four o'clock in the afternoon, placed astern, and the Cherub on the starboard bow, opened their fire. The Cherub presently, also, took her station astern. The enemy had the advantage both in position and in the range of their guns at the long dis- tance, when Captain Poi-ter bringing three of his long twelves to bear from his stern ports — ^they were worked so well, that, in half an hour, both vessels were compelled to haul off to repair damages. The Essex received consid- erable damage in her rigging, while, for the greater part of the time, help- lessly exposed to this fire. Three times she had succeeded in getting springs on her cables, but so fierce was the fire that they were shot away before the broadside could be brought to bear. There was but one feeling, however, on her deck as both vessels of the enemy came up on the starboard quarter for a fresh attack, which was prudently con- ducted by her long range guns out of reach of the ineffective carronades of the Essex. The only resort for the lat- ter was to close, if possible ; but, unfor- fortunately for any such movement, there was not a practicable sail left but thp flying jib, the remaining halliards being ctit away. With this some head- way was made, feebly assisted by let- ting fall the foretopsail and foresail, the tacks and sheets of which were destroyed. The Essex was thus ena- bled, for a short time, to close with the enemy. The firinar on both sides
DAVID
now was tremendous — the decks were stT•e^ved witli dead, the cock-pit filled with wounded, and the ship had been several times on fire, yet the men held on, encouraged by seeing the Cherub haul off. But the Phoebe, with her long guns pouring in upon a disabled vessel, was a fearful adversary. Guns were OA^erthrown on board the Essex, and the crews of others shot away. The survivors manned the guns that were left. One gun was thus three times manned, losing fifteen men in the action. In this extremity,. Porter de- termined to run his vessel on shore, and destroy her rather than be cap- tured, and had nearly succeeded in doing so, when a change of wind drove him again upon "the dreadful raking fire" of the Phoebe. Porter still hoped to board. In the midst of this scene of carnage, the brave Lieutenant Downes, of the Essex Junior, made his way through the fire to Captain Porter to receive his orders; but nothing could be done, and he returned to his own ship, carrying away in his boat several wounded, and leaving three of his crew to make room for them. " The slaugh- ter on board my ship," continues Por- ter, "had now become horrible, the enemy raking us, and we unable to bring a gun to bear." But even yet the resources of this skilful mariner were not exhausted. Ordering a hawser to be bent to the sheet-anchor, he let it go, and thus brought the head of the vessel around, and gained opportunity for another broadside. The breaking of the hawser put an end to this last chance of annoying the enemy. The Essex, moreover, was on fire in several
POUTER. 27
places, the flames bursting up each hatchway and approaching the mag- azine. A large quantity of powder exploded below. The boats were de- stroyed. In mercy to his men. Captain Porter directed those who could swim to jump overboard, and if possible gain the shore, abou* three-quarters of a mile distant. Most remained with him to defend the ship to the last. It was, indeed, the last moment when he surrendered. There was but one officer left to advise with him. The rest were dead or horribly wounded ; and as with the officers, so with the men. The flag was struck at twenty minutes past six after an action of about two hours ant. a half. More than one-half of her entire crew were killed, M^ounded or missing. The combat was witnessed, by thousands who covered the sur- rounding hills. Such was the termina- tion of Captain Porter's memorable cruise in the Pacific, ending, indeed, in disaster, but leaving a wonderful im- pression of the resources of a single small ship when directed by a com- manding will and intellect.
Captain Porter was well treated by his captor and friends at Valparaiso, though the government had shown itself not well affected towards him. In the disposition which was made of the prisoners, it was arranged they should be sent home for exchange in the Essex Junior, as a cartel. The lat- ter reached the American coast in safety, when she was boarded off New York by a British vessel, and the pass- port of Captain Hillyer disputed. The next morning, while the cartel was thus detained. Porter, true to the s]>irit
23
DAVID PORTER.
of adrenture with wliicli lie liad set out, liaving on the first detention de- clared himself a prisoner no longer on parole, left the cartel off the shore of Long Island to make his escape in a boat. The movement was observed, but not in time, and Porter, under cover of a friendly fog, filter some sixty miles rowing and sailing reached the hospi- table village of Babylon, whence he passed to a triumphant reception at New York.
The conclusion of the war found Captain Porter on the eve of taking command of a squadron of small ves- sels, got together for the annoyance of the enemy's commerce in the West Indies. Peace put an end to this scheme. In the reorganization of the navy which ensued, he was appointed, with Commodores Rodgers and Hull, one of the thi'ee officers of the board of navy commissioners, and continued in the execution of its important duties till 1823, when he was ordered to the command of an expedition fitted out by government to suppress the syste- matic piracy, which had for some time prevailed in the Gulf of Mexico. His squadron consisted of a steam galliott, eight small schooners, and five barges. Having his centre of operations at Thompson's Island, now Key West, in a few months, so effective was his con- duct of the force, he had broken up the whole piratical system on the coasts of St. Domingo and Cuba. The following year, 1824, an incident oc- curred which was the occasion of his recall. A robbery of American pro- perty took place on the island of St. Thomas, when the goods were car-
ried by the pirates into the port of Foxardo, in Porto Rico, an island of a bad reputation for its countenance to piracy and privateering. Lieutenant Piatt, one of Commodore Porter's offi- cers, undertook to aid in the recovery of the property. He accordingly pre- sented himself with his vessel, the Beagle, at the port, was roughly re- ceived by the authorities, and even arrested and put under guard. Smart- ing with this indignity as he left the port, he met Commodore Porter, in the John Adams, coming in, and narrated his grievances. The latter determined to resent the affair at once as a gross insult to the flag. Entering the har- bor with the Beagle and Grampus, and the boats of the Adams, he sent a mes- sage to the alcalde of the town de- manding satisfaction, and threatening reprisals in case it should be refused. One hour was given for the decision. A shore battery, meanwhile, about to fire upon the party, was silenced by a detachment of seamen and marines, when Porter landed with two hundred men, and marched against the town. An undefended battery was passed on the road, and a messenger sent forward for negotiation; when the Spaniards, thinking discretion the better part of valor, agreed to present the required explanation and apology. Commodore Porter then retired with his party. For this prompt vindication of the honor of his country, as he thought it, he was immediately recalled by his government, tried by a court-martial for transgressing his orders, and sen- tenced to suspension from the service for six months. The decree deeply
DAVID rORTER.
29
Avounded the spirit of the patriot who liad served his country iu so many eug-agements, who, in the words of his ih^fence, " had consumed the flower of liis years, and the vigor of his life in ard uous and, as he hoped, in acceptable services ; who had looked for approba- tion, if not honor, as his reward for an unstinted exposure to labors, priva- tions, and dangers ; so much the more disinterested, as, however beneficial to his country and to mankind, it pro- mised few of the personal gratifications which may be laudably sought in. the reno^^'u of more stiiking and brilliant aehievemeuts." The recollection of these thino;s should have made the sen- tence of Porter a light one. Senator Benton, who watched the proceedings of the trial, which lie in the dust of our libraries, recorded in a bulky octavo, says, that he was " hardly dealt with." The sentence cost the navy one of its most honored members. Commodore Porter resigned, left the country, and entered the service of the Mexican government to take charge of her newly formed naval department. He remained in that country till General Jackson became President of the United States, in 1829, w^hen h5 was ofiered the restoration of his place in the navy. He refused it on account of the old unreversed censure, but ac- cepted the post of Consul General at Algiers. The French occupation of the countiy found him in possession of the ofiice, when he was appointed Charge d' Affaires at Constantinople. The ap- pointment was subsequently enlarged to that of Resident Minister. It was II.— 4
the period of Sultan Mahmoud, the great Turkish reformer, of whose cha- racter and acts Commodore Porter, as his published letters bear witness, was a most careful and intelligent observer. This correspondence, origi- nally addressed to a friend in New York, without view to publication, was given to the world in 1835, with the title, " Constantinople and its Environs, in a series of letters, exhibiting the actual state of the manners, customs, and habits of the Turks, Armenians, Jews and Greeks, as modified by the policy of Sultan Mahmoud, by an Ame- rican, long resident at Constantinople." While in Turkey, Commodore Portei negotiated several important treaties. Pie continued to hold his position as minister till his death, which came, after a gradual decline, at Pera, a sub- urb of Constantinople, the twenty- eighth of March, 1843, at the age of sixty -three. His remains were brought home in the ship of war, Truxton, and interred in the grounds of the Naval Asylum, near Philadelphia.
The late Senator Benton, who has given an animated sketch of his career, thus notices the kindly traits of the man : " Humanity was a ruling feature in his character, and of this he gave constant proof — humane to the enemy, as well as to his own people. Of his numerous captures, he never made one by bloodshed when milder means could prevail; always preferring, by his superior seamanship, to place them in predicaments which coerced sur- render." Patriotism was a part of his soul.
JOHN JAC
OB ASTOR.
This eminent merchant, to whose liberality the city of New York, and incidentally the whole country, is in- debted for the princely foundation of the free public library bearing his name, came like his contemporary Girard of Philadelphia, an adventurer in youth from the old world to the new. There is, to a certain extent, a curious parallelism between the two men. They were alike in some points of character, and in minor habits. Early poverty was the lot of each. Both were borne by industry, self de- nial, sagacity, and a resolute will, to vast fortunes. They were alike men of large commercial views and grand resources. Each was favored in being carried onward with the development of the country, and the rising welfare of a great city. It has been their com- mon felicity to perpetuate their names with a grateful posterity by beneficent institutions erected by their bounty. The Grirard College and the Astor Li- brary are the ornaments of Phila- delphia and ISTew York. In other respects the parallel would fail. Gri- rard lived an unsocial, unsympathizing life, intent only on the toil and profit which had become necessities of his being His existence was without the grace and ameliorating influences of
80
the eminent friendships which softened and refined the career of Mr, Astor; nor had he those family interests and affections which might have done so much to increase his happiness while living and perpetuate his fortunes and beneficence when departed.
John Jacob Astor was born in. the village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, in Ger- many, July 17, 1763. His parents were of the laboring peasant class, who brought up their family of four sons, of whom the subject of this sketch was the youngest, to habits of industry and virtue. John Jacob remembered through life the lessons which he had been taught on the farm in childhood, of early rising and simple religious reading. There was enterprise and in- telligence in the race, for we find two of his brothers emigrants to England and America for the sake of bettering their fortunes, before he joined them on the same quest. The course of tra- vel in the last century, it should be remembered, differed greatly from the easy pathway opened at present. It argued then some force of character to break the barrier which hemmed in the life of a simple German peasant, fettered by his boundaries and associa- tions. The young Astor seems early
Pamted by
''jtke/tess c/ipzed.ly perw2SSio7z, fro7?van,i7riaz?iaZ-paz>7tm^ m t?is -possession ef tn^fajTizl)7. JoKTi3on.pTy& Co. PuhliBUers- l^fwlork-
s AD '864 hy .himmim Jr'r/
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
SI
to liave felt, ^^dtli sometliing of a pre- science of liis coming fortunes, that tliere was a prosperous career "before him in tlie worki, and that he had but to go forth to enter upon it. At any rate, at the as-e of sixteen he starts on foot, " ^\dtho^lt waiting for other outfit than the clothes he wore," to proceed to the coast of Holland, with the de- sign of reaching his oldest brother, in England, who had some footing in London as a musical instrument maker, and who required his assistance in the business. He found a Dutch smack which conveyed him across the Chan- nel to the metropolis, where he met with his brother and at once engaged eagerly in his occupation. Their resi- dence, within the sound of Bow Bells, af- forded a hint to early rising which these industrious Germans did not ne2:lect. " Mr. Astor's own account of this period of his youth," we are told in a biogra- phical sketch by one who knew him well, " is that he never failed to rise and dress when the clock struck four, which gave him an hour to prepare for his daily occupation, and much of this hour was regularly devoted to reading the Bible and the Lutheran prayer- book, then the only books in his library." ^
■ He had been for several years thus connected with his brother, when the conclusion of peace with the United States opened America once more to the enterprise of the old world, and perhaps led by the example of another older brother ab^ady in the country, he
' Sketch of Mr. Astor in Emepson's United States Mag- azine for October, 1855.
embarked, in 1783, for that region. He carried with him a venture made up 1 )y his brother, of some hundred dollars' worth of musical instruments. The win- try passage to Baltimore was a long one — he was all the while from November to the following March on shipboard, at sea, and delayed by the ice in the Chesapeake — but it was not altogether unprofitable, for an acquaintance which he made on the way led him on the high road of his subsequent fortunes. This was a German dealer in furs with whom he travelled to New York, and who advised him to invest the proceeds of his venture in that prime article of American trafiic, as one which would find a ready market in London. He followed the suggestion, effected the sale and purchase, and crossing the At- lantic with his new stock, made, as was predicted, a profitable trade. This ap- pears to have been his first mercantile operation of consequence. It drew his attention to a branch of traffic which afterwards became aighly productive in his hands, and which he conducted with a widely extended, liberal enter- prise. In 1Y84, after a residence of some months in London, which he de- voted to the study of the European methods of the fur trade, he returned to America, prepared, by arrangements with his brother, to continue the traffic, " At that time," says his biographer abeady cited, " he had just completed his twenty-first year; he was beginning life in a foreign land, without money capital, without powerful connections, and without established credit ; but he possessed powers and qualities, and had formed habits which made him
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
independent of capital, connections and credit— a clear head, sound judgment, quick perception, a mind of tlie most compreliensive grasp, and a masterly business talent. To tliese liigh intel- lectual powers were joined great moral force of character, a resolute will, great self-reliance, firmness in pronouncing the unyielding ISTo, when requisite, the strict integrity that inspires confidence, and the patient perseverance that in- sures success. Besides which he had the groundwork and guaranty of pros- perity in his habits of life — economy, self denial, industry, love of labor, a proper pride in his business, punctual- ity in his engagements, and above all, the careful avoiding of the thraldom of debt. It is to these properties that we must look for the elements of Mr. Astor's extraordinary prosperity, and not to any accident of birth or fortune, or any external circumstances of condi- tion ; his only advantages of that kind were his fine personal appearance, his noble head, his oracular brow, the stamp of higher intelligence upon his every feature, his commanding, and, when he chose, winning address. His reliance was upon himself in business, as well as in everything else, and he so managed his affairs as to make his rap- idly accumulating capital sufficient for its constant extension,"
The two great elements of success with Astor, as with Grirard, were his industry, combined with sound judg- ment and his self-reliance. Each planned his operations with consum- mate aljility, and it was a rule, at least with tlie Frenchman, that whatever orders he gave should be executed to
the letter, come what would of it. In this way he projected his individuality in different regions of the world, in his extended commercial operations, and his powerful will was acting in many places with the same energy as if he were present ; for it was his custom boldly to carry out his first decisions. We shall see Astor issuing his com- mands in his great enterprise with marvellous sagacity. In the meantime he is patiently, assiduously building up his fortune in the pursuit of the fur trade, at the outset working with his own hands, and performing his jour- neys to the distant fi'ontiers of the country bordering on Canada and the lakes to traffic with the Indians and collect the skins for his merchandise. By thrift and economy, and the suc- cessful management of his profitable trade, he became gradually wealthy, and began to employ his own vessels in his shipments, making his profit on both the outward and retui'u cargo. The new openings for trade with Cana- da by the provisions of the Jay treaty of IT 94, were turned to account by him. By the year 1800 he had thus become possessed of a fortune of a quarter of a million of dollars.
Taking a comprehensive view of the traffic in furs, he was anxious to give his operations strength and importance by national corporate authority. Some organization he thought was needed to cope with the great British companies which still held the control of the trade with the Indians, on the great western frontier. He consequently became in communication with the United States government ou the subject, and in 1809
JOHN JAOOU ASTOR.
33
obtained from tlie legislature of tlie State of New York a cliarter incorpor- atiuo- the "American Fur Company," with a capital of a million of dollars, which was fui-nished by himself. " He in fjict," says Irving, " constituted the company ; for though he had a board of directors, they were merely nominal ; the whole business was conducted on his plans and with his resources, but he preferred to do so under the impos- ing and formidable aspect of a corpora- tion, rather than in his individual name, and his policy was sagacious and effective." ^ To strengthen his position he purchased from the British proprie- tors the interests of the Mackinaw com- pany of traders, and merged both that and his own organization into a new association called the Southwest Com- pany.
The traffic of the traders up to this time had been mainly confined to the regions bordering on the great lakes ; it was Mr. Astor's ambition greatly to enlarge this area by extending his operations to the shores of the Pacific, Ijy means of a line of posts stretching alouo- the Missouri on the east, and the Columbia on the west of the Eocky mountains, with an important depot at the mouth of the latter river, that would open a ready means of direct exchange with China, which afforded the best market for the furs to be collect- ed. This of course involved an extensive shipping interest to carry on the trade upon the Pacific, 'and to conduct the return cargoes from the East. The history of Mr. Astor's great effort in
' Astoria, p. 80
this direction is written in the most agreeable volume of adventure by Washington Irving, entitled " Astoria."
Nor was it merely as a trading spec- ulation that this great enterprise was projected, and in fact accomplished. " Indeed, it is due to him to say," re- marks Mr. Irving, "that he was not actuated by mere motives of indivi- dual profit. He was already wealthy beyond the ordinary desires of man, but he now aspu'ed to that honorable fame which is awarded to men of simi- lar scope of mind, who, by their great commercial enterprises, have enriched nations, peopled wildernesses, and ex- tended the bounds of empire. He con sidered his projected establishment at the mouth of the Columbia as the em- porium to an immense commerce ; as a colony that would form the germ of a wide civilization ; that would, in fact, carry the American population across the Rocky Mountains, and spread it along the shores of the Pacific, as it already animated the shores of the At- lantic." This view of the enterprise was shared by the government, and by Mr. Jefferson, always an intelligent ap- preciator of the development of the country.
In the summer of 1810, articles of agreement were entered into by Mr. Astor and his associates, chiefly drawn from men who had been engaged in the British fur trade, constituting themselves the " Pacific Fur Company," with, liberal provisions on the part of the projector, who was to supply the large capital required for the success of the undertaking. A twofold expedi- tion was at once organized, by sea and
3i
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
laud. A ship, well furnished, and e(j[uipped with something of a military armament, was provided to make the voyage by the way of Cape Horn to the Pacific, and take possession of the station at the mouth of the Columbia. This vessel, named the Tonquin, was co]nmanded by Lieutenant Jonathan Thorn, of the United States navy, a man of courage and resolution, and a martinet in discipline, who had served in the Tripolitan war ; and with him sailed as companions the leading Cana- dian partners of the enterprise, one of whom was the special representative of Mr. Astor in the management of the business. The captain, of course, had the supreme command of the voyage. Various voyageurs and trappers made up the ship's company. For the hu- mors and petty vexations of the jour- ney by sea, the pertinaciously asserted authority of the commander, and the careless disposition to enjoyment of his passengers frequently bringing the two parties into conflict, we must refer to the picturesque pages of Mr. Irving, where every development of character is eagerly worked into the cunning fabric of his instructive and ever-de- lightful narrative, SuflSce it to say that the party set sail from New York in September, 1810, escorted to sea, out of fear of hostile cruisers in that period of incipient war, by the frigate Consti- tution ; that they reached the Sandwich Islands in safety in February, and the following month were landed, though not without hazard, and suffering some severe losses, within the mouth of the Columbia. Eight men were drowned from boats in the surf, in attempts to
cross the bar of the river. After the ship had reached a place of safety, her officers chose a place for a settlement and the establishment of a fort, to which they gave the name Astoria, and opened communication with the neigh- boring Indians. The Tonquin then, as previously arranged, continued her voyage along the coast in a northerly direction to Vancouver's Island. But she had not been long away when word was brought by tlie Indians to the little colony she had left behind, of her total loss, with her crew, under circumstances of fearful interest. Cap- tain Thorn, on making a landing and opening trade with the natives, had become disgusted with their subter fuges and chicanery, and in a fit of pas- sion driven some of their leading men from the vessel. They returned, appa- rently unarmed, and, contrary to the express orders of Mr. Astor before starting, were carelessly admitted in great numbers. The gallant comman- der estimated too lightly his savage foe. They procured knives in ex- change for the furs which they brought with them, on the very deck of his vessel, and turned upon her unsuspect- ing crew, murdering the captain and his chief officer. They were however arrested in their fiendish work for the moment by the remnant of the ship's company, who had gained fire-arms from below. These few men, foresee- ing their fate if they remained, aban doned the ship in a boat, with the in tention of making their way to Astoria. When the savages returned to the ves sel and crowded her decks, they ex pected an easy prey, for bu<, one of her
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
35
old crew was to be seen — a wounded man who liad refused to depart with his companions. He was gloomily bent on a terrible revenge, "Waiting till the Indians thronged the vessel, he lighted a match below, fired the maga- zine, and involved the whole in one common destruction. This occurred in the summer of 1811.
Meanwhile the overland party, which was to survey the line of the trading- posts and effect a junction with their companions on the Pacific, led by Mr. Wilson Price Hunt, upon whom Mr, Astor placed the greatest reliance for the ultimate conduct of his colony, was making its toilsome way by the line of the Missouri and the passes of the Rocky Mountains. This expedition, which numbered many intelligent men, left Montreal, the starting-point of their wanderings, in July, 1810, and did not reach Astoria till February, 1812. They had made a roundabout journey from St. Louis of upwards of thirty-five hundred miles. They found on their ariival that some progress was made with the establishment in opening trading-posts and carrying on traffic with the Indians, though the fortunes of the colony were by no means as-, sured.
While these journey ings and voy- agings were going on, Mr. Astor, in New York, intent upon his grand scheme, in March, 1811, dispatched a confidential agent to St. Petersburg to accomplish a negotiation with the northern Russian trading settlements on the Pacific, which was effected, and in ttie autumn of the same year, ignor- ant of the fate of the first, he sent a
second vessel, the Beaver, with sup- plies and reinfoi'cements of men, to As- toria. In the following May this vessel safely reached her destination, and in- fused new life into the little company. Had Mr. Astor's directions been com- plied with, all might have gone well with the colony, wealth would have poured into his coffers, and an import- ant national settlement been effected at an early day on the Pacific. His plans .were in every instance well taken, giv- ing unity to a complicated system of action reaching across an unexplored continent, including a distant European negotiation in their grasp, and extend- ing over the great waters of the globe. A chain of trading-posts threading the defiles of the Rocky Mountains, a great emporium on the Pacific, coasting voy- ages securing the trade of that ocean, the sale of the furs collected in China, and a return to America with the rich and profitable products of the East — this was the simple outline of the gigantic undertaking. It was really a vast, expanded enterprise, worthy the comprehensive mind of a great mer- chant of any time. Much more of cour- age, of adventurous foresight, did it require when it was a pioneer work in a comparatively unknown country, and moreover beset by the gravest interna- tional difficulties. All early explora- tions may be put down as extremely hazardous and costly — seldom resulting in profit to their first projectors. This in particular proved, chiefly through the inefficiency of the agents and the neglect of Government, when the crisis arrived, a most disastrous undertak- ing.
36
JOHN JACOB ASTO"R..
The supply ship, Beaver, in pursu- ance of instructions, continued her voyage to the Russian Possessions, car- rying with her Mr. Hunt, the leading man of the colony, with the expecta- tion of an early return to the place. Unhappily, the vessel standing in need of some repairs, her course, after visit- ing New Archangel, was directed to the Sandwich Islands, whence she proceeded to China without return- ing to Astoria, leaving Mr. Hunt at her stopping-place to wait for Mr. Astor's next supply ship to carry him to his post of duty. While tarry- ing for this opportunity, word reached him of the breaking out of the war between the United States and Great Britain. He saw at once the peril of Astoria, and chartering a vessel at a high price, proceeded promptly to the spot — to find the partners of the enter- prise, who were strongly tinctured with British interests, McDougal, their head, never having lost a hankering for his old Canadian allegiance, despond- ent and on the eve of abandoning the enterprise. In fact an arrangement was on foot, which was afterwards consum- mated, to sell out the whole affair to the Northwest Company, a British association, which had pushed its agen- cies across the mountains, maintaining a rival attitude to the American enter- prise. Mr. Astor's British partners were for the sale or virtual surrender, the Americans of the company opposed the transfer; but the former, armed with the threats of naval hostilities, which it was known were impending, carried the day. Shortly after, in De- cember, 1813, the port of Astoria was
formally taken possession of by the commander of a British cruiser.
Thus was defeated a great enterprise which partoolj rather of a national than a private commercial character. Carried on by the will and resources of a single man, it was worthy to have been the project of the State itself. That something of enthusiasm of an elevated character entered into the plans of Mr. Astor, we have the testi- mony of a letter written by him to his agent, Mr. Hunt, on occasion of send- ing forth a third ship with supplies. " Were I on the spot," he wrote, allud- ing to the hostile machinations of the Northwest Company, "and had the management of affairs, I would defy them all ; but, as it is, everything de- pends on you, and your friends about you. Our enterprise is grand and de- serves success, and I hope in God it will meet it. If my object was merely gain of money, I should say, think whether it is best to save what we can, and abandon the place; but the very idea is like a dagger to my heart." ^
He doubtless bore the failure of his expectations with equanimity, though he could not be insensible to the disap- pointment. It was his calculation, it is related, that the enterprise would be a bill of expense for ten years, and an uncertain source of profit for anothei like period, when, having been full}- established, it could produce a net rev- enue of a million dollars a year. Of his coolness under his losses, a story is told by Mr. Irving of his conduct on hearing of the loss of the Tonqnin.
' Irving's Astoria, p. 432.
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
37
" The very same evening lie appeared at tlie theatre -^vith his usual serenity of countenance. A friend, who knew the disastrous intellifvence he had re-
O
ceived, expressed his astonishment that he could have calmness of spirit suffi- cient for such a scene of lio-ht amuse- ment, ' What would you have me do V was his characteristic reply; 'would you have me stay at home and weep for what I cannot help ? ' "
At the conclusion of the war, Asto- ria, by the terms of the treaty, again fell to the United States, though the final adjustment of the territorial rights of the region was delayed for a longer period. Had the Government been willing to render the assistance of mili- tary protection, Mr. Astor would have recovered his undertaking. As it was, he abandoned the effort, content to wait the time when the country should awake to the importance of a region, the value of which he had formed a due estimate of in an early period of his career. The present town of Asto- ria, though far surpassed by other set- tlements of Oregon, bears witness, in its name, to the daring enterprise of its original founder.
This was Mr. Astor's last great em- ployment of his energy and capital in the fur trade. Henceforth, his productive investments in real estate in New York, and elsewhere in the country, employed most of his attention, especially in his latter years, when his wealth increased rapidly with the growth of the city. " Every year," says his biog- rapher already cited, "was adding to his fortune — at first, almost impercepti- bly, but, as the mass rolled on, it
gathered up upon a greater surface, and increased more rapidly. Few very great fortunes were ever acquired more in accordance with the laws of aggre- gation than Mr. Astor's ; but a small portion of it was added by accident or lucky hits, or great speculations of any kind. He was its sole and systematic architect, and constructed the edifice on the best foundations and in the fairest proportions."^ At the time of his death, which occurred in the city of New York, on the 29th of March, 1848, his property was estimated as the largest which had been accumulated in America, exceeding by some mil- lions that of Girard.
By the terms of his will special pro- vision was made, in a bequest of four hundred thousand dollars, for the erec- tion and endowment of a free public library — the institution, in the city of New York, which, thus supported by his liberality, bears the name of the Astor Library. It was a design of his latter years, which he would doubtless have carried out in his lifetime had he not been pressed by accumulated busi- ness and growing infirmities. He had, in considering the project, the valuable assistance of friends who knew well the importance of the object and the way it should be carried out ; for it was Mr. Astor's good fortune to possess, in the acquaintance of men like Wash- mgton Irving, Dr. Cogswell, Mr. Hal- leclc, Albert Gallatin and others, the best stimulus to his powerful intellect. He took delight in their society, and the Astor Library may be considered,
' United States Magazine.
v
38
JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
in one liglit, a monument of this inti- macy. "Desiring to render a public benefit to the city of New York, and to contribute to tlie advancement of useful knowledge, and tke general good of society," is the language of Ms will, in tke preamble of tke bequest ; and cer- tainly, as the event has already proved, he could not have secured these ob- jects in any more welcome way. The library thus founded, and its original dimensions doubled by the continued liberality of his son, has within a very few years taken its place, not only at the head of similar institutions in the city, but in the country — a result owing to the fidelity with which the trust has been carried out, and especially to the devoted and disinterested services of its librarian or superintendent. Dr. Jo- seph G. Cogswell, whose appointment to the control of the work was made according to the expressed wish of the testator. A number of years before Mr. Astor's death. Dr. Cogswell was employed in bibliographical studies preparatory to the work, forming a highly valuable collection of books in this department, which he has since presented to the library. This, rather than the thousand volumes purchased
during the lifetime of Mr. Astor, was the real foundation of the library. When the work was fairly begun to be carried out, it was on this basis of preparation rapidly extended in the most satisfactory manner. Most public libraries in their origin are chance med- leys, the aggregate of various acci- dental purchases or donations. Not so this. Minerva-like, it started into being in full panoply, each division being duly considered and fairly pro- vided for. It is thus the most symmet- rical library in the country ; its wealth being duly apportioned to each section of literature and science. K any pre- ference is shown, it is a general one for the more valuable and less accessible costly European works of original au- thority, the great standards of know- ledge, whence the more popular manuals are drawn. An American author en- gaged in the composition of a work well calculated to prove the resources of a large library, Mr. Parke Godwin, in the preface to his history of France, records his acknowledgments with the remark, that the country possesses, at last, one library where a student may apply that comprehensive test, the veri- fication of the quotations of Gibbon.
Ffvm. tTi^ oruiinn/ pam,U?ii/ 1^' Ckappel, zjl /-^jjossession, of ike pizbbsliers. JoTmBoii.l'ly & Co. PiiblLahers, Istew YbrTc.
JAMES
KENT.
This eminent jurist, whose services on tlie "bencli, no less tlian his important contributions to tlie literature of his profession, have secured him the grati- tude of his countrymen, presents a pleas- ing subject for biography. It is true there is little of incident to relate, and of what might be gathered we have but scanty materials, in the absence of the promised family memoirs. But in all that is known and remembered of Kent, one impression is predominant : that of a man of singular simplicity and purity of character — worthy, in- deed, to rank in these respects, as well as in his legal character, with his dis- tinguished contemporaries, Chief Jus- tice Marshall and Justice Story.
James Kent was born in the town of Fredericks, Putnam County, State of New York, among the Highlands of the Hudson, near the borders of Connecticut, on the thirty-first of July, 1763. His grandfather, the Rev. Eli- sha Kent, a well known and esteemed clergyman of Connecticut, had removed to the region in 1Y40, and resided there till his death. His father, Moss Kent, was bred to the law and prac- tised the profession, which divided his attention, at the time of the birth of his son, with the farm on the banks of the Croton, where he resided. The
influences of nature in this beautiful spot were not likely to be lost upon the heart of a sensitive child. In his later years he dwelt upon those associ- ations of his youth in his conversation with his intimate friends. A pleasing instance of these recollections has been preserved by his friend and eulogist, the late Judge John Duer, who was called upon to discharge a debt to his memory in the delivery of a discourse on his life, character and public ser- vices, before the judiciary and bar of the city and State of New York. In this interesting tribute the following passage occurs. The home, in the city of New York, of Chancellor Kent, we should premise, during his last years was on Union Park, where a fountain fed by his native stream, the Croton, which had been brought to pour its life-giving refreshment through the great city, leaped before his eyes. " Several times," says Judge Duer, " within the last three years of his life, when the fountain that adorns the park in front of his late residence was in its fullest action, and the waters of his native river, as if instinct with life and voluntary motion, rose in strength and majesty before him, several times have I known him approach the windows of his library in which we were then sit
89
40 JAMES
ting, and there break forth into warm expressions of admiration and deligM. It was evident tliat tlie spectacle filled his mind with the most agreeable and. varied emotions ; for while it recalled, as he said, the quiet scenes and simple pleasures of his youth, it reminded him of the vast progress that his country- had since made in the noblest arts and truest enjoyments of social and civilized life. It was evident at such times that his boyhood and youth, his manhood and age, were all present to his mind and memory ; and it was his high pri- vilege— such had been the course of his life — it was his high privilege that when thus recalled, he could dwell with feelings of unmingled satisfaction and devout thoughtfulness on each period of his existence. It is not sur- prising that at such times a serene light — the serene light of a serious and chastened joy — spread over his venera- ble features ; for it was evident that his thoughts and affections rose in gratefal adoration to the Author of his being, as the source and fountain of all the blessings — the many great and peculiar blessings — that throughout the progress and in each stage of his life, it had been his lot to enjoy."
Earnest and ample provision was made by the father for the education of his son. He was placed at the age of five at an English school at Norwalk, Con- necticut, where he lived with his mater- nal grandfather, a physician. At nine he was transferred to Pawling's, in Dutchess County, to a school where he received some instruction in Latin, which was subsequently improved by the Hev. Ebenezer Baldwin, who kept
KENT.
a Latin school at Danbury, and he had other special instructors by whom he was qualified for admission to Yale College, the freshman class of which he entered in 1111. Thus carefully nurtured with that moral as well as in- tellectual preparation of the olden time in which clergymen, as in this case, so frequently bore a part — a youth of in- genuous disposition and studious hab- its, he was well adapted to run his new race with vi^or. His colleo;e course, however, fell upon the troubled scenes of the Revolution, and the British troops taking possession of New Ha- ven in his sophomore year, the college was for a while necessarily broken up. Falling in, during this interval of forced leisure, for the first time — he was then only sixteen — with a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries, he seized upon this masterly mtroduc- tion to legal science with avidity ; his genius was thus early revealed to him- self, and he resolved to devote himself to the profession of the law, Return- ing to college when its exercises were resumed, he received his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1781, and immedi- ately entered the office of Egbert Ben- son, at Poughkeepsie. This eminent lawyer, the friend of Washington, Jay and Hamilton, an enlightened patriot of the Revolutionary and constitutional era, then held the office of Attorney General of the State, and his influence and example were well calculated to strengthen the manly instincts of his pupil.
Kent was admitted to the bar in 1Y85, and shortly after began practice with Mr. Gilbert Livingston, at the
JAMES
same time taking to himself a wife, Miss Elizabetli Bailey, wlio became tlie sharer of his rising fortunes, and the delight and protection of his long career of successful exertion. Before the latter, however, could be said to be fairly entered upon, there was the usual period of discipline and probation com- mon to the young lawyer to be encoun- tered. Kent met it with all cheerful- ness and diligence. The largest part, if not always the most important, of a man's education, is the instruction which he gives himself This was per- haps truer in the early days of Kent than in our own. Though he had the honor of a diploma from Yale, he was but meagrely instructed in the Grreek and Latin classics, and he himself was perfectly aware of the deficiency. He had read in these lan2;uao;es, in his col- legiate course, only the Greek Testa- ment, and limited portions of Virgil, Horace and Cicero. To make amends, and give himself a good working knowledge of the tongues, he divided his day systematically, and managed to secure four hours for the purpose before breakfast. Two of these he gave to Greek, and two to Latin. The midday was assigned to the law, and two hours of the afternoon were given to the French. He read Homer, Xeno- phon and Demosthenes, we are told, with great delight. To miscellaneous reading, if we may apply so general, vague, and unsatisfactory a term to his excellent special acquisitions, he was always devoted. He was an earnest student of the poetry of England, and her best prose literature, and an ardent devourer of books of traveh
KENT. 41
Kent came upon the stage at a time well qualified to develop a great con- stitutional lawyer ; for the period of his legal career embraced the origin and growth of the Constitution itself, and his early intimacies were with men who understood well its principles, and were sharers in its formation. He attended the debates at Poughkeepsie of th*e convention which sat upon its adoption, and listened to the brilliant arguments of Hamilton. The princi- ples of the Federalist we may pre- sume that he studied with earnestness, while he watched the development of party interests through the countrj. " He became and declared himself a federalist, and this name (continues Judge Duer) as expressing most clearly and fully the true nature of his politi- cal creed, he gloried throughout his life to retain and avow." His friend- ship for Hamilton was both a cause and consequence of these convictions, and it was never interrupted. It was by Hamilton's advice, we are told, that he first directed his attention to his profitable study of the French Jurists.
We find him now engaging in public life. He was twice elected a member of the State Assembly, in 1T90 and 1*792, and was recognized as a promi- nent leader of the federal party. His course on the disputed election for governor, when George Clinton was maintained in office over his rival. Jay, who it was alleged had the majority vote of the State, a division of opinion resulting from the destruction of the votes of a county, secured to him the warm support of the disappointed can- I didate. To the " discriminating judg
•2
JAMES KENT.
ment and steady friendsliip of Jolin Juy lie oWed," says Judge Duer, " his elevation to nearly all the offices that he subsequently held."
In 1793 he was nominated to Con- gress in Dutchess County, but, owing to a change in the local politics, lost his election — a result which was immedi- ately followed by his removal to New York. Here he encountered some diffi- culty in his straitened fortunes ; but if practice was slow in coming, his legal abilities were appreciated by the dis- cerning. The trustees of Columbia College appointed him within the year professor of law in that institution, and we find him in November, 1*794, com- mencing his course with an Introduc- tory of signal ability. This was pub- lished by the trustees, and in the course of a year he issued in a volume three " Dissertations " preliminary to his course on the common law, embrac- ing the discussion of important topics of the constitutional history of the United States, and of the law of nations.
The date of the introductory lecture gave the orator a special ground of ap- peal for the importance of his theme. It will mark, also, the large period over which the labors of Kent were extend- ed. In 1*794 Europe was in agitation with problems which the intelligence and foresight of American patriotism had already solved, and that solution of the novel questions was receiving due attention abroad. How important then that the youth of America should be instructed in their privileges at home, especially as the whole guardian- ship of the public welfare was intrusted
without reserve to the people. The orator pointed to law as the first tutor of liberty to the founders of the State, and drew the inference that the rudi- ments of a legal and senatorial educa- tion in our country should be drawn from our own history and constitutions. He then passed to the assertion of the value of courts of justice as " the pro- per and intended guardians of our limited constitutions against the fac- tions and encroachments of the legisla- tive body," as if in earnest of the im- portant aid he was to render this great cause in his subsequent career. He was but thirty, it should be remem- bered when he accepted the professor- ship of which this address was the first fruits. The three dissertations treated of the theory, history and duties of civil government ; the history of the American Union and the law of nations. The delivery of these and other lectures in the course, and the publication of part of them, though neither was so successful as to be continued at the time, laid the foundation of the author's reputation. Both were to be resumed afterwards — the college lectures and the commentaries. Happily the origin- ator lived himself to reap the fruit of his early labors.
In the meantime, in February, 1*796, Kent received a welcome addition to his means in the appointment, by Gov- ernor Jay, of Master in Chancery, an office then lucrative, and he was the same year chosen a member of the New York legislature by a city constituency. An address which he delivered before the State Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, at
JAMBS
KENT.
its anniversaiy in New York, also gave him an opportunity of making tlie pub- lic acquainted witli liis enliglitened perceptions of tlie material welfiire of tlie country. To liis office of Master in Chancery was joined tlie following year that of recorder of the city, and from the two he derived a considerable income. In 1798 he was still further befriended by Jay in the appointment of junior judge of the Supreme Court, and thouo-h it was at some cost of his
O
emoluments in relinquishing the posts which he held, it was with remarkable discretion and self-knowledge that he accepted the new position. He now changed his residence to Poughkeepsie, and subsequently to Albany, which continued his home till 1823, nearly a quarter of a century.
The reforms which he introduced into the practice of his court were of eminent service to the public, and have gained him the highest eulogies of the bar. Before his day there had been no wi'itten opinions or any standard re- ports of decisions. He began by writ- ing out his opinions in all reserved cases, and brought to his work such acumen, and the results of such learned industry that his brethren on the bench were compelled to follow his example. In this he brought to bear his reading of the civil law and its commentators, in the various questions arising on per- sonal contracts and commercial and maritime affairs. In 1804 he was I'aised to the office of chief justice of the court, and continued to preside over its deliberations till his appointment as Chancellor of the State in 1814.
Of his career as judge we have seve-
ral interesting notices from a high legal authority. On passing througli New York, in 1805, the late Justice Story, then a rising young lawyer, was at- tracted to the Supreme Court at the City Hall, where he found Kent on the bench. He was struck with his youthful appearance, celerity and acute- ness, and noticed his " careless manner of sitting," which seemed to him " to be the ease of a man who felt adequate to the exigencies of his station." Two years later, on a similar visit, he notices again "his singular plainness and promptitude." This early perception of Kent's ability was confirmed by Story's observation of his decisions and study of his legal writings. As time went on, the New York lawyer had no warmer admirer than the New England jurist. Both had points of personal as well as professional contact ; in their amiability, capacity for friendship, and the purity and intensity of their domestic life, as well as in that taste for general culture which has always been an ornament if not a necessity to the higher members of the profession. They were always generous appreciat- ors of each other's labors, dividing the field of legal commentary with emula- tion and without envy. Nothing can be more cordial than the friendly let- ters which passed between them as the new volumes of their writings ap- peared.
What Kent had accomplished in the Supreme Court for the common law, he was destined to renew in the Court of Chancery. In a review of Johnson's Reports, in which his decisions are re- corded, written by Joseph Story for
44
JAMES KENT.
tlie " Noi-tli American Review," in 1820, he pays this tribute to the ser- vices of Chancellor Kent, his fellow- laborer in this great work, " He has been," says he, " long before the piiblic in a judicial character, which he has sustained with increasing reputation — a reputation as pure as it is bright. His life has been devoted sedulously and earnestly to professional studies. His researches have been amidst the dust and the cobwebs of antiquated lore, pursued in the unfashionable pages of the Year Books, and Glan- ville and Fleta, and Britton, and the almost classical Bracton. He has dared to examine the abridgments of Brook and Fitzherbert and Statham. He has drawn deeply from the commercial law of foreign nations ; the works of Straccha, and Roccus, and Valin, and Pothier, and Emerigon, are familiar to his thoughts and his writings. It re- quired," he adds, looking at the state of the chancery bar as it was before Kent's day, " such a man, with such a mind, at once liberal, comprehensive, exact and methodical, always reverenc- ing authorities, and bound by decisions ; true to the spirit, yet more true to the letter of the ■^law ; pursuing principles with a severe and scrupulous logic, yet blending with them the most persua- sive equity ; — it required such a man, with such a mind, to unfold the doc- trines of chancery in our country and to settle them upon immovable founda- tions." He so enlarged and improved the Chancery Court of New York that under his administration it may be said to have been a new creation. He was chancellor for but nine years, at
the end of that time being compelled to resign the office by the arbitrary enactment which limited the period of service to the age of sixty. Never could the irregular working of this pro- vision be more manifest than in his case. It found him in the very vigor of his powers, with twenty-five years yet before him, in which he was still further to illustrate his legal ability and wisdom, though not in the seat for which he was perhaps above all men qualified. Addresses were presented to him on his leaving office by the members of the bar at New York, Al- bany, and of the State at large at Uti- ca — all couched in the warmest terms of admiration of his judicial acumen, purity, and rare spirit of personal kind- ness. This very year of his retirement, when a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States occurred, Kent was spoken of for the appointment. It had been ofifered by President Monroe to Mr. Smith Thomp- son, then the Secretary of the Navy, who for a time held his answer in sus- pense. During this interval Kent was brought forward, and his merits, spite of his difference in politics — he be- longed to the old federal party— were urged by William "Wirt, then Attorney General, in a letter to the President. He claimed that the worth and moder- ation of Kent would silence even the uproar of party objection, "Kent," he wi'ote, " holds so lofty a stand every- where for almost matchless intellect and learning, as well as for spotless purity and high-minded honor and patriotism, that I firmly believe the nation at large would approve and ap-
JAMES
plaud tlie appoiutmeut. It would sus- tain itself and soon put down tlie petty- cavils wliicli might at first assail it. . . . . He may have been decided in Lis political cliaracter, but I never heard tliat lie was intolerant, or tliat there was anything like bitterness or persecution in his composition. His conversation and manners are indica- tive only of a simplicity almost infan- tile, and of the most perfect kindness and suavity of disposition." The Pre- sident, however, was not called to de- cide upon this warm-hearted appeal, Mr. Thompson ha-\dng entered upon the office.
The termination of his duties as chancellor led him to take up his resi- dence again in New York, with a view to giving lessons in the law, and prac- tising his profession. Columbia Col- lege again welcomed him to her courses of instruction, offering him the profes- sorship of law, which he accepted. In accordance with this new obligation he delivered, in 1824, a systematic course of lectures, out of which subsequently grew his Commentaries, embracing the more important topics of the latter, and some which are not treated of in that work. He repeated the lectures in 1825, and after that discontinued the active duties of his professorship, his time being taken up in chamber prac- tice and the preparation of his dis- courses for publication. These saw the light in a first volume in 1826, followed by the second and third in the two fol- lowing years, and the fourth in 1830. Successive editions appeared to the close of his life, each marked by care- ful revision.
n.— 6
KENT. 45
The " Commentaries on American Law," embrace the consideration of the law of nations, of the goverment and constitutional jurisprudence of the United States, of the various sources of the municipal law of the several States, as well of the civil as the com- mon law ; the rights of persons, includ- ing the marriage relations, guardianship and corporations; the laws of personal property, with its various grounds of title, bailments, contracts, partnership, marine insurance, and other topics ; the law of real property, in its origin and subdivisions, and various limitations — a vast field, excluding only the laws of procedure and criminal practice; so skilfully handled as to become, to the American student, what the great work of Blackstone is to the jurisprudence of England, a clear, lucid, perspicuous map and guide. The " Commentaries " are eminently, as noticed by Judge Duer, a national work, " exhibiting not only the jurisj)rudence of the United States, as derived by their federal union, but the municipal law, written and unwritten, of each individual State, on all the subjects that the work em- braces. The principles and rules of the common law, applicable to each subject, are first stated and explained, and then all the changes that have been made in particular States by judicial decisions, or legislative enactment."
Chancellor Kent varied his retire- ment and his legal consultations by an occasional appearance before the pub- lie, in the delivery of occasional ad- dresses. One of these, occupied with a narrative of the Revolutionary affairs of his State, with a special tribute to
46 JAMES
tlie somewhat neglected merits of Philip Schuyler, was delivered hy him at an anniversary meeting of the New York Historical Society, in 1828, of which he had been made President. He also delivered an address before the Phi Beta Kappa of Yale College, and in 1836 an oration, with reminis- cences of his early contemporaries, be- fore the Law Association of New York. In 1840, he prepared a course of Eng- lish reading for the use of the members of the Mercantile Library Association, which has been since reprinted, with additions by President Charles King, of Columbia College. The suggestions, the names of authors, with occasional comments, are made under the heads of History, Biography, Travels, Voy- ages, Belles-Lettres, Political and Moral Science, and the Natural Sciences. The work of Livy, Kent pronounces " upon the whole, the greatest and most com- prehensive historical composition of the ancients, replete with gravity, sincerity, and picturesque description;" Kollin, he pronounces prolix and tedious, and tells how he was glad to escape from it, at college, " sixty years ago," to Gold- smith's " brief and enchanting epitome of Eoman history." He shows an es- pecial acquaintance with the modern Italian historians, dwelling upon Macchi- avelli, "the Tuscan Tacitus," Guicciar- dini, " the Florentine Thucydides," and Giannoni's " Civil History of the King, dom of Naples. He was attracted to
KENT.
these by their lessons of popular libei'ty and the tyi'anny of faction. In English history and literature, he shows the tastes of a gentleman and scholar of the last generation, when Pope and Dryden were still admired with unction. Trav- els in all parts of the world especially engaged his attention. He was a dili- gent reader of them to his last days.
The close of this life, so amiable and full of peaceful trophies, was happily spent almost to the last in freedom from acute disease, and when it finally suc- cumbed, it was at the venerable age of eighty-four, with moderated, but hardly diminished powers of enjoyment. Dur- ing the last year, he became a commU' nicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to which he had become pre- viously attached. His death occurred December 12, 1847. At the meeting of the Bar of New York, held at the City Hall, on the occasion, the Hon. Samuel Jones presided, and resolutions were offered and supported by Ogden Hoffman, Benjamin F. Butler, Daniel Lord, and Hugh Maxwell. The obli- gations of American law to his early devoted course were dwelt upon, his leading investigations and applications of the civil law, his companionship with Hamilton, Pendleton, Wells, and other magnates of the profession, his sound principles of policy, while the elegant Hoffman, with characteristic fervor, euloffized the virtues of the man.
JOHN JAIMES AUDUBON.
JoHisr Jauies Audubon, tlie American naturalist, was born on tlie 4tli of May, 1780, on a plantation in Louisiana, ■which his father, a retired French naval officer, had made his residence. The family was in prosperous circum- stances, and the son appears to have had every advantage of education. He was early sent to Paris, whence he re- turned to America at the age of seven- teen, ^vith a natural talent for drawing which he possessed, instructed by the hand of no less eminent a master than the painter David. Of the tastes and aspu'ations which led him in this direc- tion we may best give the reader an impression in the words of the pupil himself In the " Introductory Ad- dress," a species of autobiographical sketch or retrospect, dated Edinburgh, 1831, placed as a preface to the letter- press of his great work on ornithology, the reminiscent writes mth characteris- tic enthusiasm : " I received light and life in the New World. When I had hardly yet learned to walk, and to articu- late those first words always so endear- ing to parents, the productions of nature that lay spread all around were con- stantly pointed out to me. They soon became my playmates, and before my ideas were sufficiently formed to enable me to estimate the difference between
the azure tints of the sky and the eme- rald hue of the bright foliage, I felt that an intimacy with them, not con- sisting of friendship merely, but bor- dering on frenzy, must accompany my steps through life; and now, more than ever, am I persuaded of the power of those early impressions. They laid such hold upon me that, w^hen removed from the woods, the prairies and the brooks, or shut up from the view of the wide Atlantic, I experienced none of those pleasures most congenial to my mind. None but aerial compan- ions suited my fancy. No roof seemed so secure to me as that formed of the dense foliage under which the feathered tribes were seen to resort, or the caves and fissures of the massy rocks to which the dark-winged cormorant and the curlew retired to rest, or to protect themselves fi^om the fury of the tem- pest. My father generally accompa- nied my steps, procured birds and flowers for me with great eagerness, pointed out the elegant movements of the former, the beauty and softness of their plumage, the manifestations of their pleasure or sense of danger, and the always perfect forms and splendid attire of the latter. My valued pre- ceptor would then speak of the depart- ure and return of birds with the sea
47
4S
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
sons, and would describe their haunts, and, more wonderful than all, their change of livery ; thus exciting me to study them, and to raise my mind toward their great Creator."
There were many steps, however, between these first half shaped inti- mations of genius and the perfected scientific naturalist. Enthusiasm will do much, but only in the way of di- recting sober plodding labors. The great distinction of the man of genius is, not that he is able to dispense with toil, but that he has a fresh, ever- springing motive within him which does not permit him to tire at his work. The labor must still be under- taken and accomplished. Indeed, the man of genius, while he is continually shortening the processes is constantly inventing for himself new trials and difiSculties.
The boy was delighted with his early observations of nature, watching the birth and growth of birds from the egg, looking upon them, he says, " as flowers in the bud." Then came the desire of acquisition, of possession, of forming a collection, similar to the want of a scholar of his own books and library — though perhaps a more impel- lino; motive, with the naturalist who has a living sympathy with his brute friends who are dependent on his care. The bird, too, like the book, was capa- ble of rewarding attention by the de- velopment of new traits. Yet in one respect the book has an advantage. It can be studied during the lifetime of the observer. It does not die and moulder fi-om our view. Something of this, as he tells us, was felt by the
young Audubon. Even the prepara- tion of the birds, after death, was oner- ous, and required constant care, and was subject to decay as the beauty of the plumage vanished. " I wished," was the longing of the boy naturalist, " all the productions of nature, but I wished life with them." The sequel is told in rather a di'amatic way^" I turned to my father and made known to him my disappointment and anxiety. He produced a book of illustrations. A new life ran in my veins. I turned over the leaves with avidity ; and al- though what I saw was not what I longed for, it gave me a desire to copy nature." To copy nature — it is in three words the story of his future life.
That perception of nature in its liv- ing forms was so keen that it made the youth the severest critic of his own labors, impelling him to work and compelling him to destroy. His pen- cil, he says, " gave birth to a family of cripples. So maimed were most of them that they resembled the mangled corpses on a field of battle, compared with the integrity of living men." One expression strikes us as of singu- lar force and felicity. " The worse my drawings were, the more beautiful did I see the originals." So he plodded on, frequently dissatisfied, but never discontinuing his work. It was a sure sign of his mental growth that for a long time every successive birthday witnessed a grand incremation of these immature sketches. Such was his youthful experience when he returned from France, instructed, as we have seen, by David, leaving the fine arts
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
49
of the Old World, its wealtli of galler- ies and tliousand charms of history, to devote himself to simple nature in the New.
His father gave him the opportunity of gratifying his tastes for rural life and study, by presenting him a farm in Pennsylvania, richly furnished with woods and evergreens, and watered by a running stream, where the free fea- thered inhabitants were at his door. But a long time was yet to elapse before he was fully conscious to him- self of his claim upon the world as a naturalist, who had a story to tell the public worth listening to, and some- thing to show worth seeing. These upward and outward struggles of na- ture are the great lessons of biography. All can understand the finished work ; but men are every day making mis- takes in their judgment of the traits of character, and processes which lead to excellence. " For a period of twenty years," writes Audubon, " my life was a succession of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce, but they all proved unprofitable, doubtless because my whole mind was ever filled with my passion for rambling and ad- miring those objects of nature from which alone I received the purest grati- fication. I had to struggle against the will of all who at that period called themselves my friends. I must here, however, except my wife and children. The remarks of my other friends irri- tated me beyond endurance, and break- ing through all bonds, I gave myself entirely up to my pursuits. Any one unacquainted with the extraordinary desii^e which I then felt of seeing and
judging for myself, would doubtless have pronounced me callous to every sense of duty, and regardless of every interest. I undertook long and tedious journeys, ransacked the woods, the lakes, the prairies, and the shores of the Atlantic. Years were spent away from my family. Yet, reader, will you believe it, I had no other object in view than simply to enjoy the sight of nature."
In one of those delightful sketches of natural scenery with which the de- scriptive volumes of his great work is interspersed, Audubon pauses to ask of Irving and Cooper to describe the virgin country of the Ohio and Miss- issippi, which in twenty years he had seen transformed from an unbroken Vv^ilderness into the thickly peopled abode of civilization. It was the feli- city of Audubon that his attention was turned to the observation of nature while her early features yet remained unchanged, that he was the immediate successor of Wilson, a kindred spirit, and a contemporary of Daniel Boone. His description of the scenery of the Ohio, in the account of the journey with his wife and infant son, from his Pennsylvania home to a new residence at Henderson, Kentucky, about the year 1810, shows the naturalist to have had an appreciative eye for the beau- ties of the landscape in his quest of its wild animal occupants.
We thus find the young naturalist, who as yet made no pretensions to the name, happily married, leaving his At- lantic home for a new residence in the West. He was for a time established as a trader at Henderson, on the Ohio,
50
JAMES AUDUBON.
in the western portion of Kentucky, and at Louisville, all tlie wliile occu- pying himself with his gun in his fa\'oi-ite rambles and studies of orni- thology. An incident of his mercantile life at the latter place deserves men- tion in his biography. He was one day waited upon in his counting-room by Alexander "Wilson, the devoted naturalist, the pioneer of American forests, and solicited for a subscription to the " American Ornithology." Nei- ther at the moment appears to have had any previous knowledge of the pursuits of the other. Audubon exam- ined the eno-ravinsrs of Wilson with interest, and the latter was still more surprised to witness the di^awings of birds in the portfolio of a western storekeeper. "Wilson asked if it was his intention to publish, and appeared still more perplexed when he learnt that so patient a student had no such object. He borrowed the drawings to examine during his stay in the town, and was introduced to birds new to him in the neighborhood, in hunting with his chance acquaintance. Audu- bon, who as yet had not " taken unto the height the measure of himself," placed all his drawings at the disposal of his visitor, with the result of his re- searches, proposing a correspondence, and stipulating only in return for an acknowledgment, in the published work, of what came from his pencil. It was perhaps well for both that the liberal offer was not accepted ; for each was strong enough to stand by himself, and the world can look upon the inde- pendent labors of both with an admira- tion which it has been taught by both
to cultivate. They were alike pupils in the great school of nature, taking their lessons in the wilderness, encoun- tering, Wilson particularly, more ene- mies in the indifference of the world than the " winter and rough weather " to which they voluntarily subjected themselves.
It was not till 1824, on a visit to Philadelphia, when he was introduced by Dr. Mease to Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, who, an accomplished na- turalist himself, saw the value of Au- dubon's labors, and animated him by his encouragement, that he set seriously about the work of thorough prepara- tion for publication. He was presented by the Prince to the Natural History Society of Philadelphia, and, proceed- ing to New York, was received with kindness by the inhabitants as he made his way "by that noble stream, the Hudson, to glide over our broad lakes and seek the wildest solitudes of the pathless and gloomy forests." It was at this time, he tells us, and in these scenes, that he first entertained the thought of visiting Europe to obtain the means and carry out the plan of multiplying his drawings by engraving. Eighteen months were passed in addi- tional preparation, his family mean- while leaving their home in Louisiana before he was ready to break ground in the Old World.
In 1826, at the age of forty-six, una- ble to obtain the facilities for publish- ing his work in the United States, he set sail for England, bearing with him the drawings from original studies, upon which he had expended so much care. Twice in this season of pupilage
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
51
he liad been nlmost driven to despair. It Nvas while he was a resident of Ohio that, returning from a visit to Phila- delphia, he found two hundred of his original drawings, representing nearly a thousand birds, which he liad left carefully stored in a box, liad been de- stroyed in Ms absence by a family of Norway rats, wliich had taken possess- ion of the case. " The burning heat," he writes, " wliicli instantly rushed through my brain, was too great to be endured without affectino- the wliole of my nervous system. I slept not for several niglits, and the days passed like days of oblivion, until the animal powers being recalled into action, tlirough the strength of my constitu- tion, I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencil, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing kad hap- pened. I felt pleased tkat I might now make muck better drawings than before : and, ere a period not exceeding three years kad elapsed, I had my portfolio filled again." The second trial was when Lawson, tke engraver of tke works of Lucien Bonaparte, at Philadelphia, pronounced it impossible to engrave from kis drawings. It is by suck trials tkat men of genius are dis- ciplined— trials w^kick it requires ge- nius to undergo.
It was not unnatural tkat tke travel- ler skould experience some despondency as ke approacked tke skores of Eng- land. He was well armed witk letters of introduction, but Europe kad tkus far received too little in kis department of science from America to be greatly agitated at kis arrival. His doubts were multiplied as ke read tke unsym-
patkizing faces in tke crowded streets of Liverpool. But kow could tkey be interested in an unknown stranger ? At kome tke kunter naturalist could kide kis sorrows in tke forest, as tke sckolar takes refuge in kis library ; but wkat cOuld ke do in tkis busy tkorougk- fare? "To tke woods," ke says witk feeling simplicity, " I could not betake myself, for tkere were none near." But in a moment tke scene was ckanged to success and felicity. Tke merckant princes and men of science of Liverpool took tkeir visitor by tke kand; kis drawings were exkibited and ke was on tke kigk road to fame. An equally friendly reception awaited kim at Man- ckester, and at Edinburgk ke was re- ceived witk kearty welcome by tke magnates of tke University, Jameson, Wilson, Brown, Monroe and otkers, and by suck celebrities as Sir Walter Scott, Captain Hall, and tke rest wko made up tke brilliant society of tke culti- vated upper classes of tke northern metropolis. Nor was it an idle tribute of men of taste and faskion in litera- ture. Tke compliments wkick ke re- ceived were accompanied by substan- tial rewards in subscriptions to kis undertakino; ; tkouo;k tke manufactur- ing wealtk of Leeds and Manckester was able to render more of tkis mate- rial assistance tkan learned Edinburgk. Of tke one kundred and eigkty names appended to tke first volume of orni- tkological biograpky, accompanying tke first instalment of one kundred plates, tke number of subscribers fur- nisked by tkese manufacturing towns is most creditable to tke taste and liber- ality of tke inkabitants. But it is, per-
52
JOHN JAMBS AFDTJBON.
liaps, still more to tlie credit of Ameri- ca, wliose wealth was less abundant, that nearly one-half the whole sub- scription was furnished him at home. The unprecedented success of the popular American subscription to the work of Agassiz on natural history of the present time, shows that the liberal- ity of the country keeps pace with its riches.
Audubon commenced the publica- tion of his work, " The Birds of Ame- rica, from Drawings made in the Unit- ed States and their Territories," in Edinburgh, whence it was transferred to the hands of the engraver, Robert Havell, of London, by whom it was thenceforth executed. The drawings were in the engraver's hands before a single subscriber was obtained ; but when the publication was commenced, in 182Y, twenty-five plates were issued regularly every year, and the close of 1830 saw the first volume completed. The work was issued in numbers, at the subscription price of two guineas each, a number containing five plates. The entire series of four hundred and thirty-five plates was issued to subscri- bers for one thousand dollars.
After laying the foundation of his great enterprise in England, Mr. Audu- bon visited Paris, where he was com- plimented by the interest taken in his work by the distinguished Cuvier and the savans of the metropolis. The ex- traordinary dimensions of his pictures, then a novelty, enabling him to repre- sent every bird of the size of life, the fidelity and lifelike air of his drawing and coloring, the interest of these new additions to science, were well adapted
to secure admiration. If the undertak- ing, said Cuvier, were carried out, America would surpass the Old World in magnificence of execution. Encour aged by these glowing tributes, which were fairly extorted by his brilliant labors, Audubon having fairly intro- duced his work to the public, and seen the successive numbers improving un- der the hands of his engraver, returned in 1829 for a hurried visit to the Unit- ed States, "scouring the woods" as usual, for new objects for his pencil. In the spring of the next year he was in London with his family, and in 1831 was once more in America, intent upon a comprehensive tour of observation and discovery. He procured letters from the Department at Washington to the mil- itary outposts, explored the Carolinas and Florida, and following the birds in their migrations, proceeded northward to Maine and Labrador, everywhere en- riching his portfolio with the results of his explorations. The sketches of his travellino; in Florida and Labrador, like the notices of his western tours, abound in pleasing passages of descrip- tion. The contrast of these several scenes adds not a little to their charms ; while, interspersed with the exact de- scription of birds, they infuse a personal human interest among the necessarily formal details of ornithological science.
Audubon thus passed nearly thre6 years " of travel and research " in Ame- rica before he returned to England, where he was greeted by his completed second volume, one-half of his project- ed work. A third appeared in due time, and the fourth and last was fin- ished in 1838.
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
53
After tliis the aiitlior was at liberty to make liis permanent home in Ameri- ca, and consequently in 1839 returned to the United States, and became the purchaser of a country seat in the im- mediate vicinity of New York, on the banks of the Hudson, on the upper portion of the island on which the city is situated. To bring the results of his great work within the reach of a larger number of the public, he employed himself upon its reduction. This was published in New York in seven octavo volumes, between 1840 and 1844. Nor had the author meantime relinquished his active habits of exploration. In company with his sons Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse he traversed the remoter regions of the country, collect- ing materials for a new work on which he now became engaged, on the Vivi- parous Quadrupeds of North America. Besides the aid of his sons, he had the assistance in this work of his friend, the accomplished naturalist, the Kev. John Bachman of South Carolina. It was in size similar to the original " Or- nithology," and was completed in three volumes in 1848. This was the last publishing enterprise which the author lived to see completed, a smaller edi- tion of the work having appeared since his death.
There was something very pleasing in the fine manly appearance of the venerable disciple of nature in his last years — for age treated him kindly, and he carried with him nearly to the last, a fi-esh, buoyant energy of his own. His time, when not passed, in his favor- ite woods, was spent in the familiar labors of the pencil, and in the enjoy-
ment, surrounded by his family and friends, of his suburban rural retreat. He had the rare satisfaction, also, of seeing his fame established throughout the world, and of witnessing, as his active powers failed, the continuance of his labors in the hands of his sons, devoted to his science and art. His last perception of fading consciousness was a few days before liis death, when one of his sons held before him some of his most cherished drawings. He died on the 2lt\i January, 1851.
For a personal description of the man in his prime, we may cite the elo- quent tribute of one who had much in common with Audubon in the genial, unfettered love of nature, and in cer- tain poetic impulses which jDervade alike the prose writings of each. In enthusiasm for the woods and fields. Professor "Wilson, or Christoj^her North, as he delighted to call himself in this holiday capacity, was the equal of Au- dubon. There was much, too, alike in their personal appearance — the flowing mane of hair, the careless hunter's dress, the eagle eye. Wilson, in the passage alluded to, is reviewing the " Ornithological Biography," on the publication of the first volume in 1831. He thus introduces the author :
" When, some five years ago, we first set eyes on him, in a party of literati, in 'stately Eclinborough throned on crags,' he was such an American woods- man as took the shine out of us mod- ern Athenians. Though dressed, of course, somewhat after the fashion of ourselves, his long raven locks hung curling over his shoulders, yet unshorn from the wilderness. They were shad-
54:
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
ed across his open foreliead with a sim- ple elegance, such as a civilized Christ- ian might be supposed to give his ' fell of hair,' when practising ' every man his own perruquier ' in some liquid mirror in the forest glade, employing, perhaps, for a comb, the claw of the bald eagle. His sallow, fine-featured face bespoke a sort of wild independ- ence ; and then such an eye, keen as that of the falcon ! His foreign accent and broken English speech — for he is of French descent — removed him still further out of the commonplace circle of this everyday world of ours ; and his whole demeanor — it might be with us partly imagination — was colored to our thought by a character of conscious freedom and dignity, which he had habitually acquired in his long and lonely wanderings among the woods, where he had lived in the uncompanied love and delight of nature, and in the studious observation of all the ways of her winged children, that forever flut- tered over his paths, and roosted on the tree at whose feet he lay at night, beholding them still the sole images that haunted his dreams." ^
It is understood that Audubon left behind him a work of autobiography. The passages which he has given from his journals in his Ornithological Bio- graphy would lead us to expect a book of rare interest. These relate, of course, mainly to incidents of his travels un- dertaken in pursuit of his favorite science. They have the charm of the
' Blackwood's Magazine, vol. xxx. p. 11.
French temperament, that happy talent of observation and description which harmonizes so admirably the simple and rude elements of frontier rural life ; that art of pleasure — that determina- tion of pleasing and being pleased, so characteristic of the race. The move- ments of Audubon among this humble society seem to have caught something of the easy gracefulness of his own feathered songsters. He appears never insensible to common blessings, never long depressed at the difficulties of his* situation. There is a felicity in many of these little narratives which added new interest in the productions of his pen to the faithful delineations of his pencil.
As an index of the wealth of beauty in his pictorial works, we might contrast his accounts of the Bird of Washington, a species of the eagle tribe which he prided himself upon being the first to depict, and the Louisiana mocking-bird, which he has so charmingly described. But who has not seen the engravings of the Birds of America— a work indeed too expensive for popular circulation in its original form, the somewhat exclusive possession of the wealthy, and chosen as a rare and costly gift by Govern- ment to foreign states ; but familiar to the eye in our public libraries and gal- leries ? A glance at the ample pages will show the patient study of a lifii- time, the result of years of watching and investigation of the habits of birds, their peculiar traits, their exqui- site plumage, their arch attitudes, and even their favorite surroundings.
DE WITT
CLINTON.
a previous page, in tlie notice of G-overnor George Clinton, the " soldier and statesman of tlie Revolution," we have traced the history of the Clinton family through their remarkable Ame- rican progenitor, Charles Clinton, of 'New York colonial memory, to their remote European ancestry. We are now to follow the fortunes of another branch of the family, which perpetuat- ed^ its honors with increasing fame to a third generation on this soil. A race which has given two distinguished governors to New York, each of whom stood in a certain direct relation to the Presidency, must excite a biographic interest.
General James Clinton, the brother of Governor George Clinton, and father of De Witt Clinton, was born at the homestead in Little Britain, in a part of Ulster County now included in Or- ange, in 1736. He early acquired a knowledge of military affairs, and was in actual service with his father and brother in the old French war at Fron- tenac. When the peace of Versailles con- cluded hostilities, he still kept an eye on the profession of arms, and rose by his merits in the colonial service to impor- tant frontier commands. He married, at this time, Mary De Witt, a young lady of excellent Dutch descent. The
Clinton family, always imbued with liberal principles, was naturally looked to by the Whigs of the Revolution. James, with his brother, joined the in- fant cause, was appointed to high com- mands in the provincial service, and speedily engrafted, a brigadier general, on the army of the United States. He was with Montgomery in his invasion of Canada, at Montreal, and gallantly defended Fort Clinton, by the side of his brother at Fort Montgomery, when both, after a valiant resistance were compelled to yield to the superior forces of Sir Henry Clinton. James Clinton was the last man to leave the works. His esca23e was one of the wonders of that hard-fought day. He was severely wounded by a bayonet thrust, as he fled, pursued by the bul- lets of the enemy. His servant was killed by his side. Taking his bridle from his horse, he slid down the rocky precipice of the fort a hundred feet, to the ravine, crept along the bank, his flowing blood staunched by a fall into the river, till morning, when he met with a horse on which he rode sixteen miles to his home. He was engaged in other military services in the State and was at the final surrender at York- town. After participating in the hon- ors of Washington's entry into New
65
56 DE WITT
York, lie retired to his country-seat in Orange County, where, dying at the age of seventy-six, his remains were laid in a tomb inscribed by his son — " He was a good man and a sincere patriot, performing, in the most exem- plary manner, all the duties of life : and he died, as he lived, without fear and without reproach."
His son, De Witt Clinton, was born at the family residence, at Little Bri- tain, March 2, 1769. His early educa- tion was under the care of the Presby- terian pastor of the settlement, and at the Academy of Mr. Addison, at Kingston. At the close of the war he was a youth of fifteen, on his way to Princeton, when he was arrested at New York by the efforts to revive the seat of learning. King's College, in that city, whose short existence in the colo- nial era had been attended with dis- tinguished success. His uncle, George Clinton, the governor of the State, took an active part in this reorganiza- tion, which was effected in 1784. De "Witt Clinton was the first matriculated student of the revived institution, which now bore the name of Columbia College. He entered the junior class, and in April, 1786, received his degree at the first Commencement after the Revolution. Forty-one years after, shortly before his death, in an address before the alumni, Clinton paid a grate- ful tribute to the founders of the ris- ing college ; to Cochran, the clas^cal scholar, to Kemp, the professor of ma- thematics and natural philosophy, to Benjamin Moore, subsequently the bishop, whose benignity added a grace to his department of rhetoric. Coch-
CLINTON.
ran lived to delight in his pupil, and to lay his wealth of praise, in well chosen learned phraseology, upon his grave. " He did everything well ; upon the whole, Se seemed likely to me to prove, as he did prove, a high- ly useful and practical man ; what the Romans call civilis and the Greeks poUt{ko8^ a useful citizen, qualified to counsel and direct his fellow citizens to honor and happiness." To the ingenu- ity and insight of Kemp, particularly in his inculcation of the value of canal navigation, in internal improvements, a marked influence has been attributed upon the career of his pupil. There is one habit of his college years which accompanied him through life, one with which few men who make their mark in the world at the present day are able to dispense — the practice of study- ing with the pen in hand. He thus acquired an exact mental disci j)line, and laid the foundation of that accu- mulated stock of literature and science which was the solace and support of his after career.
On the completion of these prepara- toiy lessons — for they were but prepa- ratory— Clinton was always a student and learner — he engaged in the study of the law in the ofiice of Samuel Jones, an eminent counsellor of the time, the father of the late Chancellor Jones. It was the season of the adop- tion of the Federal Constitution, and the young student was an anxious watcher of the debates at the session of the Ratifying Convention at Pough- keepsie. His uncle, the governor, it will be remembered, sat at the head of that body, and was one of the most
DE WITT
resolute opponents of the measure. The nephew was thus early in corres- pondence with politicians in New York, to whom he communicated the progress of the debate. He shared the views of his uncle, his jealousy of consolida- tion, and fears of the loss of State pri- vileges, and had already signalized his com-se as an Anti-Federalist by his series of letters signed " A Country- man." in reply to the papers of Jay, Hamilton, and Madison. The oppo- nents of the Constitution were, how- ever, compelled to yield their preju- dices to the necessities of the case, un- der cover of urgent pleas for proposed amendments.
De Witt Clinton was now taken into the employ of the governor as his secretary, and thus made his entrance upon public affairs in 1Y89. In 1794 he was made secretary of the Board of Regents of the University, and in this capacity drew the Report in favor of the incorporation of Union College, containing the earliest official recommendation of the establishment of schools by the Legislature, for the common branches of education.^ He was also secretary of the Board of Commissioners of the State fortifica- tions. In these appointments he had the example and assistance of his uncle, always a zealous and enlightened promoter of the welfare of New York. This influence ceased when the gover- nor retired from office, in 1795, when the young Clinton commenced the practice of the law in New York. He was brought in contact with Dr.
' Street's Council of Revision, etc., p. 138.
CLINTON. 57
Hosack and Dr. Mitchill, then profes- sors of botany and chemistry in Colum- bia College, with whom he prosecuted those studies of natural history which grew to be great favorites with him, and in which he became an accom- plished adept. He married at this time Miss Franklin, the daughter of an eminent Quaker merchant of New York. In 1797 he was elected to the Legislature as a member of the Assem- bly, and in the following year to its upper house, the Senate, when he was chosen a member of the Council of Ap- pointment. While in discharge of this duty, a question arose within this body as to the right of nomination. It had been exercised by the Council m oppo- sition to the claim of Governor Clin- ton, and was now reasserted in conflict with Governor Jay. De Witt Clinton was opposed to the governor, and his view of the matter was sustained by the convention to which the question was submitted by the Legislature. To this decision, which cast the power of the State into the hands of the repub- lican party, is assigned the beginning of the course of proscription which embittered so greatly the subsequent political career of Clinton. He was now, however, on the rising tide of popularity, and in 1802, at the early age of thirty-three, was appointed to a vacancy in the Senate of the United States, where he took his seat by the side of Gouyerneur Morris, his fellow representative from the State.
Clinton had been two years in the Senate when he resigned his post to assume the mayoralty of New York as the successor of Edward Livingston.
58 DE WITT
He entered upon the duties of this office in 1803, and with several short intervals, when he was displaced by the fluctuations of party, continued to hold it till 1815. A mayor of New York at that time differed not only in the manner of his election, but in many of his employments, from his successors of the jDresent day. He had a degree and variety of power in his hands for which a senatorship might well be exchanged. He presided at the meetings of the Common Council, then sitting in a single body. He ex- ercised also important judicial func- tions as chief judge of the common pleas and of the criminal court, and at the head of the police. In all these relations Clinton was active and efficient; firm and honest as a judge, resolute and in- trepid in checking riot and preserving the peace. These were the ordinary duties of a magistrate. He had others to perform of his own choosing and advocacy, growing out of his tastes for literature and science. Foremost amono- these, in point of time and importance, was the Free School Association, for which a charter was procured in 1805. The act speaks of a single school, and its object was "to provide for the edu- cation of poor children who do not be- long to, or are not provided for, by any religious society." The undertaking was stimulated by the success of Lan- caster, with his direct and economical system in England. His plans were followed by Clinton and his associates in New York. Funds were provided by charitable subscriptions, Clinton himself soliciting contributions from door to door, and the first school was
CLIJs^TON.
opened in May, 1806, in a small apart ment in Bancker street. The corpora- tion of the city then appropriated a building adjacent to the alms-house for the purpose, and in 1809 the institu- tion found a permanent lodgment in a building erected by its funds on the site of an old arsenal which was grant- ed for the purpose. On the completion of this building, in 1809, Clinton, as president of the society, delivered an opening address, noticeable for his en- lightened interest in the subject of education, and as a landmark whence we may measure the progress to the present gigantic public school system of the city.
While holding the office of the may- oralty, Clinton was, in 1805, elected a State senator, which gave him an op- portunity of directly influencing the Legislature in the promotion of his favorite civic and philanthropic schemes. Many an act, under which the present generation enjoys some special privi- lege or benefit, owes its origin to the sagacity and perseverance of Clin- ton at Albany. The charters of the Sailor's Snug Harbor, the old Manu- mission Society, the Bloomingdale Hos- pital for the Insane, the first insurance company of the State, the Ameiican Academy of Arts, of which he was made president, acts in behalf of the Orphan Society, and numerous other phi- lanthropic associations ; others for the benefit of medical science, and generally relating to everything of importance to the welfare of the city, originated with him or were especially intrusted to his guardianship. In his seat as senator, in the Court of Errors, he deli-
DB WITT
vered opinions on questions involving iniportaut principles of constitutional law and rights of property which gained the admiration of so compe- tent a critic as Chancellor Kent.
AVe have enumerated some of the liberal objects in the advancement of the city which engaged the attention of Clinton, at the head of which must be ranked his personal efforts to secure the benefits of education to every struggling child of poverty capable and willing to receive them. The list of his good deeds in this second forma- tive era of city life, when New York was on the eve of that movement w^hich has since borne her so rapidly to her proud eminence as a metropolis of the nation, is not yet complete. "We can hardly mention any liberal enter- prise of the city which does not owe something to his fostering care and pro- tection. What Franklin, in his gener- ation, did for Philadelphia, De Witt Clinton, a half a century later, accom- plished for New York. There is a period in most institutions when the first efforts of their originators are spent ; the enthusiasm of the original idea is worn off ; the scanty supply of means exhausted : when an opportune deliverer is needed to save the labors of the original projector. Many useful societies, destined to a long life, pass through several such stages. De Witt Clinton interposed with his friendly services on more than one crisis of the kind. He took the languishing Acad- emy of Arts under his protection, ob- tained a charter for it, and a local habitation in the Grovernment House, near the Battery. This institution had
CLINTON. 59
found a zealous friend in its founder and first president. Chancellor Livings- ton. On his death, Clinton succeeded to the vacant chair. He delivered a discourse before this Academy in 1816.
The Historical Society was another struggling enterprise to which he ren- dered the most important assistance. It appealed to him by considerations of family history and national pride to which he was never insensible. He drew up th.e act of incorporation, and the report seconding its adoption in the Legislature, and when it was neces- sary to establish the society on a firmer pecuniary basis, he prepared an elabo- rate memorial of its aims and objects, with which he again appealed to that body, and secured an important grant in its favor. In 1811 he delivered, at the anniversary meeting of the society, a discourse on the history of the Iro- quois or Five Indian Nations of the State, replete with historical research and philosophical observation. He was at this time vice president of the so- ciety. He succeeded to the presidency in 1817.
The New York Literary and Philo- sophical Society was another institu- tion which called for and received his aid from the start. He was chosen its first president, and opened its public proceedings with an admirable intro- ductory discourse, not merely abound- ing in scientific information, but instinct with the zeal and warmth of a lover's admiration. For natural history he had a great fondness. Associated with Mitchill, Hosack, and others, and in his tours through the State, he devoted himself to numerous original investiga
DE WITT CLINTON.
GO
tioiis recorded in his papers in the Transactions of the Society just spoken of, in liis journals, and other publica- tions.
The period of these interesting pur- suits also gave birth to those schemes of internal improvements connected with canal navigation, with which the name of Clinton is indissolubly linked in his native State, His attention had early been directed, in the annual mes- sages of his uncle, the fii'st governor, to the subject of canals in New York. That enlightened patriot, in 1791, 1792, and 1794, had urged a liberal policy upon the Legislature in connec- tion with certain northern and western companies of inland lock navigation. In a glowing passage of an address de- livered by De Witt Clinton as early as the last mentioned year, he had pro- phesied the influence of art in changing the face of the world.
These early companies, confined to a limited portion of the State, were at- tended with but little success. In March, 1810, the Legislature seemed disposed to take up the matter in ear- nest in the appointment of a committee of which De Witt Clinton was a mem- ber, with Gouverneur Morris, Ste- phen Van Eensselaer, Thomas Eddy, William North, Simeon De Witt, and Peter B. Porter, charged with the ex- ploration of the whole route from the Hudson to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The tour was made,^ and happily a private journal kept of its numerous interesting incidents by De Witt Clin- ton. It remains a most interesting picture of the condition of the State just before its great system of improve-
ments was undertalcen, which must in- crease in value with every succeeding year as the country recedes from its primitive aspect. As usual, the obser- ver is intent not merely on the mecha- nical advantages, but the general phy- sical conditions of the region which he traversed. In 1820 he sketched the incidents of a similar journey in the " Letters of Hibernicus on the Natural History and Internal Resources of the State of New York," a genial and ani- mated production of permanent inter- est.
The canal was reported favorably upon by Gouverneur Morris, in behalf of the commissioners. The Legislature renewed their powers and added Liv- ingston and Fulton to their council. In furtherance of its designs, Clinton and Morris visited Washino;ton to secure the aid of the United States Govern- ment. President Madison and his cab- inet had other affairs of more pressing interest before them, and the work was left to the exertions of Clinton and his friends in his own State,
Before resuming our brief narrative of Clinton's connection with the canal policy of the State, we must briefly state the chief incidents of his political career, from which these scientific and literary pursuits were but diversions. We have seen him recalled from Con gress to the mayoralty, and sitting in the State Senate. In 1811 he was elected lieutenant governor, and the following year put in nomination by a convention of his republican friends in the Presidential election of 1812, in opposition to Madison. Failing of his election, he was placed in a somewhat
DE WITT
ambiguous position between the advo- cates of the war and its opponents, -\rliicli was aggravated by subsequent pai-ty divisions in liis State, in tlie pro- gress of wliicli lie was tlirown out of the mayoralty.
Clinton, it is said, was ambitious of office ; if so, it was always as a means to his useful and honorable ends. He now found means to pursue the latter even without the former. He now de- termined with his friends to revive the great canal project which had been suspended by the war. A meeting of influential citizens was called in the autumn of 1815, at the City Hotel, in New York, to which he presented a memorial on the whole subject, demon- strating the practicability of the union of the Hudson with Lake Erie, setting forth the various details and enforcing the vast benefits of the work. Never was a great undertaking more nobly heralded than in this convincing docu- ment. It was sent abroad and numer- ously signed by the public, presented in February, 1816 to the Legislature, who had now again the subject fully before them. Clinton was again ap- pointed one of the commissioners of a new board, new reports were made, and in 1817 the construction of the work duly authorized.
The same year Clinton was elected by the people, spite of party, governor of the State, and continued to hold the office by successive elections with the ex- ception of a single term in 1 8 2 3 and 1824, till his death. It was on his gratifying reelection, after the interregnum when his political enemies deprived him even of his unpaid office of canal commis- u.— 8
CLINTON. 61
sioner, that he had the further satisfac- tion of witnessing the completion of the great project of his life, the Erie canal. The rejoicings of New York at that period belong to the national history. The celebration extended throughout the State. The day which crowned the work was the 26th of Oc- tober, 1825. Governor Clinton, ac- companied by delegates from New York and the villages along the line, embarked at the western terminus of the canal at Buffalo, on its waters, and pursued its whole length to Albany, while signal guns, fired from station to station, rapidly bore the news of his progress in advance to New York. The party continued their course down the Hudson to that city, where they were met by a splendid flotilla of steamboats and other maritime dis- plays, which led them to the ocean, when the waters of Lake Erie, as in the festal processions of Venice in the Adriatic, were mingled with the Atlan- tic.
It was a proud moment for Clinton — one of those triumphs in the history of science when the laurels which so many deserving candidates fail to grasp are placed upon the brow of some favored individual, whose energy is at last rewarded with success. Clinton had every way a right to the ovation. He was a genuine son of New York, a growth of a family tree which had struck its roots deep into the soil, which had extorted nourishment from the wilderness, which had strengthened in the blasts of the Kevolution, had encountered the fiercer storm of politi- cal agitation, and survived many in-
62 DE WITT
ferior bretliren of tlie forest wliicli tlirust their foliage between its gigantic trunk and the sunlight. We sicken as we read of the strife of party, so un- generous in its opposition to this great man. It may be, indeed, that the strife and opposition were inevitable. So much the more pleasing are the peace- ful, beneficent labors of Clinton — in the poet and philosopher's praise of Epicu- rus, illustrating the benefits of life, adding to the welfare of the race by acts of unmitigated blessing. The heart of New York should throb with emotion at the name of this ardent, chivalrous spirit of civilization ; the pioneer and faithful guardian of so much of her prosperity.
We have now arrived at a culminat- ing point so near the close of this illus- trious life, that for our present pur- poses the narrative may well close. Yet it would be injustice to the fame of our great statesman, were we to omit some mention of the annual mes- sages which, as governor, he sent forth to the State, models of literary compo- sition as well as of the details of pub- lic business. He always enforced the plans of internal improvement, sanc- tioned by the success of his great en- terprise, and when occasion permitted, his language, as in his review of the prosperity of his country in his last address of this kind at the beginning of 1828, rose to moral beauty.
It was not long after this message was delivered, that, on the 11th of Feb- ruary, 1828, at the close of a day spent
CLINTON.
in public business, while yet engaged with his son in his study, in the peru- sal of the letters of the evening mail, that, stricken at the heart, he almost instantaneously expired.
The character of De Witt Clinton needs no effort of labored interpreta- tion. His portrait S23eaks the habitual gravity which sat on his countenance, with an air of pride which might be interpreted haughtiness or dignity, ac- cording to the feeling and knowledge of the observer. His figure was tall and commanding. He was active, an early riser, incessant in toil, sparing lit- tle for the frivolities of life and the arts by which politicians ingratiate themselves with their fellows. But they who could appreciate worth and goodness never mistook him. Twice married, he was endeared to a large family connection. Of the political asperities which entangled so consider- able a portion of a valuable life, we have said little. They undoubtedly present a curious subject of inquiry, by no means unprofitable, but this is not the place to ferret them out from the oblivion to which such passions of the hour are committed. There are many necessary labors in life, working to good ends, the memory of which we do not seek to perpetuate. Of these the petty details of controversial poli- tical warfare, perhaps, are the least in- teresting to posterity. They dwindle and stand abashed before the social and philanthropic benefits conferred by Clinton.
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
Tile gallant, amiable liero of Lake Erie, alike estimable as a man and admirable as a warrior, had, in his blood, two elements which seldom failed in our history, when they were put to the proof, to bring forth the matured fruits of patriotism. His first American ancestor, Edmund Perry, was one of the Devonshire emiOTants from England, who fled from religious perse- cution, in the seventeenth century, to the colony at Plymouth, in Massachusetts; but unlike some of his companions there, he fled not from Laud and his spiritual exactions, but from the fight- ing men of Cromwell. He was a Quaker, and his pacific tenets were at war with the temper of the times. Nor did he find rest at Plymouth, where on other grounds Quakers were equally obnoxious. Like Roger Wil- liams, he sought relief from his breth- ren among the children of the forest, and like him found a peaceful refuge with his companions on the waters of Narragansett Bay. He purchased a ^[uantity of land from the Indians, at a place called South Kingston, an estate which continued to his descendants, supplied a family home, and gave, in due time, the subject of our sketch to the State of Rhode Island.
Descending to the great grandson of
Edmund Perry, characteristically named Freeman Perry, we find him a man of influence in the colony, a lawyer, a judge and member of the Colonial As- sembly, married to the daughter of a wealthy and educated gentleman, Oli- ver Hazard, also a descendant of the old Quaker stock. Of this alliance came the early Revolutionary naval hero, Christopher Raymond Perry, the father of the hero of Lake Erie. "We do not know precisely how this Quaker gentleman got so intimately into the wars, whether his principles were weaker, or his logic stronger than that of some of his brethren; but no one was more resolute, and few sufi'erecl more in the cause of the country. He was in the volunteer service in Rhode Island^ — he was at sea in the privateer service, in the absence of a navy, a more dignified and patriotic pursuit than it might be at present. In one of these adventures he was taken prisoner, aad brought into New York to taste the horrors, at which humanity shud- ders, of the Jersey prison-ship. Smart- ing with the indignity, emaciated with fever on his escape, he rejoined his com- rades on the ocean, and both in the navy and in the privateer service fought gallantly against the foe. He was captui'ed again, and imprisoned
6S
64
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
for eighteen months in Ireland ; escap- ing once more, he reached America when the war was over. All this occurred when he was hut a youth, for he was only twenty-two at the declara- tion of peace.
Still following the sea, we next find him mate of a merchantman sailing to Ireland. Upon his return voyage, he falls in love with one of the passengers, Sarah Alexander, of Irish birth and Scotch descent. Both, at this time, are spoken of as remarkable for their per- sonal beauty, and force of character. The next year, 1784, Captain Perry married his blooming acquaintance, and the pair made their home at the old family estate in Rhode Island.
There Oliver Hazard Perry was born, August 23, 1785. The late Com- mander Mackenzie of the navy, who possessed, what we may term, a fine biographic faculty, has traced in his interesting narrative of the Life of Perry, with fond minuteness, the early incidents of the boy's career. The chief characteristics, he tells us, " were an uncommon share of beauty, a sweet- ness and gentleness of disposition, which corroborated the expression of his countenance, and a perfect disregard of danger, amounting to apparent un- consciousness." This biographer gives some curious anecdotes of his school days. His first schoolmaster was an odd specimen of the race. He was a kindly old gentleman of the neighbor- hood, an amateur of the profession, whose humor it was, reversing the usual relation between wisdom and her followers, himself actually to lie in bed in the schoolroom while the scholars
surrounded his couch, the nearest, of course, coming in for the most flogging. Then there was "old Master Kelly," the instructor of three generations, at Tower Hill, some four miles otf, whither the young Oliver accompanied his fair cousins, and learnt more of grace and humanity from their com- pany, than even from the proverbial emolUt mores of the pedagogue. A man who serves three generations is likely to be an old boy with those who come last, and we are not surprised to learn that Kelly retired "from sheer superannuation." The succession of schoolmasters at Tower Hill then be- came a little unsteady. The new man from Connecticut did not stay long. The one who came after him had his virtues, but was intemperate. Men of genius who stumble into that vocation are sometimes di-iven there by drink, a fatal habit which banishes them from higher positions to which they are bet- ter entitled. In this way, you will occasionally meet with a most accom- plished scholar in very humble circum- stances. If so, accept the benefit with thanks, nor look too narrowly at the inscrutable providence which has brought a learned, and, perhaps, amia- ble man to your village, sent and retained there by the fearful bond of his master vice. He may not be all in ruin.
The careful student of Perry's life will not regret these notices of his schoolmasters, who frequently stand next to a boy's parents in the forma- tion of his character. But we must here refer the reader to Mackenzie's biography for the more particular nar-
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
65
rative. Suffice it to say, tliat the fam- ily removing to Newport about tliis time, Perry found good opportunities of education at that place, and availed himself of them in a manly spiiit. He was especially instructed in mathe- matics, and their application to naviga- tion and nautical astronomy. As proof of the hoy's ingenuousness, and the interest he excited in intelligent ob- servers, it is related that Count Eocham- beau, the son of the General of the Revolution, then residing at Newport, was particularly attracted to him, and that Bishop Seabury, on his visitation, marked him as a boy of religious feel- ing. These are traits which shape the man ; we shall find them reappearing in the maturity of Peny's life, in his worth, humanity and refinement.
The boy was but thirteen when his father, in 1Y98, was called into the naval service of his country in the spi- rited effort made by President Adams to resist the aggressions of France upon the ocean. He took the command of a small frigate, built under his direction in Rhode Island, named the General Greene, and carried with him to sea his son Oliver as a midshipman, at the express solicitation of the youth. The General Greene was actively employed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, o-iving all its officers abundant oppor- tunity for practice in the infant service. The French war flurry after awhile blew over, as the Directory, the main- spring of these aggressions, lost power ; peace was patched up, and Jefferson shortly after inaugurated an unwhole- some pacific policy by a sweeping reduction of the navy, as if it had not
been small enough abeady. In this mutilating operation the elder Perry was dropped, the younger one fortu- nately retained.
The navy, however, was soon revived by the demands of the nation to resist the iniquitous and insulting depreda- tions upon life and property inflicted by the Barbary powers. The United States had borne far too patiently with these injuries, though she had the honor of being in advance of the old powers of Europe in resisting them. The Mediterranean became the scene of many a chivalrous exploit of our early officers, a score of whom headed by Preble, Bainbridge, Decatur, Som- ers, and others of that stamp of fiery and indomitable valor, gained immor- tal laurels in their deeds of daring in conflict with the infidel
The young Perry served as midship- man in the frigate Adams, which sailed from Newport, in 1802, to join Com- modore Morris' command at Gibraltar, His ship was for some time employed in blockading a Tripolitan at that port, a tedious but instructive service in ma- noeuvring, at the close of which. Perry, in consequence of his accomplishments, was promoted by his captain to the duties of a lieutenant. The frigate was then employed as a convoy, making the tour of the northern ports. This gave Perry an opportunity to study scenes of the old world, which can never lose their influence in the formation of the man of education and refinement. Cooper, whose eye was always open to every generous influence, notices the effect of this culture of travel to foreign shores. "There is little doubt," says
GO
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
he, " that one of the reasons why the American marine early obtained a thirst for a knowledge that is not uni- formly connected with the pursuits of a seaman, and a taste, which, perhaps, was above the level of that of the gen- tlemen of the country, was owing to the circumstance that the wars with Barbary called its officers so much, at the most critical period of its existence, into that quarter of Europe. Travel- lers to the old world were then ex- tremely rare, and the American who, forty years ago, could converse as an eye witness of the marvels of the Medi- terranean— who had seen the remains of Carthage, or the glories of Constan- tinople— who had visited the Coliseum, or was familiar with the aflSuence of Naples, was more than half the time, in some way or other, connected with the navy."
At the close of 1803, Perry returned to America in his ship, under the com- mand of Commodore Morris, and was not again employed in active service till he was sent to tlie Mediterranean again in the Constellation, which did not reach the scene of hostilities on the African coast, till the more daring ope- rations of the war were over. He returned home at the close of 1806, when he was set upon the construction and equipment of those famous gun- boats, the pet Lobby of Jefferson, for home defence, which exacted many a rebellious oath from the blue water sailors, condemned* to rust in harbor. But, however distasteful the service may have been. Perry acquitted him- self to the satisfaction of the govern- ment in its prosecution.
In 1809, however, Perry got to sea in command of an armed schooner, tbe Revenge, which was employed on the coast service. While on the south- ern coast, lie had an opportunity to gain distinction, which he did not fail to avail himself of, in cutting out a stolen American vessel from under the guns of a Britisb ship in Spanish waters, off Florida. Conveying his prize off the coast, he was threatened by his majesty's ship Goree, of double his force, when, having, as Mackenzie says, "no idea of being ' Leopardized,' " he put his little schooner in readiness for boarding at a moment's notice — a spirited resolution of great bravery, which he would no doubt have carried out, had the British vessel insisted upon overhauling the Revenge. While en- gaged in the cruising off Connecticut and Rhode Island, in the beginning of 1811, lie unfortunately lost his vessel through an error of the pilot, on the Watch Hill Reef, opposite Fisher's Island, as he was sailing from Newport to New London. Every seamanlike effort was made to save the vessel, and when all was unavailing. Perry show^ed equal skill and resolution in landing the crew in a heavy January swell, with a violent wind. He was himself the last to leave the vessel. He was not merely acquitted of censure, but his conduct was extolled by a court of inquiry.
He was, of course, by the loss of his vessel, thrown temporarily out of com- mand, an interval of repose which he hastened to turn to account by forming a matrimonial alliance with Miss Eliza- beth Champlin Mason, of an influential
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
67
family, at Ne^\7)ort, to whom lie Lad become engaged several years before, on Lis arrival from tLe Mediterranean. The wedding took place in May, 1811, affording Lim ample opportunity for tLe Loneymoon, previous to tLe actual outbreak of tLe war witL England now impending.
TLis event found Lim at New[3ort, AvitL tLe rank of master commandant, in cLarge of tLe flotilla of gunboats keeping watcL in tLe Larbor. It was a service not altogetLer adapted to satisfy tLe ambitious spirit of a j^oung ofiicer, but it was important in itself, and became in Perry's Lands a step to future eminence. His course, at tLis time, illustrates a valuable trutL, tLat no Lonorable employment is profitless to a man of genius. He will in some way turn it to account. Constructing gunboats, and recruiting men in port, were services not calculated to make any great blaze in a dispatcL, but tLey conducted Perry to Lis glorious bulle- tins of victory, and tLe resounding praises of tLe nation.
He saw tLe new field of military operations opening on tLe lakes, and Lis experienced eye must Lave seen as well tLe certain difficulties as tLe possi- ble Lonors of tLe situation. It was not tLe post wLicL an officer, vntL tLe claims of Perry, would Lave sougLt, wLile brilliant victories were being enacted, in tLe eye of tLe world, on tLe vast tLeatre of tLe ocean. OtLers, Lowever, were before Lim on tLat ele- ment. He was emulous of tLeir acLievements, but no petty jealousy hindered Lim from swelling tLeir praises in concert witL tLe national.
acclamation. Yet Le sougLt employ- ment in active service witL a restless imindse. Despairing of a command at sea, Le offered Limself to Commodore CLauncey, wLo Lad been recently placed at tLe Lead of tLe lake service. His cLaracter was understood by tLis officer, and tLe proffer accepted. TLe necessary communications were made to tLe government, and in tLe middle of February, in 1813, Le was ordered to join CLauncey at Sackett's Harbor, witL tLe picked men of Lis Newport flotilla. He lost no time in reporting Limself at tLe appointed spot. His destination was Lake Erie, wLere Le was to supervise tLe construction of two vessels to be employed in tLe next campaign, and Le was anxious to get to tLe work ; but CLauncey, wLo felt tLe need of Lis aid, detained Lim for a wLile on Lake Ontario. He Lowever, towards tLe end of MarcL, readied Erie, wLere tLe vessels were building, under tLe direction of NoaL Brown, tLe sLipwrigLt of New York, and sail- ing master Dobbins, of tlie navy. His experience in constructing gunboats at Newport was now of avail to Lim. He put tLe defence of tLe works, wLicL Lad been greatly neglected, in a state of efficiency, and set Limself to tLe collection of supplies, workmen, and an armament : no easy matter at tLat day and in tLat place in tLe wilder- ness ; for sucL, as compared witL our own time, it tLen was. TLe labors of Perry, in tLis work of preparation, were in fact of tLe most arduous cLaracter. TLey should not be forgot ten as a heavy item to his credit in the sum total of his victory. Three
tiS
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
gunboats and two brigs were launclied and equipped in May.
It was at this time tliat lie received advices that Chauncey was about to make an attack on the British post of Fort George, at the mouth of the Nia- gara river. He had been promised a share in this adventure, and hastened to the scene. The incidents of this journey show the spirit of the man. In his own words, in a letter describing this passage of his life, " on the evening of the twenty-third of May, I received information, about sunset, that Commo- dore Chauncey would in a day or two aiTive at Niagara, when an attack would be made on Fort George. He had previously promised me the com- mand of the seamen and marines that might land from the fleet. Without hesitation I determined to join him. I left Erie about dark in a small four- oared open boat. The night was squally and very dark. After encoun- tering head winds and many difficul- ties, I an'ived at Buffalo on the evening of the twenty-fourth, refreshed, and remained there until daylight ; I then passed the whole of the British lines in my boat, within musket-shot. Pass- ing Strawberry Island, several people on our side of the river hailed and beckoned me on shore. On landing they pointed out about forty men on the- end of Grand Island, who, doubt- less, were placed there to intercept boats. In a few moments I should have been in their hands. I then pro- ceeded with more caution. As we ar- rived at Schlosser, it rained violently. No horse could be procured. I deter- mined to push forward on foot ; walked
about two miles and a half, when the rain fell in such torrents I was obliged to take shelter in a house at hand. The sailors whom I had left with the boat, hearing of public horses on the commons, determined to catch one for me. They found an old pacing one which could not run away, and brought him in, rigged a rope from the boat into a bridle, and borrowed a saddle without either stirrup, girth, or crup- per. Thus accoutred they pursued me, and found me at the house where I had stopped. The rain ceasing, I mounted ; my legs hung down the sides of the horse, and I was obliged to steady the saddle by holding by the mane. In this style I entered the camp, it raining again most violently. Colonel Porter being the first to discover me, insisted upon my taking his horse, as I had some distance to ride to the other end of the camp, off which the Madison lay."
Having thus reached headquarters, arrangements were rajDidly made, and the landing of the troops assigned to Perry. In the ignorance or inexperi- ence of some of the officers, there was considerable confusion in directing the boats in the river, which was remedied by Perry's vigilance and decision. He was everywhere, in the midst of danger, guiding and directing ; the unexpected attack of the British was met by his energy, the landing effected, and the object of the expedition accomplished. This victory opened the port of Black Eock, where several American vessels were collected, which Perry undertook to get into Lake Erie against the strong current of the river, a feat which was
OLIVER HAZARD TERRY.
60
aecoinplislied with extraordinaiy fa- tio'ue: so tliat lie returned to Lis sta- tion, at Erie, witli a respectable addi- tion of five vessels to liis own newly launched little fleet in that harbor. To one of the vessels which he had built, a name was given by a disaster which saddened the heart of the countr}^. An order from the navy de- partment assigned the name of the gal- lant Lawrence, who had fallen on the first of June, on the deck of the Ches- apeake. It was with the dying excla- mation of Lawrence, as we shall see, that Perry led his fleet into action.
There was some delay in gathering men and materials of war in the har- bor, locked in by the inclosing penin- sula, and half closed at its mouth by a bar which seemed an equal defence to the force within and the enemy with- out, A reinforcement of men at last arrived, when Perry, though by no means provided with all or what he could have wished, urged by the de- mands of General Harrison, in the upper country, for aid, and the advance of the season, determined upon going into action at the earliest moment. The British commander, Captain Bar- clay, a gallant officer who had seen much service, expected an easy prey while the vessels were embarrassed on the bar ; and he might have enjoyed it under a less vigilant opponent. It is said that the English cajjtain was drawn off to an entertainment on shore, the Sunday afternoon when Per- ry, by the aid of camels floated under the brigs, diminishing the draught, conducted the operations which ended in getting his fleet fairly afloat. More n.— 9
than a month was now passed in watcli- ing the enemy and seeking an engage- ment, during which Perry was strengtli- ened by a reinforcement brought from Lake Ontario by Captain Jesse D. El- liott, and the British added to their force their new vessel, the Detroit, at Maiden. Perry watched the enemy from the islands in the neighborhood of this place, at the head of the lake, and from the near harbor of Sandusky.
The day of the threatened engage- ment at length came, the tenth of Sep- tember. The American force was com- posed of the brigs Lawrence and Niagara, of twenty guns each, com- manded respectively by Perry and El- liott, and seven smaller vessels number- ing in all fifty-four guns. Captain Barclay, on the other side, had the De- troit, of nineteen guns, the Queen Charlotte, Lady Prevost, and three other vessels, numbering altogether sixty- three guns.'^ The range of the enemy's guns gave them the advantage at a dis- tance, when the corresponding Ameri- can fire was ineffectual. The Ameri- cans, too, were under a disadvantage in the enfeebled state, of the crew, by the general illness which prevailed among them from the season of the year, the climate, or the unwholesome- ness of the water. The British force had undoubtedly the superiority in trained men as compared with Perry's extemporized miscellaneous command, and untried junior officers. The latter proved, however, to be of the right material.
On the morning of the engagement
' Cooper's Naval Biography, memoir of Perry.
70
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
the American fleet Wcas among tlie is- lands off Maiden at Put-in Bay, wlien tlie Britisli fleet bore up. There was some difficulty at first in clearing the islands, and the nature of the wind seemed likely to throw Perry upon the defensive, when a southeast breeze springing up, enabled him to bear down upon the enemy. This was at ten o'clock of a fine autumnal morning. Perry arranged his vessels in line, tak- ing the lead in his flagship, the Law- rence, on which he now raised the sig- nal for action, a blue flag, inscribed in large white letters, with the words of the dying Lawrence, " Don't give up the ship !" He accompanied this move- ment with an appeal to his men. " My brave lads, this flag contains the last words of Captain Lawrence. Shall I hoist it ?" " Ay ay, sir !" was the wil- ling response. In this way he cheered the men in the awful pause, " a dead silence of an hour and a half," preced- ing the action, for the vessels were long in the light breeze in overcoming the intermediate distance of several miles. " This is the time," says Wash- ington Irving, in his narrative, written shortly after the day, " when the stout- est heart beats quick, and ' the boldest holds his breath ;' it is the still mo- ment of direful expectation — of fearful looking out for slaughter and destruc- tion— when even the glow of pride and ambition is chilled for a while, and nature shudders at the awful jeop- ardy of existence. The very order and regularity of naval discipline heighten the dreadful quiet of the moment. No bustle, no noise prevails to distract the mind, except at intervals the shrill pip-
ing of the boatswain's whistle, or a murmuring whisper among the men, who, grouped around their guns, ear- nestly regard the movements of the foe, now and then stealing a wistful glance at the countenances of their commanders."
Perry, who knew the perils of the day, prepared his papers as if for death. He leaded the public documents