Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 3

Their campaign was positive and aggressive. On platform- wagons were men working at every trade which expected to be benefited by Whig success; log cabins of all sorts and sizes, hard-cider barrels, c.o.o.n pens, great canvas b.a.l.l.s, which were kept ''a-rolling on,'' canoes, such as General Harrison had used in crossing Western rivers, eagles that screamed in defiance, and c.o.c.ks that crowed for victory. The turning ball had reference to sundry lines in the foremost campaign song. For the October election in Maine having gone Whig by a large majority, clearly indicating what the general result was to be in November, the opening lines ran as follows:

''Oh, have you heard the news from Maine--Maine--Maine?

Rolling the country through?

It is the ball a-rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.''

&c., &c., &c.

Against all this the Democrats, with their negative and defensive platform, found themselves more and more at a disadvantage; they fought with desperation, but in vain, and one of their most unlucky ventures to recover their position was an effort to undermine General Harrison's military reputation. For this purpose they looked about, and finally found one of their younger congressional representatives, considered to be a rising man, who, having gained some little experience in the Western militia, had received the honorary t.i.tle of ''General,'' Isaac M. Crary, of Michigan; him they selected to make a speech in Congress exhibiting and exploding General Harrison's military record. He was very reluctant to undertake it, but at last yielded, and, after elaborate preparation, made an argument loud and long, to show that General Harrison was a military ignoramus. The result was both comic and pathetic. There was then in Congress the most famous stump-speaker of his time, and perhaps of all times, a man of great physical, intellectual, and moral vigor; powerful in argument, sympathetic in manner, of infinite wit and humor, and, unfortunately for General Crary, a Whig,--Thomas Corwin, of Ohio. Mr. Crary's heavy, tedious, perfunctory arraignment of General Harrison being ended, Corwin rose and began an offhand speech on ''The Military Services of General Isaac M. Crary.''

In a few minutes he had as his audience, not only the House of Representatives, but as many members of the Senate, of the Supreme Court, and visitors to the city, as could be crowded into the congressional chamber, and, of all humorous speeches ever delivered in Congress, this of Corwin has come down to us as the most successful. Long afterward, parts of it lingered in our ''speakers' manuals''

and were declaimed in the public schools as examples of witty oratory. Many years later, when the House of Representatives left the old chamber and went into that which it now occupies, Thurlow Weed wrote an interesting article on scenes he had witnessed in the old hall, and most vivid of all was his picture of this speech by Corwin. His delineations of Crary's brilliant exploits, his portrayal of the valiant charges made by Crary's troops on muster days upon the watermelon patches of Michigan, not only convulsed his audience, but were echoed throughout the nation, Whigs and Democrats laughing alike; and when John Quincy Adams, in a speech shortly afterward, referred to the man who brought on this tempest of fun as ''the late General Crary,'' there was a feeling that the adjective indicated a fact. It really was so; Crary, although a man of merit, never returned to Congress, but was thenceforth dropped from political life. More than twenty years afterward, as I was pa.s.sing through Western Michigan, a friend pointed out to me his tombstone, in a little village cemetery, with comments, half comic, half pathetic; and I also recall a mournful feeling when one day, in going over the roll of my students at the University of Michigan, I came upon one who bore the baptismal name of Isaac Crary. Evidently, the blighted young statesman had a daughter who, in all this storm of ridicule and contempt, stood by him, loved him, and proudly named her son after him.

Another feature in the campaign also impressed me.

A blackguard orator, on the Whig side, one of those whom great audiences applaud for the moment and ever afterward despise,--a man named Ogle,--made a speech which depicted the luxury prevailing at the White House, and among other evidences of it, dwelt upon the ''gold spoons'' used at the President's table, denouncing their use with such unction that, for the time, unthinking people regarded Martin Van Buren as a sort of American Vitellius. As a matter of fact, the scanty silver-gilt table utensils at the White House have been shown, in these latter days, in some very pleasing articles written by General Harrison's grandson, after this grandson had himself retired from the Presidency, to have been, for the most part, bought long before;--and by order of General Was.h.i.+ngton.

The only matter of political importance which, as a boy eight years old, I seized upon, and which dwells in my memory, was the creation of the ''Sub-Treasury.'' That this was a wise measure seems now proven by the fact that through all the vicissitudes of politics, from that day to this, it has remained and rendered admirable service. But at that time it was used as a weapon against the Democratic party, and came to be considered by feather- brained partizans, young and old, as the culmination of human wickedness. As to what the ''Sub-Treasury''

really was I had not the remotest idea; but this I knew;-- that it was the most wicked outrage ever committed by a remorseless tyrant upon a long-suffering people.

In November of 1840 General Harrison was elected. In the following spring he was inaugurated, and the Whigs being now for the first time in power, the rush for office was fearful. It was undoubtedly this crus.h.i.+ng pressure upon the kindly old man that caused his death. What British soldiers, and Indian warriors, and fire, flood, and swamp fevers could not accomplish in over sixty years, was achieved by the office-seeking hordes in just one month. He was inaugurated on the fourth of March and died early in April.

I remember, as if it were yesterday, my dear mother coming to my bedside, early in the morning, and saying to me, ''President Harrison is dead.'' I wondered what was to become of us. He was the first President who had died during his term of service, and a great feeling of relief came over me when I learned that his high office had devolved upon the Vice-President.

But now came a new trouble, and my youthful mind was soon sadly agitated. The Whig papers, especially the ''New York Express'' and ''Albany Evening Journal,''

began to bring depressing accounts of the new President, --tidings of extensive changes in the offices throughout the country, and especially in the post-offices. At first the Whig papers published these under the heading ''Appointments by the President.'' But soon the heading changed; it became ''Appointments by Judas Iscariot,''

or ''Appointments by Benedict Arnold,'' and war was declared against President Tyler by the party that elected him. Certain it is that no party ever found itself in a worse position than did the Whigs, when their Vice-President came into the Chief Magistracy; and equally certain is it that this position was the richly earned punishment of their own folly.

I have several times since had occasion to note the carelessness of National and State conventions in nominating a candidate for the second place upon the ticket--whether Vice-President or Lieutenant-Governor. It would seem that the question of questions--the nomination to the first office--having been settled, there comes a sort of collapse in these great popular a.s.semblies, and that then, for the second office, it is very often anybody's race and mainly a matter of chance. In this way alone can be explained several nominations which have been made to second offices, and above all, that of John Tyler. As a matter of fact, he was not commended to the Whig party on any solid grounds. His whole political life had shown him an opponent of their main ideas; he was, in fact, a Southern doctrinaire, and frequently suffered from acute attacks of that very troublesome political disease, Virginia metaphysics. As President he attempted to enforce his doctrines, and when Whig leaders, and above all Henry Clay attempted, not only to resist, but to crush him, he a.s.serted his dignity at the cost of his party, and finally tried that which other accidental Presidents have since tried with no better success, namely, to build up a party of his own by a new distribution of offices. Never was a greater failure. Mr. Tyler was dropped by both parties and disappeared from American political life forever.

I can now see that he was a man obedient to his convictions of duty, such as they were, and in revolt against attempts of Whig leaders to humiliate him; but then, to my youthful mind, he appeared the very incarnation of evil.

My next recollections are of the campaign of 1844.

Again the Whig party took courage, and having, as a boy of twelve years, acquired more earnest ideas regarding the questions at issue, I helped, with other Whig boys, to raise ash-poles, and to hurrah l.u.s.tily for Clay at public meetings. On the other hand, the Democratic boys hurrahed as l.u.s.tily around their hickory poles and, as was finally proved, to much better purpose. They sang doggerel which, to me, was blasphemous, and especially a song with the following refrain:

''Alas poor c.o.o.ney Clay, Alas poor c.o.o.ney Clay, You never can be President, For so the people say.''

The ash-poles had reference to Ashland, Clay's Kentucky estate; and the hickory poles recalled General Jackson's sobriquet, ''Old Hickory.'' For the Democratic candidate in 1844, James Knox Polk, was considered heir to Jackson's political ideas. The campaign of 1844 was not made so interesting by spectacular outbursts of tom-foolery as the campaign of 1840 had been. The sober second thought of the country had rather sickened people of that sort of thing; still, there was quite enough of it, especially as shown in caricatures and songs. The poorest of the latter was perhaps one on the Democratic side, for as the Democratic candidates were Polk of Tennessee and Dallas of Pennsylvania, one line of the song embraced probably the worst pun ever made, namely--

''PORK in the barrel, and DOLLARS in the pocket.''

It was at this period that the feeling against the extension of slavery, especially as indicated in the proposed annexation of Texas, began to appear largely in politics, and though Clay at heart detested slavery and always refused to do the bidding of its supporters beyond what he thought absolutely necessary in preserving the Union, an unfortunate letter of his led great numbers of anti- slavery men to support a separate anti-slavery ticket, the candidate being James G. Birney. The result was that the election of Clay became impossible. Mr. Polk was elected, and under him came the admission of Texas, which caused the Mexican War, and gave slavery a new lease of life. The main result, in my own environment, was that my father and his friends, thenceforward for a considerable time, though detesting slavery, held all abolitionists and anti-slavery men in contempt,--as unpatriotic because they had defeated Henry Clay, and as idiotic because they had brought on the annexation of Texas and thereby the supremacy of the slave States.

But the flame of liberty could not be smothered by friends or blown out by enemies; it was kept alive by vigorous counterblasts in the press, and especially fed by the lecture system, which was then at the height of its efficiency. Among the most powerful of lecturers was John Parker Hale, senator of the United States from New Hamps.h.i.+re, his subject being, ''The Last Gladiatorial Combat at Rome.'' Taking from Gibbon the story of the monk Telemachus, who ended the combats in the arena by throwing himself into them and sacrificing his life, Hale suggested to his large audiences an argument that if men wished to get rid of slavery in our country they must be ready to sacrifice themselves if need be. His words sank deep into my mind, and I have sometimes thought that they may have had something to do in leading John Brown to make his desperate attempt on slavery at Harper's Ferry.

How blind we all were! Henry Clay, a Kentucky slave- holder, would have saved us. Infinitely better than the violent solutions proposed to us was his large statesman- like plan of purchasing the slave children as they were born and setting them free. Without bloodshed, and at cost of the merest nothing as compared to the cost of the Civil War, he would thus have solved the problem; but it was not so to be. The guilt of the nation was not to be so cheaply atoned for. Fanatics, North and South, opposed him and, as a youth, I yielded to their arguments.

Four years later, in 1848, came a very different sort of election. General Zachary Taylor, who had shown ster- ling qualities in the Mexican War, was now the candidate of the Whigs, and against him was nominated Mr.

Ca.s.s, a general of the War of 1812, afterward governor of the Northwestern Territory, and senator from Michigan. As a youth of sixteen, who by that time had become earnestly interested in politics, I was especially struck by one event in this campaign. The Democrats of course realized that General Taylor, with the prestige gained in the Mexican War, was a very formidable opponent. Still, if they could keep their party together, they had hopes of beating him. But a very large element in their party had opposed the annexation of Texas and strongly disliked the extension of slavery;--this wing of the party in New York being known as the ''Barn Burners,'' because it was a.s.serted that they ''believed in burning the barn to drive the rats out.'' The question was what these radical gentlemen would do. That question was answered when a convention, controlled largely by the anti-slavery Democrats of New York and other States, met at Buffalo and nominated Martin Van Buren to the Presidency.

For a time it was doubtful whether he would accept the nomination. On one side it was argued that he could not afford to do so, since he had no chance of an election, and would thereby forever lose his hold upon the Democratic party; but, on the other hand, it was said that he was already an old man; that he realized perfectly the impossibility of his relection, and that he had a bitter grudge against the Democratic candidate, General Ca.s.s, who had voted against confirming him when he was sent as minister to Great Britain, thus obliging him to return home ingloriously. He accepted the nomination.

On the very day which brought the news of this acceptance, General Ca.s.s arrived in Syracuse, on his way to his home at Detroit. I saw him welcomed by a great procession of Democrats, and marched under a broiling sun, through dusty streets, to the City Hall, where he was forced to listen and reply to fulsome speeches prophesying his election, which he and all present knew to be impos- sible. For Mr. Van Buren's acceptance of the ''free soil''

nomination was sure to divide the Democratic vote of the State of New York, thus giving the State to the Whigs; and in those days the proverb held good, ''As New York goes, so goes the Union.''

For years afterward there dwelt vividly in my mind the picture of this old, sad man marching through the streets, listening gloomily to the speeches, forced to appear confident of victory, yet evidently disheartened and disgusted.

Very vivid are my recollections of State conventions at this period. Syracuse, as the ''Central City,'' was a favorite place for them, and, as they came during the summer vacations, boys of my age and tastes were able to admire the great men of the hour,--now, alas, utterly forgotten. We saw and heard the leaders of all parties.

Many impressed me; but one dwells in my memory, on account of a story which was told of him. This was a very solemn, elderly gentleman who always looked very wise but said nothing,--William Bouck of Schoharie County. He had white hair and whiskers, and having been appointed ca.n.a.l commissioner of the State, had discharged his duties by driving his old white family nag and buggy along the towing-path the whole length of the ca.n.a.ls, keeping careful watch of the contractors, and so, in his simple, honest way, had saved the State much money.

The result was the nickname of the ''Old White Hoss of Schoharie,'' and a reputation for simplicity and honesty which made him for a short time governor of the State.

A story then told of him reveals something of his character. Being informed that Bishop Hughes of New York was coming to Albany, and that it would be well to treat him with especial courtesy, the governor prepared himself to be more than gracious, and, on the arrival of the bishop, greeted him most cordially with the words, ''How do you do, Bishop; I hope you are well. How did you leave Mrs. Hughes and your family?'' To this the bishop answered, ''Governor, I am very well, but there is no Mrs. Hughes; bishops in our church don't marry.''

''Good gracious,'' answered the governor, ''you don't say so; how long has that been?'' The bishop must have thoroughly enjoyed this. His Irish wit made him quick both at comprehension and repartee. During a debate on the school question a leading Presbyterian merchant of New York, Mr. Hiram Ketchum, made a very earnest speech against separate schools for Roman Catholics, and presently, turning to Bishop Hughes, said, ''Sir, we respect you, sir, but, sir, we can't go your purgatory, sir.''

To this the bishop quietly replied, ''You might go further and fare worse.''

Another leading figure, but on the Whig side, was a State senator, commonly known as ''Bray'' d.i.c.kinson, to distinguish him from D. S. d.i.c.kinson who had been a senator of the United States, and a candidate for the Presidency. ''Bray'' d.i.c.kinson was a most earnest supporter of Mr. Seward; staunch, prompt, vigorous, and really devoted to the public good. One story regarding him shows his rough-and-readiness.

During a political debate in the old Whig days, one of his Democratic brother senators made a long harangue in favor of Martin Van Buren as a candidate for the Presidency, and in the course of his speech referred to Mr. Van Buren as ''the Curtius of the Republic.'' Upon this d.i.c.kinson jumped up, went to some member better educated in the cla.s.sics than himself, and said, ''Who in thunder is this Curtis that this man is talking about?'' ''It isn't Curtis, it 's Curtius, ''was the reply. ''Well, now, ''

said d.i.c.kinson, ''what did Curtius do?'' ''Oh,'' said his informant, ''he threw himself into an abyss to save the Roman Republic.'' Upon this d.i.c.kinson returned to his seat, and as soon as the Democratic speaker had finished, arose and said: ''Mr. President, I deny the justice of the gentleman's reference to Curtius and Martin Van Buren. What did Curtius do? He threw himself, sir, into an abyss to save his country. What, sir, did Martin Van Buren do? He threw his country into an abyss to save himself.''

Rarely, if ever, has any scholar used a bit of cla.s.sical knowledge to better purpose.

Another leading figure, at a later period, was a Democrat, Fernando Wood, mayor of New York, a brilliant desperado; and on one occasion I saw the henchmen whom he had brought with him take possession of a State convention and deliberately knock its president, one of the most respected men in the State, off the platform. It was an unfortunate performance for Mayor Wood, since the disgust and reaction thereby aroused led all factions of the Democratic party to unite against him.

Other leading men were such as Charles O'Conor and John Van Buren; the former learned and generous, but impracticable; the latter brilliant beyond belief, but not considered as representing any permanent ideas or principles.

During the campaign of 1848, as a youth of sixteen, I took the liberty of breaking from the paternal party; my father voting for General Taylor, I hurrahing for Martin Van Buren. I remember well how one day my father earnestly remonstrated against this. He said, ''My dear boy, you cheer Martin Van Buren's name because you believe that if he is elected he will do something against slavery: in the first place, he cannot be elected; and in the second place, if you knew him as we older people do, you would not believe in his attachment to any good cause whatever.''

The result of the campaign was that General Taylor was elected, and I recall the feeling of awe and hope with which I gazed upon his war-worn face, for the first and last time, as he stopped to receive the congratulations of the citizens of Syracuse;--hope, alas, soon brought to naught, for he, too, soon succ.u.mbed to the pressure of official care, and Millard Fillmore of New York, the Vice- President, reigned in his stead.

I remember Mr. Fillmore well. He was a tall, large, fine-looking man, with a face intelligent and kindly, and he was noted both as an excellent public servant and an effective public speaker. He had been comptroller of the State of New York,--then the most important of State offices, had been defeated as Whig candidate for governor, and had been a representative in Congress. He was the second of the accidental Presidents, and soon felt it his duty to array himself on the side of those who, by compromise with the South on the slavery question, sought to maintain and strengthen the Federal Union. Under him came the compromise measures on which our great statesmen of the middle period of the nineteenth century, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and Benton, made their last speeches. Mr. Fillmore was undoubtedly led mainly by patriotic motives, in promoting the series of measures which were expected to end all trouble between the North and South, but which, unfortunately, embraced the Fugitive Slave Law; yet this, as I then thought, rendered him accursed. I remember feeling an abhorrence for his very name, and this feeling was increased when there took place, in the city of Syracuse, the famous ''Jerry Rescue.''

CHAPTER IV EARLY MANHOOD--1851-1857

On the first day of October, 1851, there was shuffling about the streets of Syracuse, in the quiet pursuit of his simple avocations, a colored person, as nearly ''of no account'' as any ever seen. So far as was known he had no surname, and, indeed, no Christian name, save the fragment and travesty,--''Jerry.''

Yet before that day was done he was famous; his name, such as it was, resounded through the land; and he had become, in all seriousness, a weighty personage in American history.

Under the law recently pa.s.sed, he was arrested, openly and in broad daylight, as a fugitive slave, and was carried before the United States commissioner, Mr. Joseph Sabine, a most kindly public officer, who in this matter was sadly embarra.s.sed by the antagonism between his sworn duty and his personal convictions.

Thereby, as was supposed, were fulfilled the Law and the Prophets--the Law being the fugitive slave law recently enacted, and the Prophets being no less than Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

For, as if to prepare the little city to sacrifice its cherished beliefs, Mr. Clay had some time before made a speech from the piazza of the Syracuse House, urging upon his fellow-citizens the compromises of the Const.i.tution; and some months later Mr. Webster appeared, spoke from a balcony near the City Hall, and to the same purpose; but more so. The latter statesman was prophetic, not only in the hortatory, but in the predictive sense; for he declared not only that the Fugitive Slave Law must be enforced, but that it WOULD be enforced, and he added, in substance: ''it will be enforced throughout the North in spite of all opposition--even in this city-- even in the midst of your abolition conventions.'' This piece of prophecy was accompanied by a gesture which seemed to mean much; for the great man's hand was waved toward the City Hall just across the square--the cla.s.sic seat and center of abolition conventions.

How true is the warning, ''Don't prophesy unless you know!'' The arrest of Jerry took place within six months after Mr. Webster's speech, and indeed while an abolition convention was in session at that same City Hall; but when the news came the convention immediately dissolved, the fire-bells began to ring, a crowd moved upon the commissioner's office, surged into it, and swept Jerry out of the hands of the officers. The authorities having rallied, re-arrested the fugitive, and put him in confinement and in irons. But in the evening the a.s.sailants returned to the a.s.sault, carried the jail by storm, rescued Jerry for good, and spirited him off safe and sound to Canada, thus bringing to nought the fugitive slave law, as well as the exhortations of Mr. Clay and the predictions of Mr. Webster.

This rescue produced great excitement throughout the nation. Various persons were arrested for taking part in it, and their trials were adjourned from place to place, to the great hards.h.i.+p of all concerned. During a college vacation I was present at one of these trials at Canandaigua, the United States Judge, before whom it was held, being the Hon. N. K. Hall, who had been Mr. Fillmore's law partner in Buffalo. The evening before the trial an anti-slavery meeting was held, which I attended. It was opened with prayer by a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Loguen, and of all prayers I have ever heard, this dwells in my mind as perhaps the most impressive. The colored minister's pet.i.tions for his race, bond and free, for Jerry and for those who had sought to rescue him, for the souls of the kidnappers, and for the country which was to his people a land of bondage, were most pathetic. Then arose Gerrit Smith. Of all Tribunes of the People I have ever known he dwells in my memory as possessing the greatest variety of gifts.

He had the prestige given by great wealth, by lavish generosity, by transparent honesty, by earnestness of purpose, by advocacy of every good cause, by a superb presence, and by natural eloquence of a very high order. He was very tall and large, with a n.o.ble head, an earnest, yet kindly face, and of all human voices I have ever heard his was the most remarkable for its richness, depth, and strength. I remember seeing and hearing him once at a Republican State Convention in the City Hall at Syracuse, when, having come in for a few moments as a spectator, he was recognized by the crowd and greeted with overwhelming calls for a speech. He was standing at the entrance door, towering above all about him, and there was a general cry for him to come forward to the platform. He declined to come forward; but finally observed to those near him, in his quiet, natural way, with the utmost simplicity, ''Oh, I shall be heard.'' At this a shout went up from the entire audience; for every human being in that great hall had heard these words perfectly, though uttered in his usual conversational voice.

I also remember once entering the old Delavan House at Albany, with a college friend of mine, afterward Bishop of Maine, and seeing, at the other end of a long hall, Gerrit Smith in quiet conversation. In a moment we heard his voice, and my friend was greatly impressed by it, declaring he had never imagined such an utterance possible. It was indeed amazing; it was like the deep, clear, rich tone from the pedal ba.s.s of a cathedral organ. During his career in Congress, it was noted that he was the only speaker within remembrance who without effort made himself heard in every part of the old chamber of the House of Representatives, which was acoustically one of the worst halls ever devised. And it was not a case of voice and nothing else; his strength of argument, his gift of fit expression, and his wealth of ill.u.s.tration were no less extraordinary.