Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 61

CHAPTER XXVIII THE BIRD PEt.i.tION

Before the year 1897 I had become very much alarmed at the prospect of the total extinction of our song-birds. The Bobolink seemed to be disappearing from the field in Ma.s.sachusetts, the beautiful Summer Red Bird had become extinct, and the Oriole and the Scarlet Tanager had almost disappeared. Many varieties of songbirds which were familiar to my own boyhood were unknown to my children. The same thing seems to be going on in other countries. The famous Italian novelist, Ouida, contributed an article in the _North American Review_ a few years ago in which she described the extermination of the Nightingale in Italy. The Director of the Central Park, in one of his Reports, stated that within fifteen or twenty years the song-birds of the State of New York had diminished forty- five per cent.

One afternoon in the spring of 1897, Governor Claflin called on me at my Committee Room in the Capitol and told me a lady had just visited his daughter at her rooms who had on her head eleven egrets. These egrets are said to come from the female White Heron, a beautiful bird abounding in Florida.

They are a sort of bridal ornament, growing out on the head of the female at pairing time and peris.h.i.+ng and dropping off after the brood is reared. So the ornament on the horrible woman's head had cost the lives of eleven of these beautiful birds and very likely in every case the lives of a brood of young ones.

When I went home I sat down after dinner and wrote with a pencil the following pet.i.tion.

_"To the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts:

"We, the song-birds of Ma.s.sachusetts and their playfellows, make this our humble pet.i.tion:_

"We know more about you than you think we do. We know how good you are. We have hopped about the roofs and looked in at the windows of the homes you have built for poor and sick and hungry people and little lame and deaf and blind children.

We have built our nests in the tress and sung many a song as we flew about the gardens and parks you have made so beautiful for your own children, especially your poor children, to play in.

"Every year we fly a great way over the country, keeping all the time where the sun is bright and warm; and we know that whenever you do anything, other people all over the great land between the seas and the great lakes find it out, and pretty soon will try to do the same thing. We know; we know. We are Americans just as you are. Some of us, like some of you, came from across the great sea, but most of the birds like us have lived here a long while; and birds like us welcomed your fathers when they came here many years ago. Our fathers and mothers have always done their best to please your fathers and mothers.

"Now we have a sad story to tell you. Thoughtless or bad people are trying to destroy us. They kill us because our feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we should think would be our best friends, kill our brothers and children so that they may wear plumage on their hats.

Sometimes people kill us from mere wantonness. Cruel boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop window or under a gla.s.s case. If this goes on much longer, all your song-birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in some other countries that used to be full of birds, they are almost gone.

Even the nightingales are being all killed in Italy.

"Now we humbly pray that you will stop all this, and will save us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that no one shall kill a harmless song-bird or destroy our nests or our eggs. Will you please to make another that no one shall wear our feathers, so that no one will kill us to get them? We want them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are pretty enough without them. We are told that it is as easy for you to do it as for Blackbird to whistle.

"If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over.

We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat.

We will show them how to live together in peace and love and to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens and flower-beds,--ourselves like flowers on wings,--without any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked insects and worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our best songs and make the spring more beautiful and the summer sweeter to you. Every June morning when you go out to the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown, Vesper Sparrow will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will sing to you; and even Whip-poor-will will cheer up a little.

We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Ma.s.sachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home with you."

I thought it might, perhaps, strike the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts and the public more impressively than a sober argument. The whole thing took only fifteen or twenty minutes. The pet.i.tion was signed by all the song-birds of Ma.s.sachusetts, and ill.u.s.trated by Miss Ellen Day Hale with the portraits of the signers.

It was presented to the Ma.s.sachusetts Senate by the Honorable A. S. Roe, Senator from the Worcester District. The Legislature acted upon it and pa.s.sed the following Statute:

"Whoever has in his possession the body of feathers of any bird whose taking or killing is prohibited by section four of chapter two hundred and seventy-six of the acts of the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six, or wears such feathers for the purpose of dress or ornament, shall be punished as provided in said section: _provided_ that his act shall not be construed to prohibit persons having the certificate provided for in said sections from taking or killing such birds; and _provided, further,_ that this act shall not apply to Natural History a.s.sociations, or to the proprietors of museums, or other collections for scientific purposes.

_"Approved June 11, 1897."_

The Statute was copied in several other States. I think the pet.i.tion helped a good deal the healthy reaction which, owing largely to the efforts of humane societies and Natural History a.s.sociations and especially of some very accomplished ladies, has arrested the destruction of these beautiful ornaments of our woods and fields and gardens, "our fellow pilgrims on the journey of life," who have so much of humanity in them and who, like us, have their appointed tasks set to them by the great Creator.

CHAPTER XXIX THE A. P. A. CONTROVERSY

One very unreasonable, yet very natural excitement has stirred deeply the American people on several occasions in our history.

It came to us by lawful inheritance from our English and Puritan ancestors. That is the bitter and almost superst.i.tious dread of the Catholics, which has resulted more than once in riots and crimes, and more than once in the attempt to exclude them from political power in the country. This has sometimes taken the form of a crusade against all foreigners. But religious prejudice against the Catholics has been its chief inspiration.

I just said that this feeling, though absolutely unjustifiable, was yet quite natural, and that it came to us by lawful inheritance.

I have always resisted it and denounced it to the utmost of my power. My father was a Unitarian. I was bred in that most liberal of all liberal faiths. But I have believed that the way to encounter bigotry is by liberality. If any man try to deprive you of your absolute right, begin to defend yourself by giving him his own. Human nature, certainly American human nature, will never, in my opinion, long hold out against that method of dealing.

Our people, so far as they are of English descent, learned from their fathers the stories of Catholic persecution and of the fires of Smithfield. Fox's "Book of Martyrs," one of the few books in the Puritan libraries, was, even down to the time of my youth, reverently preserved and read in the New England farmhouses.

So it was believed that it was only the want of power that prevented the Catholics from renewing the fires of Smithfield and the terrors of the Inquisition. It was believed that the infallibility and supremacy of the Pope bound the Catholic citizen to yield unquestioning obedience to the Catholic clergy in matters civil and political, as well as spiritual. There was a natural and very strong dread of the Confessional.

This feeling was intensified by the fact of which it was partly the cause, that when the Irish-Catholics first came over they voted in solid body, led often by their clergy, for the Democratic Party, which was in the minority in the New England States, especially in Ma.s.sachusetts. England down to a very recent time disqualified the Catholics from civil office.

Our people forgot that the religious persecution, of which they cherished the bitter memory, was the result of the spirit of the age, and not of one form of religious faith. They forgot that the English Protestants not only retaliated on the Catholics when they got into power, but that the Bishops from whose fury, as John Milton said, our own Pilgrim Fathers fled, were Protestant Bishops and not Catholic. They forgot the eight hundred years during which Ireland had been under the heel of England, and the terrible history so well told by that most English of Englishmen, and Protestant of Protestants, Lord Macaulay.

"The Irish Roman Catholics were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the earth; but they were doomed to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York. Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from any public trust. Take what path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some vexatious restriction. It was only by being obscure and inactive, that he could, on his native soil, be safe. If he aspired to be powerful and honoured, he might gain a cross or perhaps a Marshal's staff in the armies of France or Austria. If his vocation was to politics, he might distinguish himself in the diplomacy of Italy or Spain. But at home he was a mere Gibeonite, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. The statute book of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the Roman Catholics but too good a ground for recriminating on us when we talk of the barbarities of Bonner and Gardiner; and the harshness of those odious laws was aggravated by a more odious administration. For, bad as the legislators were, the magistrates were worse still. In those evil times originated that most unhappy hostility between landlord and tenant, which is one of the peculiar curses of Ireland. Oppression and turbulence reciprocally generated each other. The combination of rustic tyrants was resisted by gangs of rustic banditii.

Courts of law and juries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect. Those priests who were revered by millions as their natural advisers and guardians, as the only authorised dispensers of the Christian sacraments, were treated by the squires and squireens of the ruling faction as no good-natured man would treat the vilest beggar."

When I came into political life shortly after 1848, I found this anti-Catholic feeling most intense. The Catholics in Ma.s.sachusetts were, in general, in a very humble cla.s.s. The immigration, which had well begun before the great Irish Famine, was increased very much by that terrible calamity. The Irishmen were glad to build our railroads at sixty cents a day, dwelling in wretched shanties, and living on very coa.r.s.e fare. They had brought with them the habit of drinking whiskey, comparatively harmless in their native climate--though bad enough there-- but destructive in New England. So they contributed very largely to the statistics of crime and disorder.

Even then they gave an example--from which all mankind might take a lesson--of many admirable qualities. They had a most pathetic and touching affection for the Old Country. They exhibited an incomparable generosity toward the kindred they had left behind. From their scanty earnings, Edward Everett, a high authority, estimates that there were sent twenty millions of dollars in four years to their parents and kindred.

There was some jealousy on the part of our working people, especially the men and women employed in large manufacturing establishments, lest the Irish, by working at cheaper wages, would drive them out of employment. But the Irishman soon learned to demand all the wages he could get. The accession of the Irish laborer increased largely the productive forces of the State. So there was more wealth created, of which the better educated and shrewder Yankee got the larger share.

By the bringing in of a lower cla.s.s of labor he was elevated to a higher place, but never driven out of work. The prejudice of which I have spoken showed itself in some terrible Protestant riots in New Orleans and in Baltimore, and in the burning of the Catholic Convent at Charlestown.

There was also a strong feeling that the compact body of Catholics, always voting for one political party was a danger to the public security. Of course this feeling manifested itself in the Whig Party, for whose adversary the solid Irish- Catholic vote was cast. As early as 1844, after the defeat of Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster made a suggestion--I do know where it is recorded now, but I was informed of it on good authority at about the time he made it--that there must be some public combination with a view to resist the influence of our foreign element in our politics.

But there was no political movement on any considerable scale until 1854. In that year there was a very dangerous crusade which came very near National success, and which got control of several States.

In the fall of 1857 the Republican Party elected its first Governor. The slavery question was still very prominent, and the people were deeply stirred by the attempt to repeal the Missouri Compromise. So in that year, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Nathaniel P. Banks, Gardner, the Know-Nothing Governor, was defeated, and from that time the strength of Know-Nothingism was at an end. I was elected to the Senate in the fall of 1856 as the Republican candidate from the county of Worcester over the Know-Nothing and Democratic candidates.

It is a remarkable fact that of the men known to join the Know-Nothing Party, no man, unless he were exceedingly young and obscure when he did it, ever maintained or regained the public confidence afterward, with the exception of Henry Wilson, Anson Burlingame and Nathaniel P. Banks. These men all left it after the first year. Wilson and Burlingame denounced it with all the vigor at their command, and Banks led the forces of the Republican Party to its overthrow.

I ought to say, however, of this movement and of the A. P.

A. movement, as it is called, of which I am now to speak, that I do not think the leaders in general shared the bitter and proscriptive feeling to which they appealed. The secret organization, founded on religious prejudice, or on race prejudice, is a good instrument to advance the political fortunes of men who could not gain advancement in an established political organization. So a great many men are active and busy in such organizations, who would be equally active and busy in movements founded on precisely the opposite doctrines, if they could as well find their advancement in them. Yet, as I have said, the prejudice which lay at the bottom of this movement was very powerful, very sincere, and not unnatural.

Secret societies were formed all over the country. It seemed not unlikely that the surprise of 1854 would be repeated, and that the great Republican party, which had done so much for civil liberty, would either be broken to pieces or would be brought to take an att.i.tude totally inconsistent with religious liberty.

The organization, calling itself the American Protective a.s.sociation, but known popularly as the A. P. A., had its branches all over the North. Its members met in secret, selected their candidates in secret--generally excluding all men who were not known to sympathize with them--and then attended the Republican caucuses to support candidates in whose selection members of that political party who were not in their secret councils had no share. Ambitious candidates for office did not like to encounter such a powerful enmity. They in many cases temporized or coquetted with the A. P. A. if they did not profess to approve its doctrine. So far as I know, no prominent Republican in any part of the country put himself publicly on record as attacking this vicious brotherhood.

Many men who did not agree with it were, doubtless, so strong in the public esteem that they were not attacked.

That was the condition of things when, in the early summer of 1895, I delivered an address at the opening of the Summer School of Clark University in which I spoke briefly, but in very strong terms, in condemnation of the secrecy and of the proscriptive principles of this political organization. I declared: "I have no patience or tolerance with the spirit which would excite religious strife. It is as much out of place as the witchcraft delusion or the fires of Smithfield."

I added: "This Nation is a composite. It is made up of many streams, of the twisting and winding of many bands. The quality, hope and destiny of our land is expressed in the phrase of our Fathers, 'E Pluribus Unum'--of many, one--of many States, one Nation--of many races, one people--of many creeds, one faith--of many bended knees, one family of G.o.d." A little later I went with the Ma.s.sachusetts Club, of which I was a member, to an outing at Newport. There, briefly but still more emphatically, I called upon the people not to revive the bitter memories of ancient, social and religious strife.

These two speeches excited the indignation of the leaders of this organization. A gentleman named Evans, I believe born in England, took up the cudgels. He was supported by many worthy clergymen and a good many newspapers which had been established to support the doctrine of the A. P. A.

organization. Mr. Evans, if I am right in my memory, claimed that he was not a member of the organization. But he stood up for it stanchly in two letters to me, in which he very severely denounced what I had said, and pointed out the wicked behavior of some Catholic priests to whom he referred. He said he had looked up to me as he formerly did to Charles Sumner and William H. Seward; that my course would tend as absolutely to the breaking up of the Republican Party as Daniel Webster's speech did to the breaking up of the old Whig Party, and that I had rung my own death knell; that the one mistake Wesley made when he called slavery "the sum of all villainies"

was that he did not except the Roman Catholic Church. He added that there were at least three million members of these patriotic orders, const.i.tuting at least three fifths of the Republican Party, and that their members.h.i.+p was being added to daily. Mr. Evans also said, what was absolutely without foundation, that I had said, "We need a Father Confessor."

That gave me my opportunity. I answered with the following letter in which I stated my own doctrine as vigorously and clearly as I knew how.

WORCESTER, Aug. 5, 1895.

T. C. EVANS, ESQ.:

_My Dear Sir_--One of the great evils, though by no means the greatest evil of secret political societies, is that foolish and extravagant statements about men who don't agree with them get circulated without opportunity for contradiction or explanation. You seem to be a well-meaning and intelligent man; yet I am amazed that any well-meaning and intelligent man should believe such stuff as you repeat in your letter of August 3. I never said, thought or dreamed what you impute to me. I don't believe there ever was any report in the Worcester _Telegram_ to that effect. Certainly there is none in the report of what I said in the summer school at Clark University the morning after, and there is no such statement in any of the other Worcester newspapers. I never anywhere expressed the idea that there should be a confessional or that there was any need of a Father Confessor, or that I wanted to see something in our Protestant churches like the Father Confessor in the Catholic. The whole thing is a miserable lie and invention made out of whole cloth. The language, which you quote, about an attempt to recall on one side, "the cruelties of the Catholic Church and frighten our women and children with horrid hobgoblins,"

is not my language. That does appear in the _Telegram_. But it is the reporter's statement of what he understood my idea to be in his own language. What I said was: "We are confronted with a public danger which comes from an attempt to rouse the old feelings of the dark ages, and which ought to have ended with them, between men who have different forms of faith.

It is an attempt to recall on one side the cruelties of the Catholic Church and to frighten old women of both s.e.xes, and, on the other side, to band the men of the Catholic Church together for political action. Both these attempts will fail."

There is no more zealous believer in the principles of the New England Puritans, and no more zealous advocate of them, than I am. There is not a man in Ma.s.sachusetts who has more at heart the welfare and perpetuity of our system of free common schools than I have. I was the first person, so far as I know, who called public attention to the fact that they were in danger, in any formal way. I drew and had put in the platform of the Republican State Convention the following resolution: "The Republican Party ever has maintained and ever will maintain and defend, the common schools of Ma.s.sachusetts as the very citadel of happiness. They shall be kept open to all the children and free from all partisan and sectarian control."