Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 16

Several of the most eminent leaders of the Free Soilers and Democrats separated themselves from their party and joined the Whigs in defeating it. Among them were Marcus Morton, formerly Governor and Judge of the Supreme Court; John G.

Palfrey, who had been the Free Soil candidate for Governor; Charles Francis Adams, afterward member of Congress and Minister to England, and Samuel h.o.a.r.

I was myself, at this time, an enthusiastic Free Soiler, and was, as I have said, Chairman of the Republican County Committee, but I joined the rebels against the dominant feeling of my party.

The defeat of the Const.i.tution was aided, however, undoubtedly by a very just and righteous proposal which was submitted to a separate vote of the people, but which had its effect on the feeling in regard to the whole scheme, to prohibit the use of any money raised by taxation for sectarian schools.

To this the Catholic clergy were opposed, and the Catholic vote, not however then very important in Ma.s.sachusetts, was cast against the whole scheme.

But the Whigs did not entirely get over the feeling that something must be done to propitiate the desire for change.

Accordingly they, through the Legislature, submitted to the people propositions for the election by the people of the counties of Sheriffs and District Attorneys who before that time had been appointed by the Governor. These proposals were ratified by the people and became part of the Const.i.tution.

I have always thought the change a bad one. I think the Governor likely to make quite as good if not a better choice of Sheriffs and District Attorneys than the people. But the objection to the new system is this. So long as the State makes the laws, the State, whether acting by a popular vote or through its executive, should have the power to enforce them and select the instrumentalities for that purpose. Now if the particular law which the State enacts be unpopular in a particular county, and the people be determined to defeat it, no Sheriff or District Attorney can be elected who will enforce it. That has been shown in the case of the legislation to prohibit or regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors in Suffolk County. Those laws have been always unpopular and since the change in the mode of appointment of District Attorneys and Sheriffs have not been enforced until they were modified to meet the popular objections. This difficulty applies also to the enforcing of laws for the employment of children in factories. The Legislature undertook to meet this difficulty by creating officials, called State Constables, to be appointed by the Governor and to enforce the liquor laws and the laws regulating child labor. But that did not wholly cure the evil. The officials appointed solely to enforce a law against which there are strong objections in any quarter are always themselves unpopular. The Sheriffs have been from the beginning officials of great dignity, commanding popular respect and confidence.

So if it were difficult to enforce the law the character of the Sheriff was a great force on its side. But in the case of these particular laws persons of less dignity and authority, often quite obscure when they are appointed, whose whole duty is odious to the persons to be affected by it, instead of giving dignity to the law tend to make it unpopular by their attempts to enforce it. Indeed in my opinion the Ma.s.sachusetts Const.i.tution of 1780 was as nearly a perfect system of government as was ever devised. Some changes in it were made necessary by the separation of Maine. I suppose the abrogation of the provision that every man should pay a tax for the support of public worship somewhere was demanded by a public sentiment it would have been impossible to resist, and undoubtedly the aggregation of population in the large cities and towns required a change in the system of representation. But I think the old method of electing Senators, where it was necessary that a man should have a reputation through an entire county to be chosen, to be better than the system of electing them by small single districts, and I think the slight property qualification was highly useful as a stimulant to saving and economy.

It is, however, a great pity that the labors of this Const.i.tutional Convention were wasted. It was a very able body of men. With the exception of the Convention that framed the Const.i.tution in the beginning, and the Convention which revised it in 1820, after the separation from Maine, I doubt whether so able a body of men ever a.s.sembled in the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, or, with very few exceptions indeed, in the entire country.

The debates, which are preserved in three thick and almost forgotten volumes, are full of instructive and admirable essays on the theory of const.i.tutional government. Among the members were Rufus Choate, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, George N.

Briggs, Marcus Morton, Marcus Morton, Jr., Henry L. Dawes, Charles Allen, George S. Hillard, Richard H. Dana, George S. Boutwell, Otis P. Lord, Peleg Sprague, Simon Greenleaf, and Sidney Bartlett.

There were a good many interesting incidents not, I believe, recorded in the report of the debates, which are worth preserving.

One was a spirited reply made by George S. Hillard to Benjamin F. Butler, who had bitterly attacked Chief Justice Shaw, then an object of profound reverence to nearly the whole people of the Commonwealth. Butler spoke of his harsh and rough manner of dealing with counsel. To which Hillard replied, pointing at Butler: "While we have jackals and hyenas at the bar, we want the old lion upon the bench, with one blow of his huge paw to bring their scalps over their eyes."

Hillard was an accomplished and eloquent man, "of whom," Mr.

Webster said in the Senate of the United States, "the best hopes are to be entertained." But he lacked vigor and courage to a.s.sert his own opinions against the social influences of Boston, which were brought to bear with great severity on the anti-slavery leaders.

Hillard was not so fortunate in another encounter. He undertook to attack Richard H. Dana, and to reproach him for voting for a scheme of representation which somewhat diminished the enormous political power of Boston. She elected all her representatives on one ballot, and had a power altogether disproportionate to that of the country. He said, speaking of Dana: "He should remember that the bread he and I both eat comes from the business men of Boston. He ought not, like an ungrateful child, to strike at the hand that feeds him." Dana replied with great indignation, ending with the sentence: "The hand that feeds me--the hand that feeds me, sir? No hand feeds me that has a right to control my opinions!"

A _bon mot_ of Henry Wilson is also worth putting on record.

Somebody, who was speaking of the importance of the Ma.s.sachusetts town meeting, said that it was not merely a place for town government alone, but that it was a place where the people of the town met from scattered and sometimes secluded dwelling- places to cultivate each other's acquaintance, to talk over the news of the day and all matters of public interest; and that it was a sort of farmers' exchange, where they could compare notes on the state of agriculture, and even sometimes swap oxen. Governor Briggs, who had been beaten as a candidate for reelection by the Coalition, replied to this speech and said, referring to the Coalition, "that the gentlemen on the other side seemed to have carried their trading and swapping of oxen into politics, and into the high offices of the state."

To which Henry Wilson answered, referring to Briggs's own loss of his office, "that so long as the people were satisfied with the trade, it did not become the oxen to complain."

Undoubtedly the ablest member of the Convention was Charles Allen. He spoke seldom and briefly, but always with great authority and power. Late in the proceedings of the Convention a rule was established limiting the speakers to thirty minutes each. Hillard, who was one of the delegates from Boston, made a very carefully prepared speech on some pending question.

Allen closed the debate, making no reference whatever to Hillard's elaborate and most eloquent argument, until he was about to sit down, when he said: "Mr. President, I believe my time is up?" The President answered: "The gentleman from Worcester has two minutes more." "Two minutes!" exclaimed Allen. "Time enough to answer the gentleman from Boston." And he proceeded in that brief period to deal a few strokes with his keen scimitar, which effectually demolished Hillard's elaborate structure.

There is nothing in the political excitements of recent years which approaches in intensity that of the period from 1848 until the breaking out of the War. The people of Ma.s.sachusetts felt the most profound interest in the great conflict between slavery and freedom for the possession of the vast territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific. But almost every man in Ma.s.sachusetts felt the Fugitive Slave Law as a personal dishonor. I think no great public calamity, not the death of Webster, not the death of Sumner, not the loss of great battles during the War, brought such a sense of gloom over the whole State as the surrender of Anthony Burns and of Sims.

Worcester, where I dwelt, was the centre and stronghold of the anti-slavery feeling in Ma.s.sachusetts. This odious statute was, perhaps, the greatest single cause of the union of the people of the North in opposition to the further encroachments of slavery. Yet but two slaves were taken back into slavery from Ma.s.sachusetts by reason of its provisions. I will not undertake to tell the story of those years which will form an important chapter in the history of the country. But I had a special knowledge of two occurrences which are alluded to by Colonel Higginson in his charming essay ent.i.tled, "Cheerful Yesterdays," in regard to which that most delightful writer and admirable gentleman has fallen into some slight errors of recollection.

The first person seized under the Fugitive Slave Law was a slave named Shadrach. He was brought to trial before George T. Curtis, United States Commissioner. One of the chief complaints against the Fugitive Slave Law was that it did not give the man claimed as a slave, where his liberty and that of his posterity were at stake, the right to a jury trial which the Const.i.tution secured in all cases of property involving more than twenty dollars, or in all cases where he was charged with the slightest crime or offence. Further, the Commissioner was to receive twice as much if the man were surrendered into slavery as if he were discharged. Horace Mann, in one of his speeches, commented on this feature of the law with terrible severity. He also pointed out that the Commissioner was not a judicial officer with an independent tenure, but only the creature of the courts and removable at any time. He also dwelt upon what he conceived to be the unfair dealing of the Commissioners who had presided at the trial of the three slaves who had been tried in Ma.s.sachusetts, and added: "Pilate, fellow-citizens, was at least a Judge, though he acted like a Commissioner."

Elizur Wright, a well-known Abolitionist, editor of the _Chronotype,_ was indicted in the United States Court for aiding in the rescue of Shadrach. While the hearing before Geo. T. Curtis on the proceedings for the rendition of Shadrach was going on, a large number of men, chiefly negroes, made their way into the court-room by one door, swept through, taking the fugitive along with them, and out at the other, leaving the indignant Commissioner to telegraph to Mr. Webster in Washington that he thought it was a case of levying war. I went into the court-room during the trial of Mr. Wright, and saw seated in the front row of the jury, wearing a face of intense gravity, my old friend Francis Bigelow, always spoken of in Concord as "Mr. Bigelow, the blacksmith." He was a Free Soiler and his wife a Garrison Abolitionist. His house was a station on the underground railroad where fugitive slaves were harbored on their way to Canada. Shadrach had been put into a buggy and driven out as far as Concord, and kept over night by Bigelow at his house, and sent on his way toward the North Star the next morning. Richard H. Dana, who was counsel for Elizur Wright, asked Judge h.o.a.r what sort of man Bigelow was. To which the Judge replied: "He is a thoroughly honest man, and will decide the case according to the law and the evidence as he believes them to be. But I think it will take a good deal of evidence to convince him that one man owns another."

It is not, perhaps, pertinent to my personal recollections but it may be worth while to tell my readers that Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and some others were indicted afterward for partic.i.p.ation in an intended rescue of Anthony Burns, another fugitive slave. The indictment was quashed by Judge Curtis, who had probably got pretty sick of the whole thing.

But Parker, while in jail awaiting trial, prepared a defence, which is printed, and which is one of the most marvellous examples of scathing and burning denunciation to be found in all literature. I commend it to young men as worth their study.

Some time after the Shadrach case, Asa O. Butman, a United States Deputy Marshal, who had been quite active and odious in the arrest and extradition of Burns, came to Worcester one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and stopped at the American Temperance House. This was October 30, 1854. It was believed that he was in search of information about some fugitive negroes who were supposed to be in Worcester, and I suppose that to be the fact, although it was claimed that his errand was to summon witnesses against persons concerned in the riot which took place when Burns was captured. The fact of his presence became known in the course of the day on Sunday, and a pretty angry crowd began to gather in the streets in the neighborhood of the American House. Butman learned his danger, and took refuge in the City Marshal's office in the City Hall, where the police force of the city were gathered for his protection. No attack was made during the night, but it was not deemed prudent to have Butman leave his shelter. I had been to Concord to spend Sunday with my kindred there. I got to Worcester at nine o'clock Monday morning, and was told at the station of the condition of things. I went immediately to the City Hall, made my way through the crowd to the building, and was admitted to the police office by the City Marshal, who was my client, and apt to depend on me for legal advice. I found Butman in a state of great terror. It was evident that the crowd was too large for any police force which the little city had in its service. Unless it should be pacified, something was likely to happen which we should all have much regretted.

I accordingly went out and addressed the crowd from the steps of the City Hall. They listened to me respectfully enough.

I was pretty well known through the city as an earnest Free Soiler, and as sharing the public feeling of indignation against the delivering up of fugitives. I reminded the crowd that my father and sister had been expelled from Charleston, S. C., where he had gone at the risk of his life to defend Ma.s.sachusetts colored sailors who were imprisoned there, and appealed to them not to give the people of South Carolina the right to excuse their own conduct by citing the example of Ma.s.sachusetts. There were shouts from the crowd: "Will he promise to leave Worcester and never come back?" Butman, who was inside, terribly frightened, said he would promise never to come to Worcester again as long as he lived. I did not, however, repeat Butman's promise to the crowd. I thought he ought to go without conditions. The time approached for the train to pa.s.s through Worcester for Boston. It went from a little wooden station near the site of the present Union Depot, about half a mile from the City Hall. It was determined, on consultation, to take advantage of an apparently pacific mood of the crowd, and to start Butman at once for the station in time to catch the train. I took one arm and I am quite sure Colonel Higginson took the other; a few policemen went ahead and a few behind; and we started from the back door of the City Hall. The mob soon found what we were after and thronged around us. It has been estimated that a crowd of two thousand people at least surrounded Butman and his convoy.

I suppose he had no friend or defender among the number. Most of them wanted to frighten him; some of them to injure him, though not to kill him. There were a few angry negroes, I suppose, excited and maddened by their not unnatural or unjustifiable resentment against the fellow who had been the ready and notorious tool of the slave-catchers, who would have killed him if they could. He was kicked several times by persons who succeeded in the swaying and surging of the crowd, in getting through his guard, and once knocked onto his knees by a heavy blow in the back of the neck which came from a powerful negro, who had a stone in his hand which increased the force of the blow. I believe he was. .h.i.t also by some missiles. He reached the depot almost lifeless with terror. The train was standing there, and started just after we arrived. It was impossible to get him into it. It was then endeavored to put him into a buggy which was standing outside of the depot, but the owner, a young business man of Worcester, seized the bridle of his horse and stoutly refused to allow the horse to start. Butman was then thrust into a hack, into which one or two other persons also got, and the hack was driven rapidly through the crowd with no damage but the breaking of the windows. Mr. Higginson thought Butman was left at Westboro'; but my recollection, which is very distinct, and with which I think he now agrees, is that Lovell Baker, the City Marshal, followed with his own horse and buggy, and took Butman from the hack after he got a short distance out of Worcester. Butman implored him not to leave him at the way-station, fearing that the crowd would come down in an accommodation train, which went also about that time, and waylay him there. So Baker drove him the whole distance to Boston, forty miles. When Butman got to the city, he was afraid that the news of the Worcester riot might have reached Boston, and have excited the people there; and, by his earnest solicitation, Baker took Butman by unfrequented streets across the city to a place where he thought he could be concealed until the excitement abated.

Baker, who died a short time ago in Worcester, aged over ninety, told me the whole story immediately on his return.

The proceeding undoubtedly was not to be justified; but it was a satisfaction to know that no slave-hunter came to Worcester after that occurrence. Five or six people--including, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Higginson himself, certainly including Joseph A. Howland, a well-known Abolitionist and non-resistant, and also including Martin Stowell, who was afterward indicted for killing Batchelder, a Marshal who took part in the rendition of Burns--were complained of before the police court, and bound over to await the action of the grand jury. The grand jury returned no indictment, except against one colored man.

Mr. District Attorney Aldrich was quite disgusted at this, and promptly _nol prossed_ that indictment. And so ended the famous Butman riot.

The Whigs were in a minority in Ma.s.sachusetts after the year 1848. But the const.i.tution required a majority of all the votes to elect a Governor; and, in the case of no choice, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Executive Council, and the Senators from counties where there had been no election were chosen on joint ballot by the members elected to the two Houses. The Whigs were able to carry the Legislature, and in that way chose their Governor and Lieutenant Governor, elected Councillors, and filled vacancies in the Senate. But the Free Soil and Democratic leaders were not content to leave the power in the hands of the Whig minority. In 1849 a few Representatives and Senators were chosen to the Legislature by a union of the Free Soil and Democratic Parties. In the autumn of 1850 this arrangement was extended through the State.

The Whigs were in a minority in the Legislature, and the coalition proceeded to elect a Democratic Governor and Lieutenant Governor and an Executive Council. In consideration of giving these offices to the Democrats, it was agreed that Mr. Sumner should be chosen Senator. A few of the Democrats, who desired to keep their party relations with the South, refused to agree to this arrangement. Mr. Winthrop was the Whig candidate.

The Senate, on its part, promptly elected Mr. Sumner, but there was a long contest in the House of Representatives, extending through three months. Twenty-six ballots were cast, of which no candidate had a majority until the last. Mr.

Sumner several times came within two or three votes of an election. At last it was apparent that some member had cast more than one vote; and an order was offered by Sidney Bartlett, an eminent Whig member from Boston, requiring the members to bring in their votes in sealed envelopes. This resulted in the choice of Sumner.

Another contribution to Mr. Sumner's election ought not to be forgotten. The town of Fall River was represented by Whigs; but it was a community where there was a strong anti-slavery feeling. A town-meeting was called by the friends of Mr.

Sumner, and a motion made to instruct their representatives, according to the right of the people declared in the const.i.tution of Ma.s.sachusetts, to vote for Sumner. An earnest and eloquent speech in favor of the resolution was made by Robert T. Davis, a young Quaker, since a distinguished member of Congress.

The resolution was carried, which Mr. Borden, one of the Representatives from Fall River, obeyed. The result was Sumner's election by a single vote.

As stated in the preceding chapter, I was a member in 1852 of the Ma.s.sachusetts House of Representatives, then consisting of about four hundred and twenty members. It was, I think, as admirable a body of men for the training of a public speaker as I ever knew. The members were honest. The large majority was made up of sensible, strong-headed country farmers, rather slow in making up their minds, but making them up always on considerations of what was best for the Commonwealth. There was a time, when the opinion of the House seemed to be precipitating or crystallizing, not too early in the debate and not too late, when a vigorous and effective speech had great influence.

I was made Chairman of the Committee of Probate and Chancery, the second law committee in the House; and I suppose it is not presumptuous to say that I did as much of the hard work of the body and had as much influence in leading its action and shaping its legislation as anybody.

In the year 1856 I was, with Eli Thayer, sent from Worcester as a delegate to a Convention held at Buffalo to concert measures to help the settlers from the Free States in their contest with slave owners led by Atchison and Stringfellow, of Missouri, for the possession of Kansas. Atchison had been President pro tempore of the Senate of the United States. The slave holders had organized a formidable body of men to drive out the Free State settlers from the Territories, which had just been opened after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. We met at Buffalo some gentlemen, among whom was Zachariah Chandler, of Michigan, then in the vigor of early manhood. We made arrangements for getting large contributions of money and arms with which the Northern emigrants were equipped, and which undoubtedly enabled them to maintain successfully their resistance and establish their free State.

CHAPTER XI THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY AND ITS OVERTHROW

The political history of Ma.s.sachusetts from 1846 to 1865 is, in general, the history of the share of the Commonwealth in the great National contest with Slavery; the beginning and growth of the Free Soil or Republican Party and the putting down of the Rebellion. The rise and dominion for three years, and the final overthrow of the Know Nothing Party is an episode which should not be wholly omitted, although it is an episode which might be omitted without injury to the sense.

There have been, ever since the Irish immigration which begun somewhere about 1840 down to to-day, a great many worthy people who have been afraid of the Pope and the influence of Catholicism in this country, and have been exceedingly jealous of the influence of foreigners, especially of those of the Roman Catholic Church. Self-seeking political adventurers and demagogues have not been slow to take advantage of this feeling for their own purposes. They have, for some reason, always preferred to make their political movement in secret societies. The Catholic vote had generally been cast for the Democrats, and was supposed to be largely influenced by the Catholic clergy.

It was thought that this influence had a good deal to do with defeating Mr. Clay in 1844. A movement of this kind swept over the country after the Presidential election of 1852.

It had nearly spent its force by 1856. It made little headway at the South, except in two or three States. There was a struggle with it in Virginia, where it was defeated by the superhuman energy of Henry A. Wise. The party organized for the purpose of excluding men of foreign birth from any share in the Government, sometimes called the American Party, was generally called the Know-Nothing Party, a name which came from the answer each member was expected to make to any inquiry from an outsider, "I know nothing about it."

This party swept Ma.s.sachusetts in the autumn of 1854. It elected in that year Governor, Lieutenant Governor, all the officers of the State Government, every member of both Houses of the Legislature, except two from the town of Northampton, and every member of Congress. Its candidate for Governor was Henry J. Gardner, a very skilful political organizer.

He had a book in which he had the names of men in every town in the Commonwealth whom he attached to his personal fortunes by promises, or flattery, or because in some cases of their sincere belief in the doctrine. He understood better than any other man I ever knew the value of getting the united support of men who were without special influence, even the man who were odious or ridiculous among their own neighbors, but who united might be a very formidable force. He organized with great skill and success the knave-power and the donkey- power of the Commonwealth.

But a good many Anti-Slavery men who thought the party feeling of the Whigs and Democrats was a great obstacle to their cause, joined the movement simply in order that they might get rid of the old parties, and prepare the State as with a subsoil plow for a new one. They had no belief in the proscriptive doctrines, and were willing that men of foreign birth and Catholics should have their just rights, and expected to destroy the Know Nothing Party in its turn when it had destroyed Whiggery and Democracy. Of these was Henry Wilson, who owed his first election to the Senate to the Know Nothing Legislature; and Eli Thayer, who had been the organizer of the Emigrant Aid Society, and the movement for the deliverance of Kansas and Nebraska. Both these gentlemen abandoned the Know Nothing Party the year after its formation. Mr. Thayer was elected as a Republican to Congress in 1856, and reelected in 1858.

But he separated from his political a.s.sociates and espoused the squatter sovereignty doctrines of Stephen A. Douglas.

He, I have no doubt, was a sincere Anti-Slavery man. But he liked to do things in peculiar and original ways of his own, and was impatient of slow and old-fashioned methods.

So he got estranged from his Republican brethren, was defeated as a candidate for Congress in 1860, took no part in public activities during the time of the war, became somewhat soured, and landed in the Democratic Party. I always had a great liking for him, and deem him ent.i.tled to great public grat.i.tude for his services in the rescue of Kansas from what was known as Border Ruffianism.

Neither Charles Sumner nor Charles Allen ever tolerated the Know Nothing movement or made any terms with it. Its proscriptiveness and its secrecy were alike repugnant to their honest, brave and liberty-loving souls. Sumner was advised, as the question of his reelection was coming on in January, 1857, to keep silent about Know Nothingism. He was told that the Slavery question was enough for one man to deal with, and that if he would only hold his peace all the parties would unite in his reelection. He answered the advice with his brave challenge.

He went about the Commonwealth, denouncing the intolerant and proscriptive doctrine of the Know Nothings. He told them: "You have no real principle on which you can stand. You are nothing but a party of Gardnerites."

Charles Allen addressed a little company, of which I was one, in the City Hall at Worcester in the autumn of 1854, when Know Nothingism was in the height of its strength. He said:

"Perhaps I am speaking too boldly, but I learned to speak boldly a long time ago. I will speak my sentiments in the face of any organization; or, if it does not show its face, though its secret mines are beneath my feet, and unseen hands ready to apply the match, I will declare those sentiments that a freeman is bound to utter."

The people of Ma.s.sachusetts elected Gardner Governor in 1854, 1855 and 1856. But in the autumn of 1857 he was beaten under the leadership of General Banks. The party lingered until 1856 when there was an attempt to keep it alive in the Presidential campaign of that year when Millard Fillmore was its candidate for the Presidency.

But it was destroyed in the consuming fire kindled by the Civil War, and has not since been heard of by its old name.

The proscriptive and intolerant opposition to Catholicism, especially against men of foreign birth, has shown its head occasionally. It appeared in its most formidable shape in a secret organization known as the A. P. A., of which I shall speak later. It is utterly uncongenial to the spirit of true Americanism, and will never have any considerable permanent strength.

CHAPTER XII ELECTION TO CONGRESS

In the year 1868 one chapter of my life ended and a very different one began. In the beginning of that year I had no doubt that what remained of my life would be devoted to my profession, and to discharging as well as I could the duties of good citizenship in the community to which I was so strongly attached. But it was ordered otherwise. My life in Worcester came to an end, and I shall if I live to complete my present term in the Senate have spent thirty- eight years in the National service.