Homes of American Statesmen Part 11

Mr. Ames was the author of the "Address of the House of Representatives to Washington," on his signifying his intention to withdraw from office.

His own health had been, and was still so feeble, that he could not stand for re-election. Accordingly, he retired to Dedham in March, 1797, intending to devote himself, as far as possible, to the practice of his profession and the enjoyment of domestic happiness.

In July 1792, Mr. Ames had married Miss Worthington, of Springfield.

This marriage was an exceedingly happy one. Mrs. Ames was much beloved and respected by her neighbors, and, in her sphere, was considered as remarkable as her husband. She was a woman of gentle and retiring disposition, devoted to her family, kind, motherly and sensible. Mr.

Ames seems to have found in her a companion who called forth and appreciated all those amiable qualities which were a part of his character. She took a good deal of interest in public affairs, and was a woman of cultivated mind. She survived her husband, and died some sixteen years since, at the age of seventy-four. They had seven children, six sons and a daughter. The daughter died young and unmarried, of consumption. Three of the sons are now living, one in Dedham, one in Cambridge, and another somewhere at the West. All the children however survived their father.

Previous to his marriage Mr. Ames had lived with his mother. After that event he moved to Boston and took a house on Beacon Street, next to Governor Bowdoin's. He appears to have lived here about two years, when he returned to Dedham, and began the building of a new house. This house was finished and occupied by the winter of 1795; during the interval Mr.

Ames lived in a house opposite the old mansion now occupied by the Dedham Gazette. This new house of Ames's is still standing in Dedham, externally much the same as of old; a large square-built, two-story house, flat-roofed, simple and substantial. Internally, however, together with the ground about it, it has undergone many alterations.

Formerly it had not the piazza now in front of it, and the various chimneys were then represented by one fat, old-fashioned, solid structure in the middle. It pa.s.sed out of the hands of the family about 1835, and is at present owned by Mr. John Gardiner.

Mr. Ames seems to have inherited most of the old homestead, to the extent of twenty-five acres, on which he built his house, facing the south, a little to the east, and back of his mother's. He employed himself a good deal henceforth in the cultivation of his farm. The "Front Lot" was surrounded with a rail fence and a row of Lombardy poplars, and was used at different times as a mowing lot, a cornfield, and a pasture for the cows. On the east side of the house, extending in length from the street to the river, and in width from directly under the windows, far enough to include a street and a row of small houses, since constructed, was a pasture and orchard including seven or eight acres, and stocked with the best fruit. Directly back of the house was the garden, a long and rather barren strip of land, of peculiar surface.

Two straight walks went from the house the whole length of it. At the farther end of it was a low oval s.p.a.ce, with a walk running around it, and a pond in the middle. All this part of the garden was low, and surrounded at the sides and end with a bank, in the form of an amphitheatre. Three or four terraces lay between it and the higher ground. These and the oval s.p.a.ce with its walk, still remain, but the fence between the garden and the orchard has been removed, and the two straight walks somewhat changed, to suit the modern appet.i.te for grace.

The place is still full of the fruit-trees that Fisher Ames planted, some crossgrained pear-trees, and venerable cherries being the chief.

The boys used to look over in this orchard and garden, at the big pears, weighing down the trees and covering the ground, as if it were the very garden of the Hesperides, and the dragon were asleep. Once in a while the gates would be thrown open to these hungry longers, and they helped themselves; when winter came too the pond afforded them a capital skating place. A large shed ran out from the back of the house, on the west end, used, among other purposes, as a granary. To the west and back of this, was the barn of the old house, and a large new one built by Mr.

Ames, and behind the latter, the ice-house, in those days quite a novelty. Back of this was an open field. On the west side of the house, a flight of steps led from one of the lower windows down the bank, with an old pear-tree growing through it.

The house stood about two rods from the street; a semi-elliptical walk led up to the door, and two horse-chestnuts grew in the yard. There were but few trees near the house, for Mr. Ames liked the light and the fresh air. He planted a great many shade trees however on the street, and some of the fine old elms about the common were set out with his own hands.

The front door opened into a large room, which took up the whole southwestern end, used as a hall, and on occasion of those large dinner parties so common among men of Mr. Ames's cla.s.s, in those days, as a dining-room. At such times this was thrown into one with the adjoining front room, a large apartment, with a big fireplace, commonly used as a parlor. Back of this was the library overlooking the garden. The southeastern end was Mr. Ames's favorite one. His chamber, that in which he died, was here, on the second story. Below stairs, was a cellar kitchen, and a dairy; this last quite a magnificent matter, with marble flagging, and ice bestowed around in summer, for coolness.

From the bank at the end of the garden, Mr. Ames's land covered with fruit-trees, sloped gracefully to the water. Charles River is here only twenty or thirty feet wide, and winds with a tranquil current through a narrow meadow; not as broad, but brighter and clearer than where at Cambridge it calls forth the admiring apostrophe of the poet. It is only a short way below this where Mother Brook issues from the Charles, flowing towards the east, and joining it with the Neponset, and making an island of all the intervening region, which embraces Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester. This singular stream, though its banks are wooded with venerable trees, and it is in all respects like one of nature's own, is nevertheless an artificial course of water. And what is very remarkable, it was constructed by the Puritan settlers, only three years after their arrival in 1639, when there could not have been a hundred men in the place. They were in want of a flow of water for mill purposes, and accordingly dug a ca.n.a.l a mile in length, from the Charles eastwardly.

Here the land descended, and the water, left to its own course, wound in graceful curves to the Neponset. There are still a number of mills on this stream. This achievement of Young America, considering his extreme youth at the time, amounting in fact to infancy, was not unworthy of his subsequent exploits.

After returning from Congress, Mr. Ames pa.s.sed a life of almost unbroken retirement. In 1798 he was appointed commissioner to the Cherokees, an office he was obliged to refuse. In 1800 he was a member of the Governor's Council, and in the same year delivered a eulogy on Washington, before the Legislature. He was chosen in 1805, President of Harvard College, but ill health, and a disinclination to change his habits of life, led him to decline the honor.

He had also resumed the practice of his profession with ardor, but the state of his health compelled him gradually to drop it; and towards the close of his life, he was glad to throw it aside altogether. Mr. Ames was not much of a traveller, though getting back and forth between Dedham and Philadelphia, which he used to do in his own conveyance, was no small matter in those days. He visited among his acquaintances in the neighborhood, at Christopher Gore's in Waltham, at George Cabot's in Brookline, and at Salem, where Timothy Pickering and others of his friends resided. He was also in the habit of driving to Boston in his gig two or three times a week, when his health permitted, and pa.s.sing the day. But he took few long journeys. We hear of him at Newport in 1795, in Virginia visiting the mineral springs for his health, in the following year, and in Connecticut in 1800; and he speaks in one of his letters of "jingling his bells as far as Springfield" as a matter of common occurrence. His wife's relations lived there, among others the husband of her sister, Mr. Thomas Dwight, at whose house Mr. Ames was a frequent guest.

Ames, like so many of the best statesmen of that time, and of all time, appears to have always had a relish for farming. In a letter written at Philadelphia in 1796, while groaning over his ill health, which makes him "the survivor of himself, or rather the troubled ghost of a politician compelled to haunt the field of battle where he fell," he says, "I almost wish Adams was here, and I at home sorting squash and pumpkin seeds for planting." The latter part of the wish was soon to be realized, but not till this survivor of himself had outdone all the efforts of his former life, and risen like a Phoenix in his splendid speech on the Treaty. He frequently wrote essays on agricultural subjects, and into many of his political articles similes and ill.u.s.trations found their way, smelling of the farm. He had an especial fondness for raising fruit trees, and for breeding calves and pigs. All the best kinds of fruit were found in his orchard, experiments were tried on new kinds of gra.s.s, and improvements undertaken in the cultivation of crops. A piggery was attached to the barn, conducted on scientific principles, and furnished with the best stock. New breeds of cattle were introduced, and cows were kept with a view both to the sale of milk, and to the sale of their young. The produce of the farm used to be sent to Boston in a market wagon. For the carrying on of this establishment, Mr. Ames kept some half a dozen men. He himself was able to do but little active service. His disease was called by the physicians marasmus, a wasting away of the vital powers, a sort of consumption, not merely of the lungs, but of the stomach and every thing else. This, while it produced fits of languor and depression, and had something to do probably with his excessive anxiety on political subjects, never seemed to take from the cheerfulness of his manners. He was obliged to practise a rigid system of temperance, and to take a good deal of exercise, in horseback riding and other ways. Besides the society of his family, a constant source of happiness, he used to solace himself with the company of his friends, with writing letters, and with reading his favorite authors. History and poetry he was especially fond of. Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope's Homer he read throughout his life, and during his last year, re-read Virgil, Tacitus and Livy, in the original, with much delight.

His friends were frequently invited out to partake of his "farmer's fare," and rare occasions those must have been, when such men as Theophilus Parsons, and Pickering, and Gore, and Samuel Dexter, and George Cabot were met together, with now and then one from a greater distance. Hamilton or Gouverneur Morris, or Sedgwick, or Judge Smith; while at the head of the table sat Fisher Ames himself, delighting every one by his humor, and his unrivalled powers of conversation. In conversation, he surpa.s.sed all the men of his time; even Morris, who was celebrated as a talker, used to be struck quite dumb at his side. His quick fancy and exuberant humor, his brilliant power of expression, his acquaintance with literature and affairs, and his genial and sunny disposition, used to show themselves on such occasions to perfection.

His conversation, like his letters, was mainly upon political topics, though now and then, agriculture or literature, or the common news of the day was introduced. When dining once with some Southern gentlemen in Boston, General Pinckney among the number, after an animated conversation at the table, just as Ames was leaving the room, somebody asked him a question. Ames walked on until he reached the door, when, turning round and resting his elbow on the sideboard, he replied in a strain of such eloquence and beauty that the company confessed they had no idea of his powers before. Judge Smith, his room-mate in Philadelphia, stated, that when he was so sick as to be confined to his bed, he would sometimes get up and converse with friends who came to see him, by the hour, and then go back to his bed completely exhausted. His friends in Boston used to seize upon him when he drove in town, and "tire him down," as he expressed it, so that when he got back to Dedham, he wanted to roll like a tired horse.

Ames wrote a good many newspaper essays. This was a habit which he always kept up, particularly after his retirement. About 1800, on the election of Jefferson, he was very active in starting a Federal paper in Boston, the Palladium, and wrote for it constantly. He had great fears for his country from the predominance of French influence, and deemed it the duty of a patriot to enlighten his countrymen on the character and tendency of political measures. His biographer informs us that these essays were the first drafts, and they appear as such. The language is appropriate and often very felicitous, but they are diffuse and not always systematic. There is considerable argument in them, but more of explanation, appeal and ornament. He wrote to set facts before the people, and to urge them to vigilance and activity; and his essays are in fact so many written addresses. They cost him no labor in their composition, being on subjects that he was constantly revolving in his mind. They used to be written whenever he found a spare moment and a sc.r.a.p of paper, while stopping at a tavern, at the printing office in Boston, or while waiting for his horse; and are apparently expressed just as they would have been if he were speaking impromptu. We have heard him characterized by one of his old friends as essentially a poet; but it would be more correct to say, that he was altogether an orator.

He had indeed the characteristics of an orator in a rare degree, and these show themselves in every thing he does. While his mind was clear and his powers of reasoning were exceedingly good, imagination, the instinctive perception of a.n.a.logies, and feeling predominated. His writings do not justify his fame; yet viewed as what they really are, the unlabored transcripts of his thoughts, they are remarkable. The flow of language, the wit, the wealth and aptness of ill.u.s.tration, the clearness of thought, show an informed and superior mind. They have here and there profound observations, that show an acquaintance with the principles of government and with the human heart, and are full of testimonials to the purity of the author's patriotism, and the goodness of his heart.

Besides the essays that are published among his works, he wrote many others perhaps equally good, as well as numerous short, keen paragraphs, adapted to the time, but not suitable for republication. He also wrote verses occasionally, among others "an Ode by Jefferson" to the ship that was to bring Tom Paine from France, in imitation of Horace's to the vessel that was to bear Virgil from Athens.

He wrote a great many letters, and it is in these that we are presented with the finest view of his character. They are full of sensible remarks on contemporary news and events, and sparkle with wit of that slipshod and easy sort, most delightful in letters, while in grace of style they surpa.s.s most of the correspondence of that period. The public has already been informed that the correspondence of Fisher Ames, together with other writings, and some notice of his life, is in course of publication by one of his sons, Mr. Seth Ames of Cambridge. But few of his letters were published in his works, as issued in 1809; a few more appeared in Judge Smith's life, and some twenty in Gibbs's "Administration of Washington and Adams," but these bear but a very small proportion to his whole correspondence. Within a short time as many as one hundred and fifty letters have been found in Springfield, written to Mr. Dwight, of various dates from 1790 to 1807. A large number are said to have disappeared, that were in the hands of George Cabot, and some were burned among the papers of President Kirkland. For a delightful specimen of Mr. Ames' familiar letters, the reader is referred to page 89 of that capital biography, the "Life of Judge Smith."

Mr. Ames was a man of great urbanity among his neighbors. It was his custom to converse a good deal with ignorant persons and those remote from civil affairs. He was desirous to see how such persons looked at political questions, and often found means in this way of correcting his own views. He was a great favorite among the servants, and used to sit down in the kitchen sometimes and talk with them.

He attended the Congregational church at Dedham, and took a good deal of interest in its affairs. On one occasion he invited out a number of friends to attend an installation. But about 1797, on the minister's insisting upon certain high Calvinistic doctrines, Mr. Ames left, and always went, after that, to the Episcopal church. A certain good old orthodox lady remarked to him one day, after he left their church, that she supposed, if they had a nice new meeting-house, he would come back.

"No, madam," rejoined Ames, "if you had a church of silver, and were to line it with gold, and give me the best seat in it, I should go to the Episcopal." Though a man of strong religious feelings, he was nothing of a sectarian, and did not fully agree with the Episcopal views. He was a friend of Dr. Channing, who visited him in his last illness, and he ought probably to be reckoned in the same cla.s.s of Christians with that eminent clergyman. He was very fond of the Psalms, and used to repeat the beautiful hymn of Watts, "Up to the hills I lift mine eyes." The Christmas of 1807, the year before his death, he had his house decked with green, a favourite custom with him.

He died at the age of fifty, on the fourth of July 1808, at five o'clock in the morning, leaving to his family a comfortable property. The news of his death was carried at once to Boston, and Andrew Ritchie, the city orator for that day, alluded to it in this extempore burst: "But, alas!

the immortal Ames, who, like Ithuriel, was commissioned to discover the insidious foe, has, like Ithuriel, accomplished his emba.s.sy, and on this morning of our independence has ascended to Heaven. Spirit of Demosthenes, couldst thou have been a silent and invisible auditor, how wouldst thou have been delighted to hear from his lips, those strains of eloquence which once from thine, enchanted the a.s.semblies of Greece!"

Ames' friends in Boston requested his body for the celebration of funeral rites. It was attended by a large procession from the house of Christopher Gore to King's Chapel, where an oration was p.r.o.nounced by Samuel Dexter. It was afterwards deposited in the family tomb at Dedham, whence it was removed a few years since, and buried by the side of his wife and children. A plain white monument marks the spot, in the old Dedham grave-yard, behind the Episcopal church, with the simple inscription "FISHER AMES."

=John Quincy Adams.=

[Ill.u.s.tration: Quincy Adams fac-simile of letter]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Birth-place of John Quincy Adams]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

John Quincy Adams was fortunate in the home of his birth and childhood.

It was a New England farm, descended from ancestors who were never so poor as to be dependent upon others, nor so rich as to be exempted from dependence upon themselves. It was situated in the town of Quincy, then the first parish of the town of Braintree, and the oldest permanent settlement of Ma.s.sachusetts proper.[17] The first parish became a town by its present name, twenty-five years after the birth of Mr. Adams, viz. in 1792. It was named in honor of John Quincy, Mr. Adams's maternal great-grandfather, an eminent man. His death, and the transmission of his name to his great-grandson, are thus commemorated by the latter:

"He was dying when I was baptized, and his daughter, my grandmother, present at my birth, requested that I should receive his name. The fact, recorded by my father at the time, 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 pa.s.sing from earth to immortality. It has been to me a perpetual admonition to do nothing unworthy of it."

The farm-house stands at the foot of an eminence called Penn's Hill, about a mile south of Quincy village. It is an old-fashioned dwelling, having a two-story front, and sloping far away to a single one in the rear. This style is peculiar to the early descendants of the Puritan fathers of America. Specimens are becoming rarer every year; and being invariably built of wood, must soon pa.s.s away, but not without "the tribute of a sigh" from those, who a.s.sociate with them memories of the wide old fireplaces, huge glowing backlogs, and hospitable cheer.

With this modest material environment of the child, was coupled an intellectual and moral, which was golden. His father, the ill.u.s.trious John Adams, was bred, and in his youth labored, on the farm. At the birth of his son, he was still a young man, being just turned of thirty, but ripe both in general and professional knowledge, and already recognized as one of the ablest counsellors and most powerful pleaders at the bar of the province.

The mother of John Quincy Adams was worthy to be the companion and counsellor of the statesman just described. By reason of slender health she never attended a school. As to the general education allowed to girls at that day, she tells us that it was limited "in the best families to writing, arithmetic, and, in rare instances, music and dancing;" and that "it was fashionable to ridicule female learning."

From her father, a clergyman, from her mother, a daughter of John Quincy, and above all from her grandmother, his wife, she derived liberal lessons and salutary examples. Thus her education was entirely domestic and social. Perhaps it was the better for the absence of that absorbing pa.s.sion of the schools, which for the most part rests as well satisfied with negative elevation by the failure of another, as with positive elevation by the improvement of one's self. The excellent and pleasant volume of her letters, which has gone through several editions, indicates much historical, scriptural, and especially poetical and ethical culture. In propriety, ease, vivacity and grace, they compare not unfavorably with the best epistolary collections; and in constant good sense, and occasional depth and eloquence, no letter-writer can be named as her superior. To her only daughter, mother of the late Mrs. De Wint, she wrote concerning the influence of her grandmother as follows:

"I have not forgotten the excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother, at a very early period of life. I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents. Whether it was owing to a happy method of mixing instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt together, or from an inflexible adherence to certain principles, which I could not but see and approve when a child, I know not; but maturer years have made them oracles of wisdom to me.

Her lively, cheerful disposition animated all around her, whilst she edified all by her unaffected piety. I cherish her memory with a holy veneration, whose maxims I have treasured, whose virtues live in my remembrance--happy if I could say they have been transplanted into my life."

The concluding aspiration was more than realized, because Mrs. Adams lived more than the fortunate subject of her eulogy, and more than any American woman of her time. She was cheerful, pious, compa.s.sionate, discriminating, just and courageous up to the demand of the times. She was a calm adviser, a zealous a.s.sistant, and a never failing consolation of her partner, in all his labors and anxieties, public and private.

That the laborers might be spared for the army, she was willing to work in the field. Diligent, frugal, industrious and indefatigable in the arrangement and details of the household and the farm, the entire management of which devolved upon her for a series of years, she preserved for him amidst general depreciation and loss of property, an independence, upon which he could always count and at last retire. At the same time she responded to the numerous calls of humanity, irrespective of opinions and parties. If there was a patriot of the Revolution who merited the t.i.tle of _Washington of women_, she was the one.

It is gratifying to know that this rare combination of virtue and endowments met with a just appreciation from her great husband. In his autobiography, written at a late period of life, he records this touching testimony, that "his connection with her had been the source of all his felicity," and his unavoidable separations from her, "of all the griefs of his heart, and all that he esteemed real afflictions in his life." Throughout the two volumes of letters to her, embracing a period of twenty-seven years, the lover is more conspicuous than the statesman; and she on her part regarded him with an affection unchangeable and ever fresh during more than half a century of married life. On one of the anniversaries of her wedding she wrote from Braintree to him in Europe:

"Look at this date and tell me what are the thoughts which arise in your mind. Do you not recollect that eighteen years have run their circuit, since we pledged our mutual faith, and the hymeneal torch was lighted at the altar of love? Yet, yet it burns with unabating fervor. Old ocean cannot quench it; old Time cannot smother it in this bosom. It cheers me in the lonely hour."

The homely place at Penn's Hill was thrice enn.o.bled, twice as the birth-place of two n.o.ble men--n.o.ble before they were Presidents; and thirdly as the successful rival of the palaces inhabited by its proprietors at the most splendid courts of Europe, which never for a moment supplanted it in their affections. Mrs. Adams wrote often from Paris and London in this strain: "My humble cottage at the foot of the hill has more charms for me than the drawing-room of St. James;" and John Adams still oftener thus: "I had rather build wall on Penn's Hill than be the first prince of Europe, or the first general or first senator of America."

Such were the hearts that unfolded the childhood of John Quincy Adams.

Of all the things which grace or deform the early home, the principles, aims and efforts of the parents in conducting the education of the child are the most important to both. The mutual letters of the parents, in the present case, contain such wise and patriotic precepts, such sagacious methods, such earnest and tender persuasions to the acquisition of all virtue, knowledge, arts and accomplishments, that can purify and exalt the human character, that they would form a valuable manual for the training of true men and purer patriots.

Although the spot which has been mentioned was John Quincy Adams's princ.i.p.al home until he was nearly eleven, yet he resided at two different intervals, within that time, four or five years in Boston; his father's professional business at one time, and his failing health at another, rendering the alternation necessary. The first Boston residence was the White House, so called, in Brattle-street. In front of this a British regiment was exercised every morning by Major Small, during the fall and winter of 1768, to the no little annoyance of the tenant. But says he, "in the evening, I was soothed by the sweet songs, violins and flutes of the serenading Sons of Liberty." The family returned to Braintree in the spring of 1771. In November, 1772, they again removed to Boston, and occupied a house which John Adams had purchased in Queen (now Court) street, in which he also kept his office. From this issued state papers and appeals, which did not a little to fix the destiny of the country. The ground of that house has descended to Charles Francis Adams, his grandson. In 1774 Penn's Hill became the permanent home of the family, although John Adams continued his office in Boston, attended by students at law, until it was broken up by the event of April 19th, 1775.

Soon after the final return to Quincy, we begin to have a personal acquaintance with the boy, now seven years old. Mrs. Adams writes to her husband, then attending the Congress in Philadelphia:

"I have taken a very great fondness for reading Rollin'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 pleasure and entertainment from it, and I have persuaded Johnny to read me a page or two every day, and hope he will, from a desire to oblige me, entertain a fondness for it."

In the same year the first mention is made of his regular attendance upon a teacher. The person selected in that capacity was a young man named Thaxter, a student at law, transferred from the office in Boston, to the family in Quincy. The boy seems to have been very much attached to him. Mrs. Adams a.s.signed the following reasons for preferring this arrangement to the public town school.

"I am certain that if he does not get so much good, he gets less harm; and I have always thought it of very great importance that children should be unaccustomed to such examples as would tend to corrupt the purity of their words and actions, that they may chill with horror at the sound of an oath, and blush with indignation at an obscene expression."