Homes of American Statesmen Part 14

In other letters she ill.u.s.trated observations in the same spirit by these quotations:

"Shall I determine where his frowns shall fall, And fence my grotto from the lot of ALL?"

"Prompt at every call, Can watch and weep and pray and feel for ALL."

One evening, at his house in F street in Washington, he spoke of Judge Parsons, of his depth and subtlety, and the conciseness of his language.

"Soon after I entered his office he said to us students--'Lord Bacon observes that "reading makes a full man, conversation a ready man, writing a correct man." Young gentlemen, my advice to you is, that you study to be full, ready and correct.' I thought," said Mr. Adams, "that I never heard good advice so well conveyed."

He was asked by the writer whether he had ever received any acknowledgment of his services, any mark of grat.i.tude from the colored people of the District? "None," said he--"except that I now and then hear, _in a low tone_, a hearty G.o.d BLESS YOU! That is enough."

It was enough; enough for recompense and for justification, since we are in the sad pa.s.s that justification is needed--since

"Virtue itself of Vice must pardon beg, And pray for leave to do him good."

So then, in this Republic there are millions of human hearts, which are not permitted to love a benefactor, and dare not utter for him an invocation, kindred to their devotion to G.o.d, except "in a low tone!"

When in 1846 Mr. Adams was struck the first time with palsy, he was visited by Charles Sumner, who sat much by his bedside. As he became better, he said one day to his visitor: "You will enter public life; you do not want it, but you will be drawn into the current, in spite of yourself. Now I have a word of advice to give you. _Never accept a present._ While I was in Russia, the Minister of the Interior, an old man, whose conscience became more active as his bodily powers failed, grew uneasy on account of the presents he had received. He calculated the value of them, and paid it all over to the Imperial treasury. This put me to thinking upon the subject, and I then made a resolution never to accept a present while I remained in the public service; and I never have, unless it was some trifling token, as a hat or cane."

A neighboring clergyman, to whom this conversation was related, exclaimed--"A hat! That cannot be, for he never had any but an old one."

It was a tradition in Cambridge that Mr. Adams, while Professor in the University, was noted for indifference to personal appearance, and his well-worn hat was particularly remembered.

In the relation of husband Mr. Adams showed the same fidelity and devotedness which characterized him in every other. He was united to a woman whose virtues and accomplishments blessed and adorned his home. In a letter written shortly after his n.o.ble vindication of the character of woman, and the propriety and utility of their intervention in public affairs, he said:

"Had I not, by the dispensation of Providence, been blessed beyond the ordinary lot of humanity in all the domestic relations of life, as a son, a brother, and a husband, I should still have thought myself bound to vindicate the social rights and the personal honor of the pet.i.tioners, who had confided to me the honorable trust of presenting the expression of their wishes to the legislative councils of the nation. But that this sense of imperious duty was quickened within my bosom by the affectionate estimate of the female character impressed upon my heart and mind by the virtues of the individual woman, with whom it has been my lot to pa.s.s in these intimate relations my days upon earth, I have no doubt."

In 1840 he had a severe fall, striking his head against the corner of an iron rail, which inflicted a heavy contusion on his forehead, and rendered him for some time insensible. His left shoulder was likewise dislocated. This occurred at the House of Representatives after adjournment. Fortunately several members were within call, and gave him the most tender and a.s.siduous a.s.sistance. He was carried to the lodgings of one of them, and a physician called. With the united strength of four men, it took more than an hour to reduce the dislocation. "Still," says a witness of the scene, "Mr. Adams uttered not a murmur, though the great drops of sweat which rolled down his furrowed cheeks, or stood upon his brow, told but too well the agony he suffered." At his request he was immediately conveyed to his house; and the next morning, to the astonishment of every one, he was found in his seat as usual. He was accustomed to be the first to enter the House and the last to leave it.

Mr. Everett tells us that he had his seat by the side of the veteran, and that he should not have been more surprised to miss one of the marble pillars from the hall than Mr. Adams.

That this painful accident did not impair the vigor of his mind is evident from the fact that he subsequently argued the Amistad case, and sustained the fierce contest of three days on the expulsion resolution in the House. It was three years later also that he made the journey for the benefit of his health, which turned out an improvised and continuous ovation. He had designed merely to visit Lebanon Springs. He was so much pleased with his journey thus far into the State of New-York, that he concluded to prolong it to Quebec, Montreal, and Niagara Falls, and return to Ma.s.sachusetts through the length of the empire State. This return was signalized by attentions and homage on the part of the people so spontaneous and unanimous, that nothing which has occurred since the progress of La Fayette, has equalled it. "Public greetings, processions, celebrations, met and accompanied every step of his journey." Addresses by eminent men, and acclamations of men, women, and children, who thronged the way, bore witness of the deep hold which the man, without accessories of office and pageantry of state, had of their hearts. Of this excursion he said himself towards the close of it, "I have not come alone, the whole people of the State of New-York have been my companions." In the autumn of the same year he went to Cincinnati to a.s.sist in laying the foundation of an observatory. This journey was attended by similar demonstrations. At a cordial greeting given him at Maysville, Kentucky, after an emphatic testimony to the integrity of Mr.

Clay, he made that renewed and solemn denial of the charges of "bargain and corruption."

He suffered a stroke of paralysis in November, 1846, but recovered, and took his seat at the ensuing session of Congress. He regarded this as equivalent to a final summons, and made no subsequent entry in his faithful diary except under the t.i.tle of "posthumous." After this he spoke little in the House.

In November, 1847, he left his home in Quincy for the last time. On the twentieth of February he pa.s.sed his last evening at his house in Washington. He retired to his library at nine o'clock, where his wife read to him a sermon by Bishop Wilberforce on Time. The next morning he rose early and occupied himself with his pen as he was wont. With more than usual spryness and alacrity he ascended the stairs of the Capitol.

In the House a resolution for awarding thanks and gold medals to several officers concerned in the Mexican war was taken up. Mr. Adams uttered his emphatic _No!_ on two or three preliminary questions. When the final question was about to be put, and while he was in the act of rising, as it was supposed, to address the House, he sunk down. He was borne to the speaker's room. He revived so far as to inquire for his wife, who was present. He seemed desirous of uttering thanks. The only distinct words he articulated were, "This is the end of earth. I am content." He lingered until the evening of the twenty-third, and then expired.

Thus he fell at his post in the eighty-first year of his age, the age of Plato. With the exception of Phocion there is no active public life continued on the great arena, with equal vigor and usefulness, to so advanced an age. Lord Mansfield retired at eighty-three; but the quiet routine of a judicial station is not as trying as the varied and boisterous contentions of a political and legislative a.s.sembly. Ripe as he was for heaven; he was still greatly needed upon earth. His services would have been of inestimable importance in disposing of the perilous questions, not yet definitively settled, which arose out of unhallowed war and conquest.

There is not much satisfaction in dwelling upon the general effusions of eloquence, or the pageantry which ensued. A single glance of guileless love from the men, women and children, who came forth from their smiling villages to greet the virtuous old statesman in his unpretending journeys, was worth the whole of it. The hearty tribute of Mr. Benton, so long a denouncer, has an exceptional value, the greater because he had made honorable amends to the departed during his life. That he was sincerely and deeply mourned by the nation, it would be a libel on the nation to doubt. His remains rested appropriately in Independence and Faneuil Halls on the way to their final resting place, the tomb he had made for those of his venerated parents. There he was laid by his neighbors and townsmen, sorrowing for the friend and the MAN. His monument is to stand on the other side of the pulpit.

Happy place which hallows such memories, and holds up such EXAMPLES.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] It is supposed that the State derives its name from a hill in the north part of the town, situated near the peninsula called Squantum, likewise a part of the town. Squantum was a favorite residence of the Indians; and the Sachem, who ruled over the district "extending round the harbors of Boston and Charlestown, through Malden, Chelsea, Nantasket, Hingham, Weymouth and Dorchester," had his seat on the neighboring hill, which was shaped like an arrow-head. Arrow-head in the Indian language was _mos_ or mous, and hill _wetuset_. Thus the great Sachem's home was called _Moswetuset_ or Arrow-head Hill, his subjects the Moswetusets, and lastly the Province Ma.s.sachusetts, but frequently in the primitive days "the Ma.s.sachusetts."

[18] Died early in the city of New-York, soon after entering upon the practice of law.

=Jackson.=

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hermitage, Residence of Jackson]

JACKSON.

The events of Jackson's life, even in their chronological order, dispose themselves into a number of combinations, which a skilful pen, guided by the hand of a poet, might easily work up into a series of impressive and contrasted pictures. We have not the ability, had we the s.p.a.ce here, to undertake this labor, but we see no reason why we should not present some outlines of it, for the benefit of future more competent artists.

In such a series, we should first see the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed son of Irish emigrants, driven from their home by a sense of British oppression, opening his young eyes in South Carolina, amid the stormy scenes of our Revolution. Around him, his friends and neighbors are training for the battle, and preparing to defend their homes from an invading foe; his eldest brother Hugh, is brought back dead from the fatigues of active service; the old Waxhaw meeting-house, a temporary hospital, through which he wanders, is crowded with the wounded and dying, whose condition moves him to tears, and fills him with melancholy impressions of the horrors of war, coupled with a deepening sense of English cruelty and oppression, of which he had before heard in the tales of his mother and her kindred about the old country from which they had fled; while, finally, he himself, but little more than thirteen years of age, in company with a brother Robert, takes up arms, is made a prisoner, suffers severely from wounds and the smallpox of the jail, loses first his brother by that disease, and then his mother by a fever caught on board a prison-ship, whither she had gone to nurse some captive friends, and is thus left alone in the world, the only one of all his family spared by the enemy.

We should next see the friendless, portionless orphan wending his solitary way through the immense forests of the Far West, (now the State of Tennessee), where the settlements were hundreds of miles from each other, while every tree and rock sheltered an enemy in the shape of some grisly animal, or the person of a more savage Indian. But he succeeds in crossing the mountains, he reaches the infant villages on the c.u.mberland River, he studies and practises the rude law of those distant regions, takes part in all the wild vicissitudes of frontier life, repels the red man, fights duels with the white, encounters in deadly feuds the turbulent spirits of a half-barbarous society, administers justice in almost extemporized courts, helps to frame a regular State const.i.tution, marries a wife as chivalric, n.o.ble, and fearless as himself, and at last, when society is reduced to some order, is chosen a representative of the backwoods in the Congress at Washington.

Arrived at the seat of government, a tall, thin, uncouth figure, with no words to express himself in, and apparently without ambition,--he yet shows himself, with all his wild western coa.r.s.eness, a man of insight and decision. He made no speeches, he drew up no reports, he created no sensation in the committee-room, or the lobbies,--he was not at all known, as a leader or a prominent individual, but he was one of the twelve democrats of the House, who dared to oppose returning an answer to Washington's last address, when the fame and the personal influence of that exalted man were almost omnipotent. He doubtless estimated the services and the character of Washington as highly as any member, but the measures of the administration his judgment did not approve, and he voted as he thought--a silent uncultivated representative,--odd in his dress and look, but with grit in him, not appalled even by the stupendous greatness of Washington! On the other hand, he saw in Jefferson a man for the times; became his friend, voted for him, and helped his State to vote for him as the second President.

In the next phases of his life we discover Jackson, as the dignified and impartial judge, a.s.serting the law in the face of a powerful combination of interested opponents; as the retired and prosperous planter, gathering together a large estate, which he surrounds with the comforts and luxuries of a refined existence, but sells at once when a friend's misfortunes involves him in debt, and retires to a primitive log cabin to commence his fortunes once more; as an Indian fighter achieving amid hardships of all kinds--the want of funds, the inclemency of the season, the ravages of disease, the unskilfulness of superiors, the insubordination of troops--a series of brilliant victories that made his name a terror to the Creeks and all their confederates. His campaign in the Floridas broke the power of the Indians, secretly in league with the British, forced them into a treaty, and wrested Pensacola from the possession of the Spanish governor, who had basely violated his neutrality, and who, when he wished to negotiate, was answered by Jackson, "My diplomacy is in the mouths of my cannon."

But a different foe and a wider theatre awaited the display of his military genius at New Orleans. Worn down with sickness and exhaustion, with raw and undisciplined troops--many of them the mere rabble of the wharves, and some of them buccaneers from neighboring islands--scantily supplied with arms and ammunition, in the midst of a mixed population of different tongues, where attachment to his cause was doubtful, continually agitated by gloomy forebodings of the result, though outwardly serene, he was surrounded by the flower of the British army, led by its most brave and accomplished generals. The attack commenced: from his breastwork of cotton bales his unerring rifles poured a continuous flame of fire. The enemy quailed: its leaders were killed or wounded; and the greatest victory of the war crowned the exertions of Jackson as the greatest military genius of his time. A universal glow of joy and grat.i.tude spread from the liberated city over the whole land; _Te deums_ were sung in the churches; children robed in white strewed his way with flowers; the nation jubilantly uttered its admiration and grat.i.tude. It was thus the desolated orphan of the Carolinas avenged the wrongs of his family, and a.s.serted the rights of his country, to the lasting dishonor of Great Britain.

Years pa.s.s on, and we see the successful General the President of the People, engaged once more in a fearful struggle; this time not against a foreign foe, but with an internal enemy of vast power and tremendous means of mischief. He is fighting the monster bank--another St. George gallantly charging another dragon--and, as usual, comes out of the contest victorious. The innumerable army of money-changers, wielding a power as formidable, though unseen, as that of an absolute monarch, is routed amid a horrible clangor of metal and rancorous hisses. The great true man, sustained by an honest people, was greater than the power of money. He wrought the salvation of his country from a hideous corruption--from bankruptcy, disgrace, and long years of political subjection. His near posterity has recognized the service, and placed him among the most ill.u.s.trious of statesmen.

Finally, we see the patriot soldier and civilian, a bowed and white-haired old man, in his secluded Hermitage, which is situated near the scenes of his earliest labors and triumphs. The companion of his love, who had shared in his struggles, but was not permitted to share in his latest glory, is with him no more; children they had none; and he moves tranquilly towards his grave alone. No! not alone: for travellers from all lands visit his retreat, to gaze upon his venerable form; his countrymen throng his doors, to gather wisdom from his sayings,--his friends and neighbors almost worship him, and an adopted family bask in the benignant goodness of his n.o.ble heart--his great mind, too, "beaming in mildest mellow splendor, beaming if also trembling, like a great sun on the verge of the horizon, near now to its long farewell." Thus, the orphan, the emigrant, the Indian fighter, the conquering General, the popular President, the venerated Patriarch, goes to the repose of the humble Christian.

What were the sources of Jackson's pre-eminent greatness, of his invariable success, of his resistless personal influence, of his deep hold upon the minds of his fellows? He was no orator, he was no writer, he had in fact no faculty of expression, he was unsustained by wealth, he never courted the mult.i.tude, he relied upon no external a.s.sistances.

What he did, he achieved for himself, without aid, directly, and by the mere force of his own nature. Neither education, nor family, nor the accidents of fortune, nor the friendship of the powerful, helped to raise him aloft, and push him forward in his career. The secret of his elevation, then, was this,--that he saw the Right and loved it, and was never afraid to pursue it, against all the allurements of personal ambition, and all the hostility of the banded sons of error. There have been many men of a larger reach and compa.s.s of mind, and some of a keener insight and sagacity, but none, of a more stern, inflexible, self-sacrificing devotion to what they esteemed to be true. He carried his life in his hand, ready to be thrown away at the call of honor or patriotism, and it was this unswerving integrity, which commended him so strongly to the affections of the ma.s.ses. Whatever men may be in themselves, their hearts are always p.r.o.ne to do homage to honesty. They love those whom they can trust, or only hate them, because their justice and truth stands in the way of some cherished, selfish object.

Jackson's will was imperious; the report does not follow the flash more rapidly than his execution of a deed followed the conception of it; or rather his thought and his act were an instinctive, instantaneous, inseparable unity. Like a good marksman, as soon as he saw his object he fired, and generally with effect. This impulsive decision gave rise to some over-hasty and precipitate movements, but, in the main, was correct. What politicians, therefore, could only accomplish if at all by a slow and cunning process of intrigue, what diplomatists reached by long-winded negotiations, he marched to, without indirection, with his eye always on the point, and his whole body following the lead of the eye. We do not mean that he was utterly without subtlety,--for some subtlety is necessary to the most ordinary prudence, and is particularly necessary to the forecast of generalship,--but simply that he never dissimulated, never a.s.sumed disguise, never carried water on both shoulders, as the homely phrase has it, and never went around an obstacle, when he could level it, or push it out of the way. The foxy or feline element was small in a nature, into which so much magnanimity, supposed to be lionlike, entered.

The popular opinion of Jackson was, that he was an exceedingly irascible person, his mislikers even painting him as liable to fits of roaring and raving anger, when he flung about him like a maniac; but his intimate friends, who occupied the same house with him for years, inform us that they never experienced any of these strong gusts; that, though sensitive to opposition, impatient of restraint, quick to resent injuries, and impetuous in his advance towards his ends, he was yet gentle, kindly, placable, faithful to friends and forgiving to foes, a lover of children and women, only unrelenting when his quarry happened to be meanness, fraud or tyranny. His affections were particularly tender and strong; he could scarcely be made to believe any thing to the disadvantage of those he had once liked, while his reconciliations with those he had disliked, once effected, were frank, cordial and sincere. Colonel Benton, who was once an enemy, but afterwards a friend of many years, gives us this sketch of some of his leading characteristics:

"He was a careful farmer, overlooking every thing himself, seeing that the fields and fences were in good order, the stock well attended, and the slaves comfortably provided for. His house was the seat of hospitality, the resort of friends and acquaintances, and of all strangers visiting the State--and the more agreeable to all from the perfect conformity of Mrs. Jackson's disposition to his own. But he needed some excitement beyond that which a farming life could afford, and found it for some years in the animating sports of the turf. He loved fine horses--racers of speed and bottom--owned several--and contested the four mile heats with the best that could be bred, or bought, or brought to the State, and for large sums. That is the nearest to gaming that I ever knew him to come. Cards and the c.o.c.k-pit have been imputed to him, but most erroneously. I never saw him engaged in either.

Duels were usual in that time, and he had his share of them, with their unpleasant concomitants; but they pa.s.sed away with all their animosities, and he has often been seen zealously pressing the advancement of those, against whom he had but lately been arrayed in deadly hostility. His temper was placable, as well as irascible, and his reconciliations were cordial and sincere. Of that, my own case was a signal instance. There was a deep-seated vein of piety in him, unaffectedly showing itself in his reverence for divine worship, respect for the ministers of the Gospel, their hospitable reception in his house, and constant encouragement of all the pious tendencies of Mrs.

Jackson. And when they both afterwards became members of a church, it was the natural and regular result of their early and cherished feelings. He was gentle in his house, and alive to the tenderest emotions; and of this I can give an instance, greatly in contrast with his supposed character, and worth more than a long discourse in showing what that character really was. I arrived at his house one wet, chilly evening in February, and came upon him in the twilight, sitting alone before the fire, a lamb and a child between his knees. He started a little, called a servant to remove the two innocents to another room, and explained to me how it was. The child had cried because the lamb was out in the cold, and begged him to bring it in--which he had done to please the child, his adopted son, then not two years old. The ferocious man does not do that! and though Jackson had his pa.s.sions and his violences, they were for men and enemies--those who stood up against him--and not for women and children, or the weak and helpless, for all of whom his feelings were those of protection and support. His hospitality was active as well as cordial, embracing the worthy in every walk of life, and seeking out deserving objects to receive it, no matter how obscure. Of this I learned a characteristic instance, in relation to the son of the famous Daniel Boone. The young man had come to Nashville on his father's business, to be detained some weeks, and had his lodgings at a small tavern, towards the lower part of the town. General Jackson heard of it--sought him out--found him, took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying, 'Your father's dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.' This was heart! and I had it from the young man himself, long after, when he was a State Senator of the General a.s.sembly of Missouri, and as such nominated me for the United States Senate at my first election in 1820--his name was Benton Boone, and so named after my father. Abhorrence of debt, public and private, dislike of banks and love of hard money--love of justice, and love of country, were ruling pa.s.sions with Jackson; and of these he gave constant evidences in all the situations of his life."

The same distinguished authority has drawn a picture of Jackson's retirement from the Presidency, with which we close our remarks:

"The second and last term of General Jackson's presidency expired on the 3d of March, 1837. The next day at twelve he appeared with his successor, Mr. Van Buren, on the elevated and s.p.a.cious eastern portico of the capitol, as one of the citizens who came to witness the inauguration of the new President, and no way distinguished from them, except by his place on the left hand of the President-elect. The day was beautiful: clear sky, balmy vernal sun, tranquil atmosphere; and the a.s.semblage immense. On foot, in the large area in front of the steps, orderly without troops, and closely wedged together, their faces turned to the portico--presenting to the beholders from all the eastern windows the appearance of a field paved with human faces--this vast crowd remained riveted to their places, and profoundly silent, until the ceremony of inauguration was over. It was the stillness and silence of reverence and affection, and there was no room for mistake as to whom this mute and impressive homage was rendered. For once the rising was eclipsed by the setting sun. Though disrobed of power, and retiring to the shades of private life, it was evident that the great ex-President was the absorbing object of this intense regard. At the moment that he began to descend the broad steps of the portico to take his seat in the open carriage that was to bear him away, the deep, repressed feeling of the dense ma.s.s broke forth, acclamations and cheers bursting from the heart and filling the air, such as power never commanded, nor man in power ever received. It was the affection, grat.i.tude, and admiration of the living age, saluting for the last time a great man. It was the acclaim of posterity breaking from the bosoms of contemporaries. It was the antic.i.p.ation of futurity--unpurchasable homage to the hero-patriot who, all his life, and in all the circ.u.mstances of his life--in peace and in war, and glorious in each--had been the friend of his country, devoted to her, regardless of self. Uncovered and bowing, with a look of unaffected humility and thankfulness, he acknowledged in mute signs his deep sensibility to this affecting overflow of popular feeling. I was looking down from a side window, and felt an emotion which had never pa.s.sed through me before. I had seen the inauguration of many presidents, and their going away, and their days of state, vested with power, and surrounded by the splendors of the first magistracy of a great republic; but they all appeared to me as pageants, brief to the view, unreal to the touch, and soon to vanish. But here there seemed to be a reality--a real scene--a man and the people: he, laying down power and withdrawing through the portals of everlasting fame; they, sounding in his ears the everlasting plaudits of unborn generations. Two days after I saw the patriot ex-President in the car which bore him off to his desired seclusion: I saw him depart with that look of quiet enjoyment which bespoke the inward satisfaction of the soul at exchanging the cares of office for the repose of home.

=King.=