Men of Our Times. Or, Leading Patriots of the Day

"The provisions of the Fugitive-slave Act permitted disloyal masters to claim, and they did claim, the return of their fugitive bondmen; the 37th Congress enacted that no fugitive should be surrendered until the claimant made oath that he had not given aid and comfort to the Rebellion.

"The progress of the Rebellion demonstrated its power, and the needs of the imperilled nation. To strengthen the physical forces of the United States, the 37th Congress authorized the President to receive into the military service persons of African descent; and every such person mustered into the service, his mother, his wife and children, owing service or labor to any person who should give aid and comfort to the Rebellion, was made for ever free.

"The African slave-trade had been carried on by slave pirates under the protection of the flag of the United States. To extirpate from the seas that inhuman traffic, and to vindicate the sullied honor of the nation, the Administration early entered into treaty stipulations with the British Government for the mutual right of search within certain limits; and the 37th Congress hastened to enact the appropriate legislation to carry the treaty into effect.

"The slaveholding class, in the pride of power, persistently refused to recognize the independence of Hayti and Liberia; thus dealing unjustly towards those nations, to the detriment of the commercial interests of the country; the 37th Congress recognized the independence of those republics by authorizing the President to establish diplomatic relations with them.

"By the provisions of law, white male citizens alone were enrolled in the militia. In the amendment to the acts for calling out the militia, the 37th Congress provided for the enrollment and drafting of citizens, without regard to color; and, by the Enrollment Act, colored persons, free or slave, are enrolled and drafted the same as white men. The 38th Congress enacted that colored soldiers shall have the same pay, clothing, and rations, and be placed in all respects upon the same footing, as white soldiers. To encourage enlistments, and to aid emancipation, the 38th Congress decreed that every slave mustered into the military service shall be free for ever; thus enabling every slave fit for military service to secure personal freedom.

"By the provisions of the fugitive-slave acts, slave-masters could hunt their absconding bondmen, require the people to aid in their recapture, and have them returned at the expense of the nation. The 38th Congress erased all fugitive-slave acts from the statutes of the Republic.

"The law of 1807 legalized the coastwise slave-trade; the 38th Congress repealed that act, and made the trade illegal.

"The courts of the United States receive such testimony as is permitted in the States where the courts are holden. Several of the States exclude the testimony of colored persons. The 38th Congress made it legal for colored persons to testify in all the courts of the United States.

"Different views are entertained by public men relative to the reconstruction of the governments of the seceded States, and the validity of the President's proclamation of emancipation. The 38th Congress passed a bill providing for the reconstruction of the governments of the rebel States, and for the emancipation of the slaves in those States; but it did not receive the approval of the President.

"Colored persons were not permitted to carry the United States mails; the 38th Congress repealed the prohibitory legislation, and made it lawful for persons of color to carry the mails.

"Wives and children of colored persons in the military and naval service of the United States were often held as slaves; and, while husbands and fathers were absent fighting the battles of the country, these wives and children were sometimes removed and sold, and often treated with cruelty; the 38th Congress made free the wives and children of all persons engaged in the military or naval service of the country.

"The disorganization of the slave system, and the exigencies of civil war, have thrown thousands of freedmen upon the charity of the nation; to relieve their immediate needs, and to aid them through the transition period, the 38th Congress established a Bureau of Freedmen.

"The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, its abolition in the District of Columbia, the freedom of colored soldiers, their wives and children, emancipation in Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri, and by the re-organized State authorities of Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, and the President's Emancipation Proclamation, disorganized the slave system, and practically left few persons in bondage; but slavery still continued in Delaware and Kentucky, and the slave codes remain, unrepealed in the rebel States. To annihilate the slave system, its codes and usages; to make slavery impossible, and freedom universal, – the 38th Congress submitted to the people an anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The adoption of that crowning measure assures freedom to all.

"Such are the "Anti-slavery Measures" of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses during the past four crowded years. Seldom in the history of nations is it given to any body of legislators or law-givers to enact or institute a series of measures so vast in their scope, so comprehensive in their character, so patriotic, just, and humane.

"But, while the 37th and 38th Congresses were enacting this anti-slavery legislation, other agencies were working to the consummation of the same end, – the complete and final abolition of slavery. The President proclaims three and a half millions of bondmen in the rebel States henceforward and for ever free. Maryland, Virginia, and Missouri adopt immediate and unconditional emancipation. The partially re-organized rebel States of Virginia and Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, accept and adopt the unrestricted abolition of slavery. Illinois and other States hasten to blot from their statute-books their dishonoring black codes. The Attorney-General officially pronounces the negro a citizen of the United States. The negro, who had no status in the Supreme Court, is admitted by the Chief Justice to practice as an attorney before that august tribunal. Christian men and women follow the loyal armies with the agencies of mental and moral instruction to fit and prepare the enfranchised freedmen for the duties of the higher condition of life now opening before them."

We cannot quit this subject without remarking on the striking character of the debates Mr. Wilson's book records on these subjects. The great majority of Congress utters aloud and with one consent, just, manly, noble, humane, large-hearted sentiments and resolves, while a poor wailing minority is picking up and retailing the old worn out jokes and sneers and incivilities and obscenities of the dying dragon of slavery.

As a specimen of the utter naiveté and ignorance of comity and good manners induced by slavery, in contrast with the courtesy and refinement of true republicanism, we give this fragment of a debate on the recognition of Hayti and Liberia.

Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, after plaintively stating that he is weary, sick, disgusted, despondent with the introduction of slaves and slavery into this chamber, proceeds to state his terror lest should these measures take effect, these black representatives would have to be received on terms of equality with those of other nations. Mr. Davis goes on to say: "A big negro fellow, dressed out in his silver and gold lace, presented himself in the court of Louis Napoleon, I admit, and was received. Now, sir, I want no such exhibition as that in our country. The American minister, Mr. Mason, was present on that occasion; and he was sleeved by some Englishman – I have forgotten his name – who was present, who pointed out to him the ambassador of Soulouque, and said, 'What do you think of him?' Mr. Mason turned round and said, 'I think, clothes and all, he is worth a thousand dollars.'"

Mr. Davis evidently considered this witticism of Mr. Mason's as both a specimen of high bred taste and a settling argument.

In reply, Mr. Sumner drily says: "The Senator alludes to some possible difficulties, I hardly know how to characterize them, which may occur here in social life, should the Congress of these United States undertake at this late day, simply in harmony with the law of nations, and following the policy of civilized communities, to pass the bill under discussion. I shall not follow the senator on those sensitive topics. I content myself with a single remark. I have more than once had the opportunity of meeting citizens of these republics; and I say nothing more than truth when I add, that I have found them so refined, and so full of self-respect, that I am led to believe no one of them charged with a mission from his government, will seek any society where he will not be entirely welcome. Sir, the senator from Kentucky may banish all anxiety on that account. No representative from Hayti or Liberia will trouble him."

Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky said: "I will only say, sir, that I have an innate sort of confidence and pride that the race to which we belong is a superior race among the races of the earth, and I want to see that pride maintained. The Romans thought that no people on the face of the earth were equal to the citizens of Rome, and it made them the greatest people in the world. * * * The spectacle of such a diplomatic dignitary in our country, would, I apprehend, be offensive to the people for many reasons, and wound their habitual sense of superiority to the African race."

Mr. Thomas of Maine, on the other hand, presents the true basis of Christian chivalry: "I have no desire to enter into the question of the relative capacity of races; but if the inferiority of the African race were established, the inference as to our duty would be very plain. If this colony has been built up by an inferior race of men, they have upon us a yet stronger claim for our countenance, recognition, and, if need be, protection. The instincts of the human mind and heart concur with the policy of men and governments to help and protect the weak. I understand that to a child or to a woman I am to show a degree of forbearance, kindness, and of gentleness even, which I am not necessarily to extend to my equal."

In like manner contrast a passage of sentiment between two senators on the education bill.

Mr. Carlile of Virginia, "did not see any good reason why the Congress of the United States should itself enter upon a scheme for educating negroes." He understood "the reason assigned for the government of a State undertaking the education of the citizens of the State is that the citizens in this country are the governors;" but he presumed "we have not yet reached the point when it is proposed to elevate to the condition of voters the negroes of the land."

Mr. Grimes in reply said, "It may be true, that, in that section of the country where the senator is most acquainted, the whole idea of education proceeds from the fact, that the person who is to be educated is merely to be educated because he is to exercise the elective franchise; but I thank God that I was raised in a section of the country where there are nobler and loftier sentiments entertained in regard to education. We entertain the opinion that all human beings are accountable beings. We believe that every man should be taught so that he may be able to read the law by which he is to be governed, and under which he may be punished. We believe that every accountable being should be able to read the word of God, by which he should guide his steps in this life, and shall be judged in the life to come. We believe that education is necessary in order to elevate the human race. We believe that it is necessary in order to keep our jails and our penitentiaries and our alms-houses free from inmates. In my section of the country, we do not educate any race upon any such low and grovelling ideas as those that seem to be entertained by the senator from Virginia."

But the warmest battle was on the question of the right of colored persons to ride in the cars. The chivalry maintained their side by such kind of language as this: "Has any gentleman who was born a gentleman, or any man who has the instincts of a gentleman, felt himself degraded by the fact that he was not honored by a seat beside some free negro? Has any lady in the United States felt herself aggrieved that she was not honored with the company of Miss Dinah or Miss Chloe, on board these cars?"

Again, in the course of the debate, another senator says of Mr. Sumner, "He may ride with negroes, if he thinks proper, so may I; but if I see proper not to do so, I shall follow my natural instincts, as he follows his."

"I shall vote for this amendment," says Henry Wilson; "and my own observation convinces me that justice, not to say decency, requires that I should do so. Some weeks ago, I rode to the capitol in one of these cars. On the front part of the car, standing with the driver, were, I think, five colored clergymen of the Methodist Episcopal church, dressed like gentlemen, and behaving like gentlemen. These clergymen were riding with the driver on the front platform, and inside the car were two drunken loafers, conducting and behaving themselves so badly that the conductor threatened to turn them out."

"The senator from Illinois tells us," said Mr. Wilson, "that the colored people have a legal right to ride in these cars now. We know it; nobody doubts it; but this company into which we breathed the breath of life, outrages the rights of twenty-five thousand colored people in this District, in our presence, in defiance of our opinions. * * * I tell the senator from Illinois that I care far more for the rights of the humblest black child that treads the soil of the District of Columbia than I do for the prejudices of this corporation, and its friends and patrons. The rights of the humblest colored man in the capital of this Christian nation are dearer to me than the commendations or the thanks of all persons in the city of Washington who sanction this violation of the rights of a race. I give this vote, not to offend this corporation, not to offend anybody in the District of Columbia, but to protect the rights of the poor and the lowly, trodden under the heel of power. I trust we shall protect rights, if we do it over prejudices and over interests, until every man in this country is fully protected in all the rights that belong to beings made in the image of God. Let the free man of this race be permitted to run the career of life; to make of himself all that God intended he should make, when he breathed into him the breath of life."

So there they had it, at the mouth of an educated northern working-man, who knew what man as man was worth, and the retiring senators, giving up the battle, wailed forth as follows:

"Poor, helpless, despised, inferior race of white men, you have very little interest in this government, you are not worth consideration in the legislation of this country; but let your superior Sambo's interest come in question, and you will find the most tender interest on his behalf. What a pity there is not somebody to lamp-black white men, so that their rights could be secured."

Mr. Powell thought that the Senator from Massachusetts, the next time one of his Ethiopian friends comes to complain to him on the subject, should bring an action for him in court, and adds, with the usual good taste of his party: * * "The Senator has indicated to his fanatical brethren those people who meet in free love societies, the old ladies and the sensation preachers, and those who live on fanaticism, that he has offered it, and I see no reason why we should take up the time of the Senate in squabbling over the Senator's amendments, introducing the negro into every wood-pile that comes along."

Mr. Saulsbury closes a discussion on negro testimony with the following pious ejaculation: "He did not wish to say any more about the nigger aspect of the case. It is here every day; and I suppose it will be here every day for years to come, till the Democratic party comes in power and wipes all legislation of this character out of the statute-book, which I trust in God they will do."

All this sort of talk, shaken in the face of the joyous band of brothers who were going on their way rejoicing, reminds us forcibly of John Bunyan's description of the poor old toothless giant, who in his palmy days used to lunch upon pilgrims, tearing their flesh and cracking their bones in the most comfortable way possible, but who now having sustained many a severe brush, was so crippled with rheumatism that he could only sit in the mouth of his cave, mumbling, "You will never mend till more of you are burned."

Thank God for the day we live in, and for such men as Henry Wilson and his compeers of the 37th and 38th Congresses. They have at last put our American Union in that condition which old Solon gave as his ideal of true Democracy, namely:

A state where an injury to the meanest member is felt as an injury to the whole.

CHAPTER VII

HORACE GREELEY

The Scotch-Irish Race in the United States – Mr. Greeley a Partly Reversed Specimen of it – His Birth and Boyhood – Learns to Read Books Upside Down – His Apprenticeship on a Newspaper – The Town Encyclopaedia – His Industry at his Trade – His First Experience of a Fugitive Slave Chase – His First Appearance in New York. The Work on the Polyglot Testament – Mr. Greeley as "the Ghost" – The First Cheap Daily Paper – The Firm of Greeley & Story – The New Yorker, the Jeffersonian and the Log Cabin – Mr. Greeley as Editor of the New Yorker – Beginning of The Tribune – Mr. Greeley's Theory of a Political Newspaper – His Love for The Tribune – The First Week of that Paper – The Attack of the Sun and its Result – Mr. McElrath's Partnership – Mr. Greeley's Fourierism – "The Bloody Sixth" – The Cooper Libel Suits – Mr. Greeley in Congress – He goes to Europe – His course in the Rebellion – His Ambition and Qualifications for Office – The Key-Note of his Character.

No race has stronger characteristics, bodily or mental, than that powerful, obstinate, fiery, pious, humorous, honest, industrious, hard-headed, intelligent, thoughtful and reasoning people, the Scotch-Irish. The vigorous qualities of the Scotch-Irish have left broad and deep traces upon the history of the United States. As if with some hereditary instinct, they settled along the great Allegheny ridge, principally from Pennsylvania to Georgia, in the fertile valleys and broader expanses of level land on either side, especially to the westward. In the healthy and genial air of these regions, renowned for the handsomest breed of men and women in the world, the Scotch-Irish acted out with thorough freedom, all the vigorous and often violent impulses of their nature. They were pioneers, Indian-fighters, politicians, theologians; and they were as polemic in everything else as in theology. Jackson and Calhoun were of this blood. An observant traveller in Tennessee described to the writer the interest with which he found in that state literally hundreds of forms and faces with traits so like the lean erect figure, high narrow head, stiff black hair, and stern features of the fighting old President, that they might have been his brothers. Many of our eminent Presbyterian theologians like the late Dr. Wilson, of Cincinnati, have been Scotch-Irish too, and with their spiritual weapons they have waged many a controversy as unyielding, as stern and as unsparing as the battle in which Jackson beat down Calhoun by showing him a halter, or as that brutal knife fight in which he and Thomas H. Benton nearly cut each other's lives out.

Horace Greeley is of this Scotch-Irish race, and after a rule which physiologists well know to be not very uncommon, he presents a direct reverse of many of its traits, more especially its physical ones. Instead of a lean, erect person, dry hard muscles, a high narrow head, coarse stiff black hair, and a stern look, he tends to be fat, is shambling and bowed over in carrying himself, thinskinned and smooth and fair as a baby, with a wide, long, yet rounded head, silky-fine almost white hair, and a habitually meek sort of smile, which however must not be trusted to as an index of the mind within. Meek as he looks, no man living is readier with a strong sharp answer. Non-resistant as he is physically, there is not a more uncompromising an opponent and intense combatant in these United States. Mentally, he shows a predominance of Scotch-Irish blood modified by certain traits which reveal themselves in his readiness to receive new theories of life.

Mr. Greeley was born Feb. 3d, 1811, at his father's farm, in Amherst, New Hampshire. The town was part of a district first settled by a small company of sixteen families of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry. These were part of a considerable emigration in 1718 from that city, whose members at first endeavored to settle in Massachusetts; but they were so ill received by the Massachusetts settlers that they found it necessary to scatter away into distant parts of the country before they could find rest for the soles of their feet.

The ancestors of Mr. Greeley were farmers, those of the name of Greeley being often also blacksmiths. The boy was fully occupied with hard farm work, and he attended the American farmers' college, the District School. He had an intense natural love for acquiring knowledge, and learned to read of himself. He could read any child's book when he was three, and any ordinary book at four; and having, as his biographer, Mr. Parton, suggests, still an overplus of mental activity, he learned to read as readily with the book sideways or upside down, as right side up.

Mr. Greeley, like a number of men who have grown up to become capable of a vast quantity of hard work and usefulness, was extremely feeble at birth, and was even thought scarcely likely to live when he first entered the world. During his first year he was feeble and sickly. His mother, who had lost her two children born next before him, seemed to be doubly fond of her weak little one, both for the sake of those that were gone, and of his very weakness, and she kept him by her side much more closely than if he had been strong and well; and day after day, she sung and repeated to him an endless store of songs and ballads, stories and traditions. This vivid oral literature doubtless had great influence in stimulating the child's natural aptitude for mental activity.

Mr. Greeley's father was not a much better financier than his son. In 1820, in spite of all the honest hard-work that he could do, he became bankrupt, and in 1821 moved to a new residence in Vermont.

Mr. Greeley seems to have had such an inborn instinct after newspapers and newspaper work, as Mozart had for music and musical composition. He himself says on this point, in his own "Recollections" in The New York Ledger, "Having loved and devoured newspapers – indeed every form of periodical – from childhood, I early resolved to be a printer if I could." When only eleven years old he applied to be received as an apprentice in a newspaper office at Whitehall, Vt., and was greatly cast down by being refused for his youth. Four years afterwards, in the spring of 1826, he obtained employment in the office of the Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vt., and thus began his professional career.

As a young man, Mr. Greeley was not only poorly but most extremely carelessly dressed; absent minded yet observant; awkward and indeed clownish in his manners; extremely fond of the game of checkers, at which he seldom found an equal; and of fishing and bee-hunting. Fonder still he was of reading and acquiring general knowledge, for which a public library in the town offered valuable advantages; and he very soon became, as a biographer says, a "town encyclopedia," appealed to as a court of last resort, by every one who was at a loss for information. In the local debating society of the place he was assiduous and prominent, and was noticeable both for the remarkable body of detailed facts which he could bring to bear upon the questions discussed, and for his thorough devotion to his argument. Whatever his opinion was, he stuck to it against either reasoning or authority.

In his calling as a printer, he was most laborious, and quickly became the most valuable hand in the office. He also began here his experience as a writer – if that may be called written which was never set down with a pen. For he used to compose condensations of news paragraphs, and even original paragraphs of his own, framing his sentences in his mind as he stood at the case, and setting them up in type entirely without the intermediate process of setting them down in manuscript. This practice was exactly the way to cultivate economy, clearness, and directness of style; as it was necessary to know accurately what was to be said, or else the letters in the composing stick would have to be distributed and set up again; and it was natural to use the fewest and plainest possible words.