Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 3

WORCESTER, Ma.s.s., October 26, 1898.

_My Dear Sir:_

I am sure you will not doubt that I feel myself highly honored by your invitation in behalf of the New England Society of Charleston, as I am deeply touched and gratified by what you say in the letter which conveys it. I thank G.o.d that I have lived to behold this day, and that my eyes have been spared to see the people of the whole country united again in affection as in the early time.

I hope and expect to be able to attend your banquet next Forefathers' Day. I will do so if the condition of the public business shall permit. I have the charge of the business of the Committee on the Judiciary, two of whose important members are now absent in Paris, and it is of course possible that some of the great questions which are before us may require constant attendance in their places of all the Senators during the next session without the possibility of interruption for a Christmas holiday. Subject to that possibility, I will accept your invitation, and am, with high regard,

Faithfully yours, GEO. F. h.o.a.r.

In 1850, after he had withdrawn from professional and public life, being then seventy-two years old, Mr. h.o.a.r was sent to the House of Representatives, by the town of Concord, to oppose the removal of the courts from Concord. He was successful in the opposition. He had, during the winter, an opportunity to render a very important service to Harvard College. There was a vigorous and dangerous attempt to abolish the existing Corporation, and transfer the property and control of the College to a board of fifteen persons, to be chosen by the Legislature by joint ballot, one third to go out of office every second year. This measure was recommended in an elaborate report by Mr. Boutwell, an influential member of the House, chosen Governor at the next election, and advocated by Henry Wilson, afterward Senator and Vice-President, and by other gentlemen of great influence. All the members of the Corporation were Whigs in politics and Unitarians, a sect containing a very small proportion of the people of the State. The project to take the College from their control was very popular. The House listened willingly to the able arguments with which the measure was introduced, and before Mr. h.o.a.r spoke its opinion was unmistakable for the bill. He argued that the measure was in conflict with the Const.i.tution of the United States, and defended the College with great earnestness from the charge that it had "failed to answer the just expectations of the public." The Boston _Daily Atlas,_ edited by General Schouler, then a member of the House, said the next day of this speech: "The argument of Mr. h.o.a.r was of transcendent excellence, and had a most overpowering effect upon the House.

We regret that no report was made of it. It is a pity that so much learning, argument and eloquence should be lost."

This speech caused a revolution in the opinion of the body.

The measure was referred to the next General Court. Mr. h.o.a.r was employed by the Corporation as counsel to appear before the Legislature the next winter in its behalf. But the measure was never heard of afterward. Dr. Walker said of this occurrence, after his sententious fas.h.i.+on: "Other men have served the College; Samuel h.o.a.r saved it."

The Board of Overseers, who have visitorial powers over the College, and whose concurrence is necessary to the election or appointment of officers, Professors and members of the Corporation, and who included for a long time the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and members of the Senate, had always been held to be the representative of the Commonwealth, although the members of the body who were not members _ex-officio_ were elected by the Board itself.

A bill pa.s.sed in 1851, to which no objection was made, vested the election of this body in the Legislature. But after a few years' trial, that was abandoned, and the members of the Overseers are now chosen by the Alumni of the College.

I shall speak in a later chapter of the foundation of the Free Soil Party. The call for the Convention held at Worcester on the 28th of June, 1848, addressed to all persons opposed to the election of Ca.s.s and Taylor, written by his son, E.

R. h.o.a.r, was headed by Mr. h.o.a.r. He presided over the meeting, and delegates were elected to a National Convention to be held at Buffalo, which nominated Van Buren and Adams for President and Vice-President. This was the origin of the Republican party.

After 1848, Mr. h.o.a.r did not relax his efforts to bring about a union of all parties in the North, in opposition to further encroachments of the slave power. In accomplis.h.i.+ng this end, his age, the regard in which he was held by all cla.s.ses of people, his known disinterestedness and independence, fitted him to exert a large influence. The Free Soil movement had led to the formation of a party in Ma.s.sachusetts, small in numbers, but zealous, active, in earnest, containing many able leaders, eloquent orators, and vigorous writers. They had sent Charles Allen to the lower House of Congress, and Sumner and Rantoul to the Senate. But they had apparently made little impression on the national strength of either of the old parties.

In 1854, the pa.s.sage of the measure known as the Kansas- Nebraska Bill afforded a new opportunity. A meeting of citizens of Concord appointed a committee, of which Mr. h.o.a.r was Chairman, and A. G. Fay, Secretary, who called a meeting of prominent persons from different parts of the State to meet at the American House in Boston, to take measures for forming a new party and calling a State Convention. This Convention was held at Worcester on the 7th of September, and formed a party under the name of Republican, and nominated candidates for State offices. Its meeting has been claimed to be the foundation of the Republican party of Ma.s.sachusetts, and its twenty- fifth anniversary was celebrated accordingly in 1879. But it effected little more than to change the name of the Free Soil party. Few Whigs or Democrats united to the movement.

A secret organization called Americans, or Know-Nothings, swept the Commonwealth like a wave, electing all the State officers, and, with scarcely an exception, the entire Legislature.

The candidate for Governor nominated by the Republicans at Worcester, himself joined the Know-Nothings, and labored to defeat his own election.

The next year the attempt was more successful. On the 10th of August, 1855, a meeting without distinction of party was held at Chapman Hall, in Boston, which was addressed by Mr.

h.o.a.r, George Bliss, Franklin Dexter, William Brigham, Lyman Beecher, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Charles F. Adams, Henry Wilson, Stephen C. Phillips, and others. On the 30th of the same month, a meeting of conference committees was held, representing the American or Know-Nothing party, the Know-Somethings, an antislavery organization which had held a National Convention at Cleveland in June, and the Chapman Hall Convention. This conference appointed a committee of twenty-six to call a State Convention, at the head of which they placed Mr. h.o.a.r. This State Convention was held at Worcester, nominated Julius Rockwell for Governor, and the organization which it created has const.i.tuted the Republican party of Ma.s.sachusetts to the present day.

The part taken in calling this Convention, and in promoting the union which gave it birth, was Mr. h.o.a.r's last important public service. His failing health prevented his taking an active share in the Presidential campaign of 1856.

I prefer, in putting on record this brief estimate of a character which has been to me the princ.i.p.al object of reverence and honor in my life, to use the language of others, and not my own. From many tributes to my father's character, from persons more impartial than I can be, I have selected two or three.

I cannot quote at length Ralph Waldo Emerson's sketches of Mr. h.o.a.r, who was his near neighbor and intimate personal friend for many years. They are n.o.ble and faithful as portraits of Van d.y.k.e or t.i.tian. One of them is a speech made in Concord town-meeting on the third day of November, 1856, the day after Mr. h.o.a.r's death. The other was contributed to the _Unitarian Monthly Religious Magazine,_ then edited by Rev. Dr. Huntington, afterward Bishop of New York. Mr. Emerson says in one of them: "His head, with singular grace in its lines, had a resemblance to the bust of Dante. He retained to the last the erectness of his tall but slender form, and not less the full strength of his mind. Such was, in old age, the beauty of his person and carriage, as if his mind radiated, and made the same impression of probity on all beholders."

He ends with this quatrain:

With beams December planets dart, His cold eye truth and conduct scanned; July was in his sunny heart, October in his liberal hand.

The following is from a letter of Sherman Day, a man whose reputation for wisdom and integrity is among the treasures of California:

"BERKELEY, 23d May, 1884.

HON. GEO. FRISBIE h.o.a.r, U. S. Senate, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

_My Dear Sir:_

"I was very much gratified to receive, some weeks since, a copy of your biographical sketch of your venerable father.

It was the more precious to me because it awakened memories of my own early life; while it recalls the tall, the gentle and dignified figure and courteous demeanor of your father in his prime of life. I can remember being at your father's wedding at my grandmother's house when I was about 6-1/2 years old. Several years before you were born, I was at the Phillips Academy at Andover, and used occasionally to spend a vacation with my beloved aunt, who was a sort of mother to me in my earliest childhood. It was at her home that I first read Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's Sketch Book, then just appearing in separate numbers. I believe the book belonged to a law student of your father's, as your father had not yet taken to the reading of romances.

"My memory extends back to the organization of the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1820. I well remember the venerable figure of John Adams, as he took the seat of honor at the right hand of the president, and I remember the sonorous voice of Josiah Quincy, the Secretary. I was staying at the house of Mr.

Evarts, and remember your father's dining there, and discussing the deportment and characteristics of several of the more prominent members. Among them was the tall member from Worcester, Levi Lincoln, conspicuous by his drab overcoat, by his frequent speaking, and by his constantly moving about among the members.

The member who made the most lasting impression on my memory was Daniel Webster. He was not yet forty years old, stalwart, black haired and black eyed, with a somewhat swarthy complexion; his manly beauty and his eloquence being alike objects of admiration. He had not attained that stoutness which his form a.s.sumed in later years. I could ill.u.s.trate his appearance better to your brother, Edward, by asking him to recall Don Pablo de la Guerra of Santa Barbara, whom I deemed a very good type, _in appearance,_ of Webster in the Convention of 1820."

George William Curtis came to know Mr. h.o.a.r very well during his own life in Concord. He and his brother, Burrill, were almost daily visitors at our house:

WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, N. Y., March 19, 1884.

_My dear Mr. h.o.a.r:_

I thank you very much for a copy of your sketch of your father which vividly recalls him to me as I remember him in my Concord days long ago. I recollect that when I saw in Paris Couture's famous picture of the Decadence of the Romans, it was your father that I thought of as I saw the figures of the older Romans gazing reproachfully upon the revels. So he may have felt of his country as he died.

With great regard, very truly yours, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

The following is from J. Evarts Greene, formerly editor of the Worcester _Spy,_ and one of the ablest members of his profession in New England:

WORCESTER, Mar. 10, 1884.

_My dear Mr. h.o.a.r:_

I want to thank you especially for the copy of the Memoir of your father, which I received to-day. I am exceedingly glad to have it on your account and his. He is the most venerable figure in my memory. He was always spoken of in our family with the highest respect, and few things have ever gratified me so much as his kindness to me on the occasion of my last visit to Concord during his lifetime. It was in 1850, I think, while I was in college and about fifteen years old. I had always held him in awe as the greatest and wisest man within my knowledge, and should have no more have thought of familiar conversation with him than with the Pope. But his grave and kindly courtesy, as he sat down with me after supper, though it did not quite put me at my ease, gave me courage to talk more freely than I had ever thought possible; and while my veneration for him was not diminished, I felt that there was no one now on earth that I need be afraid of.

Faithfully yours, J. EVARTS GREENE.

The Hon. Geo. F. h.o.a.r.

The following letter is from Professor Thatcher, the eminent Latin Professor of Yale:

NEW HAVEN, 14th March, 1884.

HONORABLE GEORGE F. h.o.a.r.

_My dear Senator:_

I write simply but cordially to thank you for the copy of your venerated Father's Memoir which you have been so kind as to send to your cousin, Elizabeth. I have read it with the delight which must be common to all who read it. A life so qualified with the selectest traits of a great and gentle soul, so substantial with continual but full and unembarra.s.sed labor, and so constantly influential for elevated and beneficent ends, with nothing discoverable in it to check its great drift and power,--such a life is an almost unequalled gift of G.o.d to such a community as his. There is a rare charm in the narrative, and one cannot help rejoicing that you have been able to gather together the recorded judgments of so many men whose judgments are worthy to be recorded,

I am, ever, Very truly yours, THOMAS A. THATCHER.

SENATE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, March 9, 1884.

_My dear Mr. h.o.a.r:_

I thank you very much for a copy of the Memoir of your father.

It is a tribute to his worth and fame worthy of him and of yourself. I hardly know which most to admire, the character it portrays, or the filial piety it evinces.

It brings back very vividly the venerable form and the lovely character I met and revered in the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature when I was a young man, and have ever since held among the safest and best of the land. Permit me to count it my own best fortune that I can subscribe myself the colleague and friend of the son and biographer of Samuel h.o.a.r.

Truly yours, H. L. DAWES.