USA > Indiana > Early Indiana trials: and sketches. Reminiscences > Part 44
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" Our country, in times past, has been encompassed with many diffi- culties, which time and perseverance have dispelled. We are now in the full pride of national vigor and strength, and as we are looking out upon our elevation, the political theorist, who sees panic and doubt in every advance of public policy, asks us to turn aside from the path which civilized nations have trod so long, and adventure upon the experiment of free-trade. Let him have his way, and instead of those systems of currency and finance which have so suc- cessfully ministered to our necessities, we shall be driven to a mere exchange of commodities, depending for the value and sale of our products upon the caprice of foreign policy. Instead of an accumu- lation of the means of trade, we shall be paving the way for an ulti- mate return to an exclusively metallic currency, which is so at war with national wealth and individual enterprise. Instead of opening as wide as the compass of the ocean, the pathways of our commerce, we should be obstructing every avenue to its success."
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DANIEL WEBSTER.
DANIEL WEBSTER.
THE name of the eminent subject of this sketch, has been so long identified with the history of his country, that it would seem almost unnecessary for me to notice him here. The son of a plain farmer in New Hampshire, he rose by the force of his native powers, to be one of the first lawyers of the United States, in comparatively a few years. He early commenced his career as a politician and statesman, and in a few years stood alone, as the great and powerful man without com- peer in New England, and take him all in all, with no superior in the United States, in all the high qualities of the civilian. Whether the position of Mr. Webster was at the bar, in the argument of important causes in the Supreme Court, in the House of Representatives, in the Senate of the United States, Secretary of State, he was always found equal to the occasion, standing self-sustained by his great native pow- ers, improved by long and deep study. ITis speeches have been pub- lished in many forms ; his orations are before the world, every school- boy has read them ; his diplomatic correspondence remains in the archives of the nation for the guidance of our statesmen. I have no space to sketch, much less to review them, although they are as familiar to me as household words. I had the pleasure of being asso- ciated with Mr. Webster from the year 1837 to 1841, in the Senate, I found him there when I took my seat. Ile left us to enter the Cab- inet of General Harrison in 1841, and his place was filled by Rufus Choate whom I have sketched elsewhere.
I had every opportunity of seeing Mr. Webster, and of hearing him, in the open Senate and in executive session, for four years, during which time he was brought into direct contact daily with a body of the greatest men on carth. It is eulogy enough for me to say that he stood head and head with the greatest of these eminent men. The great characteristic of the mind of Mr. Webster, was comprehensive- ness, and clearness ; there seemed to be no subject so comprehensive, none so abstruse, perplexed, entangled, that his vigorous mind did not at once see it, in all its bearings and ultimate consequences, and in the most plain and intelligible manner present it to his hearers, hence his power before his audience. Mr. Webster was a true orator, as dis- tinguished from a declaimer. He was plain, strong, clear. He stood erect, gestures easy and natural, the orator was swallowed up in the sub- ject, the hearers lost sight of Mr. Webster, in the interest he imparted to the matter in debate; and the wonder was, that others had not thought of the same ideas, they seemed to be so common and so obvious. He was always cool, collected, and self-balanced, and no
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excitement even in the heat of debate, could throw him off his guard, so far as to make him forget his self-respect, or the courtesy of debate due to others ; still with all his powers he was not cut out for a leader, a pioneer, like General Jackson, John C. Calhoun, and Henry Clay. ITis was rather the heavy artillery in the army of Napoleon, silencing the batteries of the enemy, as at Austerlitz and Jena. What Mr. Webster might have been had he lived further West, and had he and Henry Clay not been like two great lights, luring out together, stand- ing prominently before the same party, may easily be suggested. In , person, Mr. Webster was some five feet ten inches in hight, strongly built, remarkably large expanded chest, head very large, forehead unusually high and large, hair and eyes coal black, features fine. In private society and at his own social parties, Mr. Webster was, like all great men I have ever met, plain and social, making all in his presence quite at home. His many speeches have been so widely circulated, that I content myself with giving to the reader an abstract from his reply to Mr. Calhoun, on the important subject of nullification, that will be read with interest while our Union lasts.
" The gentleman from South Carolina," said Mr. Webster, " has admonished us to be mindful of the opinions of those who shall come after us. - We must take our chance, sir, as to the light in which pos- terity will regard us. I do not decline its judgment, nor withhold myself from its scrutiny. Feeling that I am performing my public duty with singleness of heart and to the best of my ability, I fearlessly trust myself to the country, now and hereafter, and leave both my motives and my character to its decision.
" The gentleman has terminated his speech in a tone of threat and defiance toward this bill, even should it become a law of the land, altogether unusual in the halls of Congress. But I shall not suffer myself to be excited into warmth, by his denunciation of the measure which I support. Among the feelings which at this moment fill my breast, not the least is that of regret at the position in which the gen- tleman has placed himself. Sir, he does himself no justice. The cause which he has espoused finds no basis in the Constitution, no succor from public sympathy, no cheering from a patriotic community. He has no foothold on which to stand, while he might display the powers of his acknowledged talents. Every thing beneath his feet is hollow and treacherous. He is like a strong man struggling in a morass ; every effort to cxtricate himself only sinks him deeper and deeper. And I fear the resemblance may be carried still further; I fear that no friend can safely come to his relief; that no one can
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approach near enough to hold out a helping hand, without danger of going down himself, also, into the bottomless depths of this Serbonian bog.
"The honorable gentleman has declared that on the decision of the question now in debate, may depend the cause of liberty itself. I am of the same opinion ; but then, sir, the liberty which I think is staked on the contest, is not political liberty, in any general and undefined character, but our own, well understood, and long enjoyed American liberty.
" Sir, I love liberty no less ardently than the gentleman, in whatever form she may have appeared in the progress of human history. As exhibited in the master States of antiquity, as breaking out again from amid the darkness of the middle ages, and beaming on the formation of new communities, in modern Europe, she has, always and every where, charms for me. Yet, sir, it is our own liberty, guarded by con- stitutions and secured by union ; it is that liberty which is our pater- nal inheritance, it is our established, dear bought, peculiar American liberty to which I am chiefly devoted, and the cause of which I now mean, to the utmost of my power, to maintain and defend.
"The Constitution does not provide for events which must be preced- ed by its own destruction. SECESSION, therefore, since it must bring these consequences with it, is REVOLUTIONARY. And NULLIFICATION is equally REVOLUTIONARY. What is revolution ? Why sir, that is revolution which overturns, or controls, or successfully resists the existing public authority ; that which arrests the exercise of the supreme power ; that which introduces a new paramount authority into the rule of the State. Now sir, this is the precise object of nullifica- tion. It attempts to supersede the supreme legislative authority. It arrests the arm of the executive magistrate. It interrupts the exer- cise of the accustomed judicial power. Under the name of an ordi- nance, it declares null and void, within the State, all the revenue laws of the United States. Is not this revolutionary ? Sir, so soon as this ordinance shall be carried into effect, a revolution will have commenced in South Carolina. She will have thrown off the authority to which her citizens have heretofore been subject. She will have declared her own opinions and her own will to be above the laws, and above the power of those who are entrusted with their administration. If she makes good these declarations, she is revolutionized. As to her, it is as distinctly a change of the supreme power, as the American revolution of 1776. That revolution did not subvert Government in all its forms. It did not subvert local laws and municipal administrations. It only threw off the dominion of a power, claiming to be superior, and to
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have a right, in many important respects, to exercise legislative author- ity. Thinking this authority to have been usurped or abused, the American colonies, now the United States, bade it defiance, and freed themselves from it by means of a revolution. But that revolution left them with their own municipal laws still, and the forms of local Gov- ernment. If Carolina now shall effectually resist the laws of Congress, if she shall be her own judge, take her remedy into her own hands, obey the laws of the Union when she pleases, and disobey them when she pleases, she will relieve herself from a paramount power as dis- tinctly as the American colonies did the same thing in 1776. In other words, she will achieve, as to herself, a revolution.
" But, sir, while practical nullification in South Carolina would be, as to herself, actual and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency must also be to spread revolution, and to break up the Constitution, as to all the other States. It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of the whole Union. To allow State resistance to the laws of Con- gress to be rightful and proper, to admit nullification in some States, and yet not expect to see a dismemberment of the entire Government, appears to me the wildest illusion, and the most extravagant folly. The gentleman seems not conscious of the direction or the rapidity of his own course. The current of his opinions sweeps him along, he knows not whither. To begin with nullification, with the avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half way down. In the one case as in the other, the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of the dark abyss below, were it not that that abyss has no discovered bottom.
" Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves citizens from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and elevates another authority to supreme command. Is not this revolu- tion ? And it raises to supreme command four and twenty distinct powers, each professing to be under a General Government, and yet. each setting its laws at defiance at pleasure. Is not this anarchy, as well as revolution? Sir, the Constitution of the United States was received as a whole, and for the whole country. If it can not stand altogether, it can not stand in parts ; and if the laws can not be executed every where, they can not long be executed any where. 'Such is my opinion, and my opinion shall be my law, and I will support it by my own strong hand. I denounce the law ; I declare it unconstitutional ; that is enough ; it shall not be executed. Men in
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DANIEL WEBSTER.
arms are ready to resist its execution. An attempt to enforce it shall cover the land with blood. Elsewhere, it may be binding; but here it is trampled under foot.'
" This, sir, is practical nullification.
" And now, sir, against all these theories and opinions, I maintain-
"1. That the Constitution of the United States is not a league, con- federacy, or compact, between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacities ; but a Government proper, founded on the adop- tion of the people, and creating direct relations between itself and individuals.
"2. That no State authority has power to dissolve these relations ; that nothing can dissolve them but revolution ; and that, consequently, there can be no such thing as secession without revolution.
"3. That there is a supreme law, consisting of the Constitution of the United States, acts of Congress passed in pursuance of it and treaties ; and that, in cases not capable of assuming the character of a suit in law or equity, Congress must judge of, and finally inter- pret, this supreme law, so often as it has occasion to pass acts of leg- islation ; and, in cases capable of assuming, and actually assuming, the character of a suit, the Supreme Court of the United States is the final interpreter.
"4. That an attempt by a State to abrogate, annul, or nullify an act of Congress, or to arrest its operation within her limits, on the ground that, in her opinion, such law is unconstitutional, is a direct usurpa- tion on the just powers of the General Government, and on the equal rights of other States, a plain violation of the Constitution, and a pro- ceeding essentially revolutionary in its character and tendency.
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JOSEPH GALES.
AMONG the great men of the nation, I have long placed Joseph Gales, the senior editor of the National Intelligencer. His name has stood at the head of that valuable paper, until the volumes of the tri- weekly numbered LVIII. on the sixth day of October, 1857. As an editor, Mr. Gales has few equals in the United States, and no superior. With his motto, standing at the head of his paper, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," he has at all times in his able editorials, that have been extensively read in America and Europe, made his motto his polar star. He has been what his paper imports, the "National Intelligencer." Mr. Gales as a writer and political controversialist, stands as a model. No attacks upon him, however unwarranted, ever drove him from his dignity as an editor, nor induced him, even in moments of excitement, to write a single, low or unbecoming paragraph. When attacked by Mr. Ritchey, the editor of the Union, who was a very small man, holding a remarkably severe pen, Mr. Gales commenced his reply ; “ Our venerable neigh- bor, may his shadow never grow less," and in plain, dignified language proceeded to present his side of the question to the public. Mr. Clay once asked me, what man in the United'States knew the most of our country, and its prominent men. I said John Quincy Adams. Hle said he agreed with me, but who next? and before I had time to speak, he said Joseph Gales. I fully concurred with him. Mr. Gales, it is true, was a strong National Whig, and so was I. It is not impossible, that I like the course of his paper the better on that account, still it was not my purpose in noticing him, to speak of his politics, bnt rather to pay a tribute to his devotion to the Union, and the uniform dignity of his editorials. Mr. Gales is about the common hight, well made, broad face, remarkably large head, prominent, square forehead, heavy coat of hair, standing erect, like the quills upon the porcupine. The last time I saw him, his hair was white as snow, his face wrinkled with age, his eyes covered with glasses, his limbs crippled ; and yet I found him in his little room over the office of the Intelligencer, pen in hand, preparing an editorial article. I give to the reader, one of his last, on a very important subject, to show his style, as well as his views.
PREVENTION OF CRIME.
" The alarming increase of social disorder and insubordination throughout the whole country, as manifested sometimes in banded rowdyism, and sometimes in individual outbreaks of violence, may well excite the solicitude, and fix the attention of all good citizens.
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JOSEPH GALES.
The evil has, indeed, reached such a hight, that it not only mars the harmonious working of our civil and political system; but threatens with danger the very elements of all social organization - the sacred- ness of human life and the security of private property.
" If we may judge from the records of the cotemporary press, it has come to pass in all our larger cities, that the chapter of willful crime, has become more varied and replete, than the chapter of those daily accidents, against which human precaution is unable to secure the denizens of the crowded street and thoroughfare. The private passenger is in danger of death from the miscreant that lurks in some darkened alley, while a dozen persons assembled at a club-room or marching in procession, are liable, perhaps for reasons which measura- bly inculpate themselves, to be assailed by a shower of deadly missiles or a discharge of shot from the still more deadly revolver.
" The moral causes of this cheap contempt in which human life is held among us, lie upon the surface, and are seen in the extravagant notions of personal rights and personal independence which are fost- ered, not only by the perversion of our political doctrines, but by the laxity of parental discipline, which, renouncing the duties of parent- age, plants thorns not only for the pillow of its own declining age, but scatters ' firebrands and death ' throughout the whole community. What wonder that our rabble youth, left unrestrained and subjected to the influences of depraved companionship, and of ' street cduca- tion,' should soon become chiefly remarkable for their precocity in crime ?
" And out of this extravagant theory of personal independence thus perverted by early contact with vice and violence, has grown an equally extravagant notion respecting the right of self-defense, which turns every man into an avenger, not only of the wrongs actually committed against his personal peace and safety, but renders him swift to shed blood in the very apprehension of danger or insult. As partly the cause and partly the effect of this indifference to human life, the practice of going armed with concealed and deadly weapons, has well nigh become one of our social habitudes. The only conceivable object of course, in thus carrying these instruments of death, is to kill: the violent, that they may perpetrate their misdeeds with impunity ; the peaceful, under the plea that the habit, though originally reprehensible, has become a dire necessity under the reign of license and disorder. Well may we deplore the social state in which such an apology for such a practice has only too much foundation.
" But, whatever the motive and whatever the excuse for this danger- ous custom, it is one that should not be tolerated in any community
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which has emerged from the condition of savages, and professes allegiance to law and order. All experience has proved, that Ameri- cans are too irascible and quick in the resentment of personal affronts, to be trusted with the means of exeenting such summary process for the redress of wrongs, or for personal defense against threatened and apprehended danger.
" The subject in hand is one upon which we have long reflected, and recent events in our own eity have only tended to revive its press- ing importance, and prove its immediate eoneern to the peace and welfare of this metropolitan community. The question recurs, what shall be done to stay this tide of violence and crime, which threatens to sweep away every dike of social restraint and eivil subordination ? Is it the fault of the law, or of the administration of the law that mob violence and eovert ruffianism are permitted to stain our streets with blood, and that unoffending persons are liable to be struck down in their tracks by the random shot of some street-brawler, or lurking desperado ? We are aware that such deplorable 'incidents ' are not of frequent occurrenee among us; but late events would seem to indicate that the sanctions of penal justice, for some reason, have failed to prove a terror to evil-doers among us, thus tending only the more to embolden the disturbers of the public peace by the prospect of impunity in their eareer of erime and disorder.
" We therefore suggest to the peace-loving and orderly citizens the propriety of passing more stringent laws to repress the outbreaks of rowdyism and violence in our midst; and among such additional measures for the prevention of erime, we would especially designate an enaetment, so framed as to insure its ready enforcement, against the dangerous and criminal practice of wearing concealed weapons. Such a law, we are aware, will prove unavailing, unless those who administer it are endowed with the means and facilities, as well as the will to enforce its penalties ; but we are well persuaded that, strin- gently enforced, it would prerent a vast amount of erime, and tend to save the effusion of blood among us. Desperate ills demand ener- getic remedies, and no social ill ever cried for correction so loudly and urgently, as the reekless ruffianism which now stalks through our streets and alleys from nightfall to morning. Congress has enaeted a stringent law against dueling ; but is it worse for two men to go out and settle a quarrel by open combat than for nocturnal rowdies to be allowed the means of committing wanton murder on unoffending pass- ers along the highway ? No peaceable citizen thinks of carrying arms, save for defense ; and why should not the lawless ruffian be disarmed and deprived of the power of executing the promptings of his depraved
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passions ? The very possession of fire-arms incites to their bloody use ; when the pistol is in hand it obeys the murderous impulse before reason or reflection can interpose.
" It is possible that a law under this head, so framed as to admit of practical enforcement, might be termed by the disorderly, and perhaps by the demagogical, who are ever ready to pander to popular passion, an 'invasion of American rights,' or an 'unwarrantable restriction of personal liberty.' It is a great truth in political science, that, in the main, every people has nearly just such a government as it deserves-all civil government being little other than the combined reflex of the intellectual and moral character of its subjects. As well expect the stream to rise above its source, as that a people, willing to endure the reign of license, will be left to enjoy the blessings of pub- lic peace and tranquillity. And let it not be forgotten, that they who neglect or refuse to strengthen the hand of the civil power for the repression of violence and wrong, become themselves, in a government of public opinion like ours, the sharers in the guilt and crime which disgrace our annals. They are sowing the wind, and society must perforce be left to reap the whirlwind."
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DANIEL BOONE.
THE subject of this sketch, one of the great pioneers of the Valley of the Mississippi, is so intimately connected with the days of massa- cre and blood in the great West, that I feel justified in placing before the reader, his own account of the trials, and thrilling scenes through which he passed, while periling his life in a savage country. Many of my subjects have been the early settlers of Indiana. I trust it will not be unacceptable, even to my Indiana readers, to let Daniel Boone, who saw the woods of our State, when they were the exclusive haunts of wild beasts, and the roving red man, speak for himself. I accident- ally noticed the following in the Family Magazine published in Cin- cinnati in 1836, and give it as I found it.
" It was on the first of May, 1769, that I resigned my domestic happi- ness, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin river in North Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the eountry of Kentucky, in company with John Finley, John Stuart, Joseph Holden, James Monay, and William Cool.
" On the seventh of June, after traveling a western direction, we found ourselves on Red river, where John Finley had formerly been trading with the Indians, and from the top of an eminence, saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky. For some time we had expe- rienced the most uncomfortable weather. We now encamped, made a shelter to defend us from the inclement season, and began to hunt, and reconnoitre the country. We found abundance of wild beasts in this vast forest. The buffaloes were more numerous than cattle on their settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane, or crossing the herbage on these extensive plains. We saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing. In this forest, the habitation of beasts of every American kind, we hunted with great suc- cess until December.
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