USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 65
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From the beginning of the anti-slavery movement, Mr. Walker had joined actively in that effort, speaking and writing freely; he never, however, acceded to opinions adverse to the union of the States. 1Ie insisted upon constitutional methods within the Union and subject to the laws. In 1839 he became president of the Boston Temperance Society, the first association of its kind in the city. Mr. Walker's pub- lished writings on total abstinence began in 1826.
In 1840, owing to increasing bodily infirmities, Mr. Walker retired permanently from business. The scale of his mercantile transactions had been extensive, and he had done more to open the trade of Boston with the South and Southwest than any other merchant of the same generation ; but the large profits of his business had been impaired by the almost total wreck of trade and industry in 1832 and 1839, so that he retired with only a moderate competence, sufficient, however, for all his needs. Not even ill health could diminish his interest in public affairs; and he took an active part in the Harrison campaign, strenu- ously advocating the establishment of the Sub-Treasury system. For this he was subjected to much obloquy; but the results of forty years' financial experience have completely demonstrated his sagacity.
The winter of 1810 to 1811 Mr. Walker spent in Florida on account of his health. In 1842 he went to Oberlin, O., on account of his great interest in the organization of a college in that town, to which he had
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contributed of his means, and remained there ten months, giving lee- tures in political economy, a subject to which his mind had been in- creasingly drawn by the financial experiences of 1831 and 1839. In May, 1843, he finally took up his residence at North Brookfield, on his father's estate; but went almost immediately to England as delegate to the First International Peace Congress, of which he became one of the vice-presidents. In 1844 he resided mainly in North Brookfield; but delivered a course of lectures at Oberlin College and attended peace conventions in various parts of the country.
In 1848 his anti-slavery convictions led to his taking an active part in the formation of the Free Soil Party. He was a member of the con- vention which placed Van Buren in nomination for the presidency. In the fall of that year he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Rep- resentatives. He took his seat January, 1849, and became the Free Soil and Democratic candidate for speaker. In the summer of this year he attended the International Peace Congress of Paris, becoming one of its vice-presidents. In the fall of the same year he was elected to the State Senate. Taking his seat in January, 1850, he brought for- ward his plan for a sealed ballot law, which was enacted the following year.
In 1851 and 1852 he was elected secretary of state by the united Free Soil and Democratic vote. In the latter year he received the degree of Master of Arts from Middlebury College. In 1853 he was elected a member of the convention for revising the Constitution of Massachusetts, and became chairman of the committee on suffrage. From 1853 to 1859 he was one of the examiners in political economy at Harvard University. In 1854 he took a part in the organization of the North Brookfield Savings Bank, and became its first president. Ile was this year appointed lecturer on political economy in Amherst College.
This year, 1852, was one of great import to the life of Mr. Walker. Early in that year he began the publication, in Hunt's Merchants' Magasine, of a series of articles on political economy. The series had already progressed so far as to give Mr. Walker's views on money, when the financial panie commenced. Almost by chance Mr. Walker attended, early in October, a large meeting of the merchants of Bos- ton, intended to fortify the banks of that city in their determination to maintain specie payments. At this meeting Mr. Walker took the ground that the banks could not possibly maintain specie payments for
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more than two weeks, and that it was desirable they should at once sus- pend, instead of causing the failure of the best merchants of the city, as they must inevitably do by refusing discounts in a vain attempt to save their own so-called honor. This speech created a great sensation at the time, and gave rise to a heated discussion in the public press ; but the suspension, within twelve days, of every bank in Boston, after causing the failure of great numbers of the best mercantile houses, some of them worth millions of dollars, gave so striking a comfirmation to Mr. Walker's views as to bring him into great prominence as an authority on finance. This episode may be considered the turning point in his intellectual career. From this time till the day of his death, the subject of the currency absorbed all the time he had to devote to public affairs. His attention had been especially called to the defects of the American system of paper money by the financial convulsions of 1833-9; and his exile in Florida during the winter of 1840-1, whither he carried the works of Adam Smith and Ricado, gave him opportunity for reflection, of which the results appeared in a pamphlet on the Nature of Money, published in the fall of 185 ;. Mr. Walker did not, like many American writers, condemn the issue of bank notes; but he recommended such restrictions upon issue as should place the paper money of the country on a sound basis.
In July of 1859 Mr. Walker visited Europe again; and in the fall of that year was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he took an important part in the revision of the laws relating to banking and the issue of paper money. At the presidential election of 1860 Mr. Walker was chosen a member of the Electoral College of Mas- sachusetts, casting his vote for Abraham Lincoln. The outbreak, 1859 -60, of the cattle disease, known as pleuro-pneumonia, led to an enact- ment by the Legislature of Massachusetts, at a special session, of a law for its extirpation ; and a commission was appointed for this purpose, of which Mr. Walker was made chairman. The commission performed its work so vigorously and thoroughly as to secure the complete extir- pation of this pest.
Beginning in 1859 Mr. Walker continued for several years to deliver an annual course of lectures in Amherst College. In the fall of 1862 he was elected a representative in Congress for an unexpired term. During the session of 1862-3 he made several speeches on finance. In 1866 he published his main work in economics, entitled " The Science of Wealth." This work passed, in the following years, through not less
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than eight American editions, was translated into Italian, and received commendation from the economists of America and Europe. The moral enthusiasm, confidence in the right, and hope for the future, which per- vaded the book, together with its wealth of examples drawn from Amer- ican life, gave it a peculiar interest to writers and students of political economy in Europe. In 1864 Mr. Walker received the degree of Doc- tor of Laws from Amherst College. Until his death he continued to write extensively in magazines and in the daily and weekly papers. His leisure gave frequent opportunities for travel; and he spent not a little of each year in visits to Boston, New Haven or Washington, or in trips to Florida or California.
Always cheerful and sanguine, in spite of great delicacy of health and frequent attacks of pain and sickness, the last years of his life were the happiest. He continued his physical and intellectual activity unim- paired to the very instant when, on the 29th of October, 18:5, without a word or sigh, he ceased to breathe. Had the end been foreseen it would have been most welcome, for he had in July lost his wife, his companion for more than forty years. The father, Walter Walker, had in like manner closely followed his wife to the grave.
Mr. Walker was in figure slender and erect; and was very quick and graceful in his movements, producing the effects of being much taller than he was. His features were regular and clear-cut, and his whole appearance at once engaging and commanding. His voice was of un- usual richness and power; and in public speaking he had a singular faculty of closely holding the attention of his audience, however large or however unfriendly. He made little use of rhetorical ornament ; but spoke with a fullness of knowledge, clearness of expression and earnest- ness of purpose seldom surpassed. He was fond of company; and his delight was in the communication of his ideas and sentiments, or in learning the purposes, feelings and wishings of the young. Wherever he traveled he easily and quickly made acquaintance, and immediately seized the occasion either to acquire or to impart information. In pri- vate charities, and in contributions to enterprises of public interest, he was liberal and even lavish.
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HENRY LEE.
BY HAMILION ANDREWS IIIL.L.
HENRY LFF, whose portrait we present herewith, was a representa- tive merchant and man, and he represented a notable family. In a memorial of his nephew, John Clarke Lee (one of the founders of the house of Lee, Higginson & Company), by the Rev. E. B. Willson, from which we shall quote more than once in this sketch, it is said : " The Lees of this line appear to have been, from the first American forefather known to us down to the subject of this notice, a people with a positive flavor, in whom was a strong individuality of character; not rounded and toned to a conventional and commonplace type, yet very genuine withal, and without affectation of eccentricity."
Henry Lee's great-grandfather was an upright business man in Bos- ton, a much respected citizen of the town, and an honored member and office-bearer in one of the churches of the established order, for fifty or sixty years in the eighteenth century. llis obituary, published July 21, 1666, was as follows: " Yesterday morning died Mr. Thomas Lee, in the ninety-fourth year of his age, who in the early and active part of Life carried on a considerable Trade in this Town, though he deserves to be recorded, rather for the unblemished Integrity of his Dealings, and the exact Punctuality of his Payments, than for the Extent of his Trade, or the Length of his Life."
Thomas, the eldest son of Thomas Lee, was born in Boston, was edi- cated at Harvard College, and settled in Salem, where he became a prominent merchant, and was entrusted with various important duties in the town, and served as its representative in the General Court. lle died in 1112, leaving a son Joseph, then three years old, who was de- prived by the circumstances of his family of the advantages of a liberal education, and was obliged to go to sea at the age of thirteen. This Joseph Lee in due time succeeded to the command of a vessel, and then became a merchant and shipowner. He married Elizabeth Cabot, who belonged to a family of merchants. George Cabot, who afterward made a distinguished name as a public man and a senator of the United States, served his brother-in-law through all grades from cabin-boy up- ward, and the two were partners for many years, and carried on a large and profitable trade with the West Indies, Spain and the Baltic. What the biographer of George Cabot tells us of his early experiences at sea,
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illustrates the nature of the training which made great merchants and great men in Massachusetts a hundred years ago: "Not yet seventeen years old, he shipped as eabin-boy in a vessel commanded by his brother-in-law, Mr. Joseph Lee. Such a change in his mode of life must have been a sharp one to a young collegian of studious habits; nor was his lot softened by relationship with his captain: for if family tradition may be trusted, Mr. Lee gave his young kinsman the full benefit of severe ship's diseipline."
Mr. Joseph Lee and the Messrs. Cabot moved from Salem to Beverly, which latter port was a busy one in their day; other merchants there at the same time were Moses Brown, Israel Thorndike, and John and Thomas Stephens. Mr. Lee, better known as Captain Lee, understood naval construction thoroughly ; his models were a great improvement upon anything which had hitherto been in use, and were adopted by many of the merchants and mechanics in Boston, as well as on the north shore. Commodore Downes used to say that in the War of 1812 the " Lee model " was the favorite model in the navy.
Henry Lee, sixth son and ninth child of Joseph and Elizabeth (Cabot) Lee, of whom we are now to speak particularly, was born in Beverly, February 4, 1182. He was educated at Phillips (Andover) Academy, and at Billerica, where Dr. Ebenezer Pemberton, who had been princi- pal of Phillips from 1186 to 1195, kept school for some years. Two of his brothers had been sent to Harvard College, and his father offered to send him, but there was a prejudice in those days against a college education for a youth who had a business career before him, and he decided therefore not to go. He entered the counting-room of Marston Watson, Rowe's Wharf, Boston, and, early in the present century, went into business with his brother Joseph, first having an office at No. 9 Doane street, and then in Phillips Building, Kilby and Water streets. The brothers were not successful; and, in 1811, Mr. Henry Lee went to Calcutta, by way of London, in the brig Reaper, which belonged to him or his father. Whether this was his first voyage to the East In- dies we do not know. He remained in Calcutta during the War of 1812, and came into very friendly relations with the great English houses there, which were continued after his return to the United States. He brought home with him not only a large acquaintanceship, but a fund of valuable information ; and he was regarded as an author- ity both in Caleutta and Boston on all questions affecting the trade be- tween the two ports. His Calcutta friends reposed such trust in him
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that, before the Barings furnished American merchants with letters of credit, all the younger and some of the long established houses de- pended on a letter from Mr. Lee to substantiate and define their pecuni- ary responsibility, and thus to enable them to sell their bills to the resident merchants. His store was at No. 39 India Wharf, and he was associated with Mr. Ozias Goodwin, who had served him as clerk and supercargo, and, later, with Mr. William S. Bullard, who had been brought up by him in the business. The firm was well known and highly respected in all the commercial centers in the United States and Europe, and the goods imported by it from Calcutta, Madras and Bom- bay were shipped again to the West Indies, South America and various European ports, as well as coastwise to New York, Philadelphia and the Southern cities. Mr. Lee was somewhat sanguine, however, and more than once met with temporary reverses. He was better fitted for the legal profession than for active business, and had it not been for his unconquerable shyness of manner he would have been useful and emi- nent in publie life. He was an able statistician, and an enthusiastic student of political economy, and while the conclusions to which he came in this department were not in accord with the prevailing opin- ions in the community in which he lived, he was recognized in England as a high authority by statisticians like McCulloch, economists like Tooke and Newmarch, and Anti-Corn Law Leaguers like Villiers and Thorneley.
When the question of protection began to be an issue in New Eng- land, Mr. Lee ranged himself with those who were opposed to tariff duties except for purposes of national revenue. In 1820 nearly all the leading business men of Boston were anti-protectionists, and, led by Mr. Webster, they vigorously protested against any advance upon the low rates of duty then in force. But, as the manufacturing industries in cotton and wool obtained a foothold in this part of the country, and became organized, the demand for protection on the behalf of those who had invested capital in them divided public opinion sharply, and the line was drawn between those who were concerned in these indus- tries and the merchants who represented foreign commerce. During the autumn of 1826 three conventions were held in Boston by the woolen manufacturers of Massachusetts and adjacent States. A pro- tective duty on woolen goods of thirty-three and a third per cent. had been laid two or three years previously, but the same act had advanced the protection on wool from fifteen to thirty per cent., and the woolen
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manufacturers, thus handicapped, were now calling not only for a higher rate of duty on the manufactured article, but for a change from ad valorem to specifie duties. An active campaign to this end was prosecuted through the newspapers, and by circulars scattered broad- cast, under the direction of a committee of correspondence consisting of Jonas B. Brown, James M. Robbins, Lewis Tappan, James Wolcott, jr., and Joshua Clapp As the discussions became intense, the motives of those who were opposed to further protection were criticised, and suspicion was thrown even upon their patriotism. The committee of correspondence, in a circular published in November, 1826, said: " It is not now a question between different American interests, but one between Americans and Englishmen." Matthew Carey, of Phila- delphia, described the merchants from Maine to Savannah as a solid phalanx, united "to oppose every attempt to afford relief to their fellow citizens, however acute their distress, however intense their sufferings." Of the Essex Junto, of which the Cabots and Lees were prominent members, Mr. Clay said on the floor of Congress that its predilection for foreign trade and for British fabrics was unconquer- able.
In 1827 a meeting was held in Boston of citizens "opposed to the further increase of the existing burthensome duties on imported articles, and especially the injurious consequences to the community at large of further duties on imported woolen goods." An influential committee was appointed, consisting of Nathaniel Goddard, Lemuel Shaw, Isaae Winslow, Thomas W. Ward, Henry Lee, Samuel Swett, Daniel P. Parker and others. The duty of preparing a report was assigned by the committee to Mr. Lee, and the result of his labors was a pamphlet of nearly two hundred pages octavo, in which the whole question of the tariff, both in its general bearings, and in connection with the particular measures then under consideration, is discussed in a masterly way, and which might well be made use of to-day by those who wish to study the subject from all sides. The views of Franklin, of Hamilton in his report on manufactures, and of Webster in his speeches of 1820 and later, are quoted and applied, and the action of the Harrisburg Convention of the year before is examined in detail. The report, which came to be known as the Boston Report, bears date November 30, 1822, and, in presenting it, the committee said: " Your committee are aware of the peculiarly difficult position in which this question is now placed, by the accidental if not designed connexion of
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this subject, under the specious name of the American system Jan imitation of the old Colonial system |, with certain controverted political questions, between which and that system your committee believe there is no natural or necessary relation."
While conceding the power of Congress to impose duties for revenue, the effect of which would be to encourage and promote manufactures. the report says: " It is the abuse of this power, when carried to such extremes as to prohibit imports and consequently lessen our export trade, destroy revenue, burden one part of the nation with heavy taxes for the benefit of another, which constitutes the wrong, and which, we contend, is neither in accordance with the spirit or letter of a constitu- tion which was intended to guarantee equal laws, equal rights, as well as equal burdens, to all who live under it."
We quote the closing paragraph of the report:
" In conclusion, we say, the system we are opposing is not patriotic. is not American. Disguise it under what names you will, it is still a system founded on error and injustice. It is a system in which there are principles at work that will first weaken, and finally break, those social, moral, and political ties which bind this Union together. We call then upon the farmer, the merchant, the mechanic, the navigator, the laborer, the citizen at large, upon every one who feels an interest in the welfare of his country, and, above all, upon the prudent, just and enlightened manufacturer, to join us in resisting it."
The memorial to Congress which accompanied this report was writ- ten by Lemuel Shaw. The Free Trade Advocate, edited by Condy Raguet, in Philadelphia, gave the following judgment on Mr. Lee's pamphlet: "Of all the publications which have appeared in this country, in favour of the principles of free trade, and in opposition to the narrow, selfish and anti-national policy miscalled the . American system,' there is none which stands so conspicuous as the 'report of a committee of the citizens of Boston and vicinity opposed to a further increase of duties on importations,' first published on the 30th of No- vember, 1821, prior to the passage of the last tariff law. This work occupies a volume of one hundred and eighty pages of closely printed octavo, and has passed through four editions, respectively at Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. It is aseribed to the pen of a practical merchant, one of the members of the committee, and when we say that it contains more substantial information, more sound doctrine, and more practical illustration connected with the great 87
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truths of political economy, than is to be found in the same space in any book in the English language, we express the opinion, we believe, of all those with whom we have conversed on the subject, whose judgment in such matters is entitled to any weight. The Boston Report is, in fine, in our humble estimation, the most triumphant vindication of the principles which it has been the design of this journal to inculcate, and the most masterly refutation of all the fallacies of the restrictive party, that has ever appeared in print; and we cannot too strongly recom- mend it to the perusal of all who are desirous of thoroughly under- standing the true interest of the country. For our own part, we are free to confess it, and we do it without any design to flatter the respect- able gentleman who is the subject of these remarks, that most of the limited knowledge which we possess of the practical operation of the restrictive system has been derived from the Boston Report, and that without the existence of that work as a pioneer to prepare the way, our labours as an humble coadjutor in the great cause of agricultural and commercial freedom would not have been as light as they have thus far proved to be.
"In our paper of to-day we publish from the Report in question a section upon the causes of the fall in the prices of cotton goods, which we flatter ourselves will be read with interest and profit, not only by those who have never seen it before, but even by those who are already familiar with the contents of Mr. Lee's volume."
The Congressional election in Boston in 1830 turned upon the issue between free trade and protection. Captain William Sturgis was selected to represent the former, but he withdrew at the last moment, and Mr. Lee accepted the candidacy in his place. Mr. Nathan Apple- ton was the candidate of the protectionists, and he was elected after a close contest. On taking his seat in Congress, Mr. Appleton was assigned by the speaker, Mr. Stevenson, of Virginia, to a position on the Committee on Invalid Pensions: " this appointment could be considered in no other light than a spiteful revenge upon the city of Boston for having disappointed the administration in the choice of the representative."
A Free Trade Convention was held in Philadelphia in 1831, and Mr. Lee took a leading part in its proceedings. A very forcible memorial for presentation to Congress was drafted by Albert Gallatin, who pre- sided over its deliberations ; at the request of the permanent committee Mr. Lee prepared an " Exposition of Evidence " in support of the
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memorial, and this was printed and widely circulated. It is full of statistical matter, carefully compiled and clearly presented, and it is a monument to the ability, the painstaking industry, and the public spirit of the author.
In 1834, when General Jackson was in conflict with the Bank of the United States, the government deposits having already been withdrawn, Mr. Lee, with Mr. Nathan Appleton, Mr. Patrick T. Jackson, and others, went to Washington in behalf of the citizens of Boston, to remonstrate with the administration, and to do what could be done towards a renewal of the charter of the bank. On their way they had an interview with Mr. Biddle, the president, whose policy of violently contracting the currency they disapproved and protested against. To relieve the pressure in the money market and the general distress which followed the closing of the bank, a meeting was held in Boston, January 18, 1886, at which Thomas B. Wales presided, and George William Gordon served as secretary. The meeting was called specific- ally "to consider the need of a bank with a capital sufficient to do the business which had been done by the Branch Bank of the United States," and it was resolved to ask the Legislature " to incorporate a bank with a capital of not exceeding ten millions of dollars, one-half to be subscribed and paid for by the State in four per cent. bonds." The memorial embodying this proposition was drawn up by a committee consisting of Henry Lee, Henry Rice, George Bond, Thomas B. Curtis, James McGregor, Ozias Goodwin, Horace Gray, and others, and it re- ceived the signature of Perkins and Company and seventeen hundred and thirty-six others. It said: " The increased and increasing busi- ness of the whole Commonwealth requires the aid of foreign capital, and such capital cannot be obtained without the credit of the State. Such an institution will not only relieve the wants of the community, but will give a new impulse to all the concerns of agriculture, manu- factures, commerce and the fisheries." Mr. Lee wrote " an exposition of the facts and arguments in support of the memorial," which was printed with the legislative documents of the year. Strong ground is taken in this paper against the usury laws then on the statute book of the Commonwealth; but in this particular Mr. Lee says expressly that he does not represent the opinions of all the memorialists.
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