USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 14
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
He embarked in business without further delay, and built up a large and successful West-India trade, and continued to prosper until the embargo of 1807 came with its paralyzing and calamitous effects. Notwithstanding this drawback, he persisted, and would doubtless have reaped the reward which his energy and industry entitled him to, had his life been spared. He died suddenly in 1810.
Soon after his father's death, Hugh Johnston, then a lad of fourteen, came to Belfast, and entered the counting-room of his uncle Frank, who was at that time one of the leading merchants in that section of the State : after a while he was admitted as a partner, and continued in the business until 1827, when he was elected clerk of the courts for Waldo County. It was at this time that his attention was first directed toward the political questions of the day, and he manifested at once a great interest in the discussions which were then going on between the two great parties. It seemed to him that the principles of the Democratic faith were more in consonance with the true spirit of repub- lican institutions, and he embraced that faith at once : from that time forth the party held no more faithful adherent, and in fifty years of service he never for a moment faltered in his allegiance, or abated in the smallest degree his interest in its welfare.
During all this time, before his departure from Wiscasset and afterward, he gave all his leisure moments to his books.
His mother, who was a woman of high literary attainments as well as exalted piety, devoted herself to directing his mind in the pursuit of all healthful inquiry, and the taste for investigation and study which she instilled remained after his entrance into the activities of business life. He was thus, at the outset of his political career, unusually well equipped for an intelligent contemplation of those great theories of administrative science which were at that time agitating the public mind.
In 1837 he was elected to Congress, and again in 1839, by a largely increased majority. He was an active member of the Committee on Commerce, and distinguished himself by his unremitting devotion to the interests of his constituency, and to his duties generally, by his uniform good sense and judgment on all questions of political expediency,
III
OF MAINE.
and by his manly and honest utterances, when he had occasion to make them, on the floor of Congress. Without claim to any particular brilliancy as a speaker, he spoke earnestly and convincingly, was always master of his topic, and always listened to with attention. Aside from the position in his party which his own character gave him, the fact that he enjoyed the unlimited confidence and favor of President Van Buren gave him additional influence. Early in his Congressional career he had the good fortune to win the regard of that great man-a regard which deepened into the warmest friendship and esteem, and was perpetuated by frequent and familiar correspondence after the retirement of Mr. Van Buren from public life. In 1840 he was entrusted by Mr. Van Buren, who was a candi- date for renomination, with the charge of his interests in Maine, and it was principally through his exertions that he received the vote of the State in the nominating convention. During this time he was in constant correspondence with Mr. Van Buren, whose letters at this important epoch in his life afford a striking picture of the strategic methods practised in the political campaigns of those days. The defeat of his chief in that memorable contest was a keen disappointment to Mr. Anderson. All calculations of a personal nature, however, were forgotten in the common disaster to the party, and everything sub- ordinated to the immediate consideration of measures for reorganization and repair. A council of war was summoned before the smoke of the conflict had cleared away; a rigid inquiry was instituted as to the causes of the defection, and a plan of rehabilitation agreed upon. The old ship had, however, only swung at her moorings, and not drifted away ; and the following year John Fairfield, the Democratic candidate for Governor, was elected by over ten thousand majority, and the party had intrenched itself more firmly than ever in the confidence of the people. In 1841 and '42 he was urged to go into the convention as a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination, but he was unwilling to antagonize himself in any way toward Mr. Fairfield, who had been his warm friend from the commencement of his political career, and who was desirous of the honor himself. It was an act of generosity which Mr. Fairfield fully appreciated; and in the following year, when Mr. Anderson had consented to have his name used, Mr. Fairfield's friends recog- nized the debt, and went en masse for him. He was nominated without difficulty, and elected by a handsome majority. He was re-elected in 1844 and 1845, each time by an increased majority. He filled the important position with conspicuous honor and ability, and retired from it carrying the respect and approval of men of both parties.
In the year 1847 he was brought forward as a candidate for the nomination of U. S. Senator. Mr. Hamlin was his opponent-one having a majority in the Senate and the other in the House. After repeated balloting, and after it became evident that neither party could be chosen, Mr. Anderson withdrew, and Mr. Bradbury was nominated.
In the Presidential campaign of 1848 he presided over the Electoral College, and in 1850 he was appointed at the head of a commission to establish the State Reform School.
-
BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPÆDIA
II2
Upon the election of General Pierce in 1852 he was recommended by the entire Maine delegation for the position of Commissioner of Customs for the Treasury Depart- ment. He was appointed to this highly responsible place, and filled it with decided ability during the whole of Mr. Pierce's Administration.
In 1857, soon after the election of Mr. Buchanan, it was found necessary to reorganize and readjust the affairs of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco. A commission was appointed for this purpose, and Mr. Anderson was placed at the head of it. In addition to their duties relating to the Mint, they were empowered to establish certain boundary-lines in the northern section of the State, and they were also instructed to examine and report upon some large claims which were pending against the Government. Mr. Anderson remained in California about a year and a half. One of the most pleasing souvenirs of his service there was the acquaintance he formed with Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, who was associated with him in some of the duties appertaining to the commission. This acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship, which continued uninterupted until the death of the great War Minister.
After Mr. Anderson's return from California in 1859 he re-established himself in Washington, where his family had resided since 1853. In the following year the party which had claimed his fealty so long, and with whose history his whole life had been iden- tified, passed from power, and the great war was inaugurated. Whatever may have been his convictions as to the causes of the war, and however strongly he may have entertained the idea that the crisis might have been passed without the appeal to arms, he neverthe- less gave the General Government his hearty and undivided support when the alternative was once established.
His residence in Washington during the progress of the war, together with his wide acquaintance among the prominent men of both parties, gave him unusual opportunities for observing the changing aspects of this eventful period, and his letters written at this time to friends and different members of his family would, if collected, form a valuable contem- poraneous record of those momentous days.
In 1868 he was appointed Sixth Auditor of the Treasury Department by President Johnson ; and such were his admitted qualifications for the office, that the antagonism of the Senate existing at that time toward the Executive, did not prevent his immediate con- firmation. He remained in this office for three years, to the entire acceptance and satisfac- tion of all who were brought into official contact with him. Under his administration of this department several important reforms in the manner of conducting the business were established, and the efficiency of the bureau greatly increased.
This was the last of Mr. Anderson's public trusts. He had arrived at that age when the cares of office and the turmoil of political life had become wearisome to him; and he now gave himself up to the unrestrained enjoyment of the domestic companionship which
1.13
OF MAINE.
had been to him so great a source of delight and pleasure through all the vicissitudes of his career. His books, from which the demands of official duties had never fully alienated him, now resumed their sway, and in
"Search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poetry,"
he passed what were perhaps the happiest days of his life.
He moved from Washington to Portland, Maine, in the spring of 1880. In the fol- lowing spring his third son, Joseph Dummer, died from the effects of a surgical operation, and this following so closely upon the death of his youngest son, Thomas Davee, was a bereavement from which he never seemed to recover. He gradually failed from this time, and finally, surrounded by loving hands and tender hearts, passed peacefully away on the afternoon of May 31.
Mr. Anderson married in 1832 Martha Jane Dummer of Belfast, Maine. For nearly fifty years she was his dear companion and counsellor, and this memoir would be incom- plete did it not ascribe something of his success in life to her consummate good sense and judgment, to her unfailing devotion and sympathy, and to the influences of her gentle sunny, and winning nature. Mrs. Anderson survived her husband but a few months : united as they had been in life, in death they were not divided.
Of the original family of six children, four now remain : General John Francis Ander- son of Boston, William Henry and Horace of Portland ; and Hannah Ann, also residing in Portland.
In this hasty and imperfect sketch we have endeavored to present the salient points in the career of one whose life was identified with the history of his country for nearly fifty years. Endowed by nature with a strong and vigorous intellect, he had from his youth up supplemented this by habits of constant study and observation. He was an omnivorous reader through his whole life, and his mind was particularly rich in its knowledge of the better portion of English literature, and conspicuously so in its familiarity with English history, and with those great epochs of constitutional reform which Hume and Macaulay have so vividly portrayed; indeed, the tendency of his mind was rather toward historic research and parallels, and his acquisitions in this direction were something remarkable for accuracy and comprehensiveness. He was a forcible, ready, and graceful writer, and some of his contributions to the political polemics of the day are worthy of study and preserva- tion. In the unrestrained freedom of social and familiar conversation Mr. Anderson was indeed delightful. The opportunities for exercising his natural habits of observation had been great, and a memory of extraordinary tenacity had retained a faithful impression of the results. In his half-century of public life he had enjoyed the acquaintance and frequently the warm friendship of most of the prominent men of his day ; and his personal
114
BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPÆDIA
reminiscences, when called out by congenial companionship and clothed in his peculiar de- liberateness of utterance, were full of picturesque light and color. Mr. Anderson in his intercourse with men seemed to possess all those qualities which command respect while they inspire affection and esteem : he was singularly courteous and conciliatory in de- meanor, generous and forgiving in disposition, and endowed to an eminent degree with the spirit of justness, which never allowed the animosities of political conflict to warp or deflect his judgment. Of the absolute purity and integrity of his character, let the unsullied record of fifty years of public service attest.
We cannot close this memoir without adverting to the great sweetness and beauty of Mr. Anderson's domestic life. It was here that were exhibited those charming character- istics of disposition which so endeared him to his family, and have made his memory so redolent of gracious love and sweet benignity. His home was to him indeed a haven of rest, where he found his purest happiness and his truest compensations, and the tenderest associations that cling around his name will be those that perpetuate the inexpressible love- liness of his character as husband and father.
W ASHBURN, ISRAEL, JR., ex-Governor of Maine. The subject of this sketch was born in Livermore, Androscoggin (then Oxford) County, June 6, 1813, and is a descendant in the seventh generation from John Washburn, the first of the name who came to America, and who was a native of Eves- ham, Worcestershire, England, whence he emigrated in 1631. He is under- stood to have been the secretary of the first council of Plymouth, in England. He was from that part of the country where the most strenuous opposition was made to the arbi- trary acts of King Charles I., and the Puritans were most numerous and unyielding to royal authority. From this section the armies of Hampden and Cromwell were largely recruited. John Washburn, the progenitor of the New England families of that name, was of that sterling Puritan stock, and having left England a few years previous to the com- mencement of the great civil war, he was thoroughly imbued with those ideas of republican liberty as opposed to kingly prerogative that finally became the ruling principles on which not only the government of the New England colonies, but subsequently of the whole American Union, was founded.
John Washburn on his arrival in this country first settled in Duxbury, Massachusetts, as early as 1632. In 1634 he purchased the place known as the " Eagle's Nest," whence he removed to Bridgewater about 1665. Israel Washburn, the father of the subject of this. notice, was born in Raynham, Massachusetts, November 18, 1784, and came to Maine in
Metropolitan Publishing & Engraving Co. Bo stou.
Israel Washburnch,
115
OF MAINE.
1806, where he was a school-teacher for a year or two, and then was engaged in shipbuilding and merchandising at White's Landing, now Richmond, on the Kennebec River, until 1809, when he removed to Livermore, where he resided at the homestead farm of the Norlands until his death, September 1, 1876. He was engaged here in trade for many years, and took an active interest in town affairs, and was often an officer of the town government. Before the separation of Maine from Massachusetts in 1820 he represented the town for several years in the General Court. His father and grandfather, the former a soldier of the Revolution, were both prominent men in Bristol County ; both served repeatedly in the Legislature, or General Court, as it was called, the younger having been a member of the convention which adopted the first constitution of the commonwealth.
Mr. Washburn's mother was a daughter of Samuel Benjamin, a native of Watertown, Massachusetts, and a lieutenant in the Revolution, who served in the army from the battle of Lexington to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and was in both engagements. Her mother was Tabitha Livermore, a relative of Elijah Livermore, the founder of the town. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Washburn, besides the subject of this paper, were : Algernon Sidney, a merchant and banker, who recently died at Hallowell; Elihu B., a Representative in Congress for sixteen years from Illinois, Secretary of State, and Minister Plenipotentiary to France ; Cadwallader C., a Representative in Congress from Wisconsin for ten years, major-general of volunteers in the civil war, and Governor of the State of Wisconsin, who died May 14, 1882 ; Charles A., an editor in San Francisco, Minister Resident at Paraguay, and author of an elaborate and voluminous history of that country, and several other works; Samuel B., a captain of the volunteer navy in the civil war; William D., a manufacturer of flour and lumber in Minnesota, and Representative in Con- gress from that State ; three daughters; and a son who died in infancy. Israel Washburn, Jr., was not a college graduate, but under private instructors he became a fine classical scholar, and from his youth was a great student of the highest order of English literature. At the age of eighteen he commenced the study of the law, and three years later, in Oc- tober, 1834, was admitted to the bar. He commenced practice as a lawyer, in December of the same year, at Orono, Penobscot County. The lumbering interest in that part of the State was then of great importance, and Mr. Washburn very soon entered on an ex- tensive and lucrative practice. This continued till he was elected to Congress in 1850, with the exception of one term in the Legislature of the State in 1842.
.
Mr. Washburn was a member of the Whig Party, and in the year 1848 was first nomi- nated for Congress by that party ; but as for many years the district in which he lived had been almost uniformly Democratic, and represented in Congress by Democrats, he at his first canvass failed to be elected. Owing to a division in the Democratic ranks at the next election (1850) Mr. Washburn was chosen by some 1500 majority. At the elec- tion two years later, however, he was returned by a large majority over all competitors,
II6
BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA
.
and this majority continued to increase at every subsequent election till 1860, when, having been nominated for Governor of the State, he was no longer a candidate for Congress. Thus he had been chosen to and served in the Thirty-second, Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth, Thirty-fifth, and Thirty-sixth Congresses. During this period of service he was made Chairman of the Committee on Elections, and was also a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, Pacific Railroad, and of several less important committees. It was about the time (December, 1851) when Mr. Washburn first took his seat in Congress, that the question of slavery extension began to overshadow all other questions in National politics, and to threaten the destruction of old party ties. The existence of slavery, in which for a long time the people generally had acquiesced as an evil, but an evil to be let alone, now began to be felt and recognized as a wrong and a crime. The speeches and writings of the best minds in the country, of those who recognized the "higher law," and who held, like Carlyle, that a LIE could not always endure, took hold on the popular conscience ; the dragon's teeth of Cadmus were sown broadcast, and when the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery arose, the armed men sprang up in legions, ready for the issue. The debate in Congress became earnest, acrimonious, and bitter to a degree never known be- fore. The insolence and arrogance of the plantation were carried into the halls of Con- gress, and by them it was attempted to overawe the members from the Free States in the expression of the sentiments which were fast crystallizing into fixed principles throughout the entire North. Concessions to the demands of the South had so long been the rule in Congress that it seemed as if the entire government was likely to pass into the hands of the slave-holders. To many the threat that the South would secede if it could not have its way in everything, was enough to bring to its support many who at the outset should have de- fied and rebuked its treasonable utterances.
On the 24th of May, 1852, Mr. Washburn delivered an elaborate speech in the House, in which, after showing that the South had for years been becoming more and more aggres- sive in its demands for legislation in the interests of slavery, and was obtaining all it de- manded, he appealed to those from the South who threaten disunion, and to those from the North who encourage them by their timidity and hesitation, in the following words :
" Look at the prospect which disunion opens, you who threaten it whenever a vote is lost. What would you do with our common history and common biography? And the star-lighted banner-what would you do with that ? What colors would float over us in our border forays across the Potomac-in our incursions upon Kentucky ? and under what sign would her sons descend on the plains of the Buck- eyes ? The stars and stripes could be the standard sheet of no divided empire. That flag represents the whole country ; it can stand for nothing short of the whole : edged by the ocean on either side, the mid-continent its field, its stars our mighty lakes, its stripes our magnificent rivers, who will dare to cut that flag in twain or tear it into rags? Come depression, come misrule, come war, come on 'Iliad of woes,' if they must come-let us bear them as we may : we can survive and outgrow them all. We
.
I17
OF MAINE.
are still here-here, Americans, citizens of the Great Republic. But let intestine strife prevail, and sec- tional jealousies be aroused till disunion shall come, and no star of Hope shall light the prospect that will lie before us. 'The blasted leaves of autumn may be renewed by the returning spring ; the cere- ments of the grave shall burst, and earth give up her dead ;' but let this Union be once destroyed, and there is no power that can restore it, no heat that can its ' light relume.' National death is followed by no resurrection."
Mr. Washburn made many other speeches in Congress during his long service in that body, all of which evinced a thorough knowledge of the subject discussed ; and as a parliamentarian and debater he was hardly surpassed by any member on the floor. He was always in the van of the opposition to the extension of slavery, which by this time had become the almost sole and controlling question both in and out of Congress. The old parties were themselves dividing on this one issue. The irrepressible conflict was clearly at hand. The Missouri Compromise that had been passed as a concession to slavery in 1820 was now to be repealed to conciliate the same insatiate spirit. To some, among whom Mr. Washburn was one of the first to expose and denounce the scheme, it was clear that the leading men of the slave oligarchy were not to be appeased with simple extension of slavery into the Territories, but that they would not rest until property in slaves should be acknowledged and recognized in every State of the Union. The Nebraska Bill, as it was called, was the paramount question in all the Congressional debates, and by common consent the management of the opposition to it in the House fell largely to Mr. Wash- burn. The night of its final passage was one of the most important in the history of Congress. Its advocates were determined to pass it, and as they had a decided majority they were confident they could tire out the minority. Mr. Washburn and others in the opposition took all parliamentary advantages to obstruct and defeat it. But the fiat had gone forth from the councils of its supporters that it must pass that night, and near mid- night of May 22, 1854, the bill was ordered to be engrossed. When the defeat was inevitable, Mr. Washburn held a brief consultation with a number of members with whom he had acted during that long and trying conflict, and invited them to meet him the next morning at the rooms of Representatives Eliot and Dickinson of Massachusetts. Only those were invited who had all been, up to this time, most thoroughly united in opposition on this great question of slavery extension. Some had always been known as Democrats, and some had always been Whigs. But they had all opposed the Nebraska Bill, and shared the opinion that only by united action by men of all parties opposed to the demands of slavery could any successful resistance be made to it. The meeting was held as agreed upon, and then was taken the initial step in the formation of the Republican Party. Mr. Washburn explained to his colleagues what his purpose was in requesting them to meet together at that time. The Nebraska Bill had passed the night before, and another wall against slavery had been broken down.
118
BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA
Hitherto they had acted with the old parties, and their opposition to a united and solid party in the interest of slavery had been unavailing. So it would continue to be until they cast off old party names and party ties, and united under a new name and as a new party in opposition to the aggressions of the slave-power and the extension of human slavery.
What name should they give the new party ? Much was in a name, and Mr. Wash- burn suggested that " Republican" was the most proper, the most suggestive, and the least objectionable that could be adopted. It was a name to conjure with, honorable in its antccedents and in history, and under it people ever so much divided in their political views on other and minor questions could unite on a footing of perfect equality and with no implied surrender of principles or convictions. The idea was received with enthusiasm by every member present except one, who was not yet prepared to give up the long-cherished Whig name and party ; and, with this exception, when the meeting adjourned they all felt that for them there was no longer either a Whig or Democratic Party.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.