USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 16
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After the war had closed and the Rebellion was crushed out, and with it the detesta- ble heresies that led to it, there still remained the question as to what had been gained and settled by the terrible sacrifices that had been made. After the abolition of slavery there could be no further dispute as to its extension. The State-rights theories of the Southern leaders also collapsed, and on none of the old party issues had the people arrayed them- selves in political organizations. At this time, and while the public opinion was little concentrated on matters of future policy, Mr. Washburn was invited by the municipal authorities of Portland to address the people of that city on the approaching Fourth of July. In this address he spoke with great force and point on the low condition of public senti- ment throughout the country which had allowed the institution of slavery to grow and expand, and practically to govern the country for many years, until it had waxed so strong as to demand not only its rights to govern the country, but to impose its accursed local institutions on the Free States of the North.
Then he passed to the conduct of the war, its trials, its sacrifices, and its final triumphs. But it had not been without its compensations. It had raised the tone of public sentiment, and magnified the American name throughout the world. Our people could no longer be taunted with claiming to be a nation of republicans while we were in reality a nation of slave-breeders and slave-traders. On the contrary, it had raised a whole
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class of native Americans from the condition of slaves to be freemen and citizens, no longer a source of danger but of strength to our institutions, and whose rights as freemen and voters were to be not only secured but maintained thereafter. The National standard had been raised and with it the National character. The nation would thenceforth for all time be stronger to resist aggression, and in the councils of the nations be recognized as one of the great powers of the world. The National credit and National currency had been established on a better basis than ever before, and the future opened on a brighter vista than the eyes of any nation ever witnessed in the history of the world.
Of this address Charles Sumner said :
"The remarkable oration of Hon. Israel Washburn, Jr., of Portland, treated the subject with unanswerable fulness and ability. His speeches in Congress were always read with interest. Perhaps he never before spoke better than now. His oration is elaborate in form and arrangement, accurate in style, logical in argument, and often eloquent. It is an important contribution to the good cause. Such a voice from Maine ought to be a key-note." *
At the close of his second term, Governor Washburn, under the impression that the work of the State Government in prosecuting the war was nearly at an end, declined a re-election as Governor. His labors had been trying and incessant, and his administration in all respects most successful and satisfactory to the people of the State. But he was soon called by President Lincoln to the performance of other duties. Within a few months after his retirement from the gubernatorial chair, the Collectorship of Portland became vacant through the death of the able and popular Collector, Mr. Jedediah Jewett ; and, without his solicitation, it was tendered to Mr. Washburn by Mr. Lincoln in such terms that he could hardly refuse to accept it.
Into this important office he was inducted in November, 1863. He filled it to the entire satisfaction of the Government, especially of the Treasury Department, till May, 1877, when he retired, and has since lived a quiet though active and useful life at his home in Portland. During this time he has busied himself in writing for different magazines and reviews, and in preparing and delivering speeches and addresses on political and literary subjects. Among his contributions at different periods to the former may be mentioned papers on Charles Lamb ; Walter Savage Landor ; Gamaliel Bailey ; Modern Civilization ; The Logic and the End of the Rebellion ; The Powers and Duty of Congress in respect to Suffrage ; Secular and Compulsory Education. Some of the Conditions of Success in Life ; Centralization ; The Ballad and Song Writers of Scotland-may be named among the numerous addresses and lectures which he has delivered within a few years. He has published also biographical notices and recollections of Chief Justice Ethan Shepley, George Evans, and Edward Kent. In 1874 he published a book of 180 octavo pages,
* Boston Transcript, July, 1865.
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entitled "Notes of Livermore." The preparation of this book, though unambitious in scope and design, was a labor of love, as it enabled him to put in enduring form the records of his native town, and to testify to the world of the merits and virtues of the people among whom his boyhood was passed.
In the same year he delivered a historical address before the citizens of Orono on the one-hundredth anniversary of the settlement of that town. This work, like the " Notes of Livermore," was a labor of love and duty, for it was here that his early manhood was passed, here he married, and here he achieved his first successes. At a later period (in 1879) he prepared for the Maine Historical Society an elaborate and thorough investiga- tion of a question which for many years hung over the State of Maine like a cloud,-that of the Northeastern Boundary of Maine,-of which the present generation knows but little, but which was the absorbing theme of talk and discussion in Maine for many years. The justice of the claim of Maine and the manner of its settlement were fully examined in this paper of Mr. Washburn, and the conclusion to be drawn from it is that the treaty which concluded the negotiations in regard to it did not secure its just rights to the State of Maine, and that it was in derogation of the prestige and honor of the nation.
Mr. Washburn is an active member of the Maine Historical Society, and is Vice- President for Maine of the New England Historical Society. From Tufts College he received several years ago the honorary degree of LL.D. He has been for many years President of the Board of Trustees of this institution, and in 18- was chosen President of the Faculty, a position which he declined. He married, October 24, 1841, Mary Maud, youngest daughter of the late Colonel Ebenezer Webster of Orono, by whom he had four children-all of whom are living. Mrs. Washburn died in June, 1873. In 1876 he married Robina Napier, eldest daughter of Benjamin F. Brown, Esq., of Bangor.
NOTE .- Governor Washburn died since the writing of the above.
ONY, SAMUEL, ex-Governor of Maine. This name is found in four suc- cessive generations. In the genealogical register of the family in each instance the name is preceded by a distinctive title. We have Deacon, Lieutenant, General, Governor. This fact is significant of the position and the influence of the family. The first of those who bore this marked name in this continuous line was Deacon Samuel Cony, who was born in Boston on the 15th of April, 1718. He afterward lived in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, and in 1777 removed to the Fort Western settlement, in the new town of Hallowell, Maine. Hc seems to have been
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attracted to this remote region by the thrifty apple-trees on the banks of the Kennebec and the abundant fish in the stream. This was the report of his son, who had examined the country to see if it would be wise to make a home in it. The father died in 1803. The son, Lieutenant Samuel Cony, was thirty-one years old when he moved from Easton, Mas- sachusetts, to Maine. Two years later he died, leaving an estate comprising five hundred acres of land, which his enterprise was seeking to enlarge. His military title connects him with the patriot forces which were beginning their long struggle for independence.
General Samuel Cony was born in Massachusetts in 1775. He was a merchant at Wiscasset and Augusta, Maine. His boyhood embraced the years of the Revolution, and his manhood suffered from the disasters of the second war with Great Britain. He was the first Adjutant-General of Maine, and held the office for ten years. He represented Augusta in the General Court, where his wife and himself were conspicuous for their fine personal appearance. " He was a man of generous impulses, kind-hearted and honorable." The second son of Deacon Cony was the Hon. Daniel Cony, who was born in 1752, and was therefore twenty-five years old when his family removed to Maine. At the begin- ning of the War of the Revolution he was residing at Tewksbury, Massachusetts, where he was a lieutenant to a company of minute-men. He heard in the night the tidings of the march of the British troops to Lexington and Concord, and was soon with his comrades on the way to Cambridge to join the mustering forces of the neighborhood. He served with distinction in the army until the surrender of Burgoyne, and received promotion for his bravery. He was married in 1776 to Susanna, the daughter of the Rev. Philip Curtis of Sharon, Massachusetts. He studied medicine with Dr. Samuel Curtis of Marlborough, Massachusetts. He died in his ninetieth year. His long life was one of great activity and usefulness. He had an extensive practice as a physician and surgeon. He was a represen- tative from Hallowell and Augusta in the Massachusetts General Court, and was also a Senator and a member of the Governor's Council. He was a Judge of the Court of Com- mon Pleas, and a Judge of Probate before and after the separation of Maine from Massa- chusetts. He was one of the electors by whom George Washington and John Adams were chosen to their second term of office as President and Vice-President of the United States. He was a delegate from Augusta to the convention by which the constitution of Maine was formed.
His interest in public education was very broad and deep. He gave it a practical form in his care for the common-schools, in founding and endowing the "Cony Female Academy," and in using his influence in procuring a charter for Bowdoin College. He was a man of marked character and influence, of strong intellect, good judgment, unyield- ing integrity, persistent industry, decided in his opinions, firm in his purposes, generous in his spirit. He belonged to the class of remarkable men who gave to Hallowell and Augusta a temper and a character distinguished for intelligence, frugality, and uprightness.
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His daughter, Susan Bowdoin, was born in 1781, and in 1803 married her cousin, General Samuel Cony. Their son is the subject of the present sketch.
Samuel Cony was born in Augusta, February 27, 1811. The certificates of one of his teachers show him to have been a studious and well-behaved boy. His education was pursued under the patronage of his grandfather, the Hon. Daniel Cony, whose faithful counsel he enjoyed through his youth and early manhood. The letters of this aged man to his young kinsman, some of which are preserved, are fine models of letter-writing, both in sentiment and in style, and must have had an early and admirable influence. The boy studied with his uncle, the Rev. John H. Ingraham of Thomaston, with Mr. Vose in Augusta, and at the China Academy. He entered Wakefield College, but removed to Brown University, where he enjoyed the instruction of the eminent President Wayland, and where he graduated in 1829. His Commencement oration was "On the Permanency of the Union." The subject has a prophetic sound, as we read it now, in the light of the crowning labors of his life. After leaving college he began the study of the law with the Hon. Hiram Belcher of Farmington. The description which he gives of his teacher, in a letter to his own brother, is at once complimentary to the subject of it and to the young man of twenty who recognized the virtues which he praised : " He is indeed a man whose example may with safety and credit be followed by the young, and cannot fail to be applauded by the most censorious. His unbending integrity and scrupulous exactness in all his tran sactions, in my opinion, sheda bright lustre upon his individual character ; and were all the members of the profession like him in that respect, the profession itself would be highly exalted in the opinion of mankind, and the epithet 'lawyer' would be synonymous with 'honorable.'" These are words of promise for the youth as he approaches his chosen profession. He continued his legal studies under his uncle, the Hon. Reuel Williams, another of the sturdy race of men who stamped their impress deep upon the community ; a man who deserved, as he continually received, the confidence and admiration of the town and the State which he served in his private and public life.
Samuel Cony was admitted to the bar in 1832, and began the practice of his pro- fession at Oldtown. But his career was not to be confined within the bounds of a strictly professional life. When he was twenty-four he represented his town in the Legislature. At twenty-eight he was a member of the Executive Council. In 1840 he was appointed Judge of Probate for Penobscot County, and received a title by which he was known to the end. In 1847 he was appointed Land Agent for the State, and in 1850 was chosen Treasurer of the State. He was elected to this office in five successive years, which was the constitutional limit. Upon assuming its duties he returned to Augusta. In 1854 he was elected Mayor of Augusta, which had become a city. In 1862 he was chosen to the Legislature. The War of the Rebellion had then begun. Public feeling was intense, and men were taking their places on one side or the other of the great question which was
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upon the nation, and which was to be settled by the stern arbitrament of war. But the causc was open before this man. He was the cultured grandson of onc who had fought to make the country. It was impossible that he should not do his part to preserve the country. He was a Democrat, but to him in that time a party name meant littlc. He gave his hearty support to the efforts of the Government to suppress the Rebellion. The whole sympathy of his manhood was enlisted. So strong and outspoken was he, that the Republicans sent him to the Legislature, where his voice and vote would work for his country. As the weary months went on, his convictions grew deeper and his pur- pose more determined. To preserve the Union became the passion of his soul. For that cause good men were ready to forget the differences of the past, and to league their endeav- ors in one persistent effort. To this Judge Cony gave himself with all his energy. It was seen that he was the man for the time, and by the decree of the people, in whom love of country was paramount, he was made the Governor of the State. The office had never been so great, had never demanded so much. It never received so much as in the three years when he filled it and adorned it. He carried into it the ample resources of his fifty years. He entered upon its duties with humility, but with a devotion which never wavered. He needed no other incentive than his patriotism afforded. He knew that good men differed in matters of policy, but he held that they should be united in the question . of life. For every man who loved his country there was but one concern. He was not responsible for the beginning of the war; to the measure of his opportunity he was rc- sponsible for its continuance until its end was achieved, in "the undisputed supremacy of the United States within its ancient and rightful limits." He stood loyally between the General Government and the people of his State. He guarded the seaboard "against the probabilities or possibilities of attack." He gathered the troops as they were necded at the front. He chose their officers with sagacity, looking only to their personal fitness for service. He followed the soldiers with the most watchful care. He provided for their comfort, so far as it was in his power. He checrcd them with his brave words, and bright- ened their hospitals with his genial presencc. All true men honored him. He was cour- teous and considerate, but he was firm and just. Who is the best man for this place ? was his rule in all appointments, with which no private wishes or friendly solicitations were suf fered to interfere. He was honored by those who stood at the head of the Government,
who saw in him a man to be trusted to the uttermost. The hearty praise lavished upon his character and his work by the Secretary of War are well remembered. He spared nothing for the purpose upon which he was set. Time, strength, money, were given with prodigal hand. The country was in his heart. He exulted when she gained a victory ; he waited anxiously for the result of her battles; he sorrowed in her disappointment, and mourned over her losses ; but through triumph and defeat he pressed onward to the only end to which he would consent. When he was first nominated for Governor he was
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asked to say that which should lift the hearts of the people "to something like the height of the actual occasion." He said it. He said it again and again; and his words remain to testify to his lofty courage, his broad conception of the cause, his utter enlistment in the service to which he gave himself before men called him to serve them and to rule over them.
Three times the people made him Governor. In his last inaugural address, in January, 1866, he said : " At the close of the present year my connection with public affairs will cease, and I shall most gladly return to that retirement from which I was originally so unexpectedly called." He had earned the right to rest. Maine had done a noble part in the war which had closed. She had furnished 71,558 men, " being more than one tenth of the population, and largely more than a majority of the heaviest vote ever polled in the State." Many had worked together for this achievement, but his part had been con- spicuous in its labor, its anxiety, and its success. Of the 4295 commissions which were issued by the Executive of the State, 1392 were given by himself. When he delivered the address to which reference has just been made he was able to announce the fulfilment of the purpose which he had declared at the beginning, and gratefully to point to the flag of the Union " floating in unchallenged supremacy over its ancient and rightful boun- daries."
But much remained to be done. The soldiers who survived were to be returned to their homes. For the sick and wounded, hospitals were to be sustained. For the dead, memorials were to be erected. He proposed that medals should be given to the living. The wives and children of the men who had fallen were to be tenderly cared for. The pensions granted by the nation were to be enlarged by the justice of the State, that none might suffer when gratitude could assist.
There were larger and graver questions which concerned the relation of the Govern- ment to the States recently warring against it, and to the men and women whom the war had set free. To these questions Governor Cony brought the one principle by which he had been testing men and measures. It was the rule .of loyalty. How had men and States carried themselves toward their country ? That determined their character and their desert. He held that the States which had revolted against the Government had "forfeited their relations and rights as States of the Union." He did not propose that the Government should revenge itself upon them. The crime was too great for vengeance. He approved the amnesty which was granted "to large classes of offenders," and called it "merciful, humane, and Christian." But he did not believe that the States which had sought secession should have the restoration of their former political condition. He held that the Government could make its own terms, and that it was bound to secure to those States the free republican institutions which ruled the loyal States. He believed that loyalty and liberty belong together. Loyalty was essential to citizenship. It was not color
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or class which was to determine a man's rights in the Republic. His judgment and feeling went out to the blacks because they had been loyal. By that word he judged them. He proposed to use the power which they had helped to preserve and to extend in recognizing them "as freemen having equal rights and obligations with the whites." They might not be qualified for the immediate exercise of all the duties of citizens. Then their moral and intellectual culture should be provided for. This was their due. In it was their safety. The honor and security of the Republic would be supported by it. Thus he took advanced ground on these questions of peace, as he had on all matters of war. In all he was thoroughly in earnest. Reason and conscience were quick, and the will was strong and patient. He sought great things for his country-the true, the right, the permanent. Thus he wrought for an enduring peace, wherein the country should find recompense for the dreadful years. Among those to whom remembrance belongs, all who love their coun- try should give him his place.
If we regard this man in his private life, there too he easily wins our admiration. His personal presence was fine. His hair, prematurely white, adorned a face of rare benignity. He was of noble blood, and this was seen in his career. He was wisely taught, and the lessons of his youth guided his manhood. He had a marked individuality. He stood by himself. His character and his name were alike his own. There was a sturdy independence in the whole habit of his life. He had inherited this, and he enjoyed it. Joined to his thorough kindness, this gave him a peculiar charm. He was a gentleman -- not formal and precise, but dignified and genuine. His intuitions were prompt and keen, and his convictions profound. His impulses were full of honor. His sympathies were warm and tender. He was a wise man. He had great good sense, and saw the fitness of things. While he bore himself in an easy, unaffected way, he regarded the proprieties of life, and suited himself to its necessities. He filled the offices to which he was appointed. He would have filled any office to which he was called. If he had been ambitious of dis- tinction, he would have been longer prominent in public affairs, and the people would have withdrawn him from his retirement and kept him in their service of honor. If there had come great need of him, the State, the country, could have had all he was and all he had. But he loved his home, His tastes were eminently domestic. His own fireside was the pleasantest spot on the earth, and its influence attended him when he was abroad. He enjoyed his simple duties in the bank whose president he was, and among his business asso- ciates and his neighbors; but he liked best the retirement of his own home. His pleasant and spacious house, a little removed from the stir of the town, gave him safe shelter and quiet when he could escape from the wearing cares and the incessant demands of the stirring years when he administered the affairs of the State. His hospitality was like himself, large- hearted and cheerful, and laying no burden upon his guests. They saw him at home, and became at home themselves. His affections were strong, but they did not overrule his
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judgment, and he counselled those who sought his advice in an unselfish and impartial spirit. One was sure of an honest answer who asked his opinion. He was a man to confide in. The lowliest who came to him found a friend. He said there was no one so humble that he could afford to have his ill-will. More than that was true. There was no one so humble that he would not show him good-will if he deserved it. The virtues of his private life went with him to his public station. He illustrated the fine saying of Edmund Burke, whose writings he greatly admired, that "private honor is the foundation of public trust, and friendship is no mean step toward patriotism." His public addresses show the charac- ter of the man. As they are read now the sentences are full of life-earnest, nervous, direct. They utter his thought, and reveal the soul within them. His manner of speaking was simple and forcible, winning attention and persuading by virtue of the sincerity of his words. His addresses had the highest quality of oratory in that they accomplished the purpose which created them. He was entertaining and instructive when his friends joined him in familiar conversation ; and when the multitude listened to him they were taught and moved. He was himself a good listener. There was help in his look. He was a regular and devout attendant at church upon the Lord's Day, and as he sat in one of the front pews his earnest, upturned face showed his interest in the words which were spoken, and gave inspiration to the preacher. He had, perhaps by inheritance from his mother, a strong religious element in his character. He saw the beauty and the strength of truth. He was ready to apply it in the relations of men. His mature thought upon law and gov- ernment, and all they mcan and all they demand upon the earth, deepened his conviction of the reality of the Divine law and government, and of their meaning and demands. He determined rectitude by duty, and made up the results of life according as the life had been. In this world, or any world, he saw that this was right. The more he felt it in the nation, the more he believed it was so in the world and the worlds. But he has gone. There were given to him a few years of the peace which he had helped to bring. Life was very pleas- ant to him, and his days passed serenely among his friends, in the enjoyment of his books, in the recollection of duty done, in the vision of the prosperity returning to the country. It was not long to be. The time of the great transition was at hand. Calmly, as became him, he drew near the change. It found him in the right place. It did not reach him until he had rounded out a life of honor and usefulness.
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