USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 7
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The next conspicuous occasion for the Senator from Maine to exhibit the qualities of his mind and heart was a sad one for himself, for his State, and for the nation. On the 14th of December, 1869, Mr. Morrill was called upon to announce to the Senate the death (on the 8th of September previous) of his distinguished colleague. In the brief sketch he gave of his character and career he has embodied the most just comprehension and dis- criminating analysis of his intellectual character that has ever been made. Asa piece of personal portraiture it is complete, delicate, life-like, and at the same time a masterpiece of characterization, and the hearty tribute of an affectionate admiration.
The following extracts indicate the careful study embodied in this sketch, and his pro- found observation :
" The lineaments of Mr. Fessenden's character were marked and clear. He was endowed with an acute understanding, lively sensibility, and an intense personality and self-reliance. Penetration and in- sight eminently characterized his genius. He was through with his preparatory course, had graduated from college, studied his profession and entered upon its practice, and had gained distinction in the de- partments of law and legislation at an age when most minds are just beginning to contemplate their intricacies and ascend their rugged steeps.
"There was next to nothing in his life, public or private, which was factitious or artificial. His professional success and his influence in State and National legislation were by no accident, nor by the employment of adventitious supports, but by the inherent energy and force of his mental constitution. He was eminent in his profession, as in him were combined those intellectual faculties and mental habits which go to make the lawyer, the statesman, and the public administrator. Had he possessed more sentiment and imagination and greater enthusiasm for the ideal, it would doubtless have increased his popularity, while it may be questioned if his reliability as a citizen, liis distinction as a lawyer, or his eminence as legislator would have been greater.
" In him the intensely practical ever so asserted its preponderance over the ideal in action as to pre- sent to superficial observance a lack of the finer sensibilities. He did nothing from impulse, and on the most exciting occasions could be cool and free from irrepressible restlessness ; but it was the calm of high resolve, persistent and tenacious in its triumph over passion and sentiment.
" His character rested on a granite basis, and sustained the structure of a lofty public virtue and private integrity, while an inflexible personal independence kept guard over the intellect and conscience, and challenged alike the advance of friend and foe to this seat of his power and secret of his success. It would have been impossible for him, like his great namesake, the Premier of George III., to recover
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office, to acquire or retain place or power by a concession of his principles or a point of honor. No public man ever more heroically followed the leadership of his reason and judgment, and with a loftier 'disdain of inferior guidance."
" His mind and method were of the judicial order. He did not defer to the decision of the popular judgment as the sum of political wisdom and the inevitable law of duty. His own and not the public sense was his rule of action as a Senator. He paid little court to the people, and practised no artifices and employed no gratuities to enlist them in his interests or purposes. And he did not sway the masses so much by the sublimity of his sentiments as he inspired confidence and admiration by the dignity of his manners, the clearness of his understanding, and the purity of his life."
The sentiments which Mr. Morrill so eloquently uttercd, the beneficent measures of public policy which he so strenuously and persistently proposed and supported, indicate how dominant in his mind is the idea of justice. That enlightened and humane legislation which he was always eager to apply to the slave and the freedman to lift them to the con- dition of the most favored races, he was always ready to interpose between the Indians, the wards of the nation, and that aggressive and fraudulent spirit rife among the new settlements of the West, that was disposed to reclaim and retract, as altogether too valuable for mere hunting-grounds, the generous reservations of rich land guaranteed to the tribes by the most solemn treaties.
Mr. Morrill always stood for the public faith, for strict fair-dealing, for non- interference with the Indian titles, and for a rigid inquisition into those pretended grants of chiefs or votes of public meetings whereby it was claimed that the uncivilized people had relinquished their treaty rights.
There were in Mr. Morrill's intellectual endowments certain characteristics that eminently fitted him for the high functions of legislation, that are not usually found in combination. He had the strong feelings and earnest convictions that belong to the enthusiast and reformer, united to the practical sagacity that belongs to the man of affairs. He looked at existing conditions of society, at established institutions, at proposed pro- jects of law or measures of administration, with sentiments warmed and inspired from the moral side of his nature. In discussion he easily became ardent, impassioned, and eloquent. At the same time he never permitted his ethical enthusiasm to overwhelm and sweep away the limitations which legal science has established to, mark the scope and boundary of legislation. He had a more just perception than many of his more distinguished associates in the Senate of what subjects were fairly within the province of legislation, and what reformatory results legislation was powerless to effect. He knew, too, what principles the political scholar would prefer to express in an abstract way in a constitution or bill of rights, and what matters of detail were the proper subject of statutes. In the extra- ordinary crisis in which the powers of the American Constitution were put to their severest test by the exigencies of a prolonged civil war, threatening its authority and the union it
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secured, he saw what abler lawyers strangely failed to see-that war suspended strictly legal methods, and brought in military necessities and powers unknown to the mere civilian ; and that while fellow-citizens held toward us the relation of public enemies, they could not appeal to the comity of equal constitutional rights, or to the protection of the civil law, but only to the humanities that mitigate the ferocity of civilized combatants and the clemency of conquerors.
Besides these high intellectual qualifications, Mr. Morrill possessed in his amiable dis- position the purity and integrity of his personal character, the guileless sincerity, frankness, and directness of his speech, the unstudied courtesy of his manners, a basis for the high esteem and solid consideration in which he was steadily held by all men associated with him in the responsibilities of public life.
With the confidence which such qualities inspired, with such conscientious enthusiasm and such rare capacity for his great work, it is not surprising that in the great conserving . and reconstructive exigency through which the country passed from r861 to 1870 a burden was thrown upon the shoulders of this assiduous public servant quite beyond the measure of his strength.
In addition to his services as Chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, and on Indian Affairs, his eminent candor, the judicial fairness of his judgment, and the rare esteem in which his associates of both parties held him, singled him out as the person to conduct several delicate investigations involving the probity of Senators, which he dis- charged without a note of censure upon his conduct. He was thrust into this disagreeable service because there was no Senator in whose impartiality there was the same general con- fidence. Accordingly he conducted in the Senate the prolonged investigation that led to the expulsion from it of Senator Bright of Indiana, and was chairman of the committee of both Houses before whom the conduct of members of each body was investigated in con- nection with the corporation that built the great railway to the Pacific.
He served also on the Committee on Naval Affairs, on the Library, and in that latter capacity made an exhaustive and able report upon the question of International Copyright.
His intimate acquaintance with the financial history and condition of the Government made him an authority on all questions of appropriation and revenue.
When the old Standing Committee of the Senate on Finance was no longer able alone to manage the expanded fiscal legislation of the country, a new Committee on Appropriations was created, and Mr. Morrill was made its chairman-a position he held during the whole remaining period of his service in the Senate. It was from this committee there emanated a report, largely the labor of the indefatigable chairman, that was presented to the Senate, June 2, 1876, that embodied a minute detail of all the expenditures of the Government, for
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all purposes, from its institution down to that period, with a comparative statement of the expenditures of the civil war and the years following, with those of the entire period of previous National history ; also a statement of expenditures by decades from the earliest time, showing how rapid had been the development of the National wealth and the Na- tional revenue and expenditure.
Such industry and capacity naturally attracted the attention of the Executive, and during the second term of General Grant Mr. Morrill was invited and urged to accept the portfolio of the War Department in the Cabinet. The duties of the office were too remote from the studies and tastes of the Senator, and he declined to accept it.
In the summer of 1876 the Secretaryship of the Treasury became vacant by the resignation of Mr. Bristow, and now the renewed invitation of President Grant to a seat in his Cabinet, backed as it was by a most emphatic solicitation on the part of leading citizens and business men of the great commercial cities, and offering employments quite in the line of Mr. Morrill's Senatorial labors, could not be refused by him. His administration of the office of Finance Minister during the last year of General Grant's Administration was eminently safe, conservative, and satisfactory to the country. By pursuing the cautious policy of his immediate predecessors, the credit of the Government steadily enhanced, and the brilliant task of Mr. Sherman in achieving specie payments was made of easy accom- plishment.
It is not surprising that such incessant and enormous labor told disastrously at length on the Senator's health. The first warning that he was overtaxing his powers came to him during his vacation at home in 1870. A severe illness, attended with great nervous prostration, and indicating that the brain had been unduly exercised, prostrated him for several months in a long and exhausting illness. From this he slowly rallied, and before the year ended was plunged anew into the midst of his accumulated Senatorial duties. A still severer attack of the same general character utterly disabled him at the very close of his term of service in the Treasury. His recovery from this illness was slow and incom- plete. The new Administration, which followed the usage of surrounding itself with a wholly new Cabinet, and which he was utterly precluded by his physical condition from serving, offered him the ministry to England, or any other post of diplomatic service he might prefer. He chose to take the post of Collector in the chief port of his own State, preferring that to the offered and more lucrative Collectorship of Boston, as better suited to his enfeebled health, and as allowing him a continued residence in his native State, for which his attachment has always been peculiarly strong.
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ILLIAMS, REUEL, of Augusta, Maine. Born June 2, 1783, in that part of the ancient town of Hallowell which is now the city of Augusta and the capital of the State. He was the second of twelve children of Cap- tain Seth and Zilpha (Ingraham) Williams of that place. His father was reputedly of Welsh origin, a farmer and tanner by occupation, and a citizen of character and consequence. The father emigrated from Stoughton, Massachusetts, in 1779, and married Zilpha, daughter of Benaiah and Abigail Ingraham, who were among the early settlers of Augusta. The mother impressed her own characteristics upon her children, and especially upon Reuel. Sclf-reliant, shrewd, firm, energetic, and conscientious, she possessed unbounded affection, every motherly virtue, and every Christian grace.
Reuel Williams studied in the common-schools of his native town until he had attaincd the age of twelve years, when he was sent to Hallowell Academy. Boarding at home, he traversed the two miles between his domicile and the institution cvery morn- ing and night, and was always at school in time. Herc he acquired a classical education, sufficient to qualify him for admission to college, before he was fifteen years old. In the evenings he worked on the shoemaker's bench,-for his father was also a disciple of Crispin, -and often finished a shoe before retiring for the night. Thus, unconsciously perhaps, he was laying, broad and firm, the foundations of futurc fame and wealth. After leaving the Academy he filled the place of toll-gatherer for the Kennebec Bridge, built at Augusta, and completed in 1798, and thus aided his father in the support of the family, while wisely utilizing every leisure hour for study. At this period he attracted the notice of Judge Jamcs Bridge, a prominent lawyer of the Kennebec bar, and a noble man, who invited him to enter his office as a student at law. The youth accepted the invitation, entered the office of Mr. Bridge on the 25th of June, 1798, earned his support by writing while pursuing his studies, and in this way accumulated more than one thousand dollars before he was nine- tccn years of age. He soon began to share an interest in the profits of the law-business, and invested his savings in real estate on the cast side of the river, which he continued to own at the time of his death.
On reaching his majority in 1804 he was admitted to the bar. Declining the proposi- tion of two fellow-students to migrate with them to Cincinnati for the practice of law, he settled down deliberately for life in the town of his birth, and there became one of its most influential and valued citizens. Indeed, the results of his zeal and foresight form an esscn- tial part of its history. In 1807 Mr. Williams first came into professional eminence. Judge Bridge, his preceptor and partner, had for years been the agent of the "Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase," a large tract of land, the management of which involved in- vestigation of titles, sales, and collections, in all of which Williams became an expert.
Melikpoliran Publicking & Engraving Go Boston
FROM A BUST BY PAUL AKERS.
Rewe Williams
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Engaged with Nathan Dane, in Boston, as junior counsel, for the Proprietors, before the Commissioners of Eastern Lands, he was highly complimented by that tribunal on his thorough and profound legal knowledge, and the clearness and ability with which he pre- sented and managed his case. In 1811 his name appears in the Massachusetts Reports as counsel in a law question in opposition to the learned and able Judge Wilde; and thence- forward for nearly thirty years, until he took his seat in the United States Senate, his name constantly occurs in the reports of important law cases tried in the courts both of Massachusetts and Maine.
In 1812 Judge Bridge retired from practice with an abundant fortune, and left Mr. Williams in full receipt of all the emoluments of their large business. The relation between him and Williams had been similar to that of the English barrister to the solicitor. The latter prepared the materials of the case, and the former presented and argued it. Thenceforward Mr. Williams had to do both, and did so with great sharpness and clear- ness of legal vision, closeness of logical argumentation, remarkable power of analysis, and effective method of arrangement.
In addition to his agency for the "Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase," he had charge of the Bowdoin College Lands, a very large and valuable property, which he man- aged with consummate skill. In his large miscellaneous practice, his addresses to juries as well as the courts were condensed, concentrated, direct, and convincing. Less learned than practical, he was very effective and successful. His reputation became widely known, and in 1815 he was honored by Harvard College with the degree of Master of Arts. In 1855, when full of years and honors, Bowdoin College acknowledged his eminent merit by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws.
In 1816, in conjunction with Judge Bridge and Thomas L. Winthrop of Boston, Mr. Williams purchased the lands, property, and remaining interests of the Kennebec Proprietors. The investment proved to be lucrative. The records, plans, and papers-of great historic value-belonging to the Proprietors are now in the archives of the Maine Historical Society. In 1818 he was active in organizing the Lincoln and Kennebec Society for the removal of obstructions in the Kennebec River, which afterward procured sundry improvements by the United States, including the erection of light-houses at the mouth of the Kennebec River.
Reuel Williams was an earnest and effective advocate of the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. In the years 1822-5 he served as a member of the House of Repre- sentatives, and in the years 1826-8 as a member of the Senate of Maine. During this period he was the leader of the movement to make Augusta the State capital. In 1829, 1832, and 1848 he was also a member of the lower House.
Although rooted in his native town, the sympathies and beneficence of Mr. Williams were wide as his State, his country-as the world itself. . From 1822 to 1860 he was one
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of the Trustees of Bowdoin College, labored earnestly for its welfare, and greatly regretted the attempt to narrow its catholic spirit and liberal principles within the limits of sectarian exclusiveness. In 1822 he became one of the forty-nine corporate members of the Maine Historical Society, and liberally contributed to its support. On the 15th of February, 1825, he was appointed one of the commissioners of Maine to divide the public lands, held in common with Massachusetts, under the Act of Separation, and discharged his arduous and delicate trust with wonted intelligence and fidelity. On the 27th of March, 1831, he was appointed Commissioner of Public Buildings, and superintended the completion of the Capitol till it was fitted for the use of the State Government and the legislative sessions. On the 10th of May, 1832, he was appointed Commissioner of Maine, with Wm. Pitt Preble and Nicholas Emery, in reference to the Northeastern boundary. In this capacity he first made the acquaintance of President Jackson, of whom he became a political supporter, so far as was consistent with his own sense of right. He remained identified with the Democratic Party down to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,-a measure which he regarded as the commencement of many and serious troubles.
In the negotiations connected with the boundary question, Jackson gavc utterance to a sentiment which Williams thought worthy to be remembered. Some one spoke of public opinion. "Public opinion ! What is public opinion ?" said Jackson. "Right is public opinion. I am public opinion when I do right." The Northeastern Boundary dispute dates back to the first occupation of the country by Europeans. The French settled on the St. Lawrence, the English on the Atlantic coast, and the natural boundary between the two was the summit of the water-shed common to both. Before this line was surveyed and marked, after the Revolution, war broke out between Great Britain and the United States. England, for military reasons, refused to further run and mark the line, as agreed, and the Treaty of Ghent had unfortunately provided for the submission of disputed matters to arbitration. The King of the Netherlands was selected as the umpire. He gravely decided that there was no ridge or water-shed separating the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence from those flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, and advised that the bed of the St. John River be adopted for the boundary. Jackson wished Maine to accept this recom- mendation, but Maine was in no humor to do so, and the matter remained unsettled until after Mr. Williams' election to the United States Senate on February 22, 1837. Taking his seat in that august body at the extra session on the 4th of September, he was placed on the Committees of Naval Affairs and of Roads and Canals, and later on that of the District of Columbia.
In Congress, Senator Williams steadfastly supported the Administration in its financial policy, and advised and supported the plan of an independent Treasury ; dispensing altogether with the aid of banks, providing a set of Government officers to take charge of the public money, and requiring the payment of all public dues exclusively in specie. He
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1
had the satisfaction of seeing this plan embodied in the National statutes. But the work of the session of 1837-8, for which he is to be most gratefully remembered, is his successful labor for the establishment of the Government Hospital for the Insane of the District of Columbia, and of the Army, Navy, and Revenue service of the United States. That institution is now one of the proudest ornaments of the National capital. Neither did he forget the unfortunate in his own State, but gave ten thousand dollars toward the founda- tion of the Maine Insane Hospital, an institution of which he was for fifteen years one of the trustees, and whose progress he watched with almost parental solicitude.
The Northeastern Boundary dispute came before the United States Senate again in 1838. Senator Williams' speeches on this question evinced great research, perfect knowl- edge of the subject, and remarkable power. The consummation of the Treaty of Wash- ington, whose ratification he could not prevent, caused him deep personal chagrin and disappointment. But he had nobly done his duty, and could but acquiesce in the fact accomplished.
Reelected to the United States Senate in 1839, he served therein until 1843, when the magnitude of his private interests and his indifference to the honors of public life united to cause his resignation. While in legislative office no service could be more conscientious and complete than his. A public trust he held to be quite as sacred as a private one, and in his hands both were equally safe.
Reuel Williams was a statesman-not a supple partisan. Able and independent, his altitude was one of lofty superiority to mere party. He opposed Calhoun in his effort to exclude blacks from the naval service ; he spoke and voted for the Whig Tariff of 1842, which but for his support would have been lost. He fearlessly antagonized the annexa- tion of Texas, and predicted that it would result in the dissolution of the Union, or in protracted civil war-a prophecy whose fulfilment he lived long enough to witness. In the bright galaxy of Senatorial talent by which he was surrounded his own rank and stand- ing were conspicuous and enduring.
As a lawyer he was deservedly held in the highest estimation. Daniel Webster being associated with him as counsel in a celebrated case in the Circuit Court of the United States, treated him with extraordinary and sincere deference, in view of his knowledge and abilities. In the comprehensive and far-reaching railroad enterprises of Maine he was prominent and influential. He realized the necessity of these highways of commerce and travel to arrest depletion of population, and to promote the prosperity and development of his native State. Circumstances are not always controllable, and particularly by members of corporations ; and rival local interests in railroad matters were adverse to the immediate pecuniary interests of Mr. Williams. He lost large sums of money in the original con- struction of railroads in Maine, but, looking at the result in the general good accomplished, he afterward said, "I do not, on the whole, regret it. I doubt if my time and money
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could have accomplished so much good in any other way." This is the reflection of a wise man, who measures life and its relations by infinitely higher than perishable monetary standards. In September, 1861, he sold all his railroad interests, and once more became free from perplexing cares.
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