USA > North Carolina > Biographical history of North Carolina from colonial times to the present; > Part 21
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The question of instruction of Senators had now received a new turn in North Carolina. Mangum had been instructed in 1834 to vote for Benton's Expunging resolution and had refused to do so or to resign, and this had brought him into sharp conflict with Bedford Brown, his colleague, as we have seen. After his resignation, Brown and Strange, his successor, voted for Benton's resolution (passed January 16, 1837). The North Carolina Assembly of 1838 was Whig. It censured Brown and Strange for voting for the Expunging resolution and then instructed them to oppose Van Buren's sub-treasury system, to advocate a division of the proceeds from the sale of public lands among the States according to population, and to endeavor to secure reform in the public expenditures and a reduction of taxes (December 8, 1838). The Senators were both Democrats, and in a letter, dated Decem- ber 31, 1838, claimed not to understand the purport of the cen- sure and resolutions of the Assembly. Their resignations were finally forwarded during the Harrison-Van Buren campaign in 1840 and caused considerable excitement.
In that year the State went with the Whigs. Mangum was re-elected to the Senate as a Whig to succeed Brown, and took his seat December 9, 1840; William A. Graham, also a Whig, suc- ceeded Strange and took his seat December 10. As Brown's term expired March 4, 1841, Mangum was chosen to fill the full term
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beginning on that date, and so served continuously by re-elections from December 9, 1840, to March 3, 1853. During his senatorial terms he served on the committees on roads and canals, pensions, foreign relations, judiciary, militia, District of Columbia, finance and as chairman of the committee on naval affairs in 1841. In general he advocated the policies of the Whig Party. The Whigs repealed Van Buren's Independent Treasury or sub-treasury and passed an act establishing a new Bank of the United States, which was vetoed by Tyler. They then passed an act for a fiscal corporation which was to have the functions of a bank, and the draft of which had been submitted to Tyler. This act he also vetoed; he was then read out of the Whig Party. After these failures Mangum favored depositing the public money in State banks, regulated by law, and said that not one Whig in five thou- sand in North Carolina was opposed to a national bank. He - opposed the Exchequer Board scheme, devised by the Secretary of the Treasury. This Board was to consist of three men who were to have charge of the finances. It was denounced with great severity by Mangum and others and defeated. He regarded it as placing the public purse as well as the sword in the hands of the President.
On Tyler's accession to the Presidency, Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey, who had been previously chosen President of the Senate pro tempore, became its regular presiding officer and as such acting Vice-President. Southard resigned May 3, 1842, and on May 31st Mangum was chosen his successor. He continued to occupy this position till March 4, 1845; it was he who that day inaugurated the practice of turning back the hands of the clock in order to lengthen the official day.
In 1844 the Whigs opposed the immediate annexation of Texas and rejected Tyler's treaty on that subject; in 1846 Mangum strongly opposed the attitude of the country on the Oregon Ques- tion, which threatened to involve us in a war with England ; he also opposed the war with Mexico. In 1847 he was offered the nomination for President by the executive committee of the Native American Party of Pennsylvania ; in 1848 he was much talked of
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as a running mate to Judge McLean of Ohio, who was being con- sidered for the Presidency ; again in 1852 he could have had the Whig nomination for Vice-President, but because of the temper of the people in North Carolina declined.
It will be noted that at the time of Mangum's election to the highest office in the gift of the Senate, and what was at that par- ticular time but one remove from the Presidency, he had had less than seven years of senatorial life in all and had been returned to the Senate less than two years before. He had been chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs in 1841 ; it is evident that he had rapidly forged ahead and had in a very short time taken high rank among the leaders of his day. This position of leader- ship he continued to hold. He was not a frequent speaker. He did his work outside the Senate chamber in settling disputes, shaping policies and keeping the running gear of the party in good order. He was such an astute political manager that his political enemies were even inclined to regard him as a Machia- velli. Clay was perhaps his warmest personal friend, although he was hardly less intimate with Webster. The secret of his power seems to have been in his masterful intellect, his dignity and character. He never neglected his duty; was a thorough parlia- mentarian and was never uninformed as to anything pertaining to his station. The Senate ranked him higher than his own people.
We have a contemporary estimate of him as a presiding officer. Caleb Atwater of Ohio, in his "Mysteries of Washington City" (Washington, 1844), says :
"He presides in the Senate and occupies the Vice-President's room in the Capitol. He is a man above the common size, of fair complexion and commanding air. rather grave in his manners, but very agreeable and ap- pears to be kind-hearted. His voice is clear, sufficiently loud and distinct to be heard all over the Senate chamber and its gallery. On the whole. he is, taking him all in all, the best presiding officer that I ever saw in any legis- lative assembly. He is always at his ease, always dignified and always agreeable .. His appearance is that of a man about forty years old. He is a Whig, unwavering and unflinching, yet, like the Kentucky Senators, not a persecuting Whig, often voting to confirm men in offices who are not
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Whigs or anything else-long. He appears to look more to the interests of his country than his party." (Page 131.)
Alexander H. Stephens said he had great influence in the Senate; that he spoke with clearness, conciseness, terseness and power and dealt very little in the flowers of rhetoric or the orna- ments of oratory. Hannibal Hamlin called him one of the ablest men of his time. In fact, it has been said that he had more influence in the Senate than any other Southern man of his day.
The whole of Judge Mangum's life was spent in the service of his State. For thirty-five years, 1818 to 1853, when his health had already failed, to be followed soon after by a disease of the spinal column, he was almost constantly in the public service. He was so passionately devoted to the Union and to the interests of his State that his private affairs, had it not been for the business . _ capacity of his wife and daughter, would have been seriously impaired. As a campaigner he has seldom had an equal in the State, for he was subtile and persuasive and skilful as a dialecti- cian. His superior among North Carolina speakers has never appeared. In the day of great orators in the Senate he held his own, and I am told that traditions of his fame in oratory still linger in the Senate chamber like a sweet aroma of a long- vanished past ; the reputation of an orator, however, does not con- sist in the things that men remember but in the memory of the effects produced, and it is impossible for the historian to transfer to writing the persuasiveness of his compelling periods.
He was for many years a trustee of the University of North Carolina ; received the degree of A.B. in 1815, A.M. in 1818, and LL.D. in 1845. He was often in demand as a commencement orator, but seems to have carefully avoided such engagements. He was a Mason and an Odd Fellow ; in personal appearance was large, being over six feet in height and well proportioned; full of dignity and courtesy, his stateliness was noticeable and com- manding. He was successful as a lawyer and judge, and, while a man of splendid accomplishment, was still more remarkable for the suggestiveness of his thought (see Tourgee's "A Royal
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Gentleman," for a pregnant paragraphi on this phase of Southern character ).
On the more personal and human side Mangum was the life and soul of a dinner party, and his stories were full of pith and point. The charm of his conversation was extraordinary, his sincerity, his mellifluous voice, the grace and dignity of his per- sonal carriage, his affability and kindness, his love of nature in general and birds in particular, his unbounded charity-were winning qualities which made him honored, respected and loved.
Of his kindness in particular Judge Edwin G. Reade wrote in 1865 that he "was always interested in the young and in the friendless. It was characteristic of him; whenever he could, he made them his companions and advised them and praised them, and when need was defended them." Of his powers as a popular orator, he says : "He was almost all his life in the public coun- cils, and no man of his day was esteemed wiser. But his most interesting exhibitions were before his own people as a popular orator. It was then that his commanding person, his rich, flowing language, his clarion voice, his graceful gesticulation and his genial humor, made him almost irresistible. No one ever tired of listening to him. He never let himself down, was never afraid of overshooting his audience."
And in more recent years the late Daniel R. Goodloe wrote :
"As presiding officer he discharged its duties with distinguished ability and courtesy, and received the unanimous thanks of the body. He be- came an ardent friend of Mr. Clay, and in 1852 took an active part in bringing out General Scott to succeed General Taylor.
"Mr. Mangum was an admirable conversationalist. My friend, John B. Fry, who is a devoted admirer of Mr. Clay, whom he knew intimately, as he did Mr. Mangum, thinks the latter excelled the great Kentuckian in this accomplishment. I knew him well, and I have never met his equal in this regard, taking him all in all ; for he never forgot to listen, as well as to talk, which most superior men who are good talkers are apt to do.
"Judge Mangum was my best friend, to whom I am greatly indebted for kindness. I came here in 1844 in search of employment. He found it for me as associate editor of a daily Whig paper, The Whig Standard. . . . At the end of the campaign in November, I owed him nearly fifty dollars; and when I was able to repay him, two years later, he was unwilling to
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admit that I owed him anything. When I told him the exact amount, and insisted on paying, he urged me to go and buy me a suit of clothes. How- ever, I persisted in forcing the money on him, and he at length received it. It is my pleasure, and my duty, to record this fact, illustrative of the generous nature of one of North Carolina's greatest men."
As the war came on Judge Mangum naturally sided with the South, but he was never a secessionist ; in fact, he was a strong Union man till the war became a reality. He then went with the South and sent his only son to the front. The death of this son caused a return of the paralysis with which he had been afflicted for years, and he died at his country seat, Walnut Hall, then in Orange, now in Durham County, North Carolina, September 7, 1861 (not September 14th).
Judge Mangum married September 30, 1819, Charity Alston Cain (1795-1873). She was the daughter of William Cain and of Mrs. Sarah ( Alston) Dudley. The Cains were Irish and set- tled in Maryland. William Cain was born in Baltimore; migrated to Orange County, North Carolina ; became a prosperous merchant and planter ; founded a large and well-known family, and at the first meeting of the trustees of the University of North Carolina, December 18, 1789, made to that body a larger donation than they had up to that time received from any other source. Mrs. Man- gum's mother was the daughter of James Alston (died 1761) of Orange and granddaughter of John Alston ( 1673-1758), founder of the North Carolina family of that name and a justice of the colonial Supreme Court (q. v.). To Judge and Mrs. Mangum were born five children: Sallie Alston ( 1824-96) ; Martha Person ( Pattie) (1828-1902) ; Catharine Davis, died in infancy ; Mary Sutherland ( 1832-1902) ; and William Preston ( 1837-61). The son was educated at the University of North Carolina and began the study of law, but delayed practice to attend his father's plantation ; he volunteered as a private, became second lieutenant in Company B, Sixth North Carolina Regiment, Colonel Charles F. Fisher, C. S. A., and died July 28, 1861, from the effects of wounds received at the first battle of Manassas.
Sallie Alston Mangum married in 1851 Colonel Martin Wash-
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ington Leach (1806-69), an older brother of General James Madison Leach (1815-91), and an extensive planter and capi- talist of Randolph County, North Carolina. They had three chil- dren to attain maturity and who are still living : Mrs. Julian A. Turner of Greensboro, Mrs. Stephen B. Weeks and Miss Annie Preston Leach of Randolph County, North Carolina. The third generation is represented by three boys and six girls. None of the other children of Judge Mangum ever married. Misses Martha and Mary Mangum resided at Walnut Hall till their death. During the war and for some years after its close they conducted at their home a select school for young ladies, which drew patrons from many sections of the State.
This brief sketch of the very active career of Judge Mangum is based mainly on his correspondence and on family history. His public career will be found in the journals of the Assembly and of Congress, while the genealogy of his family will be found in part in the supplement to Groves's "The Alstons and Allstons of North Carolina and South Carolina." Short sketches of his career have appeared in the various biographical works dealing with the United States and North Carolina, but no suitable biography, no worthy sketch even has hitherto appeared. There are at least four oil portraits of Mangum, one in possession of Willie Mangum Person, Esq., of Louisburg, North Carolina, one in the hall of the Dialectic Society at Chapel Hill and two in possession of the family, including the one from which the accompanying engrav- ing is made. His correspondence, large in amount and varied in character, is in my hands, and I have in preparation a volume on his life and times which I hope to make definitive.
Stephen B. Weeks.
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WILLIE PERSON MANGUM, JR.
ILLIE PERSON MANGUM, JR., was the second child and oldest son of Priestley Hinton W Mangum, brother of the distinguished judge and senator, and of Rebecca Hilliard Sutherland of Wake Forest, Wake County, North Carolina. He was born in Wake County, May 7, 1827, and was on his mother's side descended from Colonel Ransom Suther- land, one of the patriots of the Revolution. His father was born April 3, 1795, and, like his uncle, was educated at the University of North Carolina, took the whole course in two years and received the A.B. degree in 1815 with first honor. He chose the law as a profession, settled in Wake, but in February, 1830, removed to Hillsboro, where he lived till his death, September 17, 1850. Unlike his better known brother, he stuck closely to the law, had a large practice in Wake, Granville and adjoining counties, and accumulated what was a handsome estate for his day in negroes and real estate. Besides the subject of this sketch there were other children : Catharine (Kate), born 1825, who died soon after her father ; Rebecca, who married John R. Williams of Arkansas ; Mary L., who married J. J. James, for some years editor of the . Biblical Recorder ; Priestley Hinton, Jr., who studied medicine but devoted himself to farming; and Leonard Henderson, who was graduated from Princeton, studied law and removed to Arkansas, saw hard service in the Confederate Army, went into politics, be-
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M. Pe llanquimio.
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came a judge of one of the inferior courts in Arkansas and died in Washington City, April, 1903.
In 1838 Willie P. Mangum, Jr., entered the Bingham School and remained there till 1844, when he entered Wake Forest Col- lege. He was there two years; went to the University of North Carolina in 1846 and was graduated in 1848, delivering an oration on the character of Sir Walter Raleigh. He became a tutor in Wake Forest College and remained one year, when he began the study of law under his father; after his death he removed to Washington City and took a position in the Census Office. In 1853 he returned to North Carolina and resumed the study of law, this time in Raleigh, under Judge Badger, and later con-, tinued his studies in New York City under Honorable E. W. Stoughton, judge and later United States Minister to Russia. He was admitted to the bar in New York State, in the District of Columbia and to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the next few years were devoted to his profession.
Unlike the rest of his family in the civil struggle which was now coming on, he sided with the North, and on March 27, 1861, was commissioned by the State Department as United States Consul at Ningpo, China. He arrived there December 11, 1861, two days after its capture by the T'ai-p'ing rebels, under Fang. It soon be- came necessary to take measures for the safety of the foreign com- munity at Ningpo, and on January 12, 1862, proceedings were taken to this end and for the government of the 75,000 Chinese who had crowded for protection into the foreign quarter of the city. This heavy duty fell upon the consuls of the treaty powers, and as the French consul was practically incapacitated it was dis- charged by the consuls of England and the United States, Mr. Mangum and his colleague holding court on alternate weeks, from January 12, to May 10, 1862, when power was restored to the former authorities through a bombardment of the city by the English and French. These judicial services were highly appreci- ated by the people, who expressed their thanks in oriental fashion by presenting to each of the consuls a large umbrella, like that borne before mandarins of the first rank.
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In the Spring of 1864 Mangum was transferred to the consulate at Chin-Kiang, on the. Yang-tse, at the junction of the Grand Canal with that river, but the confinement resulting from the dis- turbances in Ningpo and the Chekiang province had undermined. his health and compelled his return to America, for which he sailed April 29, 1864. The change of scene, the sea voyage, and Winter restored his health, and on March 18, 1865, he was made consul to Nagasaki, Japan; he was reappointed by Johnson, May 29, 1865, and there he remained till 1880.
He was detailed to take charge of the consulate general in Shanghai, as Vice-Consul-General, February 1, 1867, to March 19, 1868, in the absence of George F. Seward, the Consul-General, and in this connection was also United States postal agent ; he organ- ized and started the first American mail service in China, their first office being in the consulate general in Shanghai. After resuming his duties at Nagasaki he continued his postal work till arrangements were perfected by the Japanese Government for taking over their mail service.
In December, 1868, along with Reverend Guido Verbeck, the apostle of Japan, he spent some days, by invitation, in visiting the Prince of Hizen in Saga, his capital. They were the first white men to be seen in Saga, and this was one way taken by the Prince to reconcile his people to the impending changes, for the clans of Satsuma, Choshiu, Tosa, and Hizen were leaders in the strug- gle then going on against the Shoguns (Tokugawa family), and out of which came the restoration of the Mikado to supreme power and the opening of Japan to the Western world. The Prince of Hizen remained the firm friend of Mangum and presented him many rare specimens of ceramics, which cannot now be duplicated.
Mangum sailed for America November 10, 1872, and his last visit to North Carolina was in the spring of 1873. He reached Japan on his return July 16, 1873, and resumed his duties at Nagasaki. In the Spring of 1874 he was chosen sole arbitrator in the case of the Takashima coal mines, a matter which involved England, Holland and Japan in many intricate and opposing views and had been long in the courts. No satisfactory conclusion
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seeming possible, it was decided to submit the whole matter to three arbitrators, one to be chosen by each nationality; but, on comparing the nominations, it was found that Mangum had been chosen by each, a singular and remarkable proof of the esteem in which he was held. His decision was rendered the following summer and was acceptable to all.
Mangum's health was always more or less delicate, and with the hope that a colder climate would restore him, he was trans- ferred to Tien-Tsin, in North China, March 29, 1880. He left Japan in September of that year, but the colder climate failed to do what was hoped from it, and he died in Tien-Tsin, February II, 1881. He was temporarily interred at that port, but was later, removed to America and reinterred in the Congressional cemetery in Washington City.
He was long dean of the consular corps in Nagasaki and was held in high esteem by his colleagues. He was of a pleasant, courteous disposition, dignified, but genial and charming in con- versation, and while energetic and business-like in important affairs, in unessential things was disposed to the doctrine of laissez faire. He was elected March 20, 1866, a non-resident mem- ber of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and on June 30, 1876, for long services rendered to his consulate, was decorated by the King of Portugal with the Royal Portuguese Military Order of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He was highly esteemed by resident and visiting Americans and the Japanese soon learned to consult with and trust him in many matters of im- portance outside of his consular duties. Although long a non- resident, Mr. Mangum never forgot the State of his nativity. That he considered it his home to the last is shown by the filing of his will for probate in Wake, the county of his birth.
Mr. Mangum married in Washington, D. C., on October 24, 1855, Miss Fannie Vaulx Ladd, daughter of Joseph Brown Ladd and Harriet Vaulx Conway, widow of Major W. H. Nicoll, U. S. A. No children were born to this marriage. Mrs. Mangum was a woman of decided literary tastes ; she was an artist, and an authority on ceramics and conchology and to some extent on
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numismatics. She gathered an extensive and costly library and made a great collection of ceramics from China and Japan, many of them being in costly patterns, gifts from distinguished person- ages, which can no longer be procured or produced. She made also a great and valuable collection of shells. Her collections were in part destroyed by fire ; the remainder, after being somewhat aug- mented by other selections from the East, were presented to the University of North Carolina. She presided over the social life of the foreign residents in Nagasaki, accompanied her husband in all his travels, brought back his body to America, and spent her last days in Washington City, where she died in 1901.
This sketch is made up from a sketch printed by Mrs. Mangum in the North Carolina University Magasine in 1890, and from materials in possession of the family.
Stephen B. Weeks.
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P.H. Manguno
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PRIESTLEY HINTON MANGUM
RIESTLEY HINTON MANGUM, one of the most progressive agriculturalists of the State, P was born on August 21, 1829, in Wake Forest Township, Wake County. The Mangums are of Welch extraction, the first of the name com- ing to America being John Mangum, who emi- grated to this country from Wales. The family early settled in Orange County, where its members were highly esteemed for their capacity and sterling worth. Mr. P. H. Mangum, Sr., graduated in the same class as his brother, Willie P. Mangum, at the Uni- versity of North Carolina in 1815, and studied law. He repre- sented Orange County in the Legislature of 1832, but he was not drawn into a public career like his more gifted brother, who became one of the most distinguished of North Carolinians. Mr. Willie Mangum was an orator of the first class and a jurist who was an ornament to the bench, and a statesman who reflected great honor on the people of North Carolina. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1831, and again in 1841 and again in 1847. In 1837 South Carolina cast all of her electoral votes for him for President. And five years later, when Vice-President Tyler had succeeded to the Presidency, Mr. Mangum, who was esteemed as one of the most distinguished of the Senators, was by the choice of his fellow-members elected President of the Senate and continued to hold that position for three years ; and it has been
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