USA > New Mexico > Men of our day; or, biographical sketches of patriots, orators, statemen, generals, reformers, financiers and merchants, now on the stage of action > Part 33
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Senator Trumbull is of a somewhat cold temperament, and
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though from conviction a Republican, he was conservative in his tendencies. In the last session of the XXXVIth Congress -December, 1860, to March, 1861-he opposed secession with decision and firmness, yet advocated conciliation ; and though he did not believe the Constitution needed amending, he was ready to vote for a convention to consider amendments. For- tunately for the cause of freedom, and unquestionably controlled in this by him who causes "the wrath of man to praise him," the southern leaders were not to be coaxed or soothed. They were determined on war, believing that through it they should obtain the complete ascendancy ; and, as one of them said, they would not have staid in the Union if they could have had carte blanche to dictate their own terms.
The temporary weakness which had caused the knees of some of the Republicans to smite together, and made them willing to accede to what would have been disgraceful compromises, passed away, and when the shock came, and war was actually begun, they stood shoulder to shoulder, and wondered at their own firmness. Mr. Trumbull had never been particularly timid, but his whole feelings were averse to war, and he had hoped to pre- vent it. Yet when it came, he was firm and true. In the new Senate, he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of which he had been, from his entrance into the Senate, a member, and he acted with judgment and promptness in bringing forward such measures as the occasion demanded. On the 24th of July, 1861, Mr. Trumbull moved, as an amendment to the confisca- tion bill, then under consideration, a provision "that whenever any person, claiming to be entitled to the service or labor of any other person, under the laws of any State, shall employ said person in aiding or promoting any insurrection, or in resisting the laws of the United States, or shall permit him to be so em- ployed, he shall forfeit all right to such service or labor, and the
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person whose labor or service is thus claimed, shall be thence- forth discharged therefrom, any law to the contrary notwith- standing." This amendment and the confiscation act passed the Senate, but was opposed in the House, and after long discussion, a substitute for it, proposed by Mr. Bingham, embodying the same principle, but more definite in its details, was passed. When this was returned to the Senate, Mr. Trumbull moved a concurrence with the House, and the amended bill was then passed. This was, for the time, a bold move on the part of Mr. Trumbull, though such has been the progress of opinion since that time, that it seems very weak and timid to us.
As the war progressed, his faith, like that of most of his party, in the eventful triumph of universal freedom, grew stronger; and, throughout the war, he was found in the front rank, with Sumner and Wilson and Wade and Harlan, in the development and advocacy of measures looking to the over- throw of slavery, and the protection of the wards of the nation. He advocated and defended the Emancipation Proclamation, sustained the act suspending the habeas corpus, reported the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in the form in which it finally passed, (abolishing slavery throughout the Union,) defended the first Freedmen's Bureau bill, and attached to it an amendment providing for permanent confiscation of rebel pro- perty; drew up, or materially modified, the second and third Freedmen's Bureau bills, matured and presented the Civil Rights bill, and devoted much labor and time to the perfecting and advocacy of the reconstruction aets.
It is sad to have to record, amid so many praiseworthy acts, one which cannot be commended; but, as impartial historians, we must say that Mr. Trumbull's course, in regard to the trial of the President on the articles of impeachment, presented by the House of Representatives, surprised and grieved all his
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friends. His conversation, before and at the commencement of the impeachment trial, had been such as to convince all his acquaintances that he was in favor of the conviction of the President. The evidence and arguments presented were such as to satisfy men who were fully his peers in legal learning and judicial ability; but his vote against impeachment might have been deemed only an error of judgment, the result of an over- nice hesitation on some law points, but for his conduct in regard to it. His colleague (Senator Yates) and his fellow Senators had received from him no hint of his intended opposition, and were led to suppose, from his outgivings, that he was sure for conviction, while the President himself, two days before the decision, informed other persons how he would vote, and declared that he spoke from positive knowledge; and it subsequently transpired that he had been for many days engaged in preparing a defence of his course, which, while carefully and elaborately worded, was such a piece of sophistry and special pleading as he would have severely rebuked, if it had been offered by any member of the bar, when he presided on the bench. The mo- tives which led a man so highly esteemed and fully confided in by the Republican party to disappoint so cruelly their hopes, it is not for us to scan. We only know that, by this act, he has alienated the affections of those who have hitherto delighted to do kim honor.
HON. SAMUEL C. POMEROY,
U. S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS.
ISITORS to the galleries of the United States Senate are almost always attracted by the genial and healthful, yet intellectual face and portly, massive form of one of the Senators, a man on whose broad brow the cares of more than fifty years sit gently, and whose eye lights up with humor, pathos, or stern resolution, as the debate in the Senate goes on. His hair and beard are slightly flecked with gray, but the broad shoulders, the robust, manly form, and the impression he gives of strength and repose, mark him as good for two score years or more, at least, of service in the republic. Yet this genial, healthy-looking Senator, has passed through more vicis- situdes, been exposed to more perils and dangers, and has led for years a life of more constant and harassing anxiety than any other man in the Senate. He is the Senator from Kansas (we had almost said the only one, since his colleague has proved so unworthy of confidence), and, more than this, he is the founder of that young and gallant State.
SAMUEL C. POMEROY was born in Southampton, Massachu- setts, January 3d, 1816. He is the seventh child of Samuel Pomeroy. His early education was obtained in the public schools of Southampton, and he fitted for college at Greenfield and Shelburne academies. He entered Amherst college, but, after spending some time there, left without graduating, and
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entered upon a mercantile partnership, with a Mr. Bissell, in Onondaga county, New York. This partnership was not of long continuance, and Mr. Pomeroy removed, prior to 1840, to South Butler, Wayne county, New York.
At South Butler, Mr. Pomeroy found his vocation. It was in the year 1840, that Alvan Stewart, one of the most eloquent apostles of the anti-slavery cause, William Goodell, Frederick Douglass, Samuel R. Ward, Henry Highland Garnet, and a few others, set about the organization of a political anti-slavery party, in the Northern States. Stewart lectured at South Butler, and Pomeroy, then a young man of twenty-four, became a convert to the faith, which he proceeded to exemplify by his works. He issued a call for a county Liberty-party Convention, to be held at Lyons, the county seat. On the day appointed, Mr. Pomeroy drove to Lyons, a distance of twenty miles, in his own wagon, and, on arriving, found an audience of two persons beside himself, a Mr. Snow and a livery-stable keeper. After waiting an hour for other delegates to come in, and none ap- pearing, Mr. Pomeroy called the meeting to order, Mr. Snow taking the chair, the livery-stable man acting as secretary, and Mr. Pomeroy delivering the speech. Resolutions were then adopted, and a county ticket nominated, which at the ensuing election received eleven votes, in a population of twenty thou- sand souls. But these eleven felt, as Alvan Stewart said, in one of his speeches : "Twenty years hence, it will be glory enough for any man to say, 'I was right on this question in 1840.' "
Six years later, the Wayne county Liberty-party ticket car- ried the election. Meantime, however, Mr. Pomeroy, who had lost his young wife and child, had been recalled to the old homestead, in Southampton, in 1842, where his aged parents needed his care. Here, while diligent in business, he was an active propagandist of his anti-slavery principles. Year by
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year he gained ground, and brought over new converts to the faith-and, in 1844, he became the candidate of the Liberty party for a seat in the Massachusetts Legislature. For eight years the conflict continued, and each year the vote increased, till, in the autumn of 1852, he was elected. That Legislature put George S. Boutwell into the governor's chair, and sent Henry Wilson to the United States Senate. The friends of freedom were encouraged, and felt that the day of compromises was ended. It was amid this excitement in Massachusetts, this moral earthquake which overthrew the conservatism which had for years ruled the State, that the General Government arrested and remanded to slavery, Anthony Burns, a man of color, in the city of Boston. The occasion fired the heart of the earnest Pomeroy, and he gave utterance to those burning words, which roused the people of Massachusetts, as one man, to oppose slavery to the death.
"Sir," said he, addressing the speaker, "when you have another man to enslave, do it as you did before, in the gray of the early morning; don't let in the light of the brighter day upon the scene, for the sun would blush, if you did not, and turn his face away to weep. What ! return a man to hopeless slavery !- to a condition darker than death, and more damning than perdi- tion! Death and the grave are not without their hope; light from the hill tops of immortality crosses their darkness and bids the sleepers wake, and live, and hope; and perdition with its unyielding grasp has no claims upon a man's posterity. But remorseless slavery swallows up not the man alone, but his hapless offspring through unending generations, forever and forevermore !"
Then came the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill by Congress, after a long and fierce debate. This quickened the pulse of the North to fever heat. They had borne, though not
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without great indignation, the enormities of the Fugutive Slave law, but to see the Missouri Compromise repealed, and this broad, fertile territory given over to slavery, was more than they could endure. The cry of " no more slave territory" was raised, and swept over the land with the swiftness of the whirl- wind. In this great movement, Mr. Pomeroy took, from the first, an active part. About the time of the passage of the bill, he was in Washington, and his call upon the President happened to be at the very hour of his signing it; in fact, the ink with which a faithless President had signed an infamous act, was not yet dry upon the parchment. "Sir !" said Mr. Pomeroy to the President, " this measure which has passed, is not the triumph you suppose ; it does not end, but only commences hostilities. Slavery is victorious in Congress, but it has not yet triumphed among the people. Your victory is but an adjournment of the question from the halls of legislation at Washington to the open prairies of the freedom-loving West ; and there, sir, we shall beat you, depend upon it."
The South, secure in their possession of the President, and their majority in Congress, had resolved, by fraud and force, to obtain possession of Kansas, and make it a slave State. The North, and especially New England, took up the gauntlet thus thrown down by the South, and determined to make it a free State. Eli Thayer had started the project of organized emi- gration, procured a charter from the Massachussetts Legislature, and under it, organized the "New England Emigrant Aid Company," of Boston.
Of this company, Mr. Pomeroy immediately became the agent, accepting the arduous and responsible duty of financial, as well as that of general agent. The pressing want felt by everybody, from the first, was information about the new territory. To this the Emigrant Aid Company addressed itself
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without delay, collecting and scattering broadcast items of news about Kansas, its history, soil, climate, distance, routes by which to reach it, time required, expense, etc., etc., besides procuring tickets in quantity, at reduced rates, for emigrants. In all this, Pomeroy took an active part, distributing pamphlets, lecturing everywhere, and by word and deed stimulating all who could, to make the sacrifice, and start for Kansas. In this way, recruits for freedom were soon enlisted, and Pomeroy undertook to be their Moses to the promised land. It is not every man who could assume responsibilities of this kind, situated as he then was, or who would feel it to be his duty to do so. After the death of his first wife, Mr. Pomeroy had re- mained a widower for some years, but finally married again. At the time of which we write, this wife lay ill upon a bed to which she had been confined for two years. To think of parting, under such circumstances, was indeed a trial. But if the Christian faith which impelled him to the sacrifice was heroic, not less admirable was the spirit of his suffering wife. She not only counseled, but urged him to go, feeling that in this way, she, in her feebleness and waiting, might also by the sacrifice be made a participant in his noble deeds; as Milton finely expresses it :-
" Those also serve who only stand and wait."
On the 27th of August, 1854, the first company of Kansas emigrants, under the load of Mr. Pomeroy, left Boston for their far-distant prairie home. They were nearly a week on their journey ; at various points of which, they were welcomed by the friends of the enterprise, and at Rochester were formally presented with a Bible and spelling book, as the symbols of New England liberty. They pitched their tents at the point where the city of Lawrence now stands, and Mr. Pomeroy commenced
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the erection of a steam saw-mill. A second colony came soon after, and were guided by Mr. Pomeroy to Topeka. .
Meantime, Governor A. H. Reeder had been appointed, by President Pierce, chief magistrate of the territory, and had arrived at Lawrence, where he was welcomed by Mr. Pomeroy on behalf of the colonists. Governor Reeder proved a friend to the colonists, although he periled his life in doing so, for Jefferson Davis, Pierce's principal adviser, pursued the Kansas emigrants and their friends with the same malignant hate which he manifested toward the North during the late war.
Through the influence of this man's infamous counsels, numerous bands of armed ruffians were sent from the South to the borders of Kansas, in Missouri and Arkansas; and by frauds, murders, robberies, and a general system of terrorism, sought to thrust a slave constitution upon the new State. Governor Geary, Governor Reeder's successor, became, like him, a convert to the principles of the emigrants. He too was, therefore, superseded, and Robert J. Walker appointed; but even he did not prove so supple a tool as the southerners hoped. They, however, shot the settlers, outraged the women, burned their houses, and plundered their property, sacked the flourishing town of Lawrence, and sought to make this blooming territory a desert.
Mr. Pomeroy, as the leader of the Kansas emigrants, was subjected to great trials and dangers, during the year 1856, from these border-ruffians. Beaten, arrested, and twice imprisoned, threatened with death, and sentenced by a mob to be hung, he escaped through all, because Providence had still other work for him to do. He found it necessary to arm the settlers, that they might defend themselves against the ruffians, who feared nothing so much as a loaded Sharps' rifle. Thus armed, they put to flight the armies of the border-ruffians, and with the close of
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the year 1856, they had so far dispersed their foes, that there was little more occasion to fear the irruption of brute force. But the tactics were changed under Mr. Buchanan. What force had failed to effect, it was hoped might be accomplished by political management. Here, however, they were destined to another defeat. Pomeroy had fixed his eye upon Atchison, a border- ruffian town, above Leavenworth, and was determined to trans- form it into a citadel of freedom. He bought a part of the town and the ferry, purchased the newspaper, the Squatter Sove- reign, which a ruffian, of the name of Stringfellow, had esta- blished, and made it a free State paper, and stumped the State against the Lecompton Constitution. The frauds, by which it was attempted to force that document upon the people, were too stupendous and glaring to be concealed, and it was defeated even in a Democratic Congress.
Mr. Pomeroy was elected, in 1859, mayor of Atchison, and the next year re-elected. In 1860, Kansas was visited by a terrible famine, and General Pomeroy, as he was now called, was called on to undertake the relief of the people. He came at once to their rescue, organized town committees in every town, and distributed relief to the amount of more than a million of dollars, so wisely and justly, that the people all regarded him as their benefactor. His political enemies called him Seed Corn (S. C.) Pomeroy, from the quantity of seed wheat and corn he distributed to the farmers of the State; but the people were content to plant this seed corn in the fertile soil of the United States Senate, and accordingly sent him thither, from March 1861 to March 1867, and in the latter year re-elected him for six years more.
In the Senate Mr. Pomeroy's course has always been brave, manly, and consistent. He is a radical in the best sense of that word, and may always be found on the right side of every
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great moral question. Twelve days after taking his seat in the Senate, viz., on the 16th of July, 1861, he electrified the Senate and astonished the border States men and northern Democrats, by offering a "Bill to suppress the Slaveholders' Rebellion." This was the first time this phrase had ever been applied to the war, and great was the wrath of the defenders of slavery; but the Senator from Kansas had comprehended the whole question in a word, and he was too brave and plucky to be alarmed by their outcries. He defended the phrase and de- monstrated its appropriateness so forcibly, that it has stuck from that day to this. The death of General Lyon, who had been his particular friend, drew from him a most eloquent and touching eulogy, in the course of which he paid a deserved tribute to the bravery and tenacity of the Kansas troops under Lyon.
On a resolution respecting the jail of the District of Columbia, Mr. Pomeroy made a speech, in which he demonstrated most conclusively, that slavery had no legal status in the District. He objected to pay the masters, even when loyal, for their slaves liberated, under the act for emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia, but proposed a system of accounting, by which the slave should be credited with his labor against the master's advances. He has ever been watchful on all questions involving slavery, or the condition of freedmen ; has advocated, earnestly and eloquently, the homestead act, both on account of; its own intrinsic justice, and because it was the best safeguard against slavery in the territories; insisted on justice being done to the colored troops, and on all the great questions which have come before the Senate, during the past seven years, his views have been those of the statesman and philanthropist.
An intimate friend says of him : "True to principle, true to his convictions, true to his country, and terribly true to his
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country's foes, he occupies to-day, as Senator of the United States, a proud position among his peers-a position that honors both representative and the represented. As a patriot, he is earnest ; as a statesman, logical; as a politician, consistent; and as a man, genial, generous, and just. Always self-possessed, and always patient, no man ever yet found him in a hurry, or ever caught him save 'ON TIME.' His hand is never closed except in friendship; and the latchstring of his heart is always hanging out ! Proudly and truly may he exclaim, (in reference to his consistent course on the subject of slavery,) and upon his tomb- stone, let it be written-
'I WAS RIGHT ON THIS QUESTION IN 1840 !'"
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CORNELIUS COLE.
ORNELIUS COLE was born in Seneca county, New York, September 17th, 1822. His grand-parents pene- trated the wilderness of western New York in the year 1800, when his father, David Cole, was but twelve years of age, and his mother, Rachel Townsend, but ten. His mother was a native of Dutchess county, and his father of the State of New Jersey. Early in life he was afforded such reasonable educational facilities as thrifty farmers in New York afford their sons, but manifested no unusual aptness for learning, unless it was for mathematics. He was scarcely yet seventeen years old, when a practical surveyor moved in the neighborhood of his father, and proposed to instruct some of the boys in his art. Flint's Treatise on Surveying was procured, and in eigh- teen days young Cole, without assistance, went through it, working out every problem, and making a copy of each in a book prepared for the purpose.
In the following spring, the instructor having died, the sub- ject of this sketch entered into practice as his successor, execut- ing surveys in the country about.
It was after this that he began in earnest his preparations for college, first in the Ovid academy, and afterward at the Genesee Wesleyan seminary. He spent one year at Geneva college, but the balance of his collegiate course was passed at the Wesleyan
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university, in Connecticut, where he was graduated in the full course in 1847.
After a little respite, he entered upon the study of law, at Auburn, New York, and was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of that State, at Oswego, on the 1st of May, 1848.
After so many years of close application to study, recreation was necessary, and an opportunity for it was presented by the discovery of gold in California. On the 12th of February, 1849, he, in company with a few friends, left his native town for a journey across the continent. On the 24th of April, the party, consisting of seven persons, crossed the frontier of Mis- souri, and entered upon the open plains.
At Fort Laramie the wagons of the company were abandoned. and the rest of the journey was made with pack and saddle animals alone. Arriving at Sacramento city, then called the Embarcadero, on the 24th of July, after a few days of rest, he resorted to the gold mines in El Dorado county, and worked with good success till winter, often washing out over a hundred dollars a day. When the rainy season set in, he first visited San Francisco, and in the following spring began the practice of the law there.
While absent in the Atlantic States, in 1851, two most de- struetive fires visited that city, and he returned to find himself without so much as a law book, or paper upon which to write a complaint. He visited some friends at Sacramento, and unex- pectedly becoming engaged in law business, opened an office there. Though he had been active in the political campaign in New York, in 1848, on the Free-soil side, he took little or no part in politics in California, beyond freely expressing his anti- slavery opinions, until his law business became entangled in it, in this way :- Certain negroes had been brought out from Mis- sissippi, and having earned much money for their masters, were
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discharged with their freedom. Afterwards they were seized by some ruffians, with the purpose of taking them back to slavery. Cole unhesitatingly undertook their defence, and thus brought down upon himself the hostility, not only of the claimants, but of all their sympathizers, from the highest officers of the State, down to the lowest dregs of society. California was at that time as much subject to the slave power, as any portion of the Union.
About this period, he was united in marriage to a young lady of many accomplishments,-Miss Olive Colegrove, who came from New York, and met him at San Francisco, by appoint- ment.
He contended vigorously with the elements of opposition in politics, which were carried into his profession, till 1856, when the Presidential campaign opening, he was urged by the Fremont party, to edit the "Sacramento Daily Times," the organ of the Republicans for the State. The paper was conducted to the entire satisfaction of the party, and at the same time commanded the respect of the Democrats and Know-nothings. After the election, its publication was suspended, Mr. Cole being compelled to return to his profession for the support of his family.
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