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 34
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49
During the following four years, he was the California mem- ber of the Republican National Committee, and an active mem- ber of every convention of his party, always taking strong ground against both the Breckinridge and Douglas wings of the opposition, and never consenting to any party affiliation with either.
In 1859, he was elected district attorney for the city and county of Sacramento, being about the only Republican elected to any office in California that year.
His administration of that office, during the two years for which he was elected, was in the higest degree satisfactory to
437
CORNELIUS COLE.
the people, and the subject of frequent favorable comment by the profession.
In 1862, he visited the theatre of the war, but before his re- turn to the Pacific, had been named for Congress, and the following year was elected, receiving 64,985 votes. In the XXXVIIIth Congress, he was eminently successful in securing results beneficial to the States of the Pacific slope. He was a member of the committee on the Pacific railroad, and of the committee on Post-offices and Post-roads. As a member of the latter committee he origintated the project for the mail steam- ship service, between San Francisco and the East Indies, known as the China mail line. 'The success of this great measure is attributable to his exertions. His speech upon the subject was concise and at the same time comprehensive and convincing.
We quote a few lines from it :
" The Chinese and Japanese alike are remarkable for their ingenuity and industry, both of which contribute to the value and extent of their productions. They have little of the dash and none of the recklessness of Americans, but possess in an eminent degree many of the more sober and solid virtues of our race. Their commerce is worth untold millions. It is the richest prize ever placed before a nation. It is within our reach, and the question to be determined is, have we the wisdom to grasp it ?
" The people of America should not fall behind the monarch- ies of the old world in taking hold of these powerful agencies of wealth and civilization. This project is next in grandeur to that which makes our country free. It will bring San Fran- cisco in close neighborhood with the East Indies; and when the Pacific railway is completed, New York and the eastern coast will be but little further away. Then these two great sister cities of America, the one sitting on the Atlantic looking eastward, and the other on the Pacific looking west, will control the commerce of the globe. Then ancient civilizations
438
MEN OF OUR DAY.
will succumb to the modern, monarchy to republicanism, and the old world to the new."
His speech, in favor of establishing a Mining Department at Washington, is likewise replete with sound arguments and sta- tistics.
In February, 1864, when our armies were in their most de- pressed condition, he made a very effective speech in favor of arming the slaves.
A passage or two, selected without care, will show its tenor :
"The people have not yet fully made up their minds that slavery, the Jonah of our ship, must go overboard. Gentlemen on the other side of the House seem exceedingly anxious to save some remnants of it; and if, for that end, they will discourage the enlistment of white men, how much more may they be ex- pected to oppose the enlistment of negroes, which at once strikes at the root of slavery, and saps the foundation of their party ? It will require greater audacity than most of the gentlemen ou that side of the House possess, to return to slavery a man, after he has fought for his country.
"In my judgment, this war is not nearly over. It possesses a most dangerous element of desperation ; and unless you are willing to totally discard the policy that at first, and for a long time, controlled it, by arming the slaves, you will not soon see the end. Already a thousand days and nights have the people waited and watched, but peace has not come. Hope has fre- quently brought it to our doors, but like a phantom has it fled again. Self-delusion may be pleasant, but it is a most unpro- fitable business. Armies will move in the spring ; other battles will be fought, and fields now unnamed, will become noted in the history of this war. Its greatest hero is perhaps still un- known to fame. You may depend upon it, peace has been already postponed by our acting upon the belief that it is near. We have turned aside to discuss the rights of traitors, to the forgetfulness of the more important rights of humanity."
Mr Cole was among the most earnest advocates of the
439
CORNELIUS COLE.
Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, and on the 28th of January 1865, made the following brief speech in its favor :
" The dominion of force is giving away to reason. The right ful relations of men to each other are being understood and acknowledged. Mutual reliance is a law of civil society, and there is no such thing as absolute independence among men. Whatever is beneficial to a portion, says the political philoso- pher, is beneficial to the whole community; and whatever is injurious to a portion is injurious to the whole. Every indi- vidual is, therefore, interested in the welfare of every other individual, and this without limitation or qualification. The obligation to render justice is as wide as the universe, and neither nation nor individual can override it with impunity. This rule has been recognized by the more enlightened Govern- ments in their action upon the subject of slavery. Much has been done within the last century to destroy this acknowledged evil, and the United States has not lagged behind in the work. She was the first to discard distinctions of blood, which all history proves to have been fruitful of oppression. She was the first to proclaim to the world the inalienable character of the right to liberty, and this in the face of powerful opposing interests. She was the first, also, to pronounce the trade in slaves upon the high seas to be piracy. Boldly taking the lead of older nations, and while yet in her infancy, like Hercules, she strangled white slavery in the Barbary States. She planted colonies on the coast of Africa in the very paths of slavery and the slave trade. The example she has presented of popular government has shaken the foundation of every throne in exist- ence. She has done far more than other nations to undermine oppression everywhere, and is doing more to-day than all of them combined. She had greater obstacles to overcome in the performance of this high duty, but she hesitated not to grapple with tyranny in all its Protean shapes ; and, by the favor of God, single-handed and alone, if need be, she will utterly destroy it from the face of the earth. Whatever othor nations may have done against slavery has been done under the constraint of the example set them by the United States of America, The grand
440
MEN OF OUR DAY.
old monarchies of Europe have followed, not led, in this matter. Their course in our present, and it is to be hoped final, struggle shows that their sympathies are with the oppressor. But jus- tice will triumph, freedom prevail, and liberty, exalted in this proud capital, will exert its proper sway over the whole world and for all time."
Mr. Cole enjoyed in a large degree the confidence of Mr. Lin- coln, and gave a hearty support to his administration, both in and out of Congress. He was not re-elected to the House of Representatives; but returned to California to be very generally named to succeed Mr. McDougall in the United States Senate, to which office he was chosen in December, 1865, with but little opposition.
HON. THADDEUS STEVENS,
MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM PENNSYLVANIA.
T is not often the case that an eminent political leader who has, either in local or general politics, maintained a position for years in the "forefront of the hottest battle," identified with the unpopular, as well as the popular measures of his party, and then withdraws for a series of years from political life, ever regains his old prestige and influence.
Mr. Stevens is, however, an exception to this, as to most other general rules. His early political triumphs were won in the prime and flush of manhood; and he was then regarded as the political Warwick of the State of his adoption. For ten of the best years of his life, he eschewed politics, and aside from sitting in Congress, when he was in a minority for two terms, he took no position of leadership until the close of 1859, when he was again a member of the House of Representatives, and though approaching, at that time, the three score years and ten, usually considered the limit of human life, and an almost constant sufferer from organic disease, he has been, for nine years past, the acknowledged leader of the Republican party in the House, and though at times, there have been signs of refractoryness among a few of his followers, he has invariably succeeded in bringing them into a state of subjection.
441
442
MEN OF OUR DAY.
THADDEUS STEVENS was born in Peacham, Caledonia county, Vermont, April 4th, 1792. The family were poor, and Thad- deus, when a child, was sickly and lame. His mother, however, believed in the abilities and future eminence of her feeble boy, and toiled with all her strength, yes, and beyond her strength, as many another New England mother has done, to secure for him the opportunity of acquiring an education. The boy was ambitious and full of high resolves, but so sensitive; and when his schoolfellows (schoolboys will be so cruel) laughed at him, and mimicked his limping walk, their ridicule rankled in his heart, and brought tears to his eyes. Who knows? The stern, hard man, whose sharp, bitter words lash so pitilessly the political offender, may owe something of his severity to the cruel experiences of those years of childhood.
" Where there is a will, there is a way," says the old proverb, and the poor lame boy of northern Vermont proved it, for, at the age of eighteen, he managed to qualify himself to enter Dartmouth college, where he graduated with honor, in 1814, and the same year removed to Pennsylvania, and commenced the study of law, teaching in an academy at the same time to sup- port himself. He was admitted to the bar, in Adams county, Pennsylvania, in 1816, and soon attained a good practice. At first he devoted himself to his profession, to the exclusion of politics, which, indeed, had, for some years, little interest for an ambitious and enterprising man. The election of John Quincy Adams to the presidency, and the bitter contests which followed, the triumph of the Democrats, in the election of General Jack- son, in 1828, and his decided action, roused the political fervor of Stevens, who was at that time a rising and well known law- yer in his section. He threw himself into the contest with all the zeal and ardor of his nature. He took sides with the Adams party, and when that party merged in the Whig party, he was a
443
HON. THADDEUS STEVENS.
Whig of the Whigs. But, for some years, he preferred not to be a candidate for any office. In 1833, however, he consented to run for the Legislature, and was elected by a large majority, as he was, also, in 1834, 1835, 1837 and 1841. In 1836, he was a member of the convention to make a new Constitution; but being then, as always since, hostile to slavery, he refused to sign the document, because it restricted suffrage on account of color. When this Constitution was adopted, he was chosen to the Legis- lature that followed. This was a time of intense political ex- citement. Mr. Van Buren was elected as General Jackson's suc- cessor, and Pennsylvania, which had been for some years Whig, was revolutionized the following year, and David R. Porter-a Democrat-was elected governor in place of Governor Joseph Ritner, who had been the chief magistrate for four years pre- vious. The two parties talked loudly, and both threatened vio- lence. Governor Ritner was so much alarmed that he called upon Congress for United States troops to put down an insur- rection, which he deemed imminent. The alarm proved unne- cessary. Governor Porter was quietly inaugurated, and though for a time two Legislatures were in session, Thaddeus Stevens (whom the Democrats styled "Governor Ritner's conscience keeper") being the leading spirit in one, and an equally ardent Democrat in the other, they finally coalesced without violence, and united in the choice of a speaker, and in other acts of legis- lation. In 1838, Mr. Stevens was appointed a canal commis- sioner, and managed, so far as he had the power, the system of internal improvements of Pennsylvania, with skill and ability.
In 1842, Mr. Stevens removed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which, since that time, has been his home. Here he has been largely engaged in manufacturing, and during the war, (in 1863, we believe,) his large and well-appointed manufactory was burned by the rebels, in revenge for his intense loyalty. For six years
444
MEN OF OUR DAY.
after his removal to Lancaster, Mr. Stevens took no part in poli- tics, but gave his whole time to his business.
In 1848, he suffered himself to be nominated for Congress, and was elected both to that and the next (XXXIInd) Congress, where he did valiant battle against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave law and the Kansas Nebraska abomination. The Democrats now gained the ascendancy, and Mr. Stevens was not again in Congress till 1859, having been elected by his district to the XXXVIth Congress. His constit- uents have been wise enough to re-elect him ever since, and he is now serving for his seventh term. His thorough political and legal knowledge, his skill in parliamentary tactics, his pow- erful and comprehensive intellect, his iron will, and his intense loyalty and radicalism, have all combined to make him the leader of his party, and his ascendancy is undisputed. It is true that, at times, his measures fail; less often in the XLth than in the XXXIXth Congress, yet occasionally even in that. But, while Mr. Stevens has his faults, and, among them, an im- perious will and a stern nature, firm almost to obstinacy, he possesses, in a higher degree than most men, those qualities which fit him to be, like Agamemnon, "a king of men."
During the whole war, he was firm and decided in his con- viction, that one great purpose of the war, on the part of Divine Providence, was to rid us of slavery, and, accordingly, we find him bringing forward and putting upon their passage measures and resolutions, looking to the overthrow of slavery. Among these were the Indemnity act; the XIIIth Amendment to the Constitution (prohibiting slavery throughout the United States) ; the Enrolment act; a bill to enlist one hundred and fifty thousand colored soldiers ; and, at an earlier period, a bill offer- ing to free all slaves who left their masters and aided in putting down the rebellion. As chairman of the Committee of Ways
445
HON. THADDEUS STEVENS.
and Means on the part of the House, he always advocated a broad and liberal financial policy, and seconded the efforts of Secretary Chase with great earnestness.
In the XXXIXth Congress he was chairman of the Commit- tee on Appropriations, an off-schoot of the old Committee on Ways and Means, and also of the Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction, and gave special attention to the passage of the XIVth Amendment of the Constitution-which, however, he complained, was emasculated in the Senate-to the Freedmen's Bureau bills, the Civil Rights bills, the Basis of Representation act, and the Reconstruction measures.
In the XLth Congress he lent the aid of his clear and judicial intellect to the perfecting of the measures of reconstruction, and the legislation which would most thoroughly favor these measures. His views on finance are generally regarded as less sound and satisfactory than on most other questions, and have not met with very general approval; but he has not, of late at least, urged them with so much zeal as formerly.
Since February 22, 1868, he has been very busily engaged in the preparation of the articles of impeachment against President Johnson, and in conducting the impeachment trial, of which he was one of the managers. His argument, in behalf of impeach- ment, is justly regarded as one of the ablest and most logical ever delivered before a court. It was prepared, too, amid great feebleness and infirmity of body, his condition being at times such, that his death was almost hourly expected ; but the style has lost nothing of its crispness or vigor by this constant pre- sence of pain ; every sentence is as incisive and keen, every epithet as carefully selected, every argument as concise and pointed, as if he had never known a day of illness. The power of the mind over the body was never more finely exemplified. Mr. Stevens early became the object of Mr. Johnson's hatred for
446
MEN OF OUR DAY.
his straight-forwardness, his integrity, and his intense loyalty and radicalism. So long ago as February 22, 1866, Mr. John- son, in his speech to the Washington mob, denounced him by name, and insisted that Stevens was desirous of assassinating him. He associated him then, as he did afterward at St. Louis, with Charles Sumner, and denounced both in unmeasured terms.
Mr. Stevens is, we need hardly say, an earnest advocate of impartial suffrage, both North and South. He has avowed himself in favor of General Grant for the Presidency, and though Benjamin Wade of Ohio was his first choice for Vice- President he will acquiesce with great cordiality in the nomina- tion of Mr. Colfax, between whom and himself the utmost cordiality exists.
Mr. W. H. Barnes, author of the " History of the XXXIXth Congress," well says of him : "His age-over seventy years- gave him the respect of members, the majority of whom were born after he graduated at college; the more especially, as these advanced years were not attended with any perceptible abate- ment of the intellectual vivacity or fire of youth. The evident honesty and patriotism with which he advanced over prostrate theories and policies toward the great ends at which he aimed, secured him multitudes of friends, while these same qualites contributed to make him many enemies. The timid became bold, and the resolute were made stronger in seeing the bravery with which he maintained his principles. He had a habit of going straight to the issue, and a rugged manner of presenting his opinions, coupled with a cool assurance, which one of his unfriendly critics once declared, "sometimes rose almost to the sublime."
There is often in Mr. Stevens's speeches a grim humor which is very telling. Thus, on one occasion, speaking of Mr. John- son's attempt to control the action of Congress in regard to the
4-47
HON. THADDEUS STEVENS.
XIVth Constitutional amendment, by holding a conversation with a Senator on the subject while it was pending, and assert- ing that no more Constitutional amendments were needed, and then causing this conversation to be published and circulated among members of Congress, Mr. Stevens said, "this authorized utterance was made in such a way, that, centuries ago, had it been made to Parliament by a British King, it would have cost him his head. But, sir, we pass that by ; we are tolerant of usurpation in this tolerant government of ours."
At another time, on the debate upon the reconstruction meas- ures, speaking of the section prohibiting rebels from voting till 1870, he said: "here is the mildest of all punishments ever inflicted on traitors. I might not consent to the extreme sever- ity denounced upon them by a provisional governor of Tennes- see; I mean the late lamented Andrew Johnson of blessed memory ; but I would have increased the severity of this section."
Yet again, speaking of the third section of the XIVth amendment of the Constitution as he had drawn it (it was much weakened in the passage through the Senate), and of the opposi- tion it had excited in the House, he said, "Do not, I pray you, admit those who have slaughtered half a million of our country- men until their clothes are dried, and until they are re-clad. I do not wish to sit side by side with men whose garments smell of the blood of my kindred."
Long may the veteran patriot yet live, and have the privi- lege of seeing his measures of justice accomplished, and a loyal chief magistrate presiding over the nation, ere he goes hence.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.
HE courage, pugnacity, fertility of genius, and patriotism, which enter so largely into the composition of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER, are his by inheritance. His grand- father, Captain Zephaniah Butler, of Woodbury, Con- necticut, fought under General Wolfe at Quebec, and served in the Continental army, during the entire war of the Revolution; while the general's father, John Butler, of Deerfield, New Hampshire, was a captain of dragoons in the war of 1812, and served for a while under General Jackson at New Orleans. And our hero's mother was of that doughty race of Scotch- Irish origin, to which belonged Colonel Cilley (also an ancestor of General Butler) "who, at the battle of Bennington, commanded a company that had never seen a cannon, and who, to quiet their apprehensions, sat astride of one while it was discharged."
John Butler, the ex-captain of dragoons, after the war, fol- lowed the sea-in the various capacities of supercargo, merchant or captain in the West India trade. In politics he was a full blooded Jeffersonian Democrat-one of eight representatives, only, of that party, in the town of Deerfield, whose Democracy isolated them, socially as well as politically, to a degree which is inconceivable to us of the present day, who knew New Hampshire a few years ago as the Democratic stronghold of New England. So that his son, Benjamin Franklin Butler,
448
449
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.
born at Deerfield, on the 5th of November, 1818, was also " born," as has been happily said, "into the ranks of an ab- horred but positive and pugnacious minority-a little Spartan band, always battling, never subdued, never victorious." Five months after his birth, the boy lost his father, who died in March, 1819, of the yellow fever, while his vessel was lying at one of the West India Islands.
His widow, a woman of true New England energy, supported her two boys by her individual exertions ; and, in 1828, removed to Lowell, then a young but thriving town of two thousand inhabitants ; where, by taking boarders, she was enabled to give Benjamin better educational advantages than he had before enjoyed. From the common school he passed to the High School and from thence to the Exeter Academy, where he pre- pared for college. If his own predilections had been consulted, he would have gone to West Point-but his mother, who, like all New England mothers, desired to see her boy in the ministry, consulted with her pastor, and by his advice Benjamin was sent to Waterville College, in Maine, an institution recently founded by the Baptist denomination. So, with the little occasional help received from a kind New Hampshire uncle, and the scanty earnings which he was able to secure from three hours' work per day, at chair-making, in the manual labor department of the college, he gained the ambition of his young manhood- an education, and left the college halls fully determined to be a lawyer.
Just then there came to him a special Providence-one which we might wish would come, in like circumstances, to every youth as he leaves his Alma Mater. A good-hearted uncle, " skipper" of a fishing smack, urged him to accompany him on a trip to the coast of Labrador, saying to him, "I'll give you a bunk in the cabin, but you must do your duty before the mast,
29
450
MEN OF OUR DAY.
watch and watch, like a man. I'll warrant you'll come back sound enough in the fall." So the pale-faced student accepted the kindly offer and returned from a four months' voyage with a fund of perfect health, which has lasted him ever since.
With renewed vigor the youth of twenty commenced the study of law, in the office of William Smith, Esq., of Lowell; and, being admitted to the bar in 1840, entered heart and soul into the practice of his chosen profession. He eked out his slender in- come by school teaching; he labored indefatigably eighteen hours out of the twenty-four; he joined the City Guard, a com- pany of the since famous Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts, and perseveringly worked his way through every regular gradation up to the rank of colonel. Work he craved-work he would have-and work he succeeded in getting. " All was fish that came to his net." "His speeches," says a personal friend, " were smart, impudent, reckless, slap-dash affairs, showing the same general traits which have characterized him as a lawyer and politician ever since he began his career. He very soon became a decided character in Lowell and Middlesex county. He made politics and law play into each other's hands; and while he denounced the agents and overseers of the mills as tyrants and oppressors, his office was open for the establishment of all sorts of lawsuits on behalf of the male and female operatives."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.