USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Memorial history of Syracuse, N.Y. : from its settlement to the present time > Part 34
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cessor. I remember that such Whig boys as Carroll E. Smith and myself regarded him as a sort of Satan incarnate. The attacks upon him by his old associates took shapes which showed the depth of this feeling. Appa- rently in order to build up a party for himself he proceeded to turn out the Whig incumbents of many of the minor offices, and to fill their places with men supposed to be devoted to him. In those days it was really supposed by leading men that such a course would secure for a President his re-elec- tion. The Whig newspapers were wild with rage. The same editors who only a few months before had lauded and magnified John Tyler as one of the greatest statesmen in American history now announced his changes in the offices under the head of "Appointments by Benedict Arnold," or " New Appointments by Judas Iscariot." Four years later came the Clay campaign. That, too, was carried on with great vigor ; but the procedure was changed. People seemed to have sickened of the whole apparatus of log cabins, hard cider barrels, latch strings hung out, rolling balls, and all the rest of it: the only emblems of importance now were the hickory poles erected by the Democrats and the ash poles erected by the Whigs; the former having reference to "Old Hickory," General Jackson; and the latter to " Ashland," the residence of Henry Clay. I remember feeling as a boy of twelve that the republic was nearly lost when one sad night the Demo- cratic boys cut down the ash tree of the Whig boys in South Salina street. The rallying place of the Whig party during the campaign of 1844 was a large barrack of rough hemlock boards on the site of the St. Charles Hotel Building, now the University Block, at the corner of Washington and Warren streets. Eminent among the speakers of both campaigns were William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore, Francis Granger, Attorney General of the United States in Harrison's administration, and John A. Collier, who held various high offices. On the Democratic side appeared such men as Silas Wright, Daniel Dickinson, John A. Dix, and many statesmen who have mainly passed from men's memories.
The manager of the Whig side at Syracuse in those days was the late Vivus W. Smith. He was in close relations with Governor Seward and Thurlow Weed; but they were relations which implied no servile devotion to one or the other. Mr. Smith was a man of vigor and wisdom as a writer and adviser in political matters, so that throughout Syracuse and the region round about his voice, so far as the Whig party was concerned, was all- controlling.
An interesting episode in the memories of the boys of that period was the return of soldiers from the Mexican war. A break in the canal upon the long level east of the city caused the stoppage of a great number of canal boats conveying soldiers who were on their way back to their homes.
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Their talk made a great impression upon us all; but what dwells on my memory especially is their denunciation of their Colonel, Caleb Cushing, who served the country afterward with such distinction during the civil war, as a lawyer, and who was nominated to the position of Chief Justice of the United States, but failed to secure a confirmation from the Senate. Very remarkable, too, was the coming back of some of the officers, and above all the interment with military honors of Captain Kirby Smith, who fell in the battle of Molino del Rey just as he was leading his troops tri- umphantly into the Mexican capital. It was the noble ending of a noble life, and deep feeling was shown throughout the village at this loss. How could we foresee that the prattling child he had left in Syracuse would rise to be a colonel in the United States army, would also fall in battle for his country, and receive a soldier's funeral from the sons of those who had formerly done honor to the remains of his father !
Entertainments in those days were few and simple. There was a " mu- seum," with a considerable number of doubtful curiosities, in the upper story of the building which now forms the south wing of the Syracuse House block in Salina street. But shortly afterward the building was changed into a hall, known as Library Hall or Lyceum Hall, and there lectures were given which were quite largely attended. A few men, distinguished in sci- ence or literature, from distant places, were from time to time secured ; but home talent was mainly relied upon, and some of those lectures by our fel- low citizens made so deep an impression upon us all that I have often won- dered since why it has not occurred to some of our more thoughtful citi- zens of late years to try the same experiment again. Certainly in no country in the world are there more strange experiences and masses of quaint information "lying around loose " among men whom one meets daily in life than in this country, and nowhere in this country more than in ener- getic towns like Syracuse. Anything like a theater was as a rule discour- aged by very nearly the whole community. The only theatrical represen- tations which were welcomed by any considerable of the citizens took the shape of "moral exhibitions," depicting the downward career of the drunkard.
Communications of the little village with the rest of the world were in those days few and far between as compared with those which we enjoy at present. With Cortland and other counties of the south, and with the Oswego and Lake Ontario regions of the north, the only communications were by routes which in all seasons of the year except summer were very bad, indeed at times almost impassable. As a small boy I had occasion to learn this to my cost, having been upset in a Cortland stage coach near Onondaga Hollow, narrowly escaping with my life. A large scar on the
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Respectfully N= A . Beach
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side of my head still reminds me of the condition of the roads of those days. Still I cannot say that improvement in our ordinary country roads has been such that our citizens have any cause to congratulate themselves upon it to-day. The great change has been wrought by the building of railways north and south, as well as by the perfecting of them east and west. As to the chain of railways which now forms the New York Cen- tral, a single track, made of strap rails, connected Syracuse with Auburn on the west and Utica on the cast. In winter but one passenger train was sent out daily ; in summer there were two. The train for Utica left in summer at half-past five in the morning, and for several years Syracusans who went to Saratoga Springs for a short stay in summer congratulated themselves that by thus leaving at half-past five in the morning they arrived at Saratoga as early as half-past six in the evening. It was thought a very great exploit thus to cover one hundred and sixty miles in thirteen hours. The most rapid trains ran at the rate of about fifteen miles an hour, and the largest trains were made up of three or four small box cars in which the seats ran from side to side. These seats were covered with brown leather, passengers sitting face to face, very much as they had done in the stage coaches ; and a great epoch was created when a " long car," as it was called, with diamond-shaped windows and with seats all facing the same way, was put upon the Auburn road. This, which could not have been more than half the length of the Pullman car of the present day, carried all the passengers from Syracuse westward for some years. A journey from one extremity of the State to the other was in those days a serious matter in- deed. The passenger, starting from Buffalo, first took the train over the Attica and Buffalo road ; at Attica he was changed to the Batavia and At- tica ; at Batavia, to the Rochester and Batavia ; at Rochester, to the Auburn and Rochester; at Auburn, to the Auburn and Syracuse; at Syracuse, to the Utica and Syracuse ; at Utica, to the Utica and Schenectady ; at Sche- nectady, to the Mohawk and Hudson, when, having been drawn part of the way by locomotives and then pulled up and let down two inclined planes by stationary engines, he was landed in Albany where he might take the boat. In making such a trip people generally stopped over, not only at Albany, but at Syracuse, where Rust's Hotel was famous.
Westward from Buffalo in those days men journeyed by lake steamers, and they regarded the journey to Cleveland or Detroit as a far more serious matter than they now consider a trip to London or Paris. Railway travel- ing being so much interrupted, and the cost being so much higher that at present, the canal packet was for a few years preferred by a large part of the traveling public, and the leading event of those days with the Syracuse youth of various ages, and indeed with a considerable number of the grown
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up part of the community, was the arrival and departure of the packet boats at the canal basin, close to the Salina street bridge. The boats themselves were long and trim, and seemed, to the simple views of people then, luxu- riously furnished. The captain, whether on board his vessel or in the streets of Syracuse, was a personage: far and near men spoke with pride, even with awe, of such great men as Captain Myers, Captain Daniel Brom- ley, Captain Stewart, Captain Wellington, and others. As I remember them, they were a fine body of men ; courteous, affable, very thoughtful as regarded the care of the passengers entrusted to them, and not without the sterner qualities which go to make up strong men. Fighting their way among the rough boatmen all along the canals, and especially through the locks from Buffalo to Albany, had undoubtedly developed in them much fertility of resources and courage in danger. I have since seen many fine ships upon various seas, but none that dwell in my memory as more beau- tiful than one of the better canal packets, its deck covered with passen- gers, dashing along the canal at the rate of six miles an hour, drawn by three trotting horses, handsome in build, matched in color, and gaily har- nessed.
Postal facilities at that period were also vastly inferior to those enjoyed at present. Postage was rated according to distance, and I remember well that when from time to time I took to the postoffice a letter from a mem- ber of the family to a relative near Sandusky, in Ohio, I always paid twenty- five cents for postage. Postage stamps were a thing unknown. The money in ordinary circulation was also very inferior to that of the present day. The silver was almost entirely Spanish; "sixpences" and "shillings," from which the inscriptions were generally completely worn off by use, were the common small coin ; dines were very rarely seen. Much of the larger circulating medium was made up of the notes of distant banks, especially of banks situated at little known places in the swamps of Michigan. The re- sult was that every man in business on receiving paper money had to study with great care his bank note journal and counterfeit detector. Between the varieties of doubtful notes and the poor engraving of that period brokers throve and counterfeiters flourished at the expense of the public at large. There was little, if any, effective system guarding the interest of the bank note holder ; everybody was subject to much loss, not only on coun- terfeits, but on bills of broken banks. Few of the present generation rea- lize what an immense service was rendered to every man and woman in this country, and especially to the artisans and laborers, by Secretary Chase and his compeers when they established the national bank system with the paper currency now in use.
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Among the great events of the year were the parades of the volunteer fire companies and military organizations-especially the former. In these large numbers of the most prominent citizens paraded in their various uni- forms, and it was on this account that the explosion of gunpowder in 1842 marked such an epoch in the village. The circumstances having doubtless been referred to in this history, I will simply say that this event of nearly fifty years ago dwells in my mind as vividly as if it were yesterday. The terrible roar of the explosion, the sudden disappearance of the glare which up to that momnent had filled the sky, and then, next morning, the sight of the dead carried along the streets or lying among the ruins, will remain for- ever fixed in my memory.
There were also in that period two other events, or rather expected events, which made much commotion in the village. First of these was the prophecy widely circulated that on a certain day and at a given hour Syra- cuse and all the country for ten miles around would sink. I remember the feeling of dread in our little school when the hour approached, and the feel- ing of relief when it was well past. The other prophecy was that of Will- iam Miller, who, after years of study in the Old Testament, announced the exact time when the world would end. As the time approached the "Mil- lerite " meetings became very fervent, and on the appointed day the believ- er's assembled in their "ascension robes " in various places, and especially upon the roof of the Granger Block ; but that day and night went by-as did other days and nights to which Miller adjourned the vast catastrophe, and at last the meetings ceased.
Noteworthy, too, was the great temperance movement of those times. Speakers of great power came from throughout the State, and their ad- dresses had a remarkable effect upon multitudes. Among these apostles Messrs. Pollard and Wright were especially prominent. A favorite place for these earlier assemblages was the railroad depot, which occupied the larger part of what is now Vanderbilt Square ; as so few trains entered and left it, this great wooden enclosure was during many hours of the day free for public meetings.
The political campaign of 1848 was also a noteworthy point in the de- velopment of Syracuse. The village had then become virtually a city, and on account of its central position in the State was generally chosen for the nominating conventions of both the greater parties, as well as by vari- ous bodies of political men struggling to shape public opinion. Among my more vivid remembrances of that period is that of General Lewis Cass, the nominee of the Democrats for the I'residency. He arrived in Syracuse on a hot, dusty afternoon, just as he had received the news of the nomination
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of his old Democratic enemy, Martin Van Buren, by the Free Soil party. Ile knew, and those who received him with every show of triumph knew, and all the thinking people who lined the streets at his reception knew, that this nomination by the Free Soilers was the death knell to all his hopes. Certainly, of all the pitiable spectacles I have ever seen, that of this weary old public servant, dragged along the streets of Syracuse in apparent tri- umph, but really in utter dejection, was the most striking. In the follow- ing year his rival, General Taylor, who had been elected to the Presidency, came through the town upon the railroad, and I remember gazing at him, with the other boys of my age, as he sat at the window of his car very near the site now occupied by the Vanderbilt House. The State conventions of various parties, at that time, were held at the City Hall, and were a source of unfailing interest to the youth of the community. Of all the speakers of that period John Van Buren and General James W. Nye were I think the most admired. Yet a much deeper feeling was stirred in the hearts of many of the young men by the conventions of the Liberal party and other kindred organizations. In these such men as Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phil- lips, Frederick Douglass, John P. Hale, and Samuel J. May frequently spoke, and unquestionably to their speeches was mainly due the fact that, imperceptibly, Syracuse became a great center of anti-slavery thought. Not even the wild rhetorical antics of Abby Kelly Foster could so disgust the thoughtful youth of the time as to drive him away from these conven- tions, and not even such a winning speech as that which I once heard made by Henry Clay from the balcony of the Syracuse House, or such powerful arguments as those addressed by Daniel Webster to the citizens of Syracuse from a window in the present Courier Building, could resist this current of thought from these "fanatics," who assembled from time to time in the City Hall. The prosecutions which followed the Jerry Rescue case, so far from crushing the anti-slavery spirit, really increased it, and before long it was evident that the larger part of the old Whig party and a very considerable part of the old Democratic party were ready to join in the new movement against the extension of slavery. This of course greatly enlivened for us the meetings of the party conventions. The struggles between the Old Hunkers and Barnburners in one organization, and between the Silver Grays and Woolly Heads in the other, afforded opportunities for remarkable displays of skillful tactics and impassioned oratory.
Although Syracuse has grown very largely since those days, and holds a most honorable place in the business of the country, I doubt whether at any period in its history the town has been relatively of so much import- ance in public affairs as in those early days of the anti-slavery struggle.
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The public debates then held, the Jerry Rescue case, and the struggles in the great conventions attracted the attention of the whole country, and a Syracusan in any part of the land was immediately drawn into a discussion of the great political issues of the period.
This volume may fittingly be concluded with the following extract from an address delivered July 4, 1876, on the occasion of the centennial cele- bration, by the Hon. Thomas G. Alvord. The celebration was a mammoth affair, and the exercises took place in Hanover Square, under the direction of the Hon. Daniel Pratt. In concluding his address Mr. Alvord spoke prophetic as well as strongly contrasting and descriptive words :
"Compared with the huts of our fathers our habitations are palaces ; they dot every hilltop, they nestle in every valley ; they stand in the seried ranks in our beautiful and growing city, and cluster around the school and the church in all our smiling and thriving villages; our thrifty husbandmen look upon countless herds of lowing cattle, on seas of waving grain, on graneries bursting with the rich and bounteous yield of their fertile acres ; our merchants in their stately marts of commerce gather from the ends of the earth the produce of every soil, the handiwork of savage and civilized, all creations of nature and art to satisfy the wants and gratify the tastes of our people ; the unceasing hum of the manufacturer's wheel, the contin- uous blows of the sturdy artisan and stalwart laborer chase solitude from all our borders ; our water highways link us with the lakes of our own West, and give us peaceful entrance to the great ocean which rolls between us and the land of our fathers; highways of iron rib our country north, south, east, and west, broad avenucs run by the doors of the humblest, and commerce, with its white wings of peace, has blotted out forever the war- path of the savage and the tree-marked way of the hardy pioneer. Re- ligion dwells in more than an hundred temples of beauty dedicated to the service of the living God. Education, from the lordly towers of the princely university to the more humble school-house of the cross-roads, boasts its many habitations. We are the central county of the Empire State, which ranks first in wealth, first in population, first in representation among her sister States of our Union. Of sixty, our county is seventh in population and wealth, and in the fifth rank in State representation. * Chil- dren of the soil, adopted sons and daughters of old Onondaga, is this noble heritage of our fathers, this free and equal government given to us to enjoy by the brave, good, and wise men of an hundred years ago, worth preserv- ing another hundred years ? No human being I now address will witness
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the scenes at that celebration ; the voice of him who now addresses you will be silent in the grave ; the beating hearts and active limbs of this vast multitude will have gone to their last quiet mortal sleep forever. The men of the Revolution gave us and our children this day at the cost of suffering and tears, wounds and death. Where are they ? The last surviving war- rior and statesman who stood on the battlements of freedom's citadel, and conquered for us the banded hordes of tyranny and oppression, has gone to join the hosts of heaven's freemen in another and a better world. Can we not take their finished work and keep and preserve it untarnished, un- broken, beautiful, enlarged, and more glorious and endearing, for our chil- dren's children ? ៛ * ៛ Let us to this end, from this day, practice economy and industry, cultivate intelligence, make virtue the rule and guide of our private and public life. Triumphant armies inscribe their banners with the names of their victorious fields of battle. May we give as our legacy to the next great anniversary of our country's birth the stars of our nation's banner undimmed, its stripes untarnished, rightfully inscribing thereon as our faith, kept pure and unsullied, our motto-won by our acts -Religion, Education, Free Labor, the only sure foundation on which to build for perpetuity Republican institutions."
PART II.
BIOGRAPHICAL
BIOGRAPHICAL.
H JON. CHARLES ANDREWS, Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, was born in New York Mills, Whitestown, Oneida county, N. Y., on the 27th of May, 1827. After attending the commen schools his education was finished at the Seminary of the Oneida Confer- enee at Cazenovia. Adopting the law for a profession he acquired its principles and familiarized himself with their application in the office of Sedgwick & Outwater, in Syracuse. He was admitted to the bar in January, 1849, and began practice at Syracuse, where legal business was then rapidly extending. As the chief central position on the Erie canal and the terminus of the Oswego branch, and the center of rapidly growing manufactures, including the salt industry, the young city had re- ceived large aceessions in population and wealth. The Onondaga County Bar had long been eon- spicuous for its talent and at the time under consideration contained many distinguished lawyers. In IS51, Mr. Andrews entered into partnership with Charles B. Sedgwick, under the firm name of Sedgwick & Andrews. In 1853, he was elected District Attorney of the county for a period of three years. In 1855, George M. Kennedy was admitted to partnership with Messrs. Sedgwick & Andrews, and the firm thus existed until the elevation of Mr. Andrews to the Bench of the Court of Appeals in 1870. In 1861, he was elected Mayor of Syracuse and re-elected in the following year ; and again in 1868 he was elected to that responsible office. Mr. Andrews, with other prominent citizens, lent their influence and aid to secure the location of Syracuse University in the city, and Mr. Andrews was appointed one of the five Trustees representing Syracuse ; his official connection with this insti- tution still continues. In 1867, he was elected as delegate at large to the Constitutional Convention of this State. He was elected Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals May 17, 1870, and began his term on the ist of July of that year. When Chief Judge Folger retired in ISSI, to accept the Secretaryship of the Treasury, Judge Andrews was appointed his successor by Governor Cornell. At the polls of the next year his name was offered on the Republican ticket for election to this high- est judicial office of the State ; but he was defeated by his opponent, William C. Ruger, esq. In 1884. Judge Andrews was re-elected Associate Judge of the Court for a second term of fourteen years, having been nominated with the late Judge Rapallo by both political parties. The honorary degree of LL. I). has been conferred upon Judge Andrews by Hamilton and Columbia Colleges.
In 1855, Judge Andrews was married to the daughter of the late Judge Shankland, of Cortland. They have two children.
GEORGE BARNES has been President of the State Bank of Syracuse, President Trust and De- posit Company of Onondaga, President the Whitman & Barnes Manufacturing Company until compelled in 1887, by failing health, to resign them. He was born in the municipal borough of Tenterden, county of Kent, England, October 1, 1827. He came to America in April, 1844, and in July of that year began studying law with Wilkinson & Bagg, then the leading lawyers of Syra- cuse. Mr. Wilkinson, at that time, was the President of the Syracuse and Utica railroad, and Mr. Barnes early became identified with the management of the same. Ife began his services as junior
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