USA > Ohio > Putnam County > A Portrait and biographical record of Allen and Putnam counties, Ohio, containing biographical sketches of many prominent and representative citizens, together with biographies and portraits of all the presidents of the United States, and biographies of the governors of Ohio, pt 1 > Part 6
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In 1823, when twenty-three years of age, he was admitted to the court of common pleas. He then went to the village of Aurora, and commenced the practice of law. In this secluded, peaceful region, his practice, of course, was limited, and there was no oppor- tunity for a sudden rise in fortune or in fame. Here, in the year 1826, he married a lady of great moral worth, and one capable of adorn-
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ing any station she might be called to fill- Miss Abigail Powers.
His elevation of character, his untiring in- dustry, his legal acquirements, and his skill as an advocate, gradually attracted attention; and he was invited to enter into partnership, under highly advantageous circumstances, with an elder member of the bar in Buffalo. Just before removing to Buffalo, in 1829, he took his seat in the house of assembly, of the state of New York, as a representative from Erie county. Though he had never taken a very active part in politics, his vote and his sympa- thies were with the whig party. The state was then democratic, and he found him- self in a helpless minority in the legislature, still the testimony comes from all parties, that his courtesy, ability, and integrity, won, to a very unusual degree, the respect of his asso- ciates.
In the antumn of 1832, he was elected to a seat in the United States congress. He en- tered that troubled arena in some of the most tumultuous hours of our national history. The great conflict respecting the national bank and the removal of the deposits was then raging.
His term of two years closed, and he re- turned to his profession, which he pursued with increasing reputation and success. After a lapse of two years he again became a candi- date for congress; was re-elected, and took his seat in 1837. His past experience as a repre- sentative gave him strength and confidence. The first terin of service in congress to any man can be but little more than an introduc- tion. He was now prepared for active duty. Fillmore was now a man of wide repute, and his popularity filled the state, and in the year 1847 he was elected comptroller of the state.
Fillmore had attained the age of forty- seven years. His labors at the bar, in the legislature, in congress, and as comptroller,
had given him very considerable fame. The whigs were casting about to find suitable can- didates for president and vice president at the approaching election. Far away, on the waters of the Rio Grande, there was a rough old soldier, who had fought successful battles with the Mexicans, which had caused his name to be proclaimed in trumpet-tones all over the land. But it was necessary to asso- ciate with him, on the same ticket, some man of reputation as a statesinan. Under the influence of these considerations, the names of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore became the rallying cry of the whigs, as their candi- dates for president and vice president. The whig ticket was signally triumphant. On the 4th of March, 1849, Gen. Taylor was inaugu- rated president, and Millard Fillmore vice president, of the United States.
On the 9th of July, 1850, Pres. Taylor, but one year and four months after his inaugura- tion, was suddenly taken sick and died. By the constitution, Vice Pres. Fillmore thus be- came president. He appointed a very able cabinet, of which the illustrious Daniel Web- ster was secretary of state.
Fillmore had very serious difficulties to contend with, since the opposition had a ma- jorty in both house. He did everything in his power to conciliate the south; but the pro- slavery party in the south felt the inadequacy of all measures of transient conciliation. The population of the free states was so rapidly in- creasing over that of the slave states that it was inevitable that the power of the govern- inent should soon pass into the hands of the free states. The famous compromise meas- ures were adopted under Fillmore's administra- tion, and the Japan expedition was sent out. On the 4th of March, 1853, Fillmore, having served one term, retired.
In 1856, Fillinore was nominated for the presidency by the "know nothing" party, but
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was beaten by Mr. Buchanan. After that Fillmore lived in retirement. During the ter- rible conflict of civil war he was mostly silent. It was generally supposed that his sympathies were rather with those who were endeavoring to overthrow our institutions. He lived to a ripe old age, and died in Buffalo, N. Y., March 8, 1874.
RANKLIN PIERCE, the fourteenth president of the United States, was born in Hillsborough, N. H., November 23, 1804. Franklin was a very bright and handsome boy, generous, warm-hearted and brave. He won alike the love of old and young. The boys on the play ground loved him. His teachers loved him. The neigh- bors looked upon him with pride and affection. He was by instinct a gentleman; always speak- ing kind words, doing kind deeds, with a peculiar unstudied tact which taught him what was agreeable. Without developing any pre- cocity of genius, or any unnatural devotion to books, he was a good scholar; in body, in mind, in affections, a finely developed boy.
When sixteen years of age, in the year 1820, he entered Bowdoin college at Bruns- wick, Maine. He was one of the most popu- lar young men in the college. The purity of his moral character, the unvarying courtesy of his demeanor, his rank as a scholar, and genial nature, rendered him a universal favorite. There was something very peculiarly winning in his address, and it was evidently not in the slightest degree studied; it was the simple out- gushing of his own magnanimous and loving nature.
Upon graduating, in the year 1824, Frank- lin Pierce commenced the study of law in the office of Judge Woodbury, one of the most distinguished lawyers of the state, and a man of great private worth. The eminent social
qualities of the young lawyer, his father's promince as a public man, and the brilliant political career into which Judge Woodbury was entering, all tended to entice Mr. Pierce into the fascinating, yet perilous, path of po- litical life. With all the ardor of his nature he espoused the cause of Gen. Jackson for the presidency. He commenced the practice of law in Hillsborough, and was soon elected to represent the town in the state legislature. Here he served for four years. The last two years he was chosen speaker of the house by a very large vote.
In 1833, at the age of twenty-nine, he was elected a member of congress. Without tak- ing an active part in debates, he was faithful and laborious in duty, and ever rising in the estimation of those with whom he was associ- ated. In 1837, being then but thirty-three years of age, he was elected to the senate of the United States, taking his seat just as Mr. Van Buren commenced his administration. He was the youngest member in the senate. In the year 1834 he married Miss Jane Means Appleton, a lady of rare beauty and accom- plishments, and one admirably fitted to adorn every station with which her husband was honored. Of the three sons who were born to them, all now sleep with their parents in the grave.
In the year 1838, Mr. Pierce, with growing fame and increasing business as a lawyer, took up his residence in Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. President Polk, upon his accession to office, appointed Mr. Pierce at- torney-general of the United States; but the offer was declined in consequence of numerous professional engagements at home and the precarious state of Mrs. Pierce's health. He also about the same time declined the nomina- tion for governor by the democratic party. The war with Mexico called Mr. Pierce to the ariny. Receiving the appointment of briga-
FRANKLIN PIERCE.
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dier-general, he embarked with a portion of his troops at Newport, R. I., on the 27th of May, 1847. He took an important part in this war, proving himself a brave and true soidier.
When Gen. Pierce reached his home in his native state he was received enthusiastically by the advocates of the Mexican war, and coldly by its opponents. He resumed the practice of his profession, very frequently tak- ing an active part in political questions, giving his cordial support to the pro-slavery wing of the democratic party. The compromise meas- ures met cordially with his approval; and he strenuously advocated the enforcement of the infamous fugitive-slave law, which so shocked the religious sensibilities of the north. He thus became distinguished as a "northern man with southern principles." The strong partisans of slavery in the south consequently regarded him as a man whom they could safely trust in office to carry out their plans ..
On the 12th of June, 1852, the democratic convention met in Baltimore to nominate a candidate for the presidency. For four days they continued in session, and in thirty-five ballotings no one had obtained a two-thirds vote. Not a vote thus far had been thrown for Gen. Pierce. Then the Virginia delega- tion brought forward his name. There were fourteen more ballotings, during which Gen. Pierce constantly gained strength, until, at the forty-ninth ballot, he received 282 votes, and all other candidates eleven. Gen. Winfield Scott was the whig candidate. Gen. Pierce was chosen with great unanimity. Only four states-Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Tennessee-cast their electoral votes against him. Gen. Franklin Pierce was there- fore inaugurated president of the United States on the 4th of March, 1853.
His administration proved one of the most stormy our country had ever experienced. The
controversy between slavery and freedom was then approaching its culminating point. It became evident that there was an "irrepress- ible conflict" between them, and that the nation could not long exist "half slave and half free." President Pierce, during the whole of his administration, did everything he could to conciliate the south; but it was all in vain. The conflict every year grew more and more violent, and threats of the dissolution of the Union were borne to the north on every southern breeze.
On the 4th of March, 1857, President Pierce retired to his home in Concord. Of three children, two had died, and his only sur- viving child had been killed before his eyes by a railroad accident; and his wife, one of the most estimable and accomplished of ladies, was rapidly sinking in consumption. The hour of dreadful gloom soon came, and he was left alone in the world without wife or child.
Such was the condition of affairs when Pres. Pierce approached the close of his four years' term of office. The north had become thoroughly alienated from him. The anti- slavery sentiment, goaded by great outrages, had been rapidly increasing; all the intellectual ability and social worth of Pres. Pierce were forgotten in deep reprehension of his adminis- trative acts. The slaveholders of the south, also, unmindful of the fidelity with which he had advocated those measures of government which they approved, and perhaps, also, feel- ing that he had rendered himself so unpopular as no longer to be able acceptably to serve thetn, ungratefully dropped him, and nomi- nated James Buchanan to succeed him.
When the terrible rebellion broke forth, which divided our country into two parties, Mr. Pierce remained steadfast in the principles which he had always cherished and gave his sympathies to that pro-slavery party with which he had ever been allied. He declined
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to do anything, either by voice or pen, to strengthen the hand of the national govern- ment. He continned to reside in Concord until the time of his death, which occurred in October, 1869. He was one of the most genial and social of men, an honored communicant of the Episcopal church, and one of the kind- est of neiglibors. Generous to a fault, he con- tributed liberally for the alleviation of suffer- ing and want, and many of his townspeople were often gladdened by his material bounty.
J AMES BUCHANAN, the fifteenth presi- dent of the United States, was born in Franklin county, Pa., on the 23d of . April, 1791. His father was a native of the north of Ireland; a poor man, who had emigrated in 1783, with little property save his own strong arms. Five years afterward he married Elizabeth Spear, the daughter of a respectable farmer, and, with his young bride, plunged into the wilderness, staked his claim, reared his log hut, opened a clearing with his ax, and settled down to perform his obscure part in the drama of life. In this secluded home, where James was born, he remained for eight years, enjoying but few social or intel- lectual advantages. When James was eight years of age his father removed to the village of Mercersburg, where his son was placed at school, and commenced a course of study in English, Latin and Greek. His progress was rapid, and at the age of fourteen he entered Dickenson college at Carlisle. Here he de- veloped remarkable talent, and took his stand among the first scholars of the institution. His application to study was intense, and yet his native powers enabled him to master the most abstruse subjects with facility. In the year 1809, he graduated with the highest honors of his class. He was then eighteen years of age;
tall and graceful, vigorous in health, fond of athletic sport, an unerring shot, and enlivened with an exuberant flow of animal spirits. He immediately commenced the study of law in the city of Lancaster, and was admitted to the bar in 1812, when he was but twenty-one years of age. Very rapidly he rose in his pro- fession, and at once took undisputed stand with the ablest lawyers of the state. When but twenty-six years of age, unaided by coun- sel, he successfully defended before the state senate one of the judges of the state, who was tried upon articles of impeachment. At the age of thirty it was generally admitted that he stood at the head of the bar.
In 1820 he reluctantly consented to run as a candidate for congress. He was elected, and for ten years he remained a member of the lower house. During the vacations of congress, he occasionaily tried some important case. In 1831 he retire : altogether from the toils of his profession, having acquired an ample fortune.
Gen. Jackson, upon his elevation to the presidency, appointed Mr. Buchanan minister to Russia. The duties of his mission he per- formed with ability which gave satisfaction to all parties. Upon his return, in 1833, he was elected to a seat in the United States senate. He there met, as his associates, Webster, Clay, Wright and Calhoun. He advocated the measures proposed by Pres. Jackson, of making reprisals against France, to enforce the payment of our claims against that country; and defended the course of the president in his unprecedented and wholesale removal from office of those who were not supporters of his administration. Upon this question he was brought into direct collision with Henry Clay. He also, with voice and vote, advocated ex- punging from the journal of the senate the vote of censure against Gen. Jackson for re- moving the deposits. Earnestly he opposed
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the abolition of slavery in the District of Co- lumbia, and urged the prohibition of the circu- lation of anti-slavery documents by the United States mail.
Upon Mr. Polk's accession to the presi- dency, Mr. Buchanan became secretary of state, and as such took his share of the respon- sibility in the conduct of the Mexican war. Mr. Polk assumed that crossing the Nueces by the American troops into the disputed territory was not wrong, but for the Mexicans to cross the Rio Grande into that territory was a declara- tion of war. Mr. Buchanan identified himself thoroughly with the party devoted to the per- petuation and extension of slavery, and brought all the energies of his mind to bear against the Wilmot Proviso. He gave his approval of the compromise measures of 1850, which in- cluded the fugitive slave law. Mr. Pierce, upon his election to the presidency, honored Mr. Buchanan with the mission to England.
In the year 1856, a national democratic convention nominated Mr. Buchanan for the presidency. The political conflict was one of the most severe in which our country has ever engaged. All the friends of slavery were on one side; all the advocates of its restriction and final abolition on the other. Mr. Fre- mont, the candidate of the enemies of slavery, received 114 electoral votes. Mr. Buchanan received 174, and was elected. The popular vote stood 1, 341, 264 for Fremont, 1, 838, 160 for Buchanan. On March 4, 1857, Mr. Bu- chanan was inaugurated. Mr. Buchanan was far advanced in life. Only four years were wanting to fill up his three score years and ten. His own friends-those with whom he had been allied in political principles and action for years-were seeking the destruction of the government, that they might rear upon the ruins of our free institutions a nation whose corner stone should be human slavery. In this emergency, Mr. Buchanan was hope-
lessly bewildered. He could not, with his long avowed principles, consistently oppose the state-rights party in their assumptions. As president of the United States, bound by his oath faithfully to administer the laws, he could not, without perjury of the grossest kind, unite with those endeavoring to overthrow the republic. He therefore did nothing. Mr. Buchanan's sympathy with the pro-slavery party was such, that he had been willing to offer them far more than they had ventured to claim. All the south had professed to ask of the north was non-interference with the sub- ject of slavery. Mr. Buchanan had been ready to offer them the active co-operation of the government to defend and extend the in- stitution. As the storm increased in violence, the slave holders claiming the right to secede, and Mr. Buchanan avowing that congress had no power to prevent it, one of the most piti- able exhibitions of governmental imbecility was exhibited the world has ever seen. He declared that congress had no power to enforce its laws in any state which had withdrawn, or which was attempting to withdraw from the Union. This was not the doctrine of Andrew Jackson, when, with his hand upon his sword hilt, he exclaimed: "The Union must and shall be preserved."
South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, nearly three months before the inauguration of Pres. Lincoln. Mr. Buchanan looked on in listless despair. The rebel flag was raised in Charleston; Fort Sumter was besieged; our forts, navy yards and arsenals were seized; our depots of military stores were plundered; and our custom houses and post offices were appropriated by the rebels. The energy of the rebels, and the imbecility of our executive, were alike marvelous. The nation looked on in agony, waiting for the slow weeks to glide away and close the administration, so ternbie in its weakness. At length the long looked
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for hour of deliverance came, when Abraham Lincoln was to receive the scepter.
The administration of President Buchanan was certainly the most calamitous our country has experienced. His best friends cannot re- call it with pleasure. And still more deplor- able it is for his fame, that in that dreadful conflict which rolled its billows of flame and blood over our whole land, no word came from his lips to indicate his wish that our country's banner should triumph over the flag of the rebellion. He died at his Wheatland retreat, June 1, 1868.
A BRAHAM LINCOLN, the sixteeeth president of the United States, was born in Hardin county, Ky., Febru- ary 12, 1809. About the year 1780, a man by the name of Abraham Lincoln left Virginia with his family and moved into the then wilds of Kentucky. Only two years after this emigration, still a young man, while work- ing one day in a field, he was stealthily ap- proached by an Indian and shot dead. His widow was left in extreme poverty with five little children, three boys and two girls, Thomas, the youngest of the boys, was four years of age at his father's death. This Thomas was the father of Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States, whose name must henceforth forever be enrolled with the most prominent in the annals of our world.
When twenty-eight years of age Thomas Lincoln built a log cabin of his own, and mar- ried Nancy Hanks, the daughter of another family of poor Kentucky emigrants, who had also come from Virginia. Their second child was Abraham Lincoln. The mother of Abra- ham was a noble woman, gentle, loving, pen- sive; created to adorn a palace, doomed to toil and pine, and die in a hovel. "All that I
am, or hope to be," exclaims the grateful son "I owe to my angel mother."
When Abraham was eight years of age, hi father sold his cabin and farm, and moved to Harrison county, Ind, where two years late his mother died. Abraham soon became the scribe of the uneducated community around him. He could not have had a better schoo than this to teach him to put thoughts int( words. He also became an eager reader. The books he could obtain were few; but these he read and re-read until they were almost com- mitted to memory. As the years rolled on, the lot of this lowly family was the usual lot of humanity. There were joys and griefs, wed- dings and funerals. Abraham's sister, Sarah, to whom he was tenderly attached, was mar- ried when a child of but fourteen years of age. and soon died. The family was gradually scattered. Thomas Lincoln sold out his squatter's claim in 1830, and emigrated to Macon county, Ill. Abraham Lincoln was then twenty-one years of age. With vigorous hands he aided his father in rearing another log cabin. Abraham worked diligently at this until he saw the family comfortably settled, and their small lot of inclosed prairie planted with corn, when he announced to his father his intention to leave home, and to go out into the world and seek his fortune. Little did he or his friends imagine how brilliant that fortune was to be. He saw the value of educa- tion and was intensely earnest to improve his mind to the utmost of his power. He saw the ruin which ardent spirits were causing, and became strictly temperate; refusing to allow a drop of intoxicating liquor to pass his lips. And he had read in God's word, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain;" and a profane expression he was never heard to utter. Religion he revered. His morals were pure, and he was uncontaminated by a single vice.
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Young Abraham worked for a time as a hired laborer among the farmers. Then he went to Springfield, where he was employed in building a large flat-boat. In this he took a herd of swine, floated them down the Sanga- mon to the Illinois, and thence by the Missis- sippi to New Orleans. In this adventure his employers were so well pleased, that upon his return they placed a store and mill under his care. In 1832, at the outbreak of the Black Hawk war, he enlisted and was chosen captain of a company. He returned to Sangamon county, and although only twenty-three years of age, was a candidate for the legislature, but was defeated. He soon afterward received from Andrew Jackson the appointment of post- master of New Salem. His only postoffice was his hat. All the letters he received he carried there ready to deliver to those he chanced to ineet. He studied surveying and soon made this his business. In 1834 he again became a candidate for the legislature, and was elected. Mr. Stuart, of Springfield, ad- vised him to study law. He walked from New Salem to Springfield, borrowed of Mr. Stuart a load of books, carried them back and began his legal studies. When the legislature assem- bled he trudged on foot with his pack on his back 100 miles to Vandalia, then the capital. In 1836 he was re-elected to the legislature. Here it was he first met Stephen A. Douglas. In 1839 he removed to Springfield and began the practice of lav'. His success with the jury was so great that he was soon engaged in al- most every noted case in the circuit.
In 1854 the great discussion began between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas, on the slavery question. In the organization of the republi- can party in Illinois, in 1856, he took an active part, and at once became one of the leaders in that party. Mr. Lincoln's speeches in opposi- tion to Senator Douglas in the contest in 1858 for a seat in the senate, form a most notable
part of his history. The issue was on the slavery question, and he took the broad ground of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. Mr. Lincoln was de- feated in this contest, but won a far higher prize-the presidency.
The great republican convention met at Chicago on the 16th of June, 1860. The del- egates and strangers who crowded the city amounted to 25,000. An immense building, called "The Wigwam," was reared to accom- modate the convention. There were eleven candidates for whom votes were cast. William H. Seward, a man whose fame as a statesman had long filled the land, was the most prom- inent. It was generally supposed he would be the nominee. Abraham Lincoln, however, received the nomination on the third ballot. Little did he then dream of the weary years of toil and care, and the bloody death, to which that nomination doomed him; and as little did he dream that he was to render services to his country which would fix upon him the eyes of the whole civilized world, and which would give him a place in the affections of his coun- trymen, second only, if second, to that of Washington.
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