USA > Pennsylvania > Progressive Pennsylvania; a record of the remarkable industrial development of the Keystone state, with some account of its early and its later transportation systems, its early settlers, and its prominent men > Part 30
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In the first paragraph of this chapter we have refer- red to Mr. Carnegie as the most successful of all Ameri- can manufacturers. But he was an experienced railroad man before he was a manufacturer. His telegraphic ap- prenticeship led to his employment by Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the western division of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad, (Pittsburgh to Altoona,) as his chief tele- graph operator, which position he held for several years, during which time he gained an intimate knowledge of railroad management. Mr. Scott was appointed superin- tendent of this division on December 1, 1852, and held this office for five years, until December 31, 1857. On January 1, 1858, he was appointed general superintendent of the whole road, Joseph D. Potts succeeding Mr. Scott in charge of the western division and Mr. Carnegie con- tinuing in the position he had held under Mr. Scott. On November 30, 1859, Mr. Potts retired, and on December 1 of the same year Mr. Carnegie succeeded him as superin-
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tendent of the western division. Mr. Carnegie was then just 24 years old. For more than five years, until March 31, 1865, he served as superintendent, when he was suc- ceeded by Robert Pitcairn. Mr. Carnegie's term of serv- ice embraced virtually the whole period of the civil war. How arduous and important were his duties in connec- tion with the forwarding of troops and supplies for the Government during this long and distressing period can easily be imagined. When he retired from the office of superintendent in 1865 he had spent twelve years in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
After the breaking out of the war in 1861 Mr. Scott was called to Washington as Assistant Secretary of War, Simon Cameron being Secretary, but, before this call upon Mr. Scott was made, Mr. Carnegie, upon the recommenda- tion of Mr. Scott, was appointed assistant general mana- ger of military telegraph lines, serving at Washington in this capacity from April 23, 1861, to September 1, 1861, when he resumed his railroad duties. Like his chief, Mr. Scott, he had rendered valuable service in aiding the Government to meet the first shocks of the great struggle.
We add these details of Mr. Carnegie's railroad and telegraphic experience because they have been too much obscured by his phenomenal success as an iron and steel manufacturer ; indeed few persons know anything about his telegraphic or his railroad experience in early life.
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CHAPTER XXXII.
TWO MEN FROM SOMERSET.
As Is well known, most of the towns and cities of Pennsylvania were built upon its principal water courses, their founders having regard to the facilities for transpor- tation which were thus afforded before the days of canals and railroads or even good roads of any kind. Exceptions to this rule are found in those towns which were built a century or more ago upon the roads and turnpikes that connected the eastern and western parts of the State, these roads and turnpikes usually occupying high ground and following the most direct routes. Bellefonte, Ebens- burg, Somerset, Indiana, Greensburg, Uniontown, and Washington conspicuously owe their existence to roads and not to rivers. It is an interesting fact that towns so located, away from all the large cities but happening to be county-seats, have produced some of the brightest men of Pennsylvania. Members of the bar in these hill towns have been noted for their ability ; their politicians have forged to the front; and the average intelligence of all their inhabitants has been of a high order. In this chap- ter the reader's attention will be called to the record of two men from Somerset, both natives of that county- Dr. William Elder and Judge Jeremiah S. Black, notable men of whom Western Pennsylvania may well be proud. Both were large men and of commanding presence. Nei- ther of these men received a college education ; both were virtually self-educated. In addition to their other attain- ments both were accomplished writers and have left their impress upon the literature of their native State.
Dr. William Gore Elder, a native of the North of Ire- land, was the first physician to locate in the town of Som- erset. This was about 1795. His son, William Elder, was born in Somerset on July 23, 1806, and died in Wash- ington City on April 5, 1885. He passed his boyhood in Somerset and on a farm owned by his father. His only
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opportunity for mental culture was afforded by associa- tion with his father, the range of a fair private library, and the training of the ordinary country school. When about twenty years old he began the study of medicine with Dr. Deane, of Chambersburg, and after some delay he entered upon the practice of his profession, first at Cham- bersburg and afterwards in the Juniata valley. Dr. Elder was a graduate of Jefferson Medical College. But his liter- ary instincts, his talent for public speaking, and his inter- est in the political questions of the day soon led him into other fields. These influences eventually made him a law- yer, although he always had a strong love for the medi- cal profession and he never entirely relinquished its prac- tice. In 1838 he made many able speeches in support of the Whig and Anti-Masonic ticket in Pennsylvania. The warmth of the welcome extended to him in Pittsburgh induced him in that year to establish himself in that city in the practice of medicine. So forcible and effective was his oratory, and so popular did he become, that he was elected recorder of deeds for Allegheny county in Octo- ber, 1839, by a vote that was exceedingly complimentary. Dr. Elder was admitted to the bar at Bedford on August 24, 1842, on motion of Hon. Job Mann, and in the same year he began the practice of his new profession at Pitts- burgh, in which city he remained until after the great fire in 1845, when he removed to Philadelphia, which was ever afterwards his home.
Before he located at Pittsburgh and during his resi- dence in that city, and after his removal to Philadelphia, Dr. Elder ardently espoused the anti-slavery cause, and his eloquent voice in opposition to negro slavery and to its extension was heard from many platforms. He was identified with the Liberty party of 1844, the Free Soil party of 1848, and the Republican party of 1855 and subsequent years. In Philadelphia he first found conge- nial work for his pen in editing two anti-slavery papers, The Liberty Herald in 1847 and The Republic in 1848, at the same time in both years, as in previous years, speak- ing frequently from the stump. He continued his edito- rial work for many years after 1848. His pen found con-
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stant and congenial exercise in the preparation of arti- cles, signed "Senior," for The National Era, of Wash- ington City, in which he treated calmly and philosophic- ally the questions of the day. For this journal he pre- pared much editorial matter for a number of years, and occasionally served as its acting editor for considerable periods. He had gradually taken a lively interest in other public questions than the slavery question, writing fre- quently for the editorial columns of the New York Trib- une and for some Philadelphia papers. After the estab- lishment of the Philadelphia Press by John W. Forney in 1857 he contributed regularly to the editorial columns of that paper, his subjects taking a wide range but em- bracing chiefly financial and economic questions, includ- ing the advocacy of a protective tariff. During this pe- riod Dr. Elder and Henry C. Carey became warm friends. When the civil war began in 1861 Secretary Chase sent for Dr. Elder to help him to solve the great problem of paying the national debt, and he remained an official of the Treasury Department until 1866, when he resigned. In 1873 he returned to his work in the Department, re- maining until his death in 1885.
In 1860 Dr. Elder prepared for the Philadelphia Press a series of articles in explanation of the protective policy which were considered of sufficient importance to justify their publication in pamphlet form with the title of "The Doctrine and Policy of Protection." In June, 1863, at the request of the Union League of Philadelphia, he wrote a pamphlet entitled "Debt and Resources of the United States and the Effect of Secession upon the Trade and Industry of the Loyal States." This was the first work of the kind that undertook to demonstrate that the country could meet all the drain of the civil war and re- tain its solvency. The argument was triumphantly con- vincing. Large numbers of the pamphlet were soon cir- culated to help the sale of Government bonds. It was translated into several languages and produced a strong impression in European countries. Another pamphlet from his pen was published in 1865, entitled " How Our National Debt Can be Paid," and this was followed in a
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month by still another pamphlet styled " The Western States : their Pursuits and Policy." In 1870 he published a pamphlet under the title of "The American Farmers' Market at Home and Abroad," bearing immediately up- on the practical needs of the hour. After his return to the Treasury Department in 1873 Dr. Elder, in the line of his official duties, published many other pamphlets under such titles as " The Panic and Pressure of 1873," "The Causes of the Crisis," " The Growth and Reduction of Debt," and similar subjects that he was well able to dis- cuss. In those days pamphlet publications were largely relied on to educate the people and influence public opin- ion, recalling the pamphlet literature of the Revolution. David A. Wells published "Our Burden and Our Strength" in pamphlet form in 1864. Henry C. Carey wrote many pamphlets, as did also his father, Mathew Carey.
But Dr. Elder's literary activity was not confined to newspaper work or the preparation of pamphlets. The amount of literary work that came from his pen, all of good quality and of great variety, is really marvelous. His first ambitious literary venture to which we can as- sign an exact date was a contribution to Putnam's Maga- zine in 1854, entitled " General Ogle-a Character," which described in graphic and attractive style, and with strik- ing analytical power, one of the strong men of the Alle- ghenies in the early part of the last century. This sketch at once attracted wide attention among literary men. In the same year Dr. Elder published a volume of mis- cellaneous essays and sketches entitled Periscopics, and in 1855 what was really a second edition of this book appeared, but with a new name : it was entitled The Enchanted Beauty, and Other Tales, Essays, and Sketches, forty-six in all, including "General Ogle." Just when the "tales, essays, and sketches" composing these volumes were written does not appear, or where any of them, ex- cept " General Ogle," were previously published, if at all. Many of the essays are profoundly philosophical ; the sketches deal with every-day life and its manifold lessons ; of the tales " Elizabeth Barton" ranks with the best work of American story writers.
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In 1871 Dr. Elder published his great economic work, Questions of the Day : Economic and Social, which volume caused him to take rank at once with Alexander Ham- ilton, Henry C. Carey, and Stephen Colwell, the great American economic writers. Like them he claimed credit for the protective policy as one of the leading causes of national prosperity. The book covered almost the whole field of economic inquiry-wealth, wages, money, compe- tition and co-operation, protection and free trade, etc. It was a valuable contribution to the economic litera- ture of that day or of any day. Its chapters deal with the underlying principles of an advanced social system, and the facts he presented are as pertinent now as they were then. In 1882, three years before his death, Dr. Elder published another comprehensive work which he entitled Conversations on the Principal Subjects of Political Economy. As its name indicates, this volume was in- tended especially for the use of students-teacher, pupil, and disputant, as dramatis personæ, asking and answering questions. The range of topics discussed in this volume was wider than in its predecessor. The two books are properly complements of each other, and were probably intended to be. It is a pity that both are not more widely used as text-books in our colleges and universities instead of the writings of J. Stuart Mill and other English economists with free trade convictions. One of the great economic writers of the country Dr. Elder was par excel- lence the political economist of Western Pennsylvania.
Dr. Elder had an analytical and logical mind and he also possessed a fine talent for descriptive writing. Fancy and imagination were also present in a marked degree in his mental endowments. His conversational powers were remarkable. He had a genius for statistics, which is a rare trait in combination with the story-telling faculty and with oratorical gifts. Of his oratory the present gen- eration knows almost nothing, because it is now about fifty years since his voice was heard pleading for the ne- gro slave or advocating many policies in which his heart and brain were enlisted, the protective policy included. Probably the most notable of his eloquent appeals was
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made in behalf of Hungarian liberty at the banquet that took place in Musical Fund Hall, in Philadelphia, in honor of the Hungarian patriot, Louis Kossuth, on December 26, 1851. His speech was not reported, except very briefly, as was the custom of that day, but the Public Ledger of the following day said that " Dr. Elder made a powerful and eloquent speech, " to which Kossuth, "who was called for by a spontaneous cheer," happily replied. Recollec- tions of this incident of the banquet still survive in the memories of a few old Philadelphians.
Dr. Elder married early in life Sarah Maclean, a daughter of Moses Maclean, a leading lawyer of Gettysburg. Her mother was a grand-daughter of Hugh Alexander, who represented Cumberland county in the Convention of 1776 which framed the first Constitution of Pennsylvania.
Jeremiah Sullivan Black, who will always be referred to as Judge Black, was born on a farm in Stony Creek township, Somerset county, on January 10, 1810, and died at York, Pennsylvania, on August 19, 1883. His grand- father, James Black, came from the North of Ireland and settled on a farm in Somerset county in colonial days. Judge Black's father, Henry Black, was a man of promi- nence, a member of the General Assembly, a Whig Rep- resentative in Congress, and for twenty years an associ- ate judge of Somerset county. Judge Black's mother was Mary Sullivan, and her mother was Barbara Bowser, "a person of pure German blood," so that Judge Black, like many other Pennsylvanians, was of mixed Scotch-Irish and German lineage.
Judge Black was known as a hard student from early boyhood, when he first attended a country school. At the age of sixteen years his school education had been completed at an academy in Brownsville. For some time afterwards he pursued his classical and other studies on the farm. He had an astonishing memory. He mastered Latin as if it were his mother tongue. At seventeen he entered the office of Chauncey Forward, in Somerset, as a student of law. He was fortunate in his choice of a pre- ceptor. Mr. Forward, like his brother, Walter Forward, of Pittsburgh, who was Secretary of the Treasury under
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President Tyler, was a great lawyer. Judge Black once said of Chauncey Forward and Charles Ogle, who were cotemporaries at the Somerset bar : "I have never, in my relations with the men of great reputation in this country, met the superior, nor can I now name the peer, of either of these men as lawyers." Mr. Forward was the Democratic leader of Somerset county and Mr. Ogle the Whig leader. Both men represented their Congressional district in the House of Representatives, although of oppo- site politics. Judge Black early identified himself with the Democratic party, although his father was a Whig.
In 1831 Jeremiah S. Black was admitted to the bar and in a short time thereafter he was appointed deputy attorney general of the Commonwealth for Somerset county. Mr. Forward having been a member of Congress for several years he soon shared his legal business with his bright student, who at once entered upon a large prac- tice. So thoroughly had the young lawyer mastered the science of the law and so rapidly did he rise in his profes- sion that his services were soon in demand in the neigh- boring counties. He had made his mark. In 1842, when only thirty-two years old, he was appointed by Governor Porter president judge of the sixteenth judicial district of Pennsylvania. In 1851, when forty-one years old, his reputation as a wise judge had been so firmly established that he was nominated by the Democratic State Conven- tion as a candidate for a seat on the Supreme Bench and was. elected, four other judges being chosen at the same time, the legislation of 1850 having made membership in the Supreme Court an elective office. His son, Chauncey F. Black, says : "In the lottery which determined the matter for that first bench of judges chosen by the peo- ple at the polls Judge Black drew the short term and be- came chief justice. In 1854, his term as chief justice hav- ing expired, he was elected an associate justice by a very large majority, although the head of his ticket, the Demo- cratic candidate for Governor, was defeated." From his position on the Supreme Bench he was called by Presi- dent Buchanan in March, 1857, to be a member of his Cabinet as Attorney General. This position he filled with
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great ability until the winter of 1860-61, when he suc- ceeded Lewis Cass as Secretary of State and Edwin M. Stanton took his place as Attorney General.
It does not fall within the scope of this volume to consider the grave questions leading to or growing out of the civil war, and we therefore pass over Judge Black's connection with any of these questions. In March, 1861, with the beginning of Abraham Lincoln's Administration, he retired to private life. He was now fifty-one years old. He soon changed his residence from Somerset to York. For a short time he was the official reporter of the opin- ions of the Supreme Court of the United States, from which position he withdrew to engage in the active prac- tice of his profession, much the larger part of which was before the Supreme Court. During the next twenty years he was employed in many important cases. He was one of the counsel of President Johnson in the impeachment proceedings of 1868, and one of the counsel of Samuel J. Tilden in the proceedings before the Electoral Commission in 1877. He was a delegate-at-large to the Convention of 1873 for revising the Constitution of Pennsylvania.
Judge Black was not only a great lawyer and one of the many great judges of Pennsylvania, worthy to rank with Wilson, Tilghman, and Gibson, but he was also one of the most accomplished literary men that the whole country has produced. His essays, letters, and speeches, which are embodied in a stout volume that was com- piled by his son and published soon after his father's death, should be read by every lover of good English writing for their literary style alone, if for no other rea- son. His judicial opinions are said by lawyers to possess exceptional merit for their clearness of statement. Judge Black excelled in the ability to make a plain statement, whether orally or in writing. His style was first of all logical, as became a lawyer and a judge, but it was espe- cially remarkable for the great learning which it exhib- ited without ostentation, for its wealth of pertinent illus- trations, and for its graceful and elegant diction. To quote a sentence from his eulogy of Judge Gibson, "the whole round of English literature was familiar to him."
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He never used the wrong word. His eulogy on the life and character of Andrew Jackson, delivered at Bedford on July 28, 1845, very early in his career, attracted wide attention, and from that day his reputation as a writer of the purest and most vigorous English was firmly es- tablished, at least in Pennsylvania. No finer tribute to his marvelous style could be conceived than is contained in the following analysis of its characteristics by that emi- nent lawyer, David Paul Brown, which may be found in The Forum, or Forty Years at the Philadelphia Bar :
" The style of Judge Black's composition is unlike any other with which we are acquainted. It is fluent, senten- tious, argumentative, facetious, and sarcastic. It is, to our mind, a beautiful style, and the wonder is where he should have formed it. There certainly could have been no temp- tation within the ordinary jurisdiction of a county court to lead to so much perfection in composition ; nor could his opportunities while at the bar account for his literary excellence ; nor had he the advantages that Franklin and many others enjoyed in a printing office, which in itself, with a bright pupil, is the best of schools. Where, then, did he obtain it ? He obtained it where Shakespeare, and Johnson, and Chatterton, and Burns obtained theirs- from the force of innate genius, by which opportunities of knowledge are not only improved but created."
The following extract from Judge Black's eulogy of Chief Justice Gibson's literary style will give the reader a fair illustration of his own style: "His written language was a transcript of his mind. It gave the world the very form and pressure of his thoughts. It was accu- rate, because he knew the exact. boundaries of the prin- ciples he discussed. His mental vision took in the whole outline and all the details of the case, and with a bold and steady hand he painted what he saw. His words were always precisely adapted to the subject. He said neither more nor less than just the thing he ought. He had one faculty of a great poet-that of expressing a thought in language which could never afterwards be paraphrased. When a legal principle passed through his hands he sent it forth clothed in a dress which fitted it
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so exactly that nobody ever presumed to give it any other. Almost universally the syllabus of his opinion is a sentence from itself, and the most heedless student, in looking over Wharton's Digest, can select the cases in which Gibson delivered the judgment as readily as he would pick out gold coin from among coppers. For this reason it is that, though he was the least voluminous writer of the court, the citations from him at the bar are more numerous than from all the rest put together."
Judge Black's controversies were mainly with prom- inent men of his day on political questions-Stephen A. Douglas, Judge E. R. Hoar, Henry Wilson, General Garfield, and others. He attacked their statements concerning mat- ters of fact and he condemned political acts and policies which he thought deserved rebuke, while he eagerly ac- cepted the gage of battle when there was sufficient provo- cation. His defense of the character of Edwin M. Stan- ton against statements made by Henry Wilson contains this example of his sarcastic style: "Your attacks upon Buchanan, Toucey, and Thompson might be safely passed in silence, but the character of Stanton must utterly per- ish if it be not defended against your praise." His open letter to General Garfield contains probably the most scathing criticism of New England Puritanism that has ever been written. His controversy with Robert G. Inger- soll in The North American Review will be remembered.
In 1836, when he was about twenty-six years old, Judge Black married Mary Forward, the oldest daughter of Chauncey Forward. One son, who is now dead, sur- vived him, Chauncey F. Black, at one time Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and afterwards the unsuccess- ful, candidate of the Democratic party for Governor.
Somerset county has produced other prominent men than Dr. Elder and Judge Black. Two of these we have incidentally mentioned-Chauncey Forward and Charles Ogle. Other members of the Ogle family have been dis- tinguished as lawyers or politicians, sometimes as both. Norman B. Ream, one of the country's leading capitalists and a director of the United States Steel Corporation, was
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born in Somerset county in 1844. George F. Baer, who is now the president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, was born in Somerset county in 1842. Cyrus Elder, a lawyer, and a writer of poetry and fiction and also on economic subjects, was born in Somerset in 1833. Few counties in Pennsylvania have produced as many notable men as Somerset county, which is situated on the summit of the Allegheny mountains. In the early days it was far away from commercial, political, educa- tional, and financial centres. Its principal town, Somerset, has even now a population of less than three thousand.
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