USA > Vermont > Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont > Part 14
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The most considerable monument to Gov- ernor Van Ness in our statutes is the act of Oct. 25, 1824, for the present system of choosing presidential electors, which was passed in pursuance of his recommendation in place of the old method of election by the Legislature. He made many valuable sug- gestions for legislation regarding the militia and imprisonment for debt, and was par- ticularly clamorous that the last should be abolished, at least as regards females. Each of his messages argued for a protective tariff as was the habit of all the old Democratic Governors, and he took what afterwards be- came solid Whig ground as to internal im- provements. A large part of his address of
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1825 was given to a discussion of the projects for improvement of the navigation of the Con- nectieut and the junction of its waters by canal with those of Lakes Memphremagog and Champlain, a work in which he thought the general government ought to assist under the "general welfare" clanse of the constitu- tion.
Governor Van Ness was twice married, first, March 5, 1804, to Rhoda, daughter of James Savage of Chatham, N. Y., who died at Madrid, Spain, July 18, 1834, and second to a Spanish lady. Three sons and two daughters were the fruit of the first union. The second son, Cornelius, went to Texas, where he was secretary of state at the time of his death by accident, July 18, 18.12. The third son, George, also died in Texas in 1855, being then a collector of customs. Of the daughters, the eldest married Lord Onseley of the British legation at Washing- ton, and the second, Cornelia, a famous belle of her time, married Judge J. J. Roose- velt of the New York Supreme Court.
BUTLER, EZRA .- Legislator, councilor, judge, representative in Congress and Gov- ernor, was another Baptist preacher and Democrat. He was a native of Lancaster, Mass., the fifth of seven children of Asaph and Jane (McAllister) Butler, and born Sept. 24, 1763. During his early youth his father came to West Windsor in this state, but the death of his mother necessitated the boy's spending of most of his time in the family of an older brother, and his taking care of him- self after he was fourteen, with only six months of schooling. He went to work on the farm of Dr. Stearns at Claremont, N. H., soon having the entire management of it. At the age of seventeen he was a soldier in the Revolutionary army and early in 1785, when twenty years old, having spent a few months in Weathersfield, he and his brother came to Waterbury, where they built a log house, to which Mr. Butler, in June of that year, brought his bride, Miss Tryphena Diggins, they making the journey into the wilderness on horseback by way of a bridle path. They were the second family to settle in Water- bury and suffered all the privations and hard- ships of pioneer life. He afterward built the first frame house in town.
The town of Waterbury was organized at a meeting in 1790, and Mr. Butler was chos- en the first town clerk, and for the next forty years he was constantly in the public service, frequently holding two or more important positions at a time, so that if we count the years of his terms of office they make over sixty-five. He was town representative for eleven years, from 1794 to 1805, excepting I 798, and again in 1807, when he was chos- en both representative and member of the
council, and acted a part of the time in one body and a part in the other. He served in the council sixteen years, 1807 to 1826, Cx- cepting 1813 and '14, when he was in Con- gress. In 1803, 'o4 and 'o5, he was assist- ant judge of the county court of Chittenden, to which Waterbury then belonged, and in 1806 to'n he was its chief judge. In 1812, when Jefferson (now Washington) county was organized, he was elected its chief jus- tice and held the position uninterruptedly except for the two years of his congressional service, until 1825, when the present judi- ciary system was formed, and he was elected first assistant judge. In 1806 he was a member of the Council of Censors, and in 1822 of the Constitutional Convention of that year.
He was a vigorous supporter of Jonas Galusha, in state politics, and in his long and active service in the Council steadily rose to a recognized position of leadership. But he fought for his beliefs of right rather than for personal advancement and he was so earnestly conscientious that party rewards came slowly to him. He was well started in that way when in 1812 he was elected to Congress on a general ticket with James Fisk, William Strong, W. C. Bradley, Richard Skinner and Charles Rich, a galaxy of talent that has never been surpassed in the state's representation. He was with the rest an earnest supporter of the Madison adminis- tration. But the New England revulsion against the war gave the state to the Fed- eralists in 1814, and the delegation to Con- gress was entirely changed. But Mr. But- ler's constituents were prompt to return him to the council and to the bench, and he was regularly re-elected until in 1826 he was made the Democratic candidate for Gover- nor and was elected and re-elected without any party putting up a candidate to oppose him, though some 2,000 votes were cast for Joel Doolittle at each election. His most notable work as Governor was his strenuous opposition to lotteries as expressed in both his messages, and his arguments for legislation to abolish or minimize imprisonment for debt.
He declined in 1828 to be a candidate for another term and retired to private life after a continuous political service since 1790. But he went into the anti-Masonic movement, which after the disappearance of the old political issues now swept the state, and held control of its affairs for the next few years, with only a remnant of the Dem- ocratic organization to stand up against it. Mr. Butler was one of the electors to cast the electoral vote of the state in 1832 for Wirt and Ellmaker. He had before been a Jef- ferson elector in 1804 and a Monroe elector in 1820. He was a member of the commit-
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BUTLER.
tee that fixed the site of the first state house in Montpelier and of the commissioners that located the state's prison and state arsenal and made the plans for them. He was a trustee of the University of Vermont from 1810 to 1816. With the other party leaders in the Legislature of 1804 he aided in the defeat of the Massachusetts proposal of a constitutional amendment to exclude slaves in the apportionment for representatives in Congress, arguing that this was one of the sacred compromises of the constitution and thus the consideration for it in the provision which Massachusetts also proposed to abolish for the apportionment of direct taxes by population might be important in case of war.
For above forty years he was an elder of the Baptist church, its pastor at Waterbury, its preacher whenever at home and a con- stant and unremitting teacher of religion wherever he was. According to his own account he was an irreligious and profane youth, presumptuous in his skepticism. His conversion was brought about one Sunday by the reading with his wife of a pamphlet, whose beginning and end were gone and whose author he never knew, on hereditary sin. Its perusal threw him into deep and anxious thought, bordering on despair, which lasted for several days until he was brought "into the clear light and liberty of the gospel." In a few months he was bap- tized into the Baptist church and when a church of that denomination was organized in Waterbury he was ordained its pastor and continued in the discharge of its duties until within a few years of his death, July 12, 1838, at the age of seventy-four, adding this service to all his other multifarious cares as legislator and judge, and political leader, for love of his Maker and his fellowmen, without salary or remuneration to the end.
Rarely indeed does any man hold public confidence as Ezra Butler did. He had not the winning presence of Fisk or Tichenor, or the learning of the Bradleys, or the tre- mendous popular strength of Galusha, but his judgment was sound and penetrating, his ideals high, his purposes pure, his methods always painstaking, and his appearance al- ways that of intensest sincerity. This is illustrated by the tradition that after one of his executive speeches a man in the gallery invited the audience to sing "Mear." He always had the air of meekness and dignity characteristic of the ministry, and one that could not fail to command respect.
No portrait of him was ever painted-"He was not that sort of a man," replied a mem- ber of the family to an inquiry of Governor Walton. But he is described by Rev. C. C. Parker as in form "slightly stooping, his . complexion sallow and dark, and his whole appearance quite unprepossessing ; but his
penetrating black eye and the calm tones of his voice quickly told of an intellect and will of no common order."
CRAFTS, SAMUEL C .- Governor, sen- ator, and rep- resentative in Congress, filled nearly every office within the gift of the people of Ver- mont, being in continuous public service for fifty years
or more. He was born in Woodstock, Conn., Oct. 6, 1768, the son of Col. Eben- ezer Crafts, a first and leading settler of Craftsbury, and in honor of whom the town was named. The son was liberally educated and graduated from Harvard in 1790, then accompanied his father into the wilderness, and two years later, on the organization of the town of Craftsbury, was elected its first town clerk, and held the position for thirty- seven consecutive years, even while his pub- lic duties called him away from home a large part of the time. He was in the con- vention to revise the state constitution in 1793, being its youngest member, and even then showed the marked aptitude for public affairs that achieved his distinguished career. In 1796 he was Craftsbury's representative in the General Assembly, in 1798 and 1799 he was clerk of the House, and the next year was again on the floor, being re-elected in 1801, 1803, and 1805. He was register of pro- bate for the Orleans district from 1796 to 1815, judge of the Orleans county court from 1800 to 1810, and chief judge for the next six years, and twenty years later, from 1836 to 1838, after he had filled the highest posi- tions in the state, he was clerk of the court. In 1809 he was elected a member of the ex- ecutive council, serving for three years, and again from 1825 to 1827. At this time also, from 1825 to 1828, he was again chief judge of his county court.
In 1816 he was elected representative in Congress and served eight years, until 1825, usefully and industriously, but without any great distinction or prominence in the na- tional battles of those times. Indeed, he was seldom heard in debate in either state or national halls, for he had little faith in the good of speech-making. Afterward he was senator for a few months, from December, '42, to March, '43, being appointed by Governor Paine, and then also chosen by the Legisla-
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PAL.MI.K.
ture, to fill out the unexpired term of Judge Prentiss, who had resigned to accept the of- fice of United States district judge.
In 1828, after his last term in the council, he was elected Governor and re-elected in 1829 and '30. His first election, which was substantially without opposition, as Van Ness' and Butler's had been, closed the "era of good feeling" in state politics. The vote in 1828 was 16,285 for him and 916 for Joel Doolittle. The two parties had already taken lines under the names of "National Republican" and the "Jackson Party" or "Democrats," with the Anti-Masons soon to appear, and in 1829 the vote was 14,325 for Crafts, 3,973 for Joel Doolittle, and 7,347 for Hleman Allen, of Highgate, then of Burlington, whom the Anti-Masons sup- ported, thoughi he had refused to identify himself with them. But in 1830 the Anti- Masons had become so strong as to prevent an election by the people. The vote was 13,476 for Crafts, 10,923 for William A. Palmer, Anti-Mason, and 6,285 for Ezra Meech, Democrat, with 37 scattering. This threw the election into the Legislature, where the Democrats substituted William C. Brad- ley for Meech as their candidate, and thirty- two ballots were required to reach a result. Crafts was finally elected by eight of the Anti-Masons and some of the scattering votes going to his support. The next year the Anti-Masons had a strong plurality lead in the popular vote, and won in the Legisla- ture, though a portion of the National Re- publicans supported Governor Crafts in the balloting, endeavoring to compromise on him when it was evident that their candidate, Heman Allen, could not be elected.
Governor Crafts' address in 1829 was the first to treat of the evils of intemperance, and he urged higher licenses and more stringent regulation of public houses to check the "free indulgence in the use of spirituous liquors." He advanced in his message of 1828 what may be called the germ idea of our present town system of schools, and he urged the system of highway taxes that has since been adopted. He was able to see into the future even beyond today, when he said in his message of 1830: "The state of Vermont, possessing a salubrious climate, a productive soil, much mineral wealth, an immense amount of water power, and an in- dustrious, enterprising and intelligent popu- lation, seems destined to become, when the natural resources shall be fully developed, a very important member of our great family of states. If some safe, cheap and expeditious means of communication with the market towns be constructed, no part of the Union would offer more eligible situation for some branches of manufacture than Vermont."
Governor Crafts, after his retirement, was president of the constitutional convention of
1829 and was an elector on the Harrison ticket in 1840.
Personally he was modest and unassum- ing-not " magnetic " in leadership, but with a profound power of inspiring confidence ; scholarly in habit, especially in dealing with practical affairs, he became in the course of his long life an almost exhaustless storehouse of information which he gathered from every side. In June, 1802, when there were but few log huts on the site of the present city of Cincinnati, he commenced a tour of obser- vation to the lower Mississippi, and in com- pany with Michaux, the younger, made a botanical reconnoissance of the valley of the Great West in canoes and arks. All the sciences, including natural history, geology, mineralogy, astronomy, as well as the higher mathematics, were the objects of study and extensive reading and some writing by him all his life. While in college he calculated a transit of Venus, the first achievement of the kind that had ever been made by an undergraduate at Harvard. He was also an accomplished student of architecture, serv- ing on the committee of public buildings in Congress, and the noble structure of a state house was a monument of his learning until it was burned in 1857. Above all was he a student of the Bible, and the most honorable station he ever filled, in his view, was that of Sunday school teacher, whose duties he faith- fully performed whenever at home, giving freely of his vast and varied knowledge to illuminate the text. He was active in every good work, serving on the official boards of the various state benevolent societies. He died, Nov. 19, 1853, at the age of eighty-five.
Governor Crafts married, in 1798, Eunice Todd, a sister of the famous alienist, Dr. Eli Todd, of Hartford, Conn., and by whom he had two children, one son and one daughter. The former died while at college at Burling- ton, and the latter married N. S. Hill, treas- urer of the University of Vermont.
PALMER, WILLIAM A .- The eleventh Governor of the state, judge, leg- islator and Fed- eral senator, was another leader of Connecticut ori- gin, born at He- bron, Conn., Sept. 12, 1781, the son of Joshua . and Susanna Pal- mer, of a family that had emi- grated from Eng- land before the Revolution, and was full of intel- Of the Gover-
lectual and physical vigor.
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nor's seven brothers and sisters, all lived to the age of eighty or upward. He had only a common school education, but an accident by a fall on the ice with an axe lost him the . use of a part of one of his hands and unfitted him for manual labor, so that he studied law with Judge Peters, and, after coming to Ver- mont, with Daniel Buck at Chelsea, prac- ticed a few years at St. Johnsbury and then moved to Danville, where in after years he devoted most of the time that he was free from public cares to agriculture. He was for eight years county clerk and judge of probate of Caledonia county and served one year as judge of the Supreme Court in 1816, refusing a further election. He was six times elected representative from Danville.
In politics he was a Jeffersonian Demo- crat, and during the ascendency of that party in the state, until the Anti-Masonic break-up, was one of its most potent leaders. In 1817 he was elected United States senator to suc- ceed James Fisk, resigned, and then for a full term of six years, closing in 1825. He had for several years been under something of a cloud of unpopularity, because of his vote for the Missouri compromise, and be- fore that in favor of admitting the state with the constitution which she had herself adopted, though it allowed slavery. He was practically the only senator from the state who ever cast a vote on slavery's side. But he always maintained to his dying day that the vote was right, not because he approved of slavery, but because he stood, even at that early day, on what afterwards became the Douglas idea of squatter sovereignty as the only doctrine consistent with the com- promises of our constitution. Returning to his home in Danville he was the next year elected again to the Legislature, and re- elected in 1827.
He was elected Governor in 1831, and re-elected till 1835. He had in 1830 been the candidate of the new and rapidly rising element that called itself the Anti-Masonic party, and obtained so strong a vote as to throw the election into the Legislature as detailed in the sketch of Governor Crafts. At the 1831 election, Palmer and the Anti- Masons were in a strong lead in the popular vote, it standing 15,258 for Palmer, 12,990 for Heman Allen, National Republican, and 6,158 for Ezra Meech, Democrat. No party had a majority in the Legislature, and it took nine ballots and a heated contest to elect Palmer, and this was only accomplished by one majority, due to a break among the National Republicans in trying to transfer their support from Allen to Governor Crafts.
In 1832 again there was no election by the people. The National Republicans returned again to Governor Crafts, whom they had found to be their strongest candidate, and
PALMER.
gave him 15,499 votes, while Palmer had 17,318, and Meech 8,210. It took forty- three ballots in the Legislature to re-elect Governor Palmer, with barely two majority, and this result was finally due to the aid of a few friends of Crafts. In 1833 the National Republicans had gone out entirely or been absorbed by the Anti-Masons, owing to a combination of both national and state causes, and the Democrats were the only party to stand up with any show against the new party. The vote was 20,565 for Palmer, 15,683 for Meech (Dem.), 1765 for Horatio Seymour, 772 for John Roberts, and 120 scattering. This was the only election Governor Palmer received by a majority vote of the people. By 1834 the Whigs had got well organized under the lead of Horatio Seymour, and the vote was 17,131 for Palmer, 10,365 for William C. Bradley (Dem.), and 10,159 for Seymour ; but Pal- mer was elected on the first ballot in the Legislature, getting 126 out of the 168 votes cast. This was due to the fact that both par- ties, anticipating the early collapse of the Anti-Masons as a political organization, were playing to catch the pieces. Seymour had published a letter announcing that he would not be a candidate in the General Assembly against Governor Palmer, and the vote indi- cates that Bradley or the Democratic leaders had been conveying the same assurances privately.
In 1835 Governor Palmer still led in the popular vote, 16,210 for him to 13,254 for Bradley, and 5,435 for Paine, Whig, but could not win in the Legislature, and after sixty-three ballots without any choice, the highest vote for Palmer being 112, Bradley 73, and Paine 45, the effort was given up, and Jennison, who had been chosen Lieuten- ant-Governor, had to take the executive chair. All the rest of the Anti-Masonic ticket except Governor Palmer had been indorsed by the Whigs, and the combination to defeat the Governor was due to the recollection of his Democratic proclivities and the belief that he purposed to support Van Buren for the presidency the next year.
Governor Palmer had been the Anti-Ma- sonic leader because he profoundly believed in the evil of all secret societies. He was never a member of any of them or of any similar social organization. But he did not take any such radical grounds in his mes- sages as might have been expected. In his first address in 1831 he declared his purpose to appoint to office only men who were "un- shackled by any earthly allegiance except to the constitution and laws," and he suggested legislation to prohibit the administration of oaths except "when necessary to secure the faithful discharge of public trusts and to elicit truth in the administration of justice,"
11.NNISON.
and to "diminish the frequency" of even these, because of the "influence which they exercise over the human mind." He reiter- ated these recommendations in subsequent messages.
He followed up the denunciations of the previous Governors of the system of im- prisonment for debt, which he pronounced "a relie of a dark age, and a barbarons code," and declared to be inconsistent with the constitution of the state as it was, "ex- cept where a strong presumption of fraud" could be shown. He took occasion in his 1834 message to disapprove President Jack- son's severe measures against the national bank as "pernicious in their consequences, and altogether unwarrantable," though he admitted the misconduct of the bank and the dangerous features of its charter, to whose renewal he was opposed "in its present form." The latter declaration was the reason of the Whig bitterness towards him.
In 1837 Governor Palmer was again re- turned to the Legislature, being elected county senator, and with this service he closed his public career, retiring to his farm in Danville, where he lived in honored ease until his death, Dec. 3, 1860, at the age of seventy-nine. He had in his later years been so subject to epileptic fits as to become a great source of trouble and anxiety to his friends and family.
The Governor was a very popular man personally, and also a good manager in po- litical contests, and hard to beat when up as a candidate. He was charitable to a fault, as is sometimes said, frequently giving to his own hurt financially, and at his death he was comparatively poor. He was often consulted as an adviser by his townsmen and others, and his opinion was always considered valu- able-and quite usually acted upon. He was certainly a man of " strong natural abil- ity, possessing a decided and penetrating mind," and with such an "unpretending simplicity of manners," as inevitably made him a popular favorite.
He married in September, 1813, at Dan- ville, Miss Sarah, third daughter of Capt. Peter and Sarah Blanchard of Danville, who had removed to Vermont from Concord, N. H., in 1790 or before. The Governor and wife had seven children in all, two daughters dying in infancy ; five boys lived to man- hood : William B., Abial O., Henry Wirt, Edward Carter, and Franklin Rolfe, all ex- cept Edward, who died in 1888, residing in Danville.
JENNISON, SILAS H .- Governor of the state in 1836 and for the six years following, was the last of the Governors to secure such repeated re-elections, and the first who was native born. He was born in Shoreham,
JENNISON.
May 17, 1791, the son of Levi and Ruth Hemenway Jennison. His father died when he was only a year okl, but his mother was a woman of uncommon strength of character, and to her very largely was due his success in after life, as is the case with most great men. He had to work hard in his youth, attend- ing school only a few weeks each year, but with the en- couragement of his energetic, in- dustrious and ambitious moth- er, he secured an education by omniverous reading, devoting his nights to study and reciting to Mr. Sisson, a neighbor. And he kept up this habit of study all through his life, storing his mind with information, so that though he was never a speaker and never engaged in public debate, the weight and solidity of his attainments, with his faculty of facile and accurate transaction of public business, won him prominence. He early became an expert in mathematics and surveying.
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