Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont, Part 21

Author: Ullery, Jacob G., comp; Davenport, Charles H; Huse, Hiram Augustus, 1843-1902; Fuller, Levi Knight, 1841-1896
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : Transcript Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 842

USA > Vermont > Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont > Part 21

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Judge Phelps then retired to private life and the delights of his farm, though he still practiced in the courts in important cases, especially before the Supreme Court at Washington, where he had a high reputa- tion. One argument especially, on the Woodworth planing machine patent, was regarded as among the strongest ever de- livered before the court. He was not a frequent speaker in the Senate, reserving himself for great occasions. He was a member of the committee of thirteen that reported the Clay compromise measure be- tween the North and South, the Omnibus bill of 1850, and the action greatly weakened him at home. He had been fully committed to the principle of the Wilmot proviso ; he had, in a powerful speech the year before, reminded the Southerners that the whole agitation over the slavery question of which they complained, and because of which they were threatening the dissolution of the Union, was "only the logical sequence of the Mexican war, * * which carried in its train elements that might end in despoiling the Republic ;" but when the real danger of dissolution confronted him, his love of the Union led him, like Webster, to temporize, where with larger and cooler prevision he had recognized that temporizing was useless.

There was no stronger argument made against slavery in the whole course of the debates than that of Phelps in answer to Calhoun and Berrien in 1848 on the bill for the exclusion of slavery from Oregon, with the lessons and warning he drew from the action of the new French republic in abol- ishing it. Henry Wilson in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power" describes it as a speech of "remarkable eloquence and pow- er." Wilson says, in a general estimate of Phelps, that he was "a man of rare ability and equalled by few as a lawyer and forensic debater, but his unfortunate habits impaired public confidence." His position in the Senate gradually grew to be a conservative one, out of sympathy with the current of thought and events, soon to be guided by men like Seward and Chase, and he thus became less of a leader than his admirers thought he ought to be. He served labor-

iously on the committees of claims and In- dian affairs, and it is said that the recom- mendations of his reports, fortified as they were by a definite statement of the case, were seldom rejected. He was, both as senator, judge and advocate, a cogent, pow- erful reasoner, with a clear, simple, vigorous way of stating his argument, and a habit of viewing questions that was at once compre- hensive and discriminating, large in its grasp and quick in its mastery of the sub- ject, and this with his dignified bearing and his air of resolute honesty, made him a weighty man in what was perhaps the great- est era of the greatest deliberative body of the world, a peer among such senators as Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Cass, Benton, Macy, Clay- ton, Wright, Forsyth, Corwin and Douglas.

The senator died at his home in Middle- bury, March 25, 1855. He was twice mar- ried, and brought up a large family of chil- dren of whom the eldest is Edward J. Phelps, the late minister to England. [For a sketch of E. J. Phelps see page 309, part II.]

UPHAM, WILLIAM-For ten years United States Senator, and though not ranking up with the great historical names from Ver- mont-Bradley, Phelps, Prentiss, Collamer, and Foote-yet a strong and able man of his time in national councils. He was born at Leicester, Mass., August 5, 1792, the son of Capt. Samuel Upham, who moved to Ver- mont in 1802, settling on a farm in Mont- pelier. Young William worked on the farm until he was fifteen, attending school only winters, when an accident in a cider mill, crushing his right hand so that it had to be amputated, and unfitting him for manual labor, procured paternal consent to his being "educated." A few terms at the old acad- emy at Montpelier, then some tutoring in Latin and Greek by Rev. James Hobart at Berlin, and a short time at the University of Vermont were, however, all that his means would permit in this line. Then he studied law with Samuel Prentiss at Montpelier : was admitted to the bar in 1811, and for a few years practiced in partnership with Nicholas Baylies and afterwards alone or in temporary partnership for about thirty years, with hardly an interruption from politics to mar his professional achievements.

It was a bar of great lawyers with whom he had to match wits, including besides Senator Prentiss, such giants as Dillingham. Collamer and Lucius B. Peck. But he was a foeman worthy of the best of them, and became, in fact, one of the strongest jury advocates the state has ever had. He was Choate-like in the fiery impetuousness of his eloquence, though without the rich poetic fancy with which Choate embellished his argument, masterful in his methods of state-

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ment, biting in sarcasm, full of nervous energy. Senator Seward in the obituary speeches in Congress described him as a "man of strong and vigorous judgment, which acted always by a process of inductive reasoning," and these were qualities that gave him peculiar powers in the rough and tumble of the law combats of those days.

He kept carefully out of politics until his reputation was made at the bar, refused all proffers of nomination to office, including one for a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court, and held firmly to the theory that the "law is a jealous mistress." In 1827 hc did accept an election as town represen- tative, because success seemed very dubious when he consented to run, and he was re- elected the next year and again in 1830. He took high rank as a debater, of course, but at the close of his third term he re- mained for ten years more a simple lawyer though he was state's attorney for Washing- ton county in 1829. But he was ardently in sympathy with the Canadian' rebellion of 1838, presided over a great meeting at Mont- pelier that year to send greetings to the insurgents and condemn the Van Buren administration for its efforts to stop filibust- ering aid, and the 1840 campaign aroused him and for the first time in his life, when nearly fifty years old, he plunged actively into politics, and stumped nearly the whole state for Harrison.

The fruit was an enthusiastic personal fol- lowing for himself, which, in 1842, showed itself in his election as United States senator to succeed Samuel C. Crafts ; at the end of his term he was re-elected for another term but died before completing it, Jan. 14, 1853.

He was an ardent Whig and all the more so because of the power of partisan advocacy which his training as a lawyer had given him. Ill-health in the later years of his service interfered much with his activity, but he made a number of notable speeches and took positions on some occasions that were historic. He and Crittenden of Kentucky were the two men who voted "aye, except the preamble " on the bill in 1845, declaring that "war existed by the act of Mexico " and authorizing the President to call out 50,000 men. He moved the Wilmot proviso, for- ever forbidding slavery in the territory to be acquired, as an amendment to the bill in 1846 appropriating $3,000,000 to authorize the President to negotiate peace with Mexico, and he made a speech on the subject, treating trenchantly as it deserved the whole iniquity back of the Mexican war, which was widely circulated and published in pamphlets and newspapers. He made a number of strong speeches on different questions connected with the war, the greatest of them being that of Jan. 28, 1848, on the bill to establish ter-

ritorial governments in Oregon, California, and New Mexico. But perhaps the greatest one and the one most independent of party lines of all his career was that of July i and 2, 1850, against the "compromise bill" of that year on the slavery question.

On the tariff question he was a Whig of Whigs, believing that increase of industry and growth of national wealth would surely flow from a protective policy, and being one of the most strennous advocates of the idea that wool growing was to be promoted by high duties. He fought hard against the Walker tariff-reducing bill of 1846, and his speech on that occasion was highly complimented by Daniel Webster, who wrote asking for memoranda of some of his " statements re- spccting the market abroad for our wool," and adding, "following in your track, my work is to compare the value of the foreign and home market."

The senator had a habit of exhaustively studying his subject before speaking and then an effective way of marshaling his facts and arguments. As Senator Foot said in his eulogy, his speeches had " the peculiar im- press of his earnestness, his research, his ability, and his patriotic devotion." Mr. Upham was for several years chairman of the committee on Revolutionary claims and post office and post roads, so that a vast deal of detail work was thrown on his shoulders.

The senator's domestic life was a singu- larly happy one. His wife was Sarah Keyes of Ashford, Conn., whom he met while she was on a visit in Montpelier with her sister, Mrs. Thomas Brooks, grandmother of Gen. W. T. Brooks, commander of the Vermont Brigade. She was a beautiful, accomplished woman, who made her home at Montpelier and at Washington a center of social charm as well as a delight to its inmates. She died May 8, 1856. One of their sons, William K. Upham, went to Ohio, where he rose to the front in law, ranking with such men as Chase, Corwin, and Bingham. Another, Major Charles C. Upham, was paymaster in the United States Navy.

FOOT, SOLOMON .- Senator, repre- sentative in Congress for nineteen years, like Bradley and Edmunds long president pro tem of the Senate, and among the great- est of the succession of remarkable men Vermont has kept in the Senate, with hardly an exception, from the beginning, was a native of the state, born in Cornwall, Nov. 15, 1802, the son of Dr. Solomon and Betsey (Crossett) Foot. The family was of Con- necticut origin, where one of the ancestors was prosecuted in 1702 "for having his negro servant sit" in his church pew, "contrary to religion and profanation of the Sabbath." Dr. Foot died when young Solomon was

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only nine years old, and the boy was left to the training of an intelligent and prayerful mother. With intermissions of farm work and teaching of district schools to earn money, he fitted for college and graduated from Middlebury in 1826. For the next five years, except for one year while he was a tutor at Middlebury, he was preceptor of Castleton Academy, and professor of natural philosophy at the Vermont Medical School at that place. He re-established the academy on a broader basis, erected a handsome and spacious edifice, and indeed achieved a large success as a pedagogue, as he did with everything he took hold of in life.

But while teaching he had pursued the study of law; was admitted to the bar in 1831, and established himself in practice at Rutland. He at once plunged into politics, attracted attention the next year with an ad- dress which he issued in favor of Clay for President and against the re-election of Jack- son, and from this time until his death he was almost constantly before the public. Rutland sent him to the Legislature in 1833, again in 1836-'37-'38, he being speaker in the last two sessions, and freshly enhancing his reputation by the ease and ability with which he discharged the duties. From 1836 to 1842 he was state's attorney for Rutland county, and in the latter year was elected representative in Congress as an ardent Whig, a follower of Clay, and a repudiator of Tyler. His first appearance on the floor was to pre- sent a petition for the "protection of Ameri- can producers against the unfriendly and ruinous competition of foreign nations."

His first speech, June 4, 1844, was in the same line, and this was his position as long as he was in Congress. He was one of the few Republicans to vote against the low tariff bill of 1857. He, of course, fought the Walker tariff bill of 1846 strenuously. He earnestly opposed the admission of Texas and the Mexican war, whose purpose he de- clared to be simply to obtain more territory for slavery, and denounced the measures of the Polk administration almost uniformly, and especially its construction of the Oregon boundary question. He made a hot speech Feb. 10, 1847, full of " scornful defiance " of the President for his intimation that those who censured the conduct of the executive in carrying on the war were guilty of con- structive treason. He was one of the three intrepid men who came to the rescue of Giddings of Ohio, when Dawson of Louis- iana, supported by four other Southerners, pistol in hand, threatened to shoot him for his denunciation of the "brutal coarseness" and " moral putridity " of slavery, and when it looked for a time as if the floor of Con- gress was to be a general shooting-ground.

FOOT.

He served in the House two terms and refused a re-election in 1841, to return to the practice of law. But he was the next fall sent to the Legislature by Rutland and re-elected in 1848, and again was speaker of that body, and in 1850 he was elected to the Senate to succeed Judge P'helps, and this was the arena where he won his largest fame. He was prominent in the debates over the Kansas question against the ad- mission of the state under the Lecompton constitution. He opposed the scheme for the acquisition of Cuba, justified the action of Commodore Paulding in the arrest of William Walker whose filibustering expedi- tion to South America he recognized as a scheme of the slavery extensionists. He was a participant in the discussion of all Central American matters, and strenuous in insisting that England should give up her protectorate over the Mosquito territory. He served with Jeff Davis as a commissioner to reorganize the course of study and disci- pline at West Point. He was a strong advocate of governmental construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast. He carried through bills for the erection of a custom house at Burlington and court houses at Windsor and Rutland and for the improve- ment of the breakwater at Burlington. He served industriously on the committees on pensions, post-offices and post roads, revo- lutionary claims, public lands, pensions con- tingent claims and foreign relations, rising steadily by the care and thoroughness of his work to a position of leadership. He super- vised the enlargement of the capitol and the erection of other government structures. He was chairman of the committee of ar- rangements for the inauguration of President Lincoln.

When the extra session of Congress was convened on account of the war, July 4, 1861, Mr. Foot was unanimously elected president pro tempore and through the whole of this, the whole of the Thirty-seventh and a part of the Thirty-eighth Congress he continued in this position. During the trying days of the war he did not appear on the floor so much as he had before done, evidently regarding speech- making as a needless waste of energy when there was so much work to be done, and the party in power had things all their own way, anyhow. On several important occasions, however, he kicked out of party traces. He voted against the legal tender act because he regarded it as clearly unconstitutional, and against Sumner's bill in 1861 to wipe out of slavery in the proposed new state of West Virginia as a prerequisite to its admission. He was a delegate to the Republican national convention of 1864. One of his last speeches in the Senate was that of Jan. 12, 1865, in favor of terminating the Canadian reciproc-

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ity treaty. He was with the leaders of his party in sharp antagonism to President Johnson and his policy, but died March 28, 1866, before the crisis in that struggle came, though he clearly foresaw it.

In him the country plainly saw it had lost one of its best equipped statesmen. He may not have had, as Senator Edmunds says, " that aggressive intellectual combativeness and analytical subtlety of mind, which, for- tified by learning, has produced the greatest lawyers," but he had a sound and practical mind, an active and vigilant industry, a habit of thoroughness of preparation for his duties, together with an intellectual and moral courage, and a hatred of meanness and duplicity, that, while it sometimes car- ried him too far in partisanship, made him faithful, reliable and useful.

Senator Foot was twice married, first in 1839, to Emily, daughter of William Fay of Rutland, who soon after died ; and second, to Mrs. Anna Dora, daughter of Henry Hodges of Clarendon, who survived him.

BRAINERD, LAWRENCE .- Briefly sen- ator, to fill out Mr. Upham's term, for years the recognized leader of the Lib- erty party in the state and under whose auspices the old Whig party was ab- solved into it, under the new name " Republi- can," was a na- tive of Connecti- cut, born at East Hartford, March

16, 1794. He was from a family that has been called one of " the two great families of divines"-the Beechers being the other-be- cause of its great number of clergymen, Con- gregational, Presbyterian and Methodist. Among them have been several missionaries, including David Brainerd, the evangelist of the aborigines, whose biography was written by Jonathan Edwards.

Lawrence was the fifth of the thirteen chil- dren of Dea. Ezra and Mabel ( Porter) Brain- erd, but when nine years old went to Troy, N. Y., to live with an uncle, Joseph Brainerd. Five years later he started out to shift for himself, went to St. Albans on the proceeds of walnuts he had gathered and sold, and with a capital of just twenty-five cents began the struggle of life. That same year, though only fourteen, he was sent to Massachusetts, a distance of three hundred miles, to fetch a pair of oxen. He made the journey on foot

but executed the trust faithfully. Though his education had been limited, he fitted him- self to teach distriet school and that pursnit he followed for several winters. Then he became a clerk in a store, and, in 1816, em- barked in business for himself, and with his foresight, courage and large judgment rapidly enlarged his operations, acquiring additional wealth at every step.

He conducted a large mercantile estab- lishment, doing an extensive barter with the farmers. He also engaged in farming and sheep raising, and as "railroad times" ap- proached took hold of these enterprises with all his energy. With John Smith and Joseph Clark he effected the construction of the Vermont & Canada R. R., borrowing $500,- ooo on their personal credit before any stock subscriptions had become available. He was connected with the Vermont Central either as director or trustee until his death, and was among the original projectors and promoters of the Stanstead, Sheffield & Chambly, and of the Missisquoi roads. He was also largely interested before this time in Lake Cham- plain navigation, built the first upper cabin steamer that plied its waters, and was a director of the St. Albans Steamboat Co. for many years.

His political life began with service as deputy sheriff in his young manhood, to which he was recommended by his reputa- tion for bravery. In 1834 he was elected representative from St. Albans, but this was his last office until he became Federal sena- tor, because in 1840 he abandoned the Whig party, with which he had been affili- ated, on the slavery issue. He was one of the three hundred and nineteen in Vermont to cast their votes for Birney for President in 1840. He stood as the Liberty party's candidate for Governor in 1846 and 1847, yielding the post to Oscar L. Shafter and the "Free Soil" movement of 1848, but re- turning to it in 1852 and 1853, holding the balance of power so as to throw the election into the Legislature in 1852, and defeat the Whigs and prevent Governor Fairbanks' re-election in 1853. The result was the break-down of the Whigs, the coalition of 1854 and the formation of the new Repub- lican party, over whose first convention in July of that year Mr. Brainerd presided. He was a candidate for the state Senate from his county, but was beaten by the old Whig animosity. But the new movement had be. come so strong before the close of the year, that when a vacancy in the United States Senate occurred by the death of Senator Upham, Brainerd was elected to it by a practically unanimous vote, the first man who had been sent there on purely abolition- ist principles.

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COLLAMER.

He was a delegate to the Republican national conventions of 1856 and 1860, and chairman of the Vermont delegation in the latter that threw the vote of the state for Abraham Lincoln. He called the conven- tion of 1856 to order, was chosen one of its vice-presidents, and served during the cam- paign on the national executive committee. He was, of course, a cordial supporter of the Union cause through the war, and a less impatient one than most of the old anti- slavery leaders, because he foresaw that the end, in the inevitable logic of events, must be emancipation. He had, before the war, kept the last station of the "underground railroad " on the route to Canada, and many a poor runaway black had been aided by him to liberty.

After the war he was deeply interested in the work of the American Missionary Associ- ation in educating and uplifting the freemen, and was president of the association and always a generous contributor to its funds. He in fact came to be known as among the most princely of Vermont philanthropists, and his donations were in many lines of edu- cational and religious work. He was a bus- iness man of remarkable ability always, and his training and habits of thought followed him in his benefactions. He had to be con- vinced that the object of charity was a worthy one, that the money would be judi- ciously expended, and then his purse strings were open. Disbursements increased in magnitude as his means increased, and he recognized in the possession of wealth a trust to be executed for good.

He was married Jan. 16, 1819, to Fidelia Barnet, daughter of William Gadcomb, and she died Oct. 18, 1852, having borne him twelve children, of whom four sons and two daughters reached maturity. One daughter married J. Gregory Smith, afterwards Gover- nor; and the other, F. S. Stranahan, the present Lieutenant-Governor. The sons were : Lawrence, Aldis, Erastus P., and Herbert, who have all been men of promi- nence.

COLLAMER, JACOB .- Judge, both representative and senator in Congress, post- master-general under Taylor, the only Ver- monter before Proctor to serve in the cabinet, is the man whose statue, as the rep- resentative Vermonter, stands with that of Ethan Allen in legislative hall at Washing- ton. He was born at Troy, N. Y., Jan. 8, 1791, the son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Van Ormun) Collamer, the third of eight chil- dren. His father was a soldier of the Revo- lution and of a family that had for genera- tions been prominent in Massachusetts, " Collamores Ledge " being named after one member, Capt. Anthony Collamer, who was

shipwrecked there. Samuel Collamer came to Vermont when Jacob was about four years old. Early in youth, ambition and thirst for knowledge possessed the boy, and by his own energy and industry he procured the means to prosecute preparatory collegi- ate and professional study and yet was fitted for admission to the University of Vermont at the age of fifteen. He gradu- ated in 1810, and then studied law with Mr. Langworthy and later with Benjamin Swift at St. Albans, being admitted to the bar in 1813. There was an interruption in 1812 when he was drafted into the detailed militia service and served in the frontier campaign as lieutenant of artillery.

In 1816 he moved to Royalton, where he practiced his profession with growing repu- tation for twenty years, until in 1836 he went to Woodstock. He was for several years register of probate in the Royalton district. He represented that town in the Legislatures of 1821, '22, '27 and '28. He was state's attorney for Windsor county in 1822, '23 and '24. He was a member of the constitutional convention of 1836, that did away with the old Governor's council and established the state Senate, and took a leading part in effecting the change.

In 1833, unexpectedly to himself, Mr. Collamer was elected one of the assistant judges of the Supreme Court, and regularly re-elected until 1842, when he declined further service. If his career had ended here it would have been distinguished ; as a nisi prius judge he was extraordinarily well equipped by habit and training of mind. As Judge James Barertt, long his partner, says of him : "Without any of the qualities designated fancy, imagination, brilliancy, or genius, his mind was made up of a clear and ready perception, acuteness of discrimi- nation, a facile faculty of analysis, an apt- ness and ease in rigid and simple logic, excellent common sense, and withal, a most tenacious memory of facts. These qualities of mind enabled him to serve and master all the substantial purposes of professional and judicial avocation without his becoming em- phatically a judicial scholar. What his law- books contained he knew not, as mere mat- ter of recollection, their substance became incorporated as matter of consciousness into the very substance of his mind, which thus became thoroughly indoctrinated and imbued with the foundation principles upon which the superstructure of his professional greatness arose."

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Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont, Part 21

Author: Ullery, Jacob G., comp; Davenport, Charles H; Huse, Hiram Augustus, 1843-1902; Fuller, Levi Knight, 1841-1896 Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : Transcript Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 842

Author: Ullery, Jacob G., comp; Davenport, Charles H; Huse, Hiram Augustus, 1843-1902; Fuller, Levi Knight, 1841-1896
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : Transcript Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 842