History of Dane County, Wisconsin, Part 87

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899; Western Historical Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Company
Number of Pages: 1304

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the reader, in picturesque language, one of the most absorbing as well as the most startling chapters in American annals. In 1876, he wrote, with Lyman C. Draper, of Madison, a work made up of romantic passages in our country's history, which is replete with accounts of bor- der forays, conflicts and incidents. In the spring of 1877, he published "The Washington- Crawford Letters (Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati), a valuable contribution to the early his- tory of the trans-Alleghany country. This volume was also received with marked favor by the press, in the East as well as in the West. In the fall of 1877, Mr. Butterfield completed for an illustrated atlas of Wisconsin, a brief history of the State-the leading article in the work. It is reproduced in this history as the first of the preliminary articles. He has since written "The Washington Irvine Letters," another addition to the Revolutionary annals of our country, of special value. His annotations are drawn from a great variety of sources in the United States, and from the State paper office in England. Mr. Butterfield wrote, in 1878-79, "The History and Biographical Annals of the University of Wisconsin," & small and unpretending volume, but characterized by the author's usual research and accu- racy. It was published in Madison by the University Press Company. He has since edited, in chief, the "History of Rock County," the " History of Fond du Lac County," and the "History of Columbia County," Wisconsin. These works were published by the Western His- torical Company, of Chicago. Of this book-the "History of Dane County, Wisconsin"- he is the principal editor .*

ART.

JAMES R. STUART, a resident of Madison, is a native of South Carolina, where his fore- fathers settled in the first half of the eighteenth century. His scientific training was procured in Harvard; his first instruction in art in the studio of Joseph Ames, of Boston. After some years of school-teaching in Savannah, he was enabled to prosecute his art studies in the acade- mies of Munich and Carlsruhe. Mr. Stuart came to Madison in 1872, and many of his pictures command admiration. Portraits of Charles Dunn and Byron Paine, in the Supreme Court rooms of the capitol, are from his studio, and he has also painted pictures of several prominent men of Wisconsin. The fineness of touch for which Mr. Stuart is justly praised does not detract in any degree from the faithfulness of his presentations.

MISS WILHELMINA FILLANS, an artist of considerable merit, formerly resided in Madison. The lady comes of a family of artists, and her skill is beyond question. Many of her paint- ings grace the homes of Madison. Her modelings are equal to her pictures, among which are a life-sized hust of L. S. Dixon, and one of the late Chief Justice E. G. Ryan. A crayon por- trait of ex-Gov. W. R. Taylor, for the agricultural rooms, is well executed. She resides at present in Glasgow, Scotland.

MISS BERTHA PRADT, daughter of Rev. J. B. Pradt, of Madison, has devoted herself for several years past to landscape painting. She has studied in Milwaukee and Chicago, and more recently in New York, where she has opened a studio. Among her landscapes is one from a sketch made at Lake, which was exhibited at the Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, hav- ing received a part of the prize offered by the ladies of Wisconsin for the best landscape by any lady artist of the State. Several gentlemen in Madison, among them ex-Mayor Baltzell, Andrew Sexton and John Nader, have pictures from her easel. She has also sold pic- tures in Chicago, New York, and to several parties in New England. Miss Pradt's landscapes are characterized by a softness and delicacy in the treatment of foliage, sky and water, which make them very attractive.

W. L. KNOWLES located in Madison in February, 1880. He spent his years of training with several distinguished artists in the East, and for two or three years was located in Connec- ticut (his native State). After leaving Hartford, he set up his easel in Iowa, residing in the State about six years, visiting most of the principal cities of Iowa and vicinity, but making Davenport

*This notice of Mr. Butterfield's literary efforts (except so much as relates to the county histories written in Wisconsin) is abridged from a sketch by R. B. Andorson, Professor in the University of Wisconsin, to be found in Robinson's " Epitome of Literature."-PUB.

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his home. He held a position during two years of that time as Art Instructor in one of the educational institutions of Iowa. He has devoted his attention to book illustration, portrait and landscape painting, making portraiture a specialty of late.

ORATORY.

An oratorical association was formed by the students of the University of Wisconsin, in September, 1874, the object of which was the cultivation of oratory. It was connected with a State association of the same character, organized by the principal colleges of Wisconsin ; the latter with an inter-State association, representing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin. A competitive contest was first held in each institution-the successful competitor taking part in the State meeting, and the one who was there adjudged as first on the list repre- sented the State at the final contest. The University of Wisconsin was three times honored with the highest prize at the State contests : 1875, by J. M. Mills ; in 1876, by A. S. Ritchie ; and in 1879, by R. M. La Follette-the last mentioned winning the highest honor at the inter-State contest. Mr. La Follette was born in Dane County and is a resident of Madison. Ilis oration was entitled "Iago." His analysis of that famous creation of Shakespeare was as follows :

"Shakespeare's Iago personifies two constituents of mind-intellect and will. These alone are the springs of his action, the source of his power. What he lacks in emotion he has gained in intellectual acuteness, but the result is deformity. The character is not unnatural; it is fiendishly natural. His reasoning power is abnormally developed; but he has no feeling, no sympathy, no affection, no fear. His is the cold passion of intellect, whose icy touch eliills the warm life in all it reaches. He is an intellectual athlete, and is unceasing in his mental gym- nastics. His contempt for all good is supreme ; his greatest crime is his greatest pleasure ; and his own hypocrisy gladdens and intoxicates him. Whatever is most mean, whatever is most hard, whatever is vilely atrocious and dangerously difficult, he seizes with greedy glee. Skeptical of all virtue, to him love is lechery, truth-telling stupid goodness, and lying a daring to be in- genuous.

"The emotions are the native soil of moral life. From the feelings are grown great ethical truths, one by one, forming at last the grand body of the moral law. But Iago is emotionally a cipher, and his poverty of sentiment and wealth of intelleet render him doubly dangerous. Here we have the key to his character-he is possessed of an inflexible will, of an intellect, pungent, subtle, super-sensual. He not only knows more than he feels, he knows everything, feels nothing.

"The other characters of the tragedy of Othello-a tragedy which Macaulay pronounced Shakespeare's greatest-are but puppets, moving at the will of this master. He reads them at a glance, by a flash of instinct. He wastes no words on Roderigo other than to make the 'fool his purse.' But upon Othello he plays with more subtlety, and infinitely greater zest. Upon him he exercises his crafty ingenuity; and the ' double knavery,' the ' How ? how ?' whets him keen. Now flashes forth the invisible lightning of his malignant mind, and woe to all virtue within its reach. Now we see his character in all its artful cunning, all its devilish cruelty. With what marvelous skill he makes his first attack ! He does nothing in the common way. His methods have the merit of originality. He does not assail Desdemona's virtue with a well-conned story, but is seemingly surprised into an exclamation, appearing to utter his suspicions by thie merest accident. And when he has engaged Othello's ear, note his matchless cunning; he comes and goes, and comes and goes again, with his ingenious innuendoes ; changing like the cha- meleon, quick to take his cue from the Moor, yet craftily giving direction to the other's thoughts ; cursing Cassio with his protestations of love, and damning Desdemona while joining in a benediction to her honesty. The 'constant, loving, noble nature' of the Moor changes quickly under the 'almost superhuman art' of Iago ; but too well he knows the human mind to gorge it with suspicion ; and, with every dose of poison, gives just a little antidote. With pious self-accusation, he says, ''Tis my nature's plague to spy into abuses;' and, 'oft my jealousy

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shapes faults that are not ;' but carefully adds, 'it were not for your quiet nor your good to let you know my thoughts ;' and is equally careful to tell them ; smothering with one hand all sus- picion of his perfidy, and kindling with the other the consuming fires of the Moor's jealousy. "Iago's manner of practicing on Othello is only matched by the means he employs. Like the genuine devil, he destroys the entire household-not through some unguarded vice, but through its very virtues. He sets all goodness by the ears. The strength of the Moor's affection is made a fatal weakness ; and, more than this, the very medium of all their misery is she,

' Of spirit so still and gentle that her motion Blushed at herself.'

" Iago and Desdemona ! Strange, unspeakable union of opposites ! Weird harmony of dis- cords ! Somber mingling of a smile and a sneer ! O the poet whose genius could compound these elements without an explosion ! O this 'unequal contest between the powers of grossness and purity !' That Desdemona, whose childlike nature is a divine fusion of innocence and chastity, should be played off against a moral outlaw, a being whose livery is ' heavenly shows' and whose logic is the ' divinity of hell,' is a juxtaposition appalling, fascinating ! 'Tis Diana in the talons of a Harpy. That virtue should be ' turned into pitch,' that 'out of goodness" should be made " the net to enmesh them all,' that innocence should become the instrument of the infernal, is a ' moral antithesis' that preludes the oncoming of chaos. And it comes like the quick night and consummates the tragedy ; while over all, in sullen silence, gloats this imp of darkness.

" Somewhere, Thomas Carlyle has said, 'There are depths in man that go the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach highest Heaven ;' but Iago is a magnet with only one pole, which ever points toward the infernal. Why is it, then, that this character does not disgust us ? Why do we follow liis intricate windings with such intense interest ? Why do we tolerate him ? We find the answer in his great intellect. This is the core of his character- abstract intellectuality united to volitional force, devoid of all morality, divorced from all feeling. He is hardly human, yet he sounds humanity like a philosopher. He is wanting in ethical parts; yet he makes the nicest moral distinctions. He is a fraction, yet greater than a unit ; a part, yet more than the whole. He is a paradox. In his deep schemes, we nearly forget the villain. His triumph over all obstacles pins the attention to his intellectual powers. He is 'instinct with thought.' This redeems him to us as a subject, and yields another explanation for what has been termed his 'little trace of conscience.' His self-questionings, his subtle sophisms, his cataclysm of reasons, are not the weak protest of a moral part, but the logical outcome of a sleep- less intellect. He is emphatically a being of reasons. He will do nothing except he furnish to himself the 'why !' It is not that he requires these reasons as a ' whetstone for his revenge;' it is not that his 'resolution is too much for his conscience,' but rather that he revels in reasons, that his hungry mind will have its food. He 'suspects the lusty Moor,' and fears 'Cassio with his night-cap, too,' on occasion ; not that he dreads to destroy either without some motive, but because his mental constitution demands a reason for all things. Schlegel defines wicked- ness as ' nothing but selfishness designedly unconscientious ;' but Iago makes no effort to deceive himself, for he says :

" When devils, will their blackest sins put on, They do suggest at first with heavenly shows As I do now.'

" He does not care to justify himself, except as an intellectual satisfaction. He desires no moral vindication. In fact, he commits crime merely for crime's sake, and there is no sin that he will not claim as his own. Think of it ! a being who clutches at wickedness with all the greed of a miser. Thoroughly passionless, coldly intellectual, he is forced into the self-confession that he is no libertine ; yet fearful lest the admission has cost him one hellish trait, he quickly adds that he stands 'accountant for as great a sin.' This is a moral defiance sublimely hideous, but hardly reconcilable in a being with even a 'little trace of conscience.' Were there a single

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golden thread of moral sense to knit him to the good in humanity, it would shine forth when Desdemona-whose only offense against him is that she is pure -- sinks under his cursed cunning. But it is a quality he feels not, knows not; and what Coleridge calls ' the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity ;' this constant combing of his wits for reasons, is simply a service per- formed at the mandate of his craving intellect.

" These are the premises from which, as a conclusion, we deduce Iago-a character without a conscience.

"Mark the 'steep inequality ' between him and Richard III: The Duke of Gloster, born with teeth, a twisted body, and a majestic mind, cuts his way through those of his own flesh to a throne. Malignant and artful, hypocritical and heartless, he 'seems a saint when most he plays the devil.' Monster, he stands apart from men ; he is ' like himself alone,' and he stalks along his bloody course a solitary creation. Brave, he has the audacity to defy destiny, the impudent confidence to enter the lists against the Unknown. But, hidden away somewhere in his black soul is a germ of conscience disguised as superstitious fear-a germ of conscience which starts forth when that towering will is off guard; coming in the thin substance of a dream, yet so terrible that the remorseful 'drops hang on his trembling flesh.' Here is his humanity, his mortal weakness ; and through this the 'all-powerful and ever-watchful Nemesis' hurls her lance, barbed to the shaft with retribution. Pursued by croaking phantoms, scourged by the invisible lash of violated conscience, he flings himself into the conflict, and, with a royal flourish in perfect keeping with his character, closes the tragedy. His death satisfies the equa- tion of right.

" Richard and Iago possess some qualities in common : Both have mighty intellects; both are wily, cunning, crafty ; both dissimulators, both actors. But farther than this they are pro- foundly unlike. Richard III is more humanly terrible; Iago more devilishly perfect. Richard loves nothing human ; Iago hates everything good. Richard is arrogant, passionate, powerful, violent ; Iago egotistical, cold, cynical, sly. Richard is fire; Iago ice. Richard III is more objective ; Iago more subjective. Richard would pulverize the universe ; Iago would like to reverse the order of things. In point of Satanical finish Iago is Richard-and more. Richard III murders many, and sweats with horror ; Iago few, and forgets remorse. Richard III mounts the throne of England on a score of dead bodies; Iago wins the throne of hell in three strides. The conscience of Richard wakes from its swoon ; Iago has no conscience. Richard III is a monstrosity ; Iago a psychological contradiction.

"We offer Iago, then, as Shakespeare's conception of the 'Evil Principle.' And how per- fect the creation. In the whole course of his crime he betrays never a weakness, never a check of conscience-nothing to mar the elegant symmetry of his fiendishness. From the time he lays down the postulate that ' I am not what I am ' till he attains his infernal majority, he is the same refined, pitiless, sarcastic devil. He is often surprised, but is never disconcerted. He plans, but it is because he likes the mental exercise. It has been said that 'deep rogues take all their villainy a priori ; that they do not construct plans in anticipation.' Iago's carefully perfected schemes would seem to rebuke this philosophy were it not that they appear rather meat for his mind than directions for his diabolisms. Indeed, it is in those unpremised scenes where the occasion fails to fit his plans, where all the odds are arrayed against him, that he achieves the greatest triumph. This is nothing short of Stygian skill ; and it is just here that he attains the dignity of a devil. That dignity would have been sacrificed in his death. By all the principles of dramatic tragedy, Othello is his fit executioner. Significant fact! We are only promised that his ' punishment shall torment him much and hold him long.' This is to appease the moral demand, and in its vagueness the poet seeks to avoid a decline in tragic intensity. This we offer as the ethical and æsthetical reason for the indefiniteness thrown about Iago's fate by the dramatist. He had pushed his creation to the verge of the finite, pun- ishment was demandcd, none could be devised which would requite him.

" The full course of tragedy, the mighty sweep of its changing scenes, must yield an apt sequence, a sublime completeness, else it fails in its aim. Schiller says: 'Life is great only

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as a means of accomplishing the moral law ; and nothing is sublimer than a criminal yielding his life because of the morality he has violated.' With the single exception of Iago, Shakes- peare has availed himself of this principle. The Thane of Cawdor tops all his murders with his own head ; Lady Macbeth bleaches in death the ' damned spot ' from her unclean hand; Richard III seals with his own blood, on Bosworth Field, the sublime in his career ; but Iago is just beyond the reach of death, and we can fancy him disappearing in the darkness of which he is a part.

"There are two fitnesses in a villain's death-the moral fitness and the tragic fitness. The one, the ethical satisfaction at the inevitable'recoil of the broken moral law ; the other, the grandeur of a finale. To condense into one moment the whole of life, to put a fiat on exist- ence, to engulf a soul in the awful immensity of its own acts-this is sublime. But to have conceived and brought forth a being so super-physical, so positively devilish, so intensely infernal that his death would be bathos-this is genius.

" And this is Iago. The polished, affable attendant, the boon companion, the supple sophist, the nimble logician, the philosopher, the moralist, the scoffing demon ; the goblin, whose smile is a stab and whose laugh is an infernal sneer; who has sworn eternal vengeance on virtue everywhere; who would turn cosmos into chaos. This compound of wickedness and reason, this incarnation of intellect, this Tartarean basilisk, is the logical conclusion in a syllo- gism whose premises are ' hell and night.' He is a criminal climax ; endow him with a single supernatural quality, and he stands among the devils of fiction supreme."

On the 14th of November, 1879, at a banquet given in honor of U. S. Grant by the Army of the Tennessee, in Chicago, W. F. Vilas, of Madison, spoke as follows to the toast of "Our First Commander, Gen. U. S. Grant : "

" Your call invites me, sir, I am conscious; to give expression to the profound feeling with which every heart of our assembled companions responds to the stirring sentiment. But how shall I attempt to choose, in the brief compass the occasion allows, from the multitudinous thoughts that crowd the mind ? Our first Commander, the illustrious General whose fame has grown to fill the world ! Nay, more! Our old band of the Tennessee was his first army ! What honorable memories of old associations, you, companions, may now recall !

"How splendid was your entrance on the scene of arms! The anxious eye of the North had long been fixed intently on the Eastern theater, almost unconscious of the new-formed Army of the Tennessee and its unknown General. Suddenly there fell on the startled ear the roar of your fight at Donelson, and your chieftain's victorious cry-which waked the country's heart to ecstasy-and rung. like a prophetic knell, the doom our army of salvation bore to rebels- ' Nothing but unconditional surrender.'

" Then, but a few days later, there burst at Shiloh, on his Army of the Tennessee, the flame and fury of the first great field fight of the war. In desperate doubt, the nightfall of the bloody day closed on the unequal struggle. Higher, then, rose the iron resolution of that great commander ! Urged by cautious counsel to prepare a way for retreat, with 'trust in your valor,' he gave the characteristic answer, 'I have not despaired of whipping them yet.' And loyally, on the morrow, was he vindicated in that reliance, as he rode before his soldiery, driving the enemy over the victorious field.

" How darkly comes back in recollection, the long and dismal toil in the pestilential swamps before impregnable Vicksburg ! The sky was overhung in gloom, and the soaked earth sank under the foot. Unlit by the flash of powder, unheralded by the noise of arms, in miserable darkness, the last enemy irresistibly plied his fatal work, changing the river levees-where only was solid ground for burial-into tombs for our trebly decimated ranks. Then, again, new light broke from his troubled genius on the scene, and displayed the possible path for valor. Breaking past the rebel battlements and across the great river, he flung our army into the midst of the hostile host, like a mighty gladiator surrounded by his foes, choosing no escape but in victory. There, with fiery zest, in fierce rapidity, he smote the foe the crushing strokes of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills and Black River, and seized the doomed city with the unre-

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lenting grasp of his Army of the Tennessee. And when, on the new birthday of the republic, her flag shook out its beautiful folds above the ramparts of that boasted citadel, the territory of revolt was finally split in twain, the backbone of rebellion was broken.

"Such, in a glance, your splendid story, companions, under our first commander.

"He and his Army of the Tennessee entered on the page of history together. Together they achieved the first great prophetic triumphs for the Union ; together they followed and fought her enemies from field to field, pushing our advancing arms in steady career toward the Gulf. Nor were their efforts for our country disunited, until, having dismembered the vast rebellion, the beginning of its utter downfall had been seen. Guided by his genius, your army had learned to fight only to conquer. Parted from him, it forgot not the teaching. Its march and war struck every revolted State save two, but never General anywhere lamented over its retreat from the field of arms. Joyfully may we point to that exalted fame, which, rising like a pinnacle of the Alps, breaks through the firmament above to carry up the name of the un- conquered Grant ; for it is our felicity, that, on the solid base from which it lifts, history has written the proud legend of the Army of the Tennessee, which never shunned and never lost a battle with its foes.

"Joined to it by such a story, and especially when so assembled, his old associates and soldiers in war, we may rightfully, without censure and without adulation, claim and speak the just measure of his merit and renown. Nor shall his presence deny that satisfaction to us. His reputation is not his, not even his country's alone. It is, in part, our peculiar possession. We who fought to aid its rising may well rejoice in its meridian splendor.

" The foundations of his title are deep laid and safe. There was re-action in the minds of our people after the intense strain of war, and many distracting subjects for attention. But with regained composure and reflection his reputation augments, and its foundations more and more plainly appear irremovably fixed for lasting duration. They spring not from merely hav- ing enjoyed possession of the honors of place and power, which his countrymen have bestowed; others have had them, too. They lie not specially on his shining courage and personal conduct before the enemy, who was never outdone in calm intrepidity, nor in the splendid daring with which he ever urged the battle he immediately ordered, though long these will live in song and story. Beyond the warrior's distinction, which was his earlier glory, his is the true genius of the General. The strategic learning of the military art was to him a simple implement, like colors and brush to a Raphael-not fetters to the mind. How like a weapon in a giant's hand did he wield the vast aggregations of soldiery, whose immensity oppressed so many minds ! How easily moved his divisions, yet how firm the place of all! How every soldier came to feel his participation a direct contribution to the general success ! And when, at length, his merit won the Government of the entire military power of the North, how perfect became, without noise or friction, the co-operation of every army, of every strength, throughout the wide terri- tory of the war toward the common end ! Subordinate every will and jealous soul, the profound military wisdom of the capital, even to the clear purpose and comprehensive grasp of the one commanding mind ! Then how rapidly crumbled on every side the crushed revolt! Where shall we find, in past records, the tale of such a struggle, so enormous in extent, so nearly matched at the outset, so desperately contested, so effectively decided ! Through what a course of uninterrupted victory did he proceed from the earliest engagements to a complete dominion of the vast catastrophe !

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History of Dane County, Wisconsin, Part 87

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899; Western Historical Co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Company Number of Pages: 1304

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899; Western Historical Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Company
Number of Pages: 1304