USA > West Virginia > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of West Virginia. Including reference articles on the industrial resources of the state, etc., etc. > Part 47
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1866 the Senate called for the correspondence on this subject, and among the rest came Mr. Faulkner's buried labors and vindications. It was shown that in 1860 he pressed this issue upon Napoleon, obtained the first concession in favor of our naturalized citizens ever made by a continental power on so tender a point; and, if permitted by Mr. Cass, would have made it a treaty obligation. Thus tens of thousands of young men of North German and French birth owe in great part to Mr. Faulkner their immu- nity to revisit their native land without the peril of arrest, punishment, and military peonage. Mr. Cass, however, was doubtful of the expedi- ency of pressing the subject upon France for the recognition of this principle by treaty. Mr. Faulkner responded: "I do not see how the in- sertion of an article in a treaty by which France should abandon all claim to military service from those of her natives who had become nat- uralized would detract from the high ground upon which we place that doctrine as a matter of right." The attempt to get the treaty stipu- lation was renewed by Mr. Faulkner; but the Administration thought a great feather was in its cap already, and stopped the ardent envoy. President Buchanan's Annual Message of De- cember 3, 1860, expressed his gratulation as fol- lows :
" To employ the language of our present Min- ister to France, who has rendered good service on this occasion, 'I do not think our French naturalized fellow-citizens will hereafter experi- ence much annoyance on this subject. I ven- ture to predict that the time is not far distant when the other Continental powers will adopt the same wise and just policy which has done so much honor to the enlightened government of the Emperor.'"
In the era of President Grant, Hon. George Bancroft secured by treaty from Prussia a rec- ognition of this principle-the same which Mr. Faulkner wished to anticipate by two Presiden- tial terms. To the subject of our sketch is due the first proposition of the statesmanlike idea to put the safety of the foreign-born American citizen into the written obligations of mankind, and to make his exemption from the enrolling officer no more a subject of appeal, but of broad understanding and international accord-a re- sult which it is obvious would have been accom- plished during his mission but for the timidity
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of the Secretary of State. Mr. Faulkner's as- siduity and devotion were exercised also in other directions. His education, candor and dignity placed him within the sphere of Napoleon's spe- cial consideration, and gratified his desire of knowledge and usefulness by frequent inter- views with that master of diplomacy whom he occasionally met in the privacy of St. Cloud, and always promptly communicated his study of the man and the facts of the interview to his Government. When these dispatches shall be disinterred, they will serve the historian who wishes to be assisted to an estimate and por- traiture of the late Emperor, and will also dis- play the adaptability and literary grace of the American Minister. His method and power in detail will as well be shown in the great variety of application he directed to the elucidation and correction of minor matters pertinent to his mission and the history of the period. His dis- patches present among other things a brief epit- ome of the history of the Second Empire, and of the leading political events in Europe during his residence at that Court; a full discussion of the commercial interests of France and the United States, and of the extent to which those interests might or might not be promoted by the treaty which he was authorized to negotiate. They also embrace his interviews with high officials, and his reflections on the war then being waged by France and England against the Chinese Empire; the proposed movements against Mexico; the massacre of the Christians in Syria; the Sicilian revolution, etc., etc. His review, in a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, of the controversy between the local authorities of Cherbourg and the American Con- sul, involving the construction of the Eleventh Article of the Consular Convention between France and the United States, and growing out of the wreck of the ill-fated ship Luna, may well be referred to as a monument of diplomatic labor and ability. Our diplomatic relations with France, from the beginning of the Republic, have been the most romantic and intimate of our history, and we have been served at that Court and Capital by a series of the most illus- trious statesmen we have produced. The year of Mr. Faulkner's residence there was not pro- lific in great occurrences immediately affecting our own history ; but it was a year requiring the
more application, because France was then ma- ture, formative, and well gathered up under a ruler fond of surprises, rather covetous of achievement and possessions in America, and able to do as he chose. The Palmerston alliance and the control of France over Spain led to a rumor of a tripartite attempt on Mexico, which Mr. Faulkner promptly protested against, and received the thanks of his Government for his prompt interference. The social life at his residence, in the Avenue Montaigne, near the Champs Elysées, was meantime hospitable and graceful, and the Minister popular with all. When Mr. Faulkner was subsequently a prisoner at Fort Warren, he received marked attention from the most distinguished men of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, who had remem- bered his invariable courtesy, generous hospi- tality, and faithful devotion to his duties as Minister. The crisis, however, was impending at home, and there were doubtless travellers of the McCracken character abroad in those days ready to distort, pervert, and write anonymous letters. Some of these may have desired the consideration of the new Administration ; others, with malice aforethought, already classed every Southern man as an enemy, and made a distinc- tion in favor of none. Mr. Faulkner resolved to conclude his mission, so as to preserve at least his own self-respect-whatever might be the in- fluence of misrepresentation. In the letter to Mr. Seward, already quoted, he met those old imputations upon his ministerial honor in the following paragraph, which we quote here as new and interesting matter to the reader:
"But it might be said that, whilst my official dispatches from Paris may be perfectly unex- ceptionable, yet my private actions and opin- ions may have encouraged treason and rebellion against the Government. I have but limited means of showing what my private opinions and actions were in France, for I never anticipated that they would be called in question when I left there. But as limited as those means are, I think they will be found ample and satisfactory."
He then shows very conclusively that there was no foundation for any imputation upon his fidelity. And yet in the face of these clear and unquestionable facts the public mind had be- come so generally impressed with an opposite conclusion, from the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment upon his return from France,
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that he felt constrained to call upon the Secre- tary of State to do him a simple act of justice, and to request the Secretary to furnish him with such an exoneration of his official character, in his relations with the Department of State, as the truth would warrant. We come now to the nature of the pretence which the press of the country seized upon to apologize for the arrest of Mr. Faulkner as a hostage by the Secretary of War. That arrest, in the absence of any charges from the State Department, was felt to be such an ungrateful return for faithful public services, that the Government papers, perforce, came to the rescue of the Directory with guesses, imaginings, and all manner of diatribe which the loosely written histories of the war period have accepted as material for their works. In the spring of 1861, the Confederate authorities at Montgomery, Ala., had selected three Commis- sioners to proceed to Europe-William L. Yan- cey, A. Dudley Mann, and P. A. Rost. These persons proceeded in a loitering manner to Eu- rope, stopped some time in England, and none of them reached France until Mr. Faulkner had taken leave of the Imperial family and quitted the country. Yet a newspaper paragraph went the rounds of the American papers to the effect that Mr. Faulkner had given a public re- ception to the Commissioners of the Confederate States, and introduced them to M. Thouvenel, and had also provided a day for their official presentation to the Emperor. Mr. Faulkner never saw any of the Commissioners until he met them incidentally in England, some weeks after he had definitely quitted France on his re- turn to the United States. His published dis- patches show that his behavior was just the con- trary. April 15 he called upon M. Thouvenel, delivered a copy of President Lincoln's Inau- gural Message, and assured the Minister that " the President of the United States entertains full confidence in the speedy restoration of the harmony and unity of the Government by a firm, yet just and liberal policy." He said to M. Thouvenel that a distinguished citizen of the State of New Jersey would soon supply his own place, and requested the Minister to recognize no dismemberment of the American Union in advance of Mr. Dayton's arrival, who would come fully instructed as to the matured wishes and views of the Government, This dispatch is
printed in the diplomatic correspondence, and soon after writing it Mr. Faulkner left the Em- pire. Thus the charge that Mr. Faulkner took the Confederate Commissioners under his pa- tronage has nothing to rest upon, and slander is left to jump at the conclusion that Napoleon could not have been so prompt to recognize the belligerency of the Confederates unless Mr. Faulkner had warped his judgment in advance. The action of the governments of Western Eu- rope toward the belligerent sections in America was outside of the influence of ministers and commissioners. It was the apparent, the prob- able, the sequential policy of France, England, and Spain, and consonant with what their states- men considered the mutual interest of those na- tions. Mr. Faulkner had done more to attract respect to his Government by sturdily insisting upon the right of our naturalized citizens to re- turn to their native countries, and be exempt from conscription, than by any words he could have addressed to the Emperor of France favor- able to the seceding States. The Emperor Na- poleon was the universal ally of the side of dis- traction in contemporaneous powers, as he had shown in Russia, China, Austria, Italy, and India, and as he further showed in the affairs of Mexico long after Mr. Faulkner had retired from public life, and even after the American conflict had been determined. In this he fol- lowed the traditional diplomacy of France and England, which for several years had been in accord, and they had even operated together with military force. The public mind is edu- cated to exaggerate the influence which an in- dividual may exert upon states and alliances. A higher compliment could not have been paid to Mr. Faulkner, had it been his due, than Mr. Greeley's oft-expressed conceit that he had shaped affairs in France so as to hasten the con- cession of belligerent rights to the insurgents by the decree of the 11th of June, 1861, long after he had left the country, and the United States had been otherwise represented. Mr. Greeley could have found another motive for the Emperor in the constant attacks of his paper upon Napoleon's personal and dynastic legiti- macy, which was the rule of the Republican press; and he might have observed, as a vigi- lant journalist, that the personal weight of all the Confederate Commissioners was almost im-
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palpable. They returned at an early period, leaving little evidence of influence behind them, and even the sympathetic and notorious circum- stances under which Messrs. Mason and Slidell arrived in Europe got them small countenance at Court. Mr. Faulkner had impressed the French Emperor as ministers seldom had done, but it was as the American and not as the Con- federate Envoy. Yet the current histories of the war have tumbled into the line of superficial inference, and we may quote Lossing's volumi- nous book in evidence. That author says: "At the powerful French Court, the source of much of the political opinion of the ruling classes of Continental Europe, Charles J. Faulkner, of Vir- ginia, the American Minister Plenipotentiary, it was believed, was an efficient accomplice of the conspirators in the work of misrepresenting their Government and maturing plans for secur- ing the recognition of the independence of the seceded States." But almost in the next para- graph this writer of loose inferences admits that " already an understanding existed between the British government and the French Emperor that they were to act together in regard to American affairs; they had even gone so far as to apprise other European governments of this understanding, with the expectation that they would concur with them and follow their exam- ple-whatever it might be." The times were
out of joint. There were no circumstances under which Mr. Faulkner could have been otherwise than misrepresented, for he was of the old Administration, and a Virginian; he was the only Southern man at the head of a first-class mission; in the conflict of sections, he was expected to do more than to look home- ward and grieve and plead for moderation; and had he gone about loudly, constantly, and vi- tuperatively to injure the Union, his meed would have been no worse. There remains to relate only the story of Mr. Faulkner's arrest, which has been almost wholly misunderstood. He recruited his health, which had suffered by the
labor and confinement of his mission, in a few months' excursion through the British Islands, and arrived at New York at a gloomy period for the North, August 5, 1861. Three days after- ward he reached Washington, and, stopping at Brown's Hotel, proceeded to the State Depart- ment on the 10th, where he adjusted his account
of the Contingent Fund, as is the custom, and was provided with a safe conduct and passport from Mr. Seward to his home beyond the lines. The next day but one succeeding-two days after General Lyon had been killed at Wilson's Creek, three weeks after the defeat of Bull Run, ominous times for a man whose home was be- yond the lines-Mr. Faulkner was arrested by Gen. Andrew Porter, Provost Marshal General, who had brought to his hotel a great array of troops and constabulary, without charges of any kind, and, as we have related, by the order of the Secretary of War. He was not an offender, therefore, but a captive within the lines; and his record was not charged to be at fault, but only his place of abode. And the American Minister to France, just honorably discharged from the diplomatic service, was taken to the common jail of Washington, where the sense of decency in Captain Willard, the Deputy Provost, would not permit him long to remain. He was accommodated with a more honorable im- prisonment among the officers at their quarters, and here he addressed a letter to the Secretary of War, asking the cause of his detention. To this Mr. Cameron replied frankly, and the words were taken down by Captain Willard: " Tell Mr. Faulkner that, as a distinguished citizen of Vir- ginia, he has been arrested as a hostage for Henry S. Magraw, State Treasurer of Pennsyl- vania; and that, with my consent, he shall not be released until Colonel Magraw be set at lib- erty." It appeared that a few weeks before this time, Colonel Cameron, brother of the Secretary of War, had commanded a regiment in the first battle of Bull Run, and had been killed in battle, and his body left upon the field. At Secretary Cameron's request, Mr. Magraw was sent within the Confederate lines for the purpose of recov- ering the body of the fallen colonel. He was provided with a pass addressed simply “To whom it may concern," and making no recogni- tion of General Beauregard, or of the Confeder-
ate forces. Deeming such a paper not entitled to respect, Beauregard ordered Magraw and his party to be arrested and conveyed to Richmond, which was done. They were detained there several months before satisfactory negotiations were had for their release. That this was the sole motive and object of the arrest was ad- mitted by the National Intelligencer of Washing-
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ton, at that time the recognized organ of the Administration. But this unprecedented and violent treatment of a non-combatant and an eminent Minister of the Government was not to be excused by fair-minded people, and hence the Administration presses began to trump up " vague surmises and frivolous suspicions" af- fecting Mr. Faulkner's fidelity at Paris, in order to apologize for the arbitrary act. Mr. Seward himself seemed to have felt that the outrage re- quired some show of defence, and he took notice of these imputations in a letter to Colonel Burke, Commandant at Fort Lafayette, more than a month after the arrest. Mr. Faulkner was de- tained a prisoner about one month at Washing- ton, six weeks in Fort Lafayette, New York Harbor, and six weeks at Fort Warren, near Boston, and released on the 9th of December, 1861, when he returned to his home in Virginia. Whilst in prison he had an opportunity of learn- ing the impression which his conduct as Minis- ter had produced on the many able, patriotic individuals of this country who had visited Paris during his residence there as Minister. With not a single exception, their letters to him as- sured him of their unabated confidence in the honor of his character and his fidelity to the Government whose commission he had held. The frequency of such arrests blunted the public sensibility after a time, and the duration and eventfulness of the war had, until of late, left little opportunity for justice to the misrepre- sented character of individuals. Mr. Faulkner never ceased, however, to vindicate the faithful- ness and propriety of his conduct at the French Court, corresponded with distinguished men on the subject while in confinement, and at the end of the war promptly reopened communication with the State Department. Mr. Lincoln, sensi- ble of the injustice done to Mr. Faulkner, sent Mr. Ward H. Lamon, his subsequent biographer and confidential friend, to find Mr. Faulkner im- mediately after the occupation of Richmond, and regain his services in aid of the tranquilliza- tion and repose of Virginia; and Mr. Lamon has published a most interesting statement on the subject since Mr. Lincoln's death, from which the following is an extract: "I know Mr. Lincoln disapproved of his arrest," wrote Mr. Lamon to John E. Schley; "he said there was no just ground for it, but added that these were
critical times, and he did not like to interfere with that act of the Secretary of War, especially as Mr. Faulkner had made no appeal to him. The President had long entertained a high re- gard and kind feeling for Mr. Faulkner as a public man, and kept by him in Illinois a copy of Mr. Faulkner's speech on the subject of slav- ery, often used it on the stump, and could repeat considerable portions of it from memory. He often talked with me on the subject, knowing that Mr. Faulkner was a favorite of my family in West Virginia." Mr. Lamon then states in detail, what he well knew as Mr. Lincoln's Mar- shal, that in 1865 he addressed Mr. Faulkner an autograph letter, inviting him to return to his home and offering him the protection of the Government. The letter was placed in the hands of Theodore Wilson, an officer, to be de- livered to General Grant, and by him forwarded through the lines. At that period of the war it missed its destination. Marshal Lamon then narrates this incident, quaint and touching as it will be to Mr. Faulkner's posterity :
"I well remember my last interview with President Lincoln. It was the day previous to his assassination. He was sending me to Rich- mond, which had then fallen and was in pos- session of our troops, on a special mission. In taking leave of him, the last words he addressed to me were, 'Now, Lamon, be sure you don't return from Richmond without bringing Faulk- ner with you.
Mr. Faulkner's shrewd observation and judg- ment detected the seeds of disorganization and failure as soon as he entered the Confederacy, and he spent the greater part of three years and a half there in scholastic retirement at the abode of his daughter, Mrs. Bocock, in Appomattox County. The official battle reports of Stone- wall Jackson, which have been admired on both sides of the Potomac, were the compositions of Mr. Faulkner, written out from the rough notes of that celebrated commander. Of these he wrote twenty-two, and all but the last were revised and signed by General Jackson. With this literary labor, which shows his grasp of great movements and faithfulness of detail, his active life in the Confederacy began and termi- nated. After the war, Mr. Faulkner returned to his home and resumed the practice of law. He was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1872, that framed a second Con-
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stitution for the State, and was its temporary President. He was elected to Congress from March 4, 1875, to March 4, 1877, and declined a re-election. This was his last public office. It has been said that the Southern revolt produced many heroes, but few who survived it with heroism. Among these latter the subject of our sketch may be classed as probably the most nota- ble example in the South. Reflective, studious, with a cheerful temperament and flexible facul- ties, yet blessed with a remarkable tenacity of purpose, he emerged from the war without self- accusation, and proceeded to redeem his affairs and give aid and confidence to his neighborhood. He brought his large estate into excellent condition, and was President of the Berkeley County Agricultural and Mechanical Associa-
tion, and President of the Martinsburg and Po- tomac Railroad Company. His practice was one of the largest in the South, pursued chiefly in the Supreme Court of the United States, the Court of Appeals of West Virginia, and the courts of the judicial circuit where he resided. Mr. Faulkner was upward of seventy years of age at the time of his death. He had blue eyes, which were of clear and quiet expression, and features expressive of decision and sensi- bility. His hair, formerly of a rich brown color, became gray, but retained the luxuriance of uni- form health. He had a large family of children, who have become connected by marriage with some of the most excellent households in the North and South. He died at Martinsburg, W. Va., November 1, 1884.
BURNING SPRINGS OIL FIELD .- OIL PRODUCTION OF THE STATE .- COAL, IRON AND TIMBER .- PIONEER HISTORY OF CHARLESTON .- THE CAPITAL CITY OF WEST VIR- GINIA .- IMPROVEMENT OF THE GREAT KANA- WHA RIVER.
APPENDIX.
BURNING SPRINGS OIL FIELD.
THE first great oil find in West Virigina was not a sudden revelation, for the substance had been well known several years previously to the farmers and salt makers in the region of Burning Springs, where it was generally alluded to as "devil's grease," and considered more or less detrimental as a hindrance to salt production. Generally speaking, a salt well becoming contaminated with the oil had to be abandoned; and the purchasers of the Burn- ing Springs tract regarded it as anything but desirable in land which they intended for tilling and milling purposes, and had no idea of the prospective increase in the value of the farm, nor did they entertain the remotest anticipations that the investment would bring to the family a vast fortune, quickly acquired.
Mr. J. R. Dodge, who for several years was the Chief Commissioner of the Agricultural Department at Washington, wrote a brief but very correct history of West Virignia, which was published by Lippincott & Co. in 1865.
Referring to the first discovery of oil in the State, he says:
"In 1842, while boring for salt, oil was discovered near Burning Springs, on the Little Kanawha, twenty-seven miles from Parkersburg. The Rathbone farm, on which the well was sunk, has since become famous for the production of oil. Boring specifically for oil was first attempted in this vicinity in the Fall of 1859, after the first successes in oil in Pennsyl- vania had attracted the attention of the world, although Dr. Hildreth, of Ohio, as early as 1836, alluded to the abundance of petroleum on the Little Kanawha.
"It is a well-known fact that S. D. Karnes was one of the first operators at Burning Springs, having leased the abandoned salt well from the Rathbones, which he improved until it yielded from ten to twenty barrels a day. This attracted attention, and others began operations. In the Autumn of that year a well sunk by the Rathbones astonished the coun- try with a yield of three hundred barrels daily. Other wells were soon added, and fortunes began to be made.
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