THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE.

Published Monthly—Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter.

With this NOVEMBER Number, the Magazine of Western History, appears under its new name

THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE.

A Journal devoted to American History.

(See Editorial Notes.)

One of the earliest Greek dreams, prominent in the classic literature, was that of a beautiful island in the ocean at the far West. Perhaps, nevertheless, we have been accustomed to think of the conception too much as a dream, a piece of pure imagination; for it is absolutely certain, as Pliny and Strabo prove, that bold Phenician navigators passed far beyond the Pillars of Hercules into the vast Atlantic, discovering and naming the Canary Islands, pushing their observations far and wide. Possibly, like Columbus, as on his first voyage, they sailed over tranquil seas, smooth as the rivers in Spain, and through ambient air, soft as the air of Andalusia in spring, until they reached the Edenic Cuba, and thus furnished the foundation of that Greek conception of an exquisitely fair isle, the home of the immortals, an Elysium on whose happy, fragrant shores the shrilly-breathing Zephyrus was ever piping for the refreshment of weary souls.

In the fifteenth century the islands in the west formed the object of many a voyage, but even in 1306 Marino Sanuto laid down the Canaries anew, while Bethencourt found them in 1402. The Azores and the Madeira Islands appear in the chart of Pizigani in 1367, and the sailors of Prince Henry the Navigator went to the Azores, the Isles of the Hawks, in 1431, as preparatory to those voyages which, beginning with the rediscovery of the Cape Verde Islands in 1460, were destined to prepare the way for the circumnavigation of Africa, and thus open the way to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. Long before this, however, the Spaniards were credited with the establishment of colonies in the western ocean, and on[2] the globe of Martin Behaim, in 1482, may be seen the legend crediting Spanish bishops with the founding of seven cities in a distant island in the year 734. In 1498 De Ayala, the Spanish ambassador in England, reported to his sovereign that the city of Bristol had for seven years sent out ships in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, which were commonly laid down in maps, together with the great island of “Antillia,” by many supposed to refer to the American Continent.

In the time of Columbus enterprise was generally active, and men everywhere were eager to realize the prediction of Seneca, who declared that the Ultima Thule, the extreme bounds of the earth, would in due time be reached. But Columbus would win something more than beautiful islands. He aimed at a continent, and would reach the eastern border of Asia by sailing west, in accordance with the early philosophers, who had accepted the spherical form of the earth, not dreaming that, instead of a few islands, scattered like gems in the ocean, a mighty continent barred the way. Dominated by the antique notions of the classic writers, Columbus, after encountering and overcoming every discouragement, finally sailed towards the golden West, finding the voyage a pleasant excursion, interrupted only by the occasional fears of the sailors, lest the light breeze might prevent their return to Spain, by blowing all the time the one way. At a given point of the voyage Columbus met with an experience, and made a decision, that perhaps determined the destiny of North America. October 7, 1492, Martin Pinson saw flocks of parrots flying southwest, and argued that the birds were returning to land, which must lie in that direction. He accordingly advised the Admiral to change the course of the ship. Columbus realized the force of the argument and knew the significance of the flights of birds, the hawk having piloted the Portuguese to the Azores. He was now sailing straight for the coast of North Carolina, and must inevitably have discovered our continent, but the parrots were accepted as[3] guides, the course was changed to the southwest, and in due time the Island of San Salvador rose before their expectant eyes. All his efforts, therefore, after this memorable voyage, were devoted to the West Indies, and in the fond belief that he had reached fair Cathay. Consequently John Cabot was left to discover North America at least one year before Columbus sighted the southern portion of the western continent. Even then Columbus held that South America was a part of India, and he finally died in ignorance of the fact that he had reached a new world.

His error proved a most fortunate one for the English-speaking people; since, if he had confined on the western course, the Carolinas would have risen to view, and the splendors and riches of the Antilles might have remained unknown long enough for Spanish enterprise to establish itself on the Atlantic coast. This done, the magnificent Hudson would have become the objective point of Spanish enterprise, and a Spanish fortress and castle would to-day look down from the Weehawken Heights, the island of New York yielding itself up as the site of a Spanish city.

The mistake of Columbus, however, was supplemented by what, perhaps, may properly be called a series of blunders, all of them more or less fortunate, or at least in the interest of a type of civilization very unlike that of Spain, especially as expanded and interpreted in Central and South America. It is, therefore, to the series of nautical adventures following the age Columbus, and extending down to the voyage of Henry Hudson, the Englishman, in 1609, that this article is mainly devoted, showing how this entire region was preserved from permanent occupation by Europeans, until it was colonized by the Walloons under the Dutch, who providentially prepared the way for the English.

First, however, it may be interesting to glance at voyages made during the Middle Ages, considering whether they had any possible connection[4] with the region now occupied by the city of New York.

That Northmen visited the shores of North America no reasonable inquirer any longer doubts. Even Mr. George Bancroft, who for about half a century cast grave reflections upon the voyages of the Northmen, and inspired disbelief in many quarters, finally abandoned all allusion to the subject, and subsequently explained that in throwing discredit upon the Icelandic narratives he had fallen into error.[2]

The probability now seems to be that the Irish had become acquainted with a great land at the west, and gave it the name of “Greenland,” which name was simply applied by Eric the Red to a separate region, when he went to the country now known as Greenland in the year 985. The next year Biarne Heriulfsson, following Eric, was blown upon the north Atlantic coast, and in the year 1000-1 Leif, son of Eric, went in quest of the land seen by Biarne, reaching what is generally recognized as New England. Others followed in 1002 and 1005, while from 1006 to 1009 Thorfinn Karlsefne visited the same region, then known as “Vinland the Good,” and made a serious but abortive effort to found a colony. Freydis, daughter of Eric the Red, visited New England in 1010 to 1012. Vague accounts in the Icelandic chronicles tell of a visit of one Are Marson to a region called White Man’s Land (Hvitrammanaland) in 983, ante-dating Eric’s appearance in Greenland. We also hear of Biörn Asbrandson in 999, and of the voyage of Gudlaugson in 1027. Certain geographical fragments refer to Bishop Eric, of Greenland, as searching for Wineland in 1121, while in 1357 a small Icelandic ship visited “Markland,” the present Nova Scotia. The voyages of Asbrandson and of Gudlaugson are generally viewed as standing connected with a region extending from New England to Florida, known as White Man’s Land, or Ireland the Great. In these accounts there is found no definite allusion to the region of the Hudson, though Karlsefne’s explorations may have extended some distance southwesterly from Rhode Island; while later adventurers, who came southward and followed the course of Are Marson, who was discovered in the country by Asbrandson, must have sailed along our shores. Still no record of such a visit now remains, which is not at all singular, since many a voyager went by, both before and afterwards, with the same failure to signalize the event for the information of posterity. “They had no poet and they died.”

Turning to the voyages of the Welsh, who, some think, reached the western continent about the year 1170, led by Madoc, Prince of Wales, there is the same failure to connect them with this region. Catlin, who visited the White or Mandan Indians, supposes that the Welch sailed down[5] the coast to the Bay of Mexico and ascended the Mississippi; although there is just as much reason to hold, if the Mandans were their descendants, that they entered the continent and found their way westward from the region of Massachusetts or New York. The latter, however, might be favored, for the reason that our noble river forms to-day the most popular and certainly the most splendid gateway to the far West.

The voyages of the Zeno brothers, who are believed by most competent critics to have reached America about the close of the fourteenth century, and who left a chart, first published in 1558, show a country called “Drogeo,” a vast region which stretched far to the south, whose inhabitants were clothed in skins, and subsisted by hunting, being armed with bows and arrows, and living in a state of war. The description would apply to our part of the coast. At this period the Red Indians had come from the west, and dispersed the original inhabitants, known to the Northmen as Skraellings. The red man on this coast was an invader and conqueror, not the original proprietor of the land. In a very brief time, however, he forgot his own traditions and indulged in the belief that he was the first holder of this region, which was deeded to him by the Great Father in fee simple; and it was in this belief that, in turn, the simple savage conveyed vast tracts of territory to the white man, in consideration of trinkets and fire-water.

So far as can be discovered, the Skraelling was the first proprietor, and by the Skraelling is meant what is called the “Glacial Man,” who appeared on this coast when the great ice-sheet that once covered the highlands of America was melting and sliding into the sea. The evidences of the so-called glacial man are found at the present time in the gravels of the Trenton River, of New Jersey, consisting of stone implements that seem to have been lost while engaged in hunting and fishing. With the disappearance of the ice and the moderation of the climate, these men of the ice-period spread along the Atlantic[6] coast from Labrador to Florida, their descendants being the modern Eskimo and Greenlander, whose ancestors were driven northward by the red man when he conquered the country. The immediate region of the Hudson has thus far afforded none of the stone implements that abound at Trenton yet it may be regarded as beyond question that the first inhabitant of New York was a glacial man, ruder than the rudest red savage, and in appearance resembling the present Eskimo.

We turn, however, to note what, in this immediate connection, may be styled the course of maritime enterprise, the first voyage of interest in connection with our subject being the voyage said to have been made by Sebastian Cabot along the coast from Newfoundland in 1515. Upon this initial voyage many Englishmen based their claim, but in the present state of knowledge the expedition itself is considered debatable by some. That John Sebastian Cabot saw the continent in 1498, or one year before Columbus saw South America, can hardly be doubted; but convincing testimony is required respecting the alleged voyage down this part of the coast in 1515. If we accept the voyage as a fact, this expedition, whose objective point was Newfoundland, may be regarded as the first known English expedition to these shores.

Before this time, however, the Portuguese were very active, and had run the coast from Florida to Cape Breton, evidence of which they left in the “Cantino” Map, and in the Ptolemy of 1513. This was in continuation of the enterprise of the Costas, or “Cortereals,” who made voyages to the north in 1500-1-2. The expedition made a long our coast at this period left no memorials now known, save the maps to which allusion has been made. As early as 1520 the Spaniards began to navigate to the north from the West Indies, and in that year Ayllon reached the coast of Carolina, on an expedition to capture slaves, though Martyr speaks of the country he visited as “near the Baccaloos,” a term applied at that time to the region far south of Newfoundland. Nevertheless, in the year 1524, we reach a voyage of deep interest, for in this year the Bay of[7] New York comes distinctly into view, Europeans being known for the first time to pass the Narrows. Reference is here made to the voyage of the celebrated Italian, Giovanni da Verrazano, in the service of Francis I. of France.

This celebrated navigator is supposed to have been the son of Piero Andrea di Bernardo de Verrazano and Fiametta Capella. He was born at Val di Greve, a little village near Florence, in the year 1485. At one time a portrait of Verrazano adorned the walls of a gallery in Florence. This portrait[3] was engraved for the well-known work entitled, “Uomini Illustri Toscani.” A medal was also struck in his honor, but no copy of it can now be found. The family, nevertheless, appears to have maintained a definite place in local history, the last known Florentine representative being the Cavaliere Andrea da Verrazano, who died in 1819.

Verrazano, the great explorer of the American coast, seems to have had a large experience as a sailor upon the Mediterranean, eventually entering the service of Francis I. of France, as a privateer or corsair, in which calling Columbus and many of the old navigators shone conspicuously, the profession at that time being quite creditable, even though dangerous. In 1523 Verrazano was engaged in capturing Spanish ships that brought the treasures of Montezuma from Mexico. In the following year he made his voyage to America, and one statement makes it appear that, subsequently, he was captured by the Spaniards and executed. Ramusio tells us that on a second voyage he was made a prisoner by the savages, and was roasted and eaten in the sight of his comrades. The light which we have at the present time does not suffice for the settlement of the question relating to the manner of his death, but we have overwhelming evidence of the reality of his voyage in 1524, which is vouched for by invaluable maps and relations contained in a lengthy letter addressed to his employer, Francis I.

This letter is of unique interest, especially for the reason that it contains the first known post-Columbian description of the North Atlantic coast, and the first pen-picture of the Bay and Harbor of New York. In connection with our local annals Giovanni da Verrazano must hold a high place. As might be supposed, the narrative of Verrazano has exerted a commanding influence upon historical literature. For more than three centuries it has furnished quotations. This fact has not prevented one or two occasional writers from questioning the authenticity of the Letter of Verrazano, though the discussion which followed simply resulted in the production of additional proof, especially that found in two maps previously unknown, establishing the authenticity of both voyage and letter, and taking the subject from the field of controversy.

The voyage of Verrazano was projected in 1523. On April 25th of that[8] year, Silveira, the Portuguese embassador at the Court of Francis I., wrote to his master: “By what I hear, Maestro Joas Verrazano, who is going on the discovery of Cathay, has not left up to date for want of opportunity, and because of differences, I understand, between himself and his men.... I shall continue to doubt unless he takes his departure.” It appears that he first went to sea with four ships, but met a severe gale and was obliged to return to port, apparently with the loss of two ships. After making repairs, he sailed for the Spanish coast alone in the Dolphin, the captain of the remaining ship leaving Verrazano, and giving color to the story of Silveira, that he had quarreled with his men. In the Carli correspondence, there is a reference to one Brunelleschi, “who went with him and unfortunately turned back.”

On January 17, 1524 (old style), Verrazano finally sailed from a barren rocky island, southeast of Madeira, though Carli erroneously says that he departed from the Canaries. The discrepancy is useful, in that it proves an absence of collusion between writers in framing a fictitious voyage. Steering westward until February 14th, he met a severe hurricane, and then veered more to the north, holding the middle course, as he feared to sail southward, by the accustomed route to the West Indies, less he should fall into the hands of the Spaniards,[4] who with the Portuguese, claimed the entire New World, in accordance with the decree of Pope Alexander. Hence the navigator, to avoid the Spanish cruisers, held his course westward in sunshine and storm, until the shores of the American continent appeared above the waves. March 7th he saw land which “never before had been seen by any one either in ancient or modern times,” a statement that he was lead into by the desire to claim something for France. He knew that his statement could not be exactly true, because, like all the navigators of his day, he was familiar with the Ptolemy of 1513, containing a rude map of the coast from Florida to 55° N. Evidently he did not attach any value to the explorations of the Portuguese[9] as represented by the maps, and hence, after sighting land in the neighborhood of 34° N., he sailed southward fifty leagues to make sure of connecting with the actual exploration of the Portuguese, and then began coasting northward in search of a route through the land to Cathay. Columbus died in 1508, believing that he had reached Cathay, but in the day of Verrazano it was understood by many that the land found formed a new continent, though this was not everywhere accepted until the middle of the sixteenth century.

Navigating northward, Verrazano reached the neighborhood of the present site of Charlestown, South Carolina, describing the country substantially as it appears to-day, bordered with low sand-hills, the sea making inlets, while beyond were beautiful fields, broad plains, and vast forests. On landing they found the natives timid, but by friendly signs the savages became assured, and freely approached the French followers of Verrazano, wondering at their dress and complexion, just as, in 1584, Barlow, in the same locality, said that the natives wondered “at the whiteness of our skins.” The descriptions of Verrazano were so faithful that Barlow, though without credit, employed his language, especially when he says, speaking of the forests before reaching the land, “We smelt so sweet and strong a smell as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden.” As Verrazano held northward, his descriptions continued to exhibit the same fidelity, being used by Barlow and confirmed by Father White. They were also confirmed by Dermer, who ran the coast in 1619, finding the shores low, without stones, sandy, and, for the most part, harborless. When near Chesapeake Bay, Verrazano found that the people made their canoes of logs, as described by Barlow and Father White. The grapes-vines were also seen trailing from the trees, as indicated by these writers; and, speaking of the fruit, Verrazano says that it was “very sweet and pleasant.” This language, being used early in the season, led to the rather thoughtless objection that Verrazano never made the voyage. The simple explanation is that the natives were accustomed to preserving fruits by drying them; and hence Hudson,[10] in 1609, found dried “currants,” which were sweet and good, meaning by the word, “currant” what all meant at that period, namely, a dried grape. The letter of Verrazano contains exaggerations, like all similar productions. Cortez made Montezuma drink wine from cellars in a country where both wine and cellars were unknown. Cartier caused figs to grow in Canada, and Eric the Red called the ice-clad hills of the land west of Iceland, “Greenland.” Verrazano, however, falls into none of these flat contradictions, and often the objection to the authenticity of the voyage has grown out of the ignorance of the critic of very common things.

Leaving Delaware Bay, Verrazano coasted northward, sailing by day and coming to anchor at night, finally reaching the Bay of New York, which forms the culmination of the interest of the voyage, so far as our present purpose is concerned. After proceeding a distance roughly estimated, on the decimal system, at a hundred leagues, he says: “We found a very pleasant situation among some little steep hills, through which a very large river (grandissima riviera), deep at its mouth, forced its way to the sea,” and he adds: “From the sea to the estuary of the river any ship might pass, with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet.” This is about the average rise at the present time, and the fact is one that could have been learned only from actual observation. It points to the “bar” as then existing, and gives the narrative every appearance of reality. Many things observed were noted in what Verrazano calls a “little book,” and evidently it was from data contained in this book that his brother compiled the map which illustrates the voyage. Verrazano, however, was cautious, as he possessed only one ship, and he says: “As we were riding at anchor in a good berth we would not venture up in our ship without a knowledge of the mouth; therefore,” he says, “we took the boat and entering the river, we found the country on its banks well-peopled, the inhabitants not differing much from the others, being dressed out with feathers of birds of various colors.” The natives, by their action, showed that their faith in human nature had not been spoiled by men leading expeditions like those of Ayllon in 1521, to the Carolinas for slaves. They were still a simple and unaffected people, not spoiled by European contact, as in the time of Hudson, and accordingly, unlike the sly people met where Ayllon’s kidnappers had done their work, “they came towards us with evident admiration, and showing us where we could most securely land with our boat.” Continuing, the narrative says: “We passed up this river about half a league, when we found it formed a most beautiful lake, three leagues in circuit, upon which were rowing thirty or more of their small boats from one shore to the other, filled with multitudes who came to see us.” This “beautiful lake” (bellissimo lago) was,[11] so far as one is able to judge, the Bay of New York.

Verrazano passed the bar and anchored at the entrance of the Narrows, the position being defined as between “little steep hills” (infra piccoli colli eminenti), which exactly describes the heights of Staten Island, and the shore of Long Island as far up as Yellow Hook, the present Bay Ridge. Then far and wide the spacious harbor was surrounded by well-wooded shores, upon which Verrazano and his followers, evidently the first of Europeans to enter the port, gazed with admiration. It would appear that they did not cross the harbor, but they probably espied in the distance the island upon which our city now stands, clothed in the dusky brown, touched only here and there with patches of the evergreen pine. Nothing is said of the beauty of the foliage in this region, since in March none could have been apparent, though the population was evidently numerous, and from the shores the smoke of many wigwams was seen by day, with the distant illuminations that filled the eye of the sailor by night. Verrazano little dreamed of the value of the situation. It never occurred to him that on this “beautiful lake” would one day stand a city which in wealth and importance would eclipse the far-famed city of Montezuma. The situation was pleasing, but it did not offer what Verrazano sought, namely, an opening to India. He learned that he was at the mouth of a swift river that poured out a powerful tide from between the hills, and he saw the unreasonableness of continuing his search at this place. What conclusion he might have reached eventually, had his stay been prolonged, we cannot predict, but he was soon hurried away. He says: “All of a sudden, as it is wont to happen to navigators, a violent contrary wind blew in from the sea and forced us to return to our ship, greatly regretting to leave this region, which seemed so commodious and delightful, and which we supposed must contain great riches, as the hills showed many indications of minerals.” By a glance at the chart it will be seen that the ship lay in a position in the lower bay perilous for a stranger, and in case of a gale she would be in danger of being driven upon the shore of either Long Island or Staten Island. Verrazano would not take his ship through the Narrows into the harbor, on account of his ignorance of the situation, and when the wind set upon shore from the sea he at once decided to get out of danger. Accordingly he says: “Weighing anchor we sailed fifty leagues towards the east, the coast stretching in that direction, and always in sight of it.” Thus he coasted along the shores of Long Island, and “discovered an island in triangular form, some ten leagues from the main land, in size about equal to the Island of Rhodes.” This was Block Island, and we mention the circumstance here, in order that the reader may appreciate the fact that Verrazano first visited New York, and[12] that he properly describes the coast. Block Island is distinctly a triangular island. Then he went to a harbor in the main, identified as Newport Harbor.[5] The natives who appeared in the harbor, it will be noticed, had some thirty small boats (barchettes). The word itself does not indicate the manner of their construction, but, when at Newport, Verrazano says distinctly, that these barchettes were hollowed out of single logs of wood (un sole fusto di legno). The Dutch found the natives using the same kind of boats here in the early days, though the bark canoe was also employed. The objections urged against the authenticity of the voyage of Verrazano have simply resulted in fresh investigation and the production of proofs that establish beyond question the truth of the narrative, which is supplemented by a long series of maps. The series begin with the map of Verrazano, drawn in the year 1529, by Hieronimo da Verrazano, brother of the navigator, and the Maijolla map, which also represents the voyage, giving particulars not given in the narrative of Verrazano. The map of Verrazano is now preserved in the museum of the “Propaganda Fide” at Rome,[6] and forms a wonderful advance upon the Ptolemy of 1513, which, after passing Florida, is vague and, upon the whole, quite useless as respects our present purpose, since it shows no knowledge of the Bay and Harbor of New York, and calls for no particular notice here.

It has already been observed that much of that which is wanting in the Letter is furnished by the map of Verrazano, noticeably the Shoals of Cape Cod. The map was constructed by the aid of the “little book,” in which, as Verrazano told Francis I., there were many particulars of the voyage, and it forms the best sixteenth century map of the coast now known to be extant in the original form. After Verrazano the delineation of the coast, as a whole, gradually, in the neglect of cartography, became more and more corrupt, culminating in the monstrous distortions of Mercator.

On the map of Verrazano the Cape of Florida is most unmistakable, though by an error in following Ptolemy, the draftsman placed the cape nine degrees too high, thus vitiating the latitudes, also failing to eliminate the error before reaching Cape Breton. This however, does not prevent us from recognizing the leading points of the coast. At Cape “Olimpo” we strike Cape Hatteras, and near “Santanna” is the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. “Palamsina,” a corruption perhaps of Pallavicino, marks the entrance to the Delaware. “Lamuetto,” possibly Bonivet after the general of that name, distinguishes what apparently was intended for Sandy Hook; while “San Germano” and “La Victoria” stand on the lower Bay of New York. Verrazano did not know enough about the river of “the steep hills” to enable him to give it a pronounced name, though in after times the Hudson, as we shall see, was called “the river of the mountains.” It will be readily recognized that San Germano is a name given out of compliment to his patron by Verrazano, as it recalls the splendid palace of Francis I., at St. Germaine-en-Lay. If circumstances had favored, the name of Francis might have been affixed to a great French metropolis at the mouth of the Hudson.

[13]

[14]

The influence of the Verrazano Map upon succeeding charts was most marked down even to 1610, when all obscurity in regard to the position of the Harbor of New York had passed away. The same is true of the exhibition of the relation of New York Bay to Rhode Island and the Island of Luisa. The influence of Verrazano upon the Globe of Vlpius, 1542, was most emphatic, as will be noticed later; though it is to be remembered that Verrazano’s voyage was pictured on the Map of Maijolla before the Verrazano Map was drawn, notes from Verrazano, probably out of the “little book” that he mentions, affording the requisite material. Verrazano evidently furnished an abundance of names for localities, and the various draftsmen seemed to have exercised their judgment to some extent respecting their use. It would, however, prove wearisome to the reader to peruse any minute statements of the contents of the many maps that indicate the Bay of New York; since neither the authenticity nor the influence of the voyage of Verrazano can now be questioned. In directions where it was never suspected, the Letter of Verrazano to Francis I. had a decided influence, as will be noted hereafter, though attention may again be called to the fact that Barlow, in his voyage to North Carolina, 1584, used the Letter without credit, according to the custom of the time; while, when Gosnold visited New England, in 1602, he sailed, as tacitly acknowledged, with the Letter of Verrazano, translated by Hakluyt as his guide.

Next, however, the reader’s attention must be directed to the voyage of Estevan Gomez, who followed Verrazano in 1525. This adventurer was a Portuguese in the service of Spain. While Verrazano was abroad on his voyage, Gomez attended the nautical congress at Badajos, in Spain, when, we are told, Sebastian Cabot was present. At this congress Portugal opposed the plan presented for an expedition to the Indies, being very jealous, as usual, of the power of Spain. The differences of the two powers were nevertheless reconciled, and the king of Spain, with the aid of several merchants, fitted out a caravel and put Gomez in command. Gomez, if he did not stand as high as some men of his time, was a navigator of experience. In 1519 he sailed as chief pilot with Magellan, but incurred much odium by leaving him in the Straits which now bear Magellan’s name, and returning to Spain. Peter Martyr, who gives an account of the congress at Badajos, says: “It is decreed that one Stephanus Gomez, himself a skilful navigator, shall go another way, whereby, between Baccalaos and[15] Florida, long since our countries, he says he will find out a way to Cataia. Only one ship, a caravel, is furnished for him,” and, the chronicler continues, “he will have no other thing in charge than to search out whether any passage to the great Chan from among the various windings and vast compassing of this our ocean is to be found.” Of the voyage out from Spain few particulars are now available, though the account of the return was penned by Martyr subsequently to November 13, 1525, and probably before the close of the year. The voyage was, upon the whole, a short one. Martyr, however, says that he returned at the end of “ten months,” while Navarrete states that he sailed in February. Galvano tells us that, having failed to obtain the command of an expedition to the Moluccas, he went on the coast of the new world in search of a passage to India, observing that “the Earl Don Fernando de Andrada, and the doctor Beltram, and the merchant Christopher de Serro, furnished a galleon for him, and he went from Groine, in Gallicia, to the Island of Cuba, and to the Cape of Florida, sailing by day because he knew not the land.” Galvano tells us, likewise, that he passed the Bay of Angra and the river Enseada, and so “went over to the other side, reaching Cape Razo in 46° N.” This means that he sailed up from Florida past the coast of Maine. Martyr, writing after the return of Gomez, indulges in a strain of ridicule, and says: “He, neither finding the Straight, nor Cataia, which he promised, returned back in ten months after his departure;” and continues: “I always thought and supposed this worthy man’s fancies to be vain and frivolous. Yet he wanted not for suffrages and voices in his favor and defense.” Still, Martyr admits that “he found pleasant and profitable countries agreeable with our parallels and degrees of the pole.”

The results of the voyage along the coast from Florida to Newfoundland are indicated on the Map of Ribeiro, 1529, which represents a new exploration, as nothing seems to have been borrowed from either the voyage of Verrazano or from the voyages made by the Portuguese, with the exception that Ribeiro used old Portuguese maps of Newfoundland, which was the case with Verrazano. We must, however, confine our observations to things that relate to this immediate region, and notice what the accompanying maps so fully exhibit, the difference of the delineation of Sandy Hook and Long Island. On the Ribeiro Map Sandy Hook appears as “Cabo de Arenas,” the Sandy Cape, exaggerated in size, while Long Island is hardly distinguishable, as the coast line runs too close to the north. It is indicated by the section of the coast between two rivers, “Montana Vue,” evidently one of the hills of Long Island that the navigator now views from the sea. On the Verrazano Map, the region of Sandy Hook is “Lamuetto” and “Lungavilla,” while Long Island is indicated as a[16] part of the mainland, bearing the names of “Cabo de Olimpo” and “Angolesme,” the bay of “San Germano” lying between. The delineations of Verrazano exhibit his short stay and hasty departure, while the survey of Gomez must have occupied more time, at least around Sandy Hook. That this map resulted from the voyage of Gomez is evident from the legend, which calls the land “Tierra de Estevan Gomez;” (the country of Stephen Gomez) while eastward, where the coast of Maine is delineated, is the “Arcipelago” of Gomez. On this Map of Ribeiro the lower Bay of New York is indicated by “E. de S. Xpoal,” with several Islands. A river appears between this bay, given in later documents as Bay of “St. Chrispstabel,” and Long Island, but the name of the river is not given. “B. de S. Antonio,” however, is given which indicates the upper bay or harbor, and subsequently we shall see the river itself indicated as the river “San Antonio,” while the place of Sandy Hook in the old cartography will be fully established and identified with Cape de Arenas. Ribeiro evidently had pretty full notes of the calculations and observations of Gomez.

As the reverential old navigators were often in the habit of marking their progress in connection with prominent days in the Calendar, it is reasonable to suppose that the Hudson was discovered by Gomez on the festival of St. Anthony, which falls on January 17. Navarrete indeed says that he left Spain in February, but the accounts are more or less confusing. If Martyr, who is more particular, is correct, and Gomez was absent “ten months,” he must have sailed early in December, which would have brought him to our coast on the festival of the celebrated Theban Father. At this time the navigator would have seen the country at its worst. Evidently he made no extended exploration of the river, as in January it is often loaded with ice and snow.

Gomez was laughed at by the courtiers, and had no disposition to return to the American coast. The legend on the Map of Ribeiro proclaiming[17] his discovery, that is, exploration of the coast, declared that here were to be found “many trees and fruits similar to those in Spain,” but Martyr contemptuously exclaims, “What need have we of these things that are common to all the people of Europe? To the South! to the South!” he ejaculates, “for the great and exceeding riches of the Equinoxial,” adding, “They that seek riches must not go to the cold and frozen North.” Gems, spices, and gold were the things coveted by Spain, and our temperate region, with its blustering winters, did not attract natures accustomed to soft Andalusian air.

After the voyage of Gomez, which, failing to find a route to the Indies, excited ridicule, there is nothing of special interest to emphasize in this connection until 1537. In the meanwhile, the English were active, and in 1527 two ships, commanded by Captain John Rut, were in American waters. It has been claimed that he sailed the entire coast, often sending men on land “to search the state of these unknown regions,” and it has been affirmed that this is “the first occasion of which we are distinctly informed that Englishmen landed on the coast.” Also that, “after Cabot, this was the second English expedition which sailed along the entire east coast of the United States, as far as South Carolina.” Granting, however, that the expedition of Rut actually extended down the American coast, there is no proof that he gave any attention to the locality of the Hudson.

We turn now to the account of our particular locality, as given by Oviedo in 1537, who wrote an account of the coast based largely upon the Map of Alonzo Chaves. It appears that, in 1536, Charles V. ordered that the official charts should “be examined and corrected by experienced men, appointed for that purpose.” Acting under their instructions, Alonzo Chaves drew up a chart, embodying the information that he had been able to collect from maps and narratives. It is evident that he had notes of the voyage of Gomez, and that he used the Ribeiro Map, but he had no information about the voyage of Verrazano or that of Cartier in 1534. His delineation of the coast began in the Bay of Mexico, and extended to Newfoundland. Oviedo, in his “History of the Indies,” used this map, and describes the coast by its aid. The Map of Chaves does not appear to be accessible, but its American features have been reconstructed from the descriptions of Oviedo, and this portion of the Map is given herewith, the latitudes and distances being exactly preserved. From the Cape of Florida, Oviedo moves northward in his descriptions, which are distinctly recognizable. “Cabo de Sanct Johan” stands at the mouth of the Chesapeake, and from this place “Cabo de los Arenas” is thirty leagues to the north-northeast. The latter cape is 38° 20′ N. From “Arenas” the coast runs thirty leagues to “Cabo de Santiago,”[18] which is 39° 20′ N. On this map Sandy Hook appears as Cape Santiago, but generally the name of “Arenas,” the Sandy Cape, is affixed to the Hook[7]. Oviedo, on reaching the end of Sandy Hook, proceeds to give an unmistakable delineation of the Bay and Harbor of New York, and of the river which is now known as the Hudson. “Thence,” continues Oviedo, with his eye on the Map of Chaves, “the coast turns southwest twenty leagues to the Bay of Sanct Christobal, which is in 39°, passes said bay, and goes thirty leagues to Rio de Sanct Antonio, north and south with the bottom of this bay; and the ‘Rio de Sanct Antonio’ is in 41° N.” Dr. Kohl says that “it is impossible to give a more accurate description of the Hudson River,” but this is not quite true. It was an excellent description for that period, considering the material at hand; yet it must be remembered that all the distances are given as general estimates on the decimal system. Besides, the Map of Chaves, like all the maps, was drawn on a small scale, and Sandy Hook and the Lower Bay are both exaggerated, as on the Map of Ribeiro, which will be seen by a comparison of the two maps, placed side by side to facilitate investigation. Both Ribeiro and Chaves had erroneous measurements of distances, and made the Lower Bay quite a large gulf, while the latitude of “Rio Sanct Antonio” is placed one[19] degree too high. Ribeiro, however, gave the Hook its right name, “Arenas.”[8] The size of the Hook is exaggerated on the Maijolla Map, 1527, though not on the Verrazano, 1529. These things show free-hand drawing on the part of the mapmakers, and defective rule-of-thumb measurements by the navigator, who probably viewed the waters behind the Hook when veiled in mist, failing to test his own estimates.

Oviedo says that “from the Rio de Sanct Antonio the coast runs northeast one-fourth east forty leagues to a point (punta), that on the western side it has a river called the Buena Madre, and on the eastern part, in front of (de lante) the point, is the Bay of Sanct Johan Baptista, which point (punta) is 41° 30′ N.”; or, rather, correcting the error of one degree, in 40° 30′ N. This point is Montauk Point, Long Island being taken as a part of the main. The Thames River in Connecticut answers to the River of the Good Mother, and the Bay of John Baptist is evidently the Narragansett. Oviedo then goes on to the region of Cape Cod, varying from the general usage, and calling it “Arrecifes,” or the Reef Cape, instead of “Cabe de Baxos,” which signifies substantially the same thing. Under the circumstances, the description of Long Island is remarkably exact, as its shore trends northward almost exactly half a degree in running to Montauk Point. What, therefore, lies on either side of the River San Antonio fixes beyond question the locality of the Hudson, and proves that it was clearly known from the time of Gomez to 1537.

The next navigator whose work touched our part of the coast was Jehan or Jean Allefonsce, who, in 1542, came to Canada as pilot of Roberval, and gained considerable knowledge of the North Atlantic shores. This hardy sailor was a native of Saintonge, a village of Cognac, France. After following the sea for a period of more than forty years, and escaping many dangers, he finally received a mortal wound while engaged in a naval battle in the harbor of Rochelle. Melin Saint-Gelais wrote a sonnet in his honor during the year 1559. It can hardly be doubted that Allefonsce himself ran down the coast in one of the ships of Roberval, probably when returning to France.

With the aid of Paulin Secalart he wrote a cosmographical description, which included Canada and the West Indies, with the American coast. Very recognizable descriptions are given as far down as Cape Cod and the islands to the southward. The manuscript also possesses interest in connection with the region of the Hudson, though farther south the description becomes still more available.

Allefonsce after disposing of the region of New England, turns southward, and says: “From the Norombega River,” that is, the Penobscot, “the coast runs west-southwest about two hundred and fifty leagues to a large bay (anse) running inland about[20] twenty leagues, and about twenty-nine leagues wide. In this bay there are four islands close together. The entrance to the bay is by 38° N., and the said islands lie in 39° 30′ N. The source of this bay has not been explored, and I do not know whether it extends further on.... The whole coast is thickly populated, but I had no intercourse with them.” Continuing, he says: “From this bay the coast runs west-northwest about forty-six leagues. Here you come upon a great fresh-water river, and at its entrance is a sand island.” What is more, he adds: “Said island is 39° 49′ N.”

From the description of Allefonsce, it is evident that the “great fresh-water river” is the Hudson, described five years before by Oviedo, out of the Map of Chaves, as the River of St. Anthony, while the “island of sand” was Sandy Hook.[9]

Turning from the manuscript of Allefonsce to the printed cosmography, we discover that the latter is only an abridgement, it being simply said that after leaving Norombega, the coast turns to the south-southeast to a cape which is high land (Cape Cod), and has a great island and three or four small isles. New York and the entire coast south have no mention. The manuscript, however, suffices for our purpose and proves that the coast was well known.

It has been already stated that it would be impossible to say when the first Englishman visited this region; yet in the year 1567-8, evidence goes to prove that one David Ingram, an Englishman, set ashore with a number of companions in the Bay of Mexico, journeyed on foot across the country to the river St. John, New Brunswick, and sailed thence for France. Possibly he was half crazed by his sufferings, yet there can be little doubt that he crossed the continent and passed through the State of New York, traveling on the Indian paths and crossing many broad rivers. If the story is true, Ingram is the first Englishman known to have visited these parts.

In April, 1583, Captain Carline wrote out propositions for a voyage “to the latitude of fortie degrees or thereabouts, of that hithermost part of America,” and, in 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert had this region under consideration, Hakluyt observing on the margin of his “Divers Voyages” that this was “the Countrey of Sir H. G. Uoyage.” Hays says in his account of the region, that “God hath reserved the same to be reduced unto Christian civility by the English nation” and, also that “God would raise him up an instrument to effect the same.” All this is very interesting in connection with English claims and enterprise. In the same year the French were active on the coast, and one Stephen Bellinger, of Rouen, sailed to Cape Breton, and thence coasted southwesterly six hundred miles “and had trafique with the people in tenne or twelve places.” Thus the French were moving from both the north and the south towards[21] this central region; but we cannot say how far south Bellinger actually came, as there is nothing to indicate his mode of computation. It is not improbable that he knew and profited by the rich fur-trade of the Hudson.

In 1598 and there about, we find it asserted that the Dutch were upon the ground, for, in the year 1644, the Committee of the Dutch West India Company, known as the General Board of Accounts, to whom numerous documents and papers have been intrusted, made a lengthy report, which they begin as follows: “New Netherland, situated in America, between English Virginia and New England, extending from the South [Delaware] river, lying in 34½ degrees to Cape Malabat, in the latitude of 41½ degrees, was first frequented by the inhabitants of this country in the year 1598, and especially by those of the Greenland Company, but without making any fixed settlements, only as a shelter in winter. For which they built on the North [Hudson] and the South [Delaware] rivers there two little forts against the attacks of the Indians.” Mr. Brodhead says that the statement “needs confirmation.” Still it is somewhat easy to understand why a statement of this kind coming from such a body should require confirmation; but the Committee had no reason for misstating the facts, and ought to have been accurately informed. Yet if confirmation is insisted upon, we are prepared to give it, such as it is, from an English and, in fact, an unexpected source. Our authority is no less a personage than Governor Bradford, of Plymouth Colony, whose office and inclinations led him to challenge all unfounded claims that might be put forth by the Dutch. Nevertheless, writing to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the father of New England colonization, who likewise was hostile to the pretensions of the Dutch, Bradford says, under date of June 15, 1627, that the Dutch on the Hudson “have used trading there this six-or-seven-and-twenty years, but have begun to plant of later time, and now have reduced their trade to some order.” Bradford lived in Holland in 1608, and had abundant opportunities for knowing everything relating to Dutch enterprise. It is perfectly well known that the Plymouth Colonists of 1620 intended to settle at the Hudson, though circumstances directed them to the spot pointed out by Dermer in 1619, when in the service of Gorges. Thus, about seventeen years before the Committee of 1644 reported, Governor Bradford, an unwilling, but every way competent and candid witness, carried back the Dutch occupancy, under the Greenland Company, to the year 1600. Besides, on the English map of the voyage of Linschoten, 1598, there is a dotted trail from the latitude of the Hudson, 40° N. to the St. Lawrence, showing that the route was one known and traveled at that time. It is evident, from a variety of considerations, that both the Dutch and French resorted to the Hudson at this period to engage in the trade. Linschoten[22] was one of the best informed of Dutch writers, and probably understood the significance of the representation upon his map. The probability is that this route was known a long time before, and that it may be indicated by Cartier, who, when in Canada, 1534, was told of a route by the way of the river Richelieu, to a country a month’s distance southward, supposed to produce cinnamon and cloves, which Cartier thought the route to Florida. Champlain, writing in Canada, says that, in the year previous, certain French who lived on the Hudson were taken prisoners when out on an expedition against the northern Indians, and were liberated, on the ground that they were friends of the French in Canada. This agrees with the report of the Labadists, who taught that a French child, Jean Vigné, was born here in 1614. Evidently the French had been on the ground in force for some years, and were able to make expeditions against the savages. Very likely the French were here quite as early as the Hollanders.

There seems to be, however, another curious piece of confirmation, which comes from the writings of the celebrated Father Isaac Jogues, who was in New Amsterdam during the year 1646. In a letter written on August 3d of that year, he says that the Dutch were here, “about fifty years” before, while they began to settle permanently only about “twenty years” since. The latter statement is sufficiently correct, as 1623 was the year when a permanent colony was established by the Dutch. The former statement carries us back to the date of the “Greenland Company.”

So far as present evidence goes, it is perhaps unnecessary to say anything more in vindication of the statement of the Dutch Committee of 1644, claiming that representatives of the Greenland Company wintered here in 1598. Nevertheless, as a matter of interest, and to show how well the Hudson was known at this time by both Dutch and English, we may quote from the English translation of the Dutch narrative of Linschoten, which clearly describes the coast. He says: “There is a countrey under 44 degrees and a halfe, called Baccalaos.” This country of Baccalaos reached nine hundred miles, that is, from the Cape de Baccalaos [Cape Race] to Florida.

The distances are given approximately, of course, by Linschoten, being on the decimal system, but they distinctly mark the principal divisions of the coast and fix the fact beyond question that the Hudson was perfectly well known.

On the general subject it may be said, that the record of the “Greenland Company” is not satisfactory, yet the word “Greenland” at that time had a very general use, and all that the Committee of Accounts may have meant by the phrase was, that a company or association engaged in the fur and fish trade, which for centuries, even, had been prosecuted at the north, had sent some ships to this region in 1598.[23] There is certainly nothing unreasonable in this supposition, the coast being so well known. Various adventurers of whom we know nothing doubtless came and went unobserved, being in no haste to publish the source from which they derived such a profitable trade in peltries. The Committee of Accounts either falsified deliberately or followed some old tradition. Why may not a tradition be true?

We turn next to examine a map recently brought to notice and which is of unique value. Formerly the map usually pointed out as the oldest seventeenth century map of this region was the Dutch “Figurative” Map, which was found by Mr. Brodhead in the Dutch archives. We have now, however, an earlier map of 1610, which was prepared from English data for James I., a copy finding its way to Philip III., by Velasco, March 22, 1611. Sandy Hook, though without name, is delineated about as it appears in later maps, while Long Island is shown as a part of the main, with no indication of the Sound, though Cape Cod and the neighboring islands are well delineated, and Verrazano’s Island of “Luisa” appears as “Cla[u]dia,” the mother of Francis I. Clearly at this time neither Block nor any other Dutch navigator had passed through Hell Gate into Long Island Sound.

There is nothing whatever in this map relating to explorations by any nation later than 1607. Jamestown appears on the Virginia portion, and Sagadehoc in Maine. It was simply a copy of a map made soon after the voyage to New England and Virginia in 1607. The compiler had not heard of Hudson’s voyage, as that navigator did not reach England until November 7, 1609. If he had received any information from Hudson, he would have shown the river terminating in a shallow, innavigable brook, whereas the river is indicated, in accordance with Captain John Smith’s idea, as a strait, leading to a large body of water. Further, the map contradicts Hudson, who represents the Hoboken side of the river as “Manhatta,” while this map puts the name on both sides, “Manahata,” on the west and “Manahatin” on the east. It is not unlikely that Hudson had with him a copy of the map, for his guidance on the voyage in the Half-Moon.

Though this map bears a date subsequent to Hudson’s voyage, the contents prove that the original could not have been drawn later than 1608. It was evidently one of the various maps of which Smith spoke and which he underrated. Its substance indicates that it was drawn from a source independent of the Dutch and French, showing that the English knew of the Bay of New York and its relation to Sandy Hook, and that they supposed the great river delineated was a broad stream which, in someway, communicated with the Pacific. On the original map of which Velasco’s example was a copy, the land west of the river was colored blue, and the legend says that[24] it is described by information drawn from the Indians. What we need now is the original map, which may still exist in some obscure collection in England or Holland, and quite as likely in the archives of Spain, sent thither by jealous Spanish spies, who lingered, like Velasco, at the court of James I., to learn what they could with respect to English enterprise in America. At all events we have in this English map the first seventeenth century delineation of this region, and one showing that the English knew the form and general character of the country which the crown conveyed to the colonists of North and South Virginia in 1606. So far as now known, it was clearly the English who first became acquainted with the name that the Aborigines applied to the island upon which our great metropolitan city stands. Whether or not this was an aboriginal word or a corruption of a Castilian term future investigators may decide. The unexpected finding of this old English map in the Spanish archives revives our hopes relating to the discovery of new sources of information concerning early voyages to this coast. English enterprise and adventure on the Virginia coast, extending from Raleigh’s expedition, 1584, to Gosnold’s fatal quest, 1603, must have brought Englishmen into the Bay of New York, unless miracle was balanced against curiosity and chance. There are archives yet to be opened that may give the origin of the delineations of this region found in the remarkable map from Samancas, and we need to be cautious in making claims even for the priority of the Dutch in 1598.

The period under consideration was a period of reconnoissance, one that offered some romantic incident, but more of disappointment and mortification. Here was a site for one of the noblest cities in the world, but the voyager was blind. The river offered no route to the gorgeous Indies, and Verrazano had little inclination to test its swift tide. Gomez, in the short January days of 1525, had no desire to ascend, for when his ship met the drift ice tossing on the cold, swirling stream, he thought of Anthony in his desolate[25] retreat on the Red Sea, put the river under his charge, and sailed away in search of happier shores. Sailors of other nationalities, doubtless, ascended the river; but, finding it simply a river, they took what peltries they could get, and, like Gomez, turned the whole region over to the care of the solitary Saint, who for nearly a century stood connected with its neglect. Much remained to be done before steps could be taken with regard to colonization. The initial work, however, was inaugurated by the sturdy Englishman, Henry Hudson, and the proud Spanish caravel disappears, while the curtain rises upon the memorable voyage of the quaint Dutch fly-boat, the Half-Moon.

[26]

Seventy-odd years ago the Rev. Sydney Smith wrote in the Edinburg Review as follows: “Literature, the Americans have none—no native literature, we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed, and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems, and his baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a small account of Virginia, by Jefferson, an epic by Joel Barlow, and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should the Americans write books, when a six weeks’ passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science and genius in bales and hogsheads?”

Times have changed since Mr. Smith wrote this somewhat sarcastic summary of our native literature; for, while it is true that we still import British “sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads,” it is done now on principles of reciprocity, and we return quite as good and perhaps nearly as much as we receive.

Americans do not instance Mr. Dwight, whose “baptismal name was Timothy,” or Mr. Barlow, the author of the epic so sneeringly referred to, as the chiefs of American poesy; yet we need not blush for either of them; for the first was a distinguished scholar the President of Yale College, and the author of the hymn so dear to many pious hearts:

The other, Mr. Barlow, was a well-known man of letters and politician in his day, author of the “Columbiad,” the epic referred to by Mr. Smith, and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the coast of France at a critical period of our history. As to the “Columbiad,” it has been pronounced by competent critics to be equal in merit to Addison’s “Campaign,” and surely it is no disgrace to have equalled Addison.

It was the fashion in those days for Englishmen to sneer at Americans; and so we find in another review, written by the same gentleman in 1820, this language: “During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature, or even for the statesmanlike studies of politics or political economy.... In the four quarters of the globe who[28] reads an American book? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they done in mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from American plates? or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets?” In the very same year that this array of rather insolent queries was propounded by Sydney Smith, the genial Washington Irving, in the advertisement to the first English edition of his Sketch Book, remarks: “The author is aware of the austerity with which the writings of his countrymen have been treated by British critics.” We have not a particle of doubt as to the “austerity” in question. The salvos of Old Ironsides and the roar of Jackson’s guns at New Orleans, were unpleasant facts not yet forgotten by Englishmen.

But Sydney Smith was not quite fair towards our countrymen. It was “during the thirty or forty years of their independence” referred to that Fulton’s steamboat revolutionized navigation, that Rittenhouse developed a mathematical skill second only to that of Newton; that West delighted even royalty itself with the creations of his pencil; while in “the statesmanlike studies of politics or political economy,” it was during this very period that Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and their coadjutors did more to develop the true principles of government and politics than had ever been done before in the history of the world. True, we had not much to boast of, but it would have been only just to give us credit for what we were worth. Moreover, in a small way, but to the extent it was possible under the circumstances, the English colonists in America had cultivated letters from the beginning. In 1685, Cotton Mather wrote his Memorable Providences; in 1732, Franklin began to issue his Poor Richard’s Almanac; in 1749, Jonathan Edwards published his Life of David Brainerd, and in 1754, his famous treatise on The Freedom of the Will and Moral Agency. Besides these, which perhaps stand out most conspicuously, there were many minor works of more or less excellence, over most of which the iniquity of oblivion, to use the fine phrase of Sir Thomas Browne, hath scattered her poppy.

The moment that the Edinburg Review was thus dealing our fathers these heavy blows seemed to be the real starting point in our career of literary greatness. William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, James K. Paulding, Richard H. Dana, James Fenimore Cooper, Mrs. Sigourney and a host of others were giving direction to that stream of literature that has since flowed broad and free over our land, imparting life and vigor and beauty to our society and institutions. It is, however, anterior to the year 1820, the[29] thirty or forty years of our national independence, during which Mr. Smith says we have done “absolutely nothing” in literature, science or art, to which we must more particularly advert. The literary product of those years was scanty enough, it is true. The student of this period will not find much, and not all of that of the first order, to reward his labor—not much, at least, as compared with other nations at the same time. But may there not have been some sufficient reason for this, outside of any downright intellectual deficiencies on the part of our fathers? Let us for a moment consider the condition of things at that time in this country.

In the first place, at the time referred to, the citizens of the United States were in a daily struggle with the material difficulties of their situation. The country was new. The region west and north of the Ohio and Mississippi was yet an almost unbroken wilderness, while the country east and south of those rivers was but sparsely populated. At the same time the tide of immigration was sweeping into the country, and with it all the rush and turmoil incident to life in a new country was going on. Forests were to be cut down; farms were to be cleared up; houses were to be built; roads were to be made; bridges were to be thrown across the rivers; while a livelihood was to be compelled from the forests, the streams, and the fields. The conditions of a new country are not favorable to the cultivation of the arts, of sciences, or of literature. Why do not Englishmen twit the people of Australia because during the past forty or fifty years in which they have prospered so greatly in material things, they have not produced a Macaulay, a Tennyson, a Gladstone, a Tyndall, or a Huxley? It would be just as fair to do it.

Not only was there this hand to hand contest with their physical environment, but the political conditions were also unfavorable to any general dalliance with the Muses. Only in times of tranquility and ease is it possible.

The country at the period referred to, had just emerged from a long and exhausting war. Society was almost broken up; the arts of peace were well nigh forgotten; the finances were in almost hopeless confusion; the form of government was unsettled, and scarcely yet determined upon. The first thing to do was to evolve some system and some security out of this chaos. Politics alone occupied the moments of leisure. When, finally, authority had crystallized into definite government the people were not allowed to be at rest. Murderous wars with the Indians on the frontiers; the machinations of French emissaries; British oppression of American commerce, and at length another long and bloody war with England, harassed the minds of the people, and prevented them[30] from giving themselves up more generally to the kindly and refining influences of literature and art. When we consider all the circumstances in the case, there seems a degree of severity in Sydney Smith’s sneers and taunts.

But though circumstances were thus unfavorable to the cultivation of letters, yet something was done in this direction nevertheless. Smith refers flippantly enough to Dwight, Jefferson, Barlow and Irving. But besides these there were others, not brilliant luminaries perhaps, yet stars shining in the darkness according to their orders and degrees. We do not design here to enter upon any discussion of their respective merits, but we may mention as a writer of that period no less a character than George Washington, whose greatness in other spheres of life has entirely eclipsed any fame of which he may be worthy as an author, yet whose Farewell Address alone would entitle him to a place among the most accurate writers of English. Among others we may name John Adams, whose pen was scarcely less eloquent than his tongue; Francis Hopkinson, author of The Battle of the Kegs and many other pieces, of which it has been said, that “while they are fully equal to any of Swift’s writings for wit, they have nothing at all in them of Swift’s vulgarity;” Dr. Benjamin Rush, a distinguished writer on medical and social topics; John Trumbull, the author of McFingal and The Progress of Dullness; James Madison, afterward President of the United States, one of the ablest writers in The Federalist; Philip Freneau, a poet of the Revolution and the period immediately following; Alexander Hamilton, a contributor to The Federalist, and one of the clearest of political writers; Joseph Dennie, the author of The Lay Preacher, and editor of The Portfolio; Joseph Hopkinson, author of Hail, Columbia; Charles Brockden Brown, author of Wieland, Arthur Mervyn, and other works, and who was perhaps the first American who wholly devoted his life to literary pursuits; William Wirt, author of the British Spy, the Life of Patrick Henry, and other works; and Lyman Beecher, the author of a work on Political Atheism, anti several volumes of sermons and public addresses. This list might easily be extended, but its length as it now stands, as well as the merits of the writers adduced, is sufficient to contradict effectually the statement that America had “no native literature,” and that during the thirty or forty years immediately subsequent to the Revolution she had done “absolutely nothing” for polite letters. Much of this early literature still remains, and is read; many of these authors are still familiar to this generation, and it is generally admitted that the writer whose fame survives a century is assured of a literary immortality. Sydney Smith was an acute man, a learned man, a great wit, a ready and elegant writer, a trenchant[31] critic, but the names of some of these humble Americans whom he did not deign to mention, or mentioned only to scoff, bid fair to stand as long in the annals of literature as his own.

On the eastern slope of the Andes are a thousand springs from which the slender rills, half hidden at times by the grass, scarcely at any time seen or heard, trickle down the side of the immense mountain range, here and there falling into each other and swelling in volume as they flow, until at length is formed the mighty Amazon, that drains the plateaus and valleys of half a continent. So the beginnings of our literature, like the beginnings of every literature, are small, indistinct, half hidden; but as they proceed, these little rills of thought and expression grow and expand, until the mighty stream is formed that irrigates the whole world of intellectual activity.

This stream, as we have said, first began to assume definite form and direction about the time that Sydney Smith was uttering his tirades against the genius and achievements of our countrymen. In 1817, appeared in the North American Review a remarkable poem called “Thanatopsis.” The author was a young man named William Cullen Bryant, only twenty-three years of age; yet the poem had been written four years before. The annals of literature do not furnish another example of such excellence at so early an age. The poem yet stands as one of the most exquisite in the language. A recent critic has characterized it as “lofty in conception, beautiful in execution, full of chaste language and delicate and striking imagery, and, above all, pervaded by a noble and cheerful religious philosophy.” This first effort on the part of Bryant was succeeded by a long career of eminence in the field of literature. In 1818 appeared a volume of miscellanies called “The Sketch Book,” by Washington Irving, a young man who had already acquired some slight reputation as a dabbler in literature of a trifling or humorous kind. The Sketch Book was almost immediately honored by republication in England. This initial volume was followed by a second series of miscellanies called “Bracebridge Hall,” which was published in London in 1822. In the preliminary chapter the author pleasantly adverts to the general feeling with which American authorship was regarded in England. “It has been a matter of marvel to my European readers,” says he, “that a man from the wilds of America should express himself in tolerable English. I was looked upon as something new and strange in literature; a kind of demi-savage, with a feather in his hand instead of on his head; and there was a curiosity to hear what such a being had to say about civilized society.” In the same year with Irving’s Sketch Book appeared Drake’s Culprit Fay, a poem that has not been surpassed in its kind since Milton’s Comus. In 1821 Percival issued his first volume of[32] poems, Dana his Idle Man, and Cooper, his Precaution. His last named volume was at once followed by a long list of works including such famous titles as The Spy, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer. It marked the advent of our most distinguished novelist—a man who has been styled the Walter Scott of America. He justly stands in the same rank with the mighty Wizard of the North, and has no other equal. Thus the stream of American literature rolled on its course, and was swelled as it flowed by the contributions of Everett, Prescott, Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Willis, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, and a host of others, whose names the world will not willingly let die.

America has not yet produced a Shakespere or a Milton; but it must be remembered that England has produced but one, each of these in a period of a thousand years. Anywhere below these two great names, American literature of the last seventy years is able to parallel the best work that has been produced by our kinsmen on the other side of the Atlantic. In wealth and elegance of diction, in depth of thought or feeling, in brightness and grace of expression, in any of the thousand forms and flights in which genius seeks to express himself, the current literature of America stands on a level with the current literature of England; and Sydney Smith’s sneers, which must have touched our fathers to the quick, find no response now except the smile of contempt which alone they ever deserved.

T. J. Chapman.

There are many things that link the capital city of financial and commercial America, to the State of Ohio, that New England enterprise, and New York encouragement, and Virginian patriotism, did so much to build beyond the Alleghenies. It is not merely in the associations and connections of to-day that New York and Ohio are bound together. A pregnant era of the early past, was disposed toward good results forever, by the patriotic generosity of the Empire State, at a time when Ohio was but a name in the far off wilderness; a promise that many things must nurture, before it could be realized.

Historians will recall, when this much has been said, the events that were pressed close upon each other, before the soil upon which Ohio now stands, was declared the property of the nation, disentangled from the conflicting claims of jealous States, and how New York by her self-renunciation, led the way to harmony. For a century had Virginia and Connecticut made their claims to the vast westward territory; vaster than the imagination of any living man then conceived. When the French were driven from the lands west of the bounds of Pennsylvania, the contention commenced, and claims were urged from time to time, until both voices of dispute were temporarily silenced by the war in which the rivals fought side by side for the freedom of both. When that conflict was ended, the question again arose; not, this time, with the English Crown as the greater power, but with the loose jointed Confederation, under which America endeavored to work out a national salvation. Virginia, made her demand under the grant of James, in 1609, which gave her: “All those lands, countries and territories, situated, lying, and being in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of the eastern land called Cape or Point Comfort, all that space and circuit of land lying, from the seacoast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land, throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest, and also all the islands lying within one hundred miles along the coast of the both seas of the precinct aforesaid.”

This generous King, who was giving away so much that did not belong to him, was really giving more than he dreamed of; for the writer of the grant evidently believed that the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, was but little westward of the Atlantic, and never dreamed that he was extending[34] his line so as to take in the magnificent Western and Northwestern empire of to-day.

Connecticut made her claim under Charles the II, who in 1662, gave to the colony “All that part of our dominion in New England, in America, bounded on the east by the Narragansett River, commonly called Narragansett Bay, where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line of the Massachusetts plantation, and on the south by the sea, and in longitude as the line of the Massachusetts colony, running from east to west; that is to say, from the said Narragansett Bay, on the east to the South Sea on the west part, with the islands thereto adjoining.”

It was under this very vague, but very extensive grant, that Connecticut laid claim to, and maintained that claim, for that part of Ohio known the world over, as the “Connecticut Western Reserve.”

While Virginia, Connecticut and Pennsylvania were warring in the courts, in the legislatures, and before the people over their various claims, there were many others who virtually assumed that the whole unoccupied and unorganized land to the west, belonged to the nation at large, and that no state had a right to exclusive jurisdiction. This discussion threatened all sorts of difficulties, at a time when peace and prosperity could only come through a mutual helpfulness and internal harmony, and the wisest and most patriotic declared themselves willing to waive all personal claims, and allow the national government to administer the general estate for the general good. Congress so viewed it, and appealed to the States to yield their claims. The first response came from New York, which conceded all her possible ownership to western territory, to the general government, and the other States followed in her wake. Virginia followed New York; and Massachusetts Virginia; and eventually Connecticut came into line.

In the appeal of Congress to the States there was no ambiguity as to the purpose to which these lands were to be devoted. The act of October 10, 1780, resolved that “the unappropriated lands that may be ceded or relinquished to the United States by any particular State,” should be disposed of “for the common benefit of the United States, and shall be settled and formed into distinct republican States, which shall become members of the Federal Union, and have the same right of sovereignty, freedom and independence as the other States; that each which shall be so formed shall contain a suitable extent of territory not less than one hundred nor more than one hundred and fifty miles square, or as near thereto as circumstances will admit, that the necessary and reasonable expense which any particular State shall have incurred since the commencement of the present war, in subduing any part of the territory that may be ceded or relinquished to the United States, shall be reimbursed.”[35] It was further agreed that said lands should be “granted or settled at such times and under such regulations” as should be thereafter agreed upon by the United States, or any nine or more of them.

In less than six months after the issuing of this broad invitation, New York set an example of generosity to her young sister States, which had so much yet to learn in the way of mutual concessions for the general good. And she made no conditions in her surrender. She simply said that she would draw a line across the western end of Lake Ontario, north and south, and that while all east of it should be hers, all west would be forever quit-claimed to the nation. It took Virginia three years to make up her mind, and when she waived her claim in March, 1784, she yet reserved nearly four million acres to the south and east of the Ohio. The year following, Massachusetts came in with no conditions, while Connecticut followed, in the fall of 1786, conditioning that she should retain the magnificent Western Reserve, upon which a New Connecticut was eventually built in the wilderness—that Reserve that has played so important a part in the history, and the moral development of the republic. South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, at last straggled, one by one, into the path of manifest destiny; although the century had turned the point of time by two notches, before the last hand was lessened, and the Nation became in law what she had already been in fact—the architect and master of the splendid empire that stretched from the western edge of the civilization of that day, to where the Spaniard and the Frenchman still held a nominal right to the westward of the Mississippi.

With these cessions, the territorial system of our government came into existence. That which Georgia gave, became the Mississippi Territory; that from the Carolinas, the Southwest Territory; and all that north of the Ohio River, the Northwest Territory; and this brings us to a point where New York again had a part in creating the State of Ohio, and in dedicating the soil upon which she was reared, forever to the cause of human liberty.

It was within the limits of her chief city that the very foundation stones, not only of the one State but of many, were laid with a far-seeing wisdom and prophetic foresight that mark the men of that early Congress as among the sages of legislative wisdom. In the old hall, that stood at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, where the restless oceans of a financial world roll in a flood that never rests, and to which the lines of monetary interest center from all the far-off corners of the land, upon the spot now hallowed to the memory of Washington by a colossal statue of bronze, there was enacted, in the midsummer of 1787, an ordinance that has well been called[10] “The[36] most important legislative act in American History”—there came into existence a law that gave Ohio and Indiana, and that galaxy of northwestern states to the Union; those free states, without which that Union never could have been saved in the day of its imminent peril.

Many States have been created, many important acts have been passed by the various Congresses that have sat in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Washington, but there was in this measure something that saved the nation from being sometime all slave; that reserved for freedom an empire that by mere stress of moral example if in nothing else, was a menace forever before the slaveholder. In that ordinance was one little clause that made Ohio and Wisconsin and Illinois what they afterwards became.

“There shall be,” it recited, “neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes.” Simple enough these words sound now, when human bondage upon American soil is but the echo of a dead past, but for the day in which they were uttered, they were the clarion call of a new era—the death knell of a monster wrong; and the voice was none the less that of God speaking in human legislation, because many of the men who had become His instrument, had no dream of the great things to which they had put their hands, and to which they had given their votes.

So, in one sense, Ohio may be said to have had her beginning in New York. From the days of her earliest childhood, she has been a willing neighbor, willing to give and take of friendly offices with her elder sister to the East. Two of her chief magistrates were the sons of the Empire State; she has borrowed not a little of her legislation from the experience of the older State; she patterned her canals after those which DeWitt Clinton had so largely aided to bring into being; she has developed many of her native resources by New York’s financial aid; she has sought to build her railways so that they should lead direct to the metropolis; she has in a thousand ways acknowledged the commercial and financial supremacy of the greater city and State; and last, but not the least, she has sent scores of her sons to the East, to prove that the Buckeye is capable of gaining and holding his own among the best, in any lines of human labor or human thought—and it is with this subject largely, that we have at present to deal.

There hangs in certain cheerful rooms at No. 236 Fifth avenue, a modestly framed document that is more significant in that which it suggests, than in what it declares. It is a call for a meeting, and a pledge of certain gentlemen whose names are attached, that they will do what lies within their power to create in this great metropolis, a hearthstone around which those who claimed Ohio for a mother or a foster-mother, might congregate now and then, for such[37] mutual help or association as would keep the memory of the old home alive in the new. The beginning was modest and quiet, and yet out of it has grown an organization that is in many ways a model of its kind, and that certainly has fulfilled the intentions of its originators.

“We the undersigned,” to quote from the language of the call, “hereby agree to unite with each to form an association to be known as The Ohio Association in New York, and to that end will meet at any place designated, for the purpose of completing such organization upon notice given to us whenever twelve persons shall have signed this agreement. There is to be no expense incurred until the organization is completed, and assented to by each member.”

“New York, October 7th, 1885.”

Attached to this document were names that would have carried weight in many of the walks of the business and professional life of the metropolis. General Thomas Ewing, an honored member of the New York Bar, Samuel Thomas and Calvin S. Brice, of the more active fields of Wall Street and the railway world, C. W. Moulton, Col. W. L. Strong, one of the leading merchants of the city, Hugh J. Jewett, Wallace C. Andrews, Homer Lee, J. W. Harman, Warren Higley, Milton Sayler, Anson G. McCook, Col. Fogg, Mahlon Chance, J. Q. Howard, General Henry L. Burnett, and others who had acquired reputation at home, before making New York the scene of later operations and more recent successes. There was more than mere formal agreement in this compact; it was understood by all that such a society should come into being, and all were in one mind that then was the time for beginning.

Other attempts looking in the same direction had been made in times past, but had come to naught. Early in the days of the great war, many of the sons and daughters of Ohio, residing in this city, met at the Murray Hill Hotel, and took steps to give active aid to the soldiers in the field; but these weekly gatherings ended with the noble purpose that called them into being. In the first annual report of the Ohio Society, its first secretary, Homer Lee, gives a brief sketch of this effort, and of the things that followed in its wake. “The object,” says Mr. Lee, “was to send supplies, clothing, medicines, etc., to the soldiers at the front. A handsome silk and satin banner was made at a cost of some $500, upon which was a beautifully embroidered Coat of Arms of the State of Ohio, to be presented to the bravest Ohio regiment. As might have been expected there was much rivalry for the possession of this prize, as glowing descriptions of the beautiful souvenir were given by the newspapers at that time. The commanding officers were appealed to, but could not be prevailed upon to decide the question, because, as one officer put it ‘It could not easily be decided which[38] was the bravest, where all the regiments by their valor and heroism had covered themselves with glory.’ At the close of the war the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, of Cleveland, secured the prize.”

Another organization, somewhat similar in character and purpose, was called into being about the same time. It was the Ohio Soldier’s Aid Society, and Theron R. Butler, was its president, and Mr. John R. Cecil the treasurer. Its members made it their duty to call upon the Ohio soldiers in the New York hospitals, and to minister to their wants. In various forms of help, this society expended over fifteen thousand dollars, and performed many eminent services for the wounded and the sick, and like its companion organization above described, its days ended with the close of the war.

In 1877, the subject of an association of Ohio men was again discussed, when a number of gentlemen had been called together by the death of Chief Justice Chase, but it came to naught. Again, in 1874, some of the younger sons of the Buckeye State in this city, held various meetings and talked organization, but nothing came of the movement beyond talk. It was reserved for the call above quoted to produce enduring results, and to bring into being the flourishing society that has bound the Ohioans of New York together with bonds of enduring union.

When the twelve, and more, had signed the call and thus made it operative, a meeting was held in the office of General Ewing, No. 155 Broadway, on November 13, 1885. There was then no question of success, and the gentlemen present went to work in a mood to make that success of the most pronounced character. General Ewing was elected president pro tem., and Mr. David F. Harbaugh secretary pro tem. A committee of ten upon permanent organization were appointed, and consisted of the following gentlemen: C. W. Moulton, William Perry Fogg, Cyrus Butler, J. Q. Howard, Mahlon Chance, M. I. Southard, David F. Harbaugh, Warren Higley, Calvin S. Brice, and Joseph Pool. When an adjourned meeting was held, on the 20th of the same month, additions were made to this foundation committee, in the persons of Messrs. Carson Lake, John W. Harman, and Homer Lee.

The committee were already prepared with a report. They had drafted a provisional constitution, and prepared by-laws, and proposed that these should be printed and sent to the Ohio men in New York, to discover how many would favor the movement, and agree to support it. Such action was ordered, the new fundamental law of a society not yet organized was sent broadcast, and responses invited. One hundred subscribing names were made the requisite; they were furnished, and twenty-five in addition. Thus encouraged, there was a call from the President, and on[39] the evening of January 13, 1886, over one hundred of the sons of Ohio were found together in the parlors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

The meeting was prolific of results. The Ohio Society of New York, was called into being. Officers were elected; arrangements made for the preparation of a constitution that would be in exact accord with the purposes there declared. The first officers there chosen constituted a corps which was of itself a guarantee of successful results. General Thomas Ewing was elected president; Whitelaw Reid, General Wager Swayne, Col. William L. Strong, Hon. Hugh J. Jewett, and Algernon S. Sullivan were chosen vice-presidents. Homer Lee was made recording secretary and Carson Lake, corresponding secretary; while Col. William Perry Fogg was assigned to the responsible position of treasurer. A governing committee consisting of Henry L. Burnett, chairman, Calvin S. Brice, Andrew J. C. Foye, A. D. Juilliard, George Follett, Stephen B. Elkins, Jerome D. Gillett, C. W. Moulton, Joseph Pool, were selected. The president and vice-president were directed to prepare the constitution; the invitations of certain hotels managed by Ohio men to use their parlors for gatherings until permanent quarters could be secured, were accepted; and the president-elect delivered a striking address upon assuming office, that throws so strong a light upon the purpose and spirit of the gathering, that the writer is tempted to quote somewhat freely therefrom.

“We have met to-night” said General Ewing, “as sons and foster sons of Ohio resident in New York City to complete the foundation of a new society in our National Metropolis. Full as this city is of organizations of men, she has, I think, none such as this. The ties of religion, charity, politics, science, art, literature and common occupation draw and hold people together in numberless associations which have filled Manhattan Island with splendid edifices. So, too, the sympathies of a common race and history have founded Societies of St. Patrick, St. Andrew, St. George and many others, at whose annual reunion, the wit, song and sentiment of the fatherlands warm the hearts of their sons in this land beyond the sea. And here, also, is an American society which has at several crises in the last fifty years exerted a considerable influence on public opinion, and the annual reunions of which are watched with eagerness everywhere throughout our land where the sons of New England, from their distant homes, look proudly and fondly back on their grand old mother.

“But the New England Society is composed of the sons of six States. This is a society of the natives or former residents of a single State—Ohio, the State first born of the American Republic. I do not say she was the first received into the Union, for Vermont,[40] Kentucky and Tennessee all preceded her. Vermont was admitted in 1791, Kentucky in ’92, Tennessee in ’96 and Ohio not until the 29th day of November, 1802. But these three older States begun life as Colonies of Colonies, each exclusively owned by and settled from its parent colony—Vermont from New York, Kentucky from Virginia, and Tennessee from North Carolina. ‘The territory northwest of the Ohio river’ was the first land ever owned by the United States. It was a vast and pathless wilderness—an Empire in embryo—when, in 1784, Virginia, with magnificent generosity, presented it to the Union. It was not until ten years later, when the savages, who had been allies of Great Britain throughout the War of the Revolution, were routed and subdued by Mad Anthony Wayne, that agricultural settlements, except under the shadow of block-houses, first became possible. Then the veteran soldiers of the Revolution, broken in fortune, but aflame with the love of liberty and triumphant from the long struggle for independence, flocked there from every one of the glorious thirteen; hewed out homes in the primeval forest, paid for lands in the long-dishonored certificates of indebtedness given for their service in the Revolutionary War, and thus founded the first State which sprung from the womb of the Republic.

“We are proud of Ohio,” continued the General, “for her heroic birth, her honorable achievements, and her glorious destiny. She ‘sits in the centre,’ belongs to no section, and is a bond of all. Her sons who meet here to-night are at home in New York. We do not come together as strangers in a strange land to seek relief from the depression of inhospitable influence. No; New York is not inhospitable. She is merely too big and too busy to note who comes or goes. Her gates landward and seaward, are thrown open to the world. She is a focus of all the great forces of American life. Much that is best and worst in it is developed here; and the struggle of a new comer for a footing is always severe, and generally unsuccessful. But New York is more truly cosmopolitan than any other city in the United States, or, perhaps, in the world; and there is little of race or sectional prejudice to bar the path of merit from whatever quarter it may come.

“We found this Society because we love Ohio, and would cherish her history, her traditions, her recollections of home and camp and forum. How often do we look back to the days and scenes of our life there to revive the sweetest influence and the dearest memories of existence.

“But we have aims for our Society beyond the culture of the memories and affections of other days. We hope to make it felt in this great field of thought and action as a generator of wholesome intellectual and moral forces. When this meeting was called for permanent organization there were one hundred and fifteen signers of our Constitution. Under the direction of a[41] judicious Governing Committee, the number will doubtless be increased to several hundred. Our membership of non-residents will perhaps be equally large. We should make something more of such good and abundant material than a mere social club. I am far from insensible to the pleasures of convivial reunions, and hope our society may have many of them, and that I may long be of the number present. But we can have some good work out of it as well as plenty of recreation. For instance, with the aid of our western and southwestern brethern, who, like ourselves, have drifted into this fence corner of the Republic, we might help it to throw off its colonial subserviency to English politics and manners, and gradually Americanize it. We can thus repay in kind the debt of gratitude we owe the East for its missionary efforts a generation ago, when it was the seat of power in the Union, and the now imperial West was but a half subdued wilderness.

“Ere long we can command means, I hope, to fit up and maintain an accessible, commodious and permanent club house, the halls of which will be a pleasant rendezvous for members and their friends, where the ideas and policies of East and West may meet in intelligent and friendly encounter, and where sectional prejudice may be worn off in the attrition of social intercourse; where we may see files of the Ohio newspapers, and note the current of life at our old homes; where our brethern who come East may meet, or learn where to find their friends, and get information and help in their business; where Ohio men and women who are eminent or rising in any worthy field of effort may have cordial recognition and a helping hand, if needed; and where those who have unfortunately fallen in the struggle for a foothold here will not be forgotten. In conclusion, gentlemen, I venture to express the hope that our Society may be from the outset, and continue to the end, so aristocratic that wealth can not buy a membership for vice, and so democratic that none will be excluded by needless cost of membership from an association which their virtues and talents would adorn.”

The foundation was thus laid; the story of the superstructure will be deferred for the present.

[42]

General Thomas Ewing—First President of the Ohio Society.

The connection of General Thomas Ewing with the founding of the Ohio Society of New York has been already shown. At this point some mention may profitably be made of the chief points in his public and professional career; as others of the same Buckeye group will be considered from time to time.

General Ewing came into the busy life of the world at a time, and under auspices, calculated not only to develop the best that was in him, but to call into active play the strongest elements of his nature. Ohio was in its youthful days; schools and culture had not yet reached that point where a finished education was the rule and expectation of the great mass of the youth as now. The freedom of pioneer life was around him, and while he learned the lessons of refinement and culture within his parental home, he was learning the lessons of self-reliance, courage and personal responsibility, from the outdoor environments of his day and neighborhood.

It was, also, a time when the great public questions of the day were debated from the stump, in the home circle, and at the caucus, and not left to the newspapers as at present. The young man was not merely a reader—he was compelled to think, and often talk for himself. He must know something of public life, and he usually had a personal acquaintance with the public men of his day and neighborhood. In the case of General Ewing, one of the chief men of Ohio history was a member of his own household—his father, Thomas Ewing, the Senator from Ohio, and Secretary of the Treasury in the cabinets of the elder Harrison and Tyler, and Secretary of the Interior under Taylor.

Thomas Ewing, the son, was born at Lancaster, Ohio, August 7, 1829. Not only was he the natural heir to the qualities that had made his father one of the great statesmen and lawyers of his day, but he could find back among the family names that of Findley Ewing, who distinguished himself under William of Orange, in the famous war of 1688, and was presented with a flag by that monarch, for gallant service at the siege of Londonderry; George Ewing, his grandfather, an ensign and lieutenant of the Revolutionary War; Neil Gillespie—a man of mark, in the early days of the Monongahela, and great-grandfather to James G. Blaine and himself; and his mother’s father, Hugh Boyle, who, in youth was driven from Ireland because of the part he[43] had taken in the Emmet rebellion, and afterward served the State of Ohio for forty years, as clerk of the Supreme Court for Fairfield county.

The public life of young Ewing commenced at an early age. When but nineteen, he was appointed secretary of the commission to settle the still vexed question as to whether the boundary between Virginia and Ohio was the high water mark or the low water mark, on the north side of the Ohio River. A year later, he became one of the private secretaries of President Taylor, and after Taylor’s sudden death, entered Brown University at Providence, Rhode Island, from which he was graduated in 1854.

He had already chosen the profession of the law, as the work of his life, and immediately entered the Cincinnati Law School, from which he was graduated in 1855. The next year he married Ellen E. Cox, a daughter of Rev. Wm. Cox, a Presbyterian minister of Piqua, Ohio, celebrated for his eloquence and zeal, and in the fall of ’56 removed to Leavenworth, Kansas, which he had chosen as the opening point of his professional career. His partners in the first firm whose sign-board bore his name, were two gentlemen afterwards to win great distinction in a war then farther off in the minds of men than in the dread certainties of fact—General Dan McCook, who afterwards fell at Kenesaw, and William T. Sherman, whose recent death the world is yet lamenting. The name of the firm was Sherman, Ewing & McCook.

The success of Mr. Ewing was brilliant from the start. He had not only the magnetic presence by which friends are made, but the “natural genius for law” that made him a safe counsellor, a brilliant pleader, and a wary contestant in the varied fields of litigation. He was soon one of the recognized leaders of the bar of Kansas, and it was inevitable that he should soon be called to a commanding place in the field of politics as well. It was a time and place where no man could be silent, and when the most sluggish was compelled to become partisan. The young advocate from Ohio left no one in doubt as to which side he took in the struggle to make Kansas a free State. He bore an active and conspicuous part in the struggle on the side of freedom, and was one of the Republican leaders of the West. He represented Kansas in the Peace Conference, which assembled in Washington on the call of Virginia in 1860, and at the early age of twenty-nine was elected the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of his State—a position he ably held for two years, until the great rebellion swept him from the bench into the ranks of the Union army.

Some more detailed mention of General Ewing’s part in that great historic struggle to make Kansas a free State is needed, to fully explain the public service he rendered in those days of danger. In the fall of 1857, the Pro-Slavery[44] constitutional convention of Kansas, formed the Lecompton constitution, of which only the slavery cause was submitted to popular vote. The question thus left to the people was whether they would accept a fundamental law with slavery, or without. Thus the voter was compelled to favor the Lecompton constitution if he voted at all—a constitution hateful to the Free State majority, as it had been framed by a fraudulently chosen convention, composed largely of residents of Missouri.

It was also provided in this document, that if the majority voted for it and rejected slavery, then the slaves already held in Kansas, should remain such for life.

At the same election, a separate vote was ordered for legislative and executive officers under the constitution. The hope of the pro slavery party was that the Free State men, who were in a great majority in the territory, would refuse to vote at all, because of their indignation at the tricky manner of the submission, and that therefore, the Democratic Congress would admit Kansas as a slave State completely officered by pro slavery men.

“It was an artful trap,” says one historian of those stirring times, “and the Free State Convention was caught in it by resolving that the party would wholly refrain from voting at that election. Thereupon Mr. Ewing bolted the convention, but only eight out of over a hundred delegates followed him. The bolters nominated a full State ticket and tickets in every county for all the offices, canvassed the Territory, and in spite of the bitterest opposition of the radical leaders and press, succeeded in bringing a large majority of the Free State party to the polls. They thus completely officered the proposed pro-slavery Government with tried and true Free State men—publicly pledged, if the State should be admitted, to immediately call another convention, form a Free State Constitution, and destroy the Lecompton Constitution and Government, root and branch. The pro-slavery leaders, finding themselves outnumbered at the polls, resorted to the most enormous and astounding frauds in the returns, and then officially proclaimed the election of the pro-slavery candidates. Thereupon Ewing went to the Territorial Legislature then in session at Lawrence, a majority of which were Free State men, and got a commission appointed to investigate and expose the election frauds. He was a member of the Board and conducted its proceedings with startling boldness and energy, resulting within a week in the discovery and seizure of the forged returns, which had been buried in a candle box under a wood pile at Lecompton on the premises of the United States Surveyor General, John Calhoun—the exposure of the forgeries—the indictment of the chief conspirators, Calhoun, McLean and others—their flight from Kansas never to return—and the abandonment by Buchanan’s[45] administration, and his party in Congress of the Lecompton Constitution, which fell covered with execrations and infamy. This closed the long struggle to force slavery on Kansas, and the new State was thereupon admitted under a Free Constitution made by her own people.”

To pass from this struggle for freedom to the greater struggle in the wider field of the war that followed, was but a logical step to the young advocate who had devoted so much of his time to the cause that had won his heart. He first appears in that struggle as Colonel of the Eleventh Regiment of Kansas Volunteer Infantry, recruited and organized by him in the summer of 1862. He led his command in several severe engagements in Arkansas—at Cane Hill, Van Buren and Prairie Grove; and for gallant conduct in the last named battle, which was one of the fiercest of the war, was promoted to be a Brigadier-General on the 11th of March, 1863. He was soon after assigned to the command of the “District of the Border,” comprising the State of Kansas and the western portion of Missouri—a command of extreme administrative difficulty and great personal danger, which he held from June, 1863, to February, 1864, and in which he won the emphatic approval of President Lincoln and General Schofield, the Department Commander. His “Order No. 11,” issued while he held this command, directing the inhabitants of large portions of three border counties of southern Missouri to remove to the military posts or out of the border, was and still is severely criticised. It was the result of a peculiarly difficult situation, solvable in no other way.

Those counties had become the impregnable base of operations of about a thousand guerrillas, under Quantrell, the James brothers, and Yeager, who were incessantly making incursions into southern Kansas, to rob and kill the defenceless people, and who had just burned Lawrence, and in cold blood murdered nearly three hundred unarmed and unresisting citizens. After two years of strenuous effort by other Union commanders, it had proved to be impossible to protect Kansas people from these dreadful incursions, and equally impossible to run the guerillas to earth in their fastness on the Missouri side of the border. These counties had been desolated early in the war by Jennison, Hoyt and their lawless bands of Kansas “Red Legs”—burned to the subsoil, nineteen farms out of twenty having been absolutely abandoned, and the houses and fences destroyed or left rotting. The condition of this district can be imagined from the fact that when this “Order No. 11” was issued, Nevada, the county seat of Vernon County, having at least a hundred houses standing and in good order, had not a single inhabitant, and the Court House without door or window-pane, had become a shelter for hogs and cattle running[46] wild, with its records of titles and court proceedings scattered over the floors, and covered with filth. There were not at that time a hundred families left in the entire district affected by the order, outside of the military posts. They were the friends and kinsfolk of the guerillas, who were constantly hanging about the garrisoned towns, buying arms, ammunition and provisions for the guerillas, and carrying news to them of every movement of our troops. It was impossible to kill the guerillas or drive them out of the border while these country people stayed there as their spies and purveyors. Therefore, after full conference with General Schofield, then commanding the Department of the Missouri, and now the honored head of the army, General Ewing ordered the few remaining inhabitants in these desolated districts to remove to the nearest military post, or back to the second tier of counties from the State border, and the order was subsequently ratified by President Lincoln.

In a letter published since the war, General Schofield said: “The responsibility for that order rests with President Lincoln, myself, and General Ewing, in the proportion of our respective rank and authority.” About half of the people affected by the order removed to the posts under the protection of our troops, and the remainder further back in Missouri. They moved in summer—were subjected to no physical force or hardship, and were generally glad to get out of reach of the wild storm which was about to burst on them from Kansas, in revenge for the Lawrence massacre, and which the Government had not troops enough there to quell. Within two or three months after the issuance of this order, Quantrell having lost his spies and purveyors, and finding it impossible therefore to continue the vendetta, led all his guerillas south, and the border war was thus forever ended.

General Ewing’s most distinguished service during the war was in fighting the battle of Pilot Knob on the 27th and 28th of September, 1864. The Confederate General, Sterling Price, having effected an unlooked for and unresisted crossing of the Arkansas above Little Rock, with his army of over twenty thousand men, marched on St. Louis, where General Rosecrans was in command of the Department of the Missouri, and General Ewing of the District of Southeast Missouri. All the Federal troops of the department were scattered in small detachments, with bases in earthworks or stockades in or near the chief towns of Missouri, which were the places of refuge of the Union men and neutrals from the savage warfare of the guerillas. These scattered troops could not be withdrawn from their posts without enormous sacrifice of the people and property they were protecting, and it was, moreover, impossible to assemble them at St. Louis in time and numbers sufficient to defeat Price’s[47] large army, which was increasing rapidly by accessions of guerillas from all parts of Southern Missouri. There was but one possible means of preventing the capture of St. Louis and the vast loss of prestige and resources which would follow. That was to delay Price a few days until re-enforcements could arrive from Little Rock, by occupying and holding fast to Fort Davidson, a small hexagonal work capable of being manned by about one thousand men, situated ninety miles south of St. Louis, at the village of Pilot Knob, which was then the southern terminus of the Iron Mountain Railroad. In this little fort were stored immense amounts of ordnance, commissary and quartermasters’ supplies, which Price greatly needed, and which lay directly between him and the great city, by capturing which he expected to bring Missouri over to the Confederacy. General Rosecrans, at the urgent request of General Ewing, reluctantly consented that he should lead this forlorn hope. He reached Pilot Knob in the nick of time—but four hours ahead of Price’s advance—and with but one thousand and eighty men he held Fort Davidson against two of the three divisions of Price’s army—those of Marmaduke and Cabell—numbering about fourteen thousand men—Shelpy’s division of about seven thousand men having been sent to Ewing’s rear at Mineral Point, twenty miles north of Pilot Knob, to cut the railroad and insure the destruction or capture of his entire command. After repulsing two assaults with great loss to the enemy, General Ewing, under cover of the night, evacuated and then blew up his untenable fort, and, favored by broken ground, though pressed on flank and rear, held his force in hand, and by dogged fighting for two days and nights, brought them to a fortified camp at Rolla, a hundred miles west of Pilot Knob. Price was thus delayed for a week, and drawn so far westward from his march on St. Louis, that reinforcements reached St. Louis and the great objective of his invasion was lost. He turned west and south and was soon driven from Missouri without striking an effective blow. General Rosecrans, in a special order issued October 6, 1864, said of this brilliant episode: “With pride and pleasure the commanding General notices the gallant conduct of Brigadier-General Thomas Ewing, Jr., and his command in the defence of Pilot Knob, and in the subsequent retreat to Rolla. With scarcely one thousand effective men, they repulsed the attacks of Price’s invading army, and successfully retreated with their battery a distance of one hundred miles, in the face of a pursuing and assailing cavalry force of five times their number. General Ewing and his subordinates have deserved well of their country. Under such commanders, the Federal troops should always march to victory.”

At the conclusion of the war, General Ewing once more made his home in[48] his native State. He was soon prominent in political affairs, giving his voice and vote to such measures as in his opinion were for the best interests of his country. He was a member of the Ohio constitutional convention of 1873-4, where his legal attainments and admirable powers of debate gave him a foremost place. As a member of the Democratic majority in the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses, he was one of the leaders of his party in resisting and stopping the employment of Federal troops and supervisors at elections conducted under State laws, and also in the successful movement for the preservation of the Greenback currency, the remonetization of silver, and the issue of silver certificates, but for which measures of finance the currency would have been greatly contracted, to the infinite and protracted distress of the industrial and debtor classes. In 1879, he was the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, and made an able canvass of the State, but the Republican majority was too large to be overcome.

In 1882, that magnetic attraction that draws so many men to New York city, made General Ewing a member of the bar of the metropolis, where the enlarged opportunities of his profession have been met by a mental equipment and training equal to their most exacting requirements, and where his success has been of a marked character. To this legal ability is added a ripe scholarship, unusual grace as a speaker, and a personal magnetism that charms all with whom he comes in contact. His published speeches in Congress and on the stump have been numerous, and marked by their information, ability, liberality of thought and patriotism. Although his purely literary efforts have been less numerous, because of the active professional life that has been thrust upon him, the work he has done in that direction shows how much he might have accomplished, had his life been given to letters; for example, an address delivered at the Centennial celebration of the settlement of the Northwest territory at Marietta, Ohio, July, 16, 1889, and his address before the Kansas State Bar Association, on January 7, 1890, favoring the abolition of the requirement of unanimity, of juries in civil cases, and urging the codification of the “private law”—both of which speeches have attracted wide attention, and most favorable comment.

While General Ewing has accomplished so much, he is still in his prime, and is one of the moral forces in his profession in New York city, a strong, well-balanced and successful man. As has been said, he takes a deep interest in the affairs of the Society he did so much to create, and with him, an “Ohio man,” whether known or unknown, is always sure of a cordial welcome; while he enjoys life in his new home, his love for the State that gave him birth, and which his honored[49] father so long served, is as deep as that of a son for a mother whose face he does not see, but whose memory is forever carried in his heart.

Col. William L. Strong—One of the First Vice-Presidents of the Ohio Society.

In the sketches of the two distinguished Ohioans which accompany this, the law has been so well represented that one might imagine that the chief purpose of Ohio in the metropolis was to interpret the law, and see that equal justice was done between man and man; but from that which follows, it will be seen that the mission of the Buckeye in New York, is as varied as his numbers are many, and that in the walks of business and financial operation, he has won honor for his mother-state, and the evidences of deserved success for himself. And while engaged in the cares of business, he has not forgotten to fulfill all the demands of good citizenship, nor to preserve the memory of the State he has left, by doing all that lies in his power to perpetuate her memory loyally and lovingly in the one of his adoption.

Those who have attended the meetings of the Ohio Society with any degree of regularity, have not failed to notice that the genial presiding officer, Gen. Swayne, whose genius for his position is universally recognized is never so well satisfied as when he can so twist or change the current of business as to bring upon the floor a gentleman who always talks entertainingly, and whose appearance and speech justify the efforts of the presiding officer to “draw him out.” Col. William L. Strong has been so many years in New York, that people generally suppose him to be of New York origin; he has travelled the world so much, that at times it is hard to tell from what section he does hail; but when he has been brought before the Society upon one of the occasions above referred to, it takes no skill and no endeavor to tell that he was an Ohio man in the beginning, and that many of the tendrils of his affection still cling to the State in which his youth was spent, and to which he turns with a loyal devotion, whenever the occasion renews the scenes of memory, and the other sons of Ohio about him are recalling with varied emotions the things of the vanished past.

Mr. Strong came to New York when quite young in years, but equipped with all the elements needed for business success. He was born in Richland County, Ohio, on the 22d of March, 1827, and spent his boyhood among the Loudinville hills. At the age of sixteen he went to Wooster, Ohio, and spent two years with the firm of Lake & Jones, a large retail dry goods house, and from thence to Mansfield, Ohio,[50] where he continued in the dry goods business until he came to this city, arriving here on the 31st of December, 1853.

When the young Buckeye reached the great city, he came with a purpose of making the best use of all the possibilities which might present themselves. He commenced life here as a salesman in the well-known dry goods house of L. O. Wilson & Co., at that time one of the largest and most prominent of the wholesale houses of the United States. In the panic of 1857 the firm suspended, but Mr. Strong continued in its service until 1858, when he went into the dry goods commission business, entering the firm of Farnham, Dale & Co., which was one of the prominent firms of New York at that time. In the subsequent changes of affairs, it was succeeded by Farnham, Sutton & Co., and afterwards by Sutton, Smith & Co. This last named firm was dissolved and retired from business in December, 1869, and on January 1, 1870, the firm of W. L. Strong & Co. was organized, and succeeded to the business.

The advance of Mr. Strong in his chosen line, had been as rapid as his wonderful success in these later years, has been deserved. He had entered upon the work with a determination to succeed, and nothing in the line of hard work or close application was allowed to stand in the way. He had made the interests of his employers his own; he had studied all the needs and possibilities of the situation, and had laid a sure foundation for future success. He had learned the country from one end to the other, and his business acquaintances were to be found in every quarter. It hardly needs to be added that when the new firm of which he was the head, opened its doors for business, it had already a clientage of the most valuable sort, and that its prominent place among the great dry goods houses of America, was already assured.

Col. Strong has been a faithful servant of the house from the beginning; he has done his work as if the whole load fell upon him, and he has never asked anyone to carry any share that properly belonged to himself. The house has ever been recognized as one of the solid institutions of New York. It has made but one removal since its organization, beginning business on the corner of Church and Leonard streets, and moving several years later to the spacious double store which it still occupies, in the center of the dry goods district at Nos. 75 and 77 Worth street.

Some of the qualities that have made his firm what it is to-day, are suggested in the above. Mr. Strong is a man of decided views, and great force of character, and at the same time one of the most approachable and genial men in the business. His good nature and open-handed liberality are widely felt and known, and no man has a wider circle of personal and business friends. His abilities as a business man and financier are of the highest order, and[51] although strongly marked by conservatism and caution, are nevertheless, sufficiently progressive for even this day of commercial activity.

But while Col. Strong has given the greater share of his time and care to the interests of the firm of which he is the head, he has found time to make his energy and capital effective in various other directions. He was for years a director of the Central National Bank, and for three years past has been its president; is president of the Homer Lee Bank Note Company; was president of the Brush Electric Light Company of New York for several years; is president of the Griswold Worsted Company, a large corporation engaged in the manufacture of silk and worsted materials. He is also a director in the Erie Railroad Company; a director in the New York Life Insurance Company, Mercantile Trust Company, and Hanover Fire Insurance Company. He is also vice-president of the New York Security and Trust Company; is a director in the newly formed Plaza Bank, and has been closely connected with other important commercial and financial enterprises not necessary to mention in detail here.

In the lines of political duty, social demands, and especially in connection with such enterprises as have had some object of public benefit in view, Col. Strong has ever been an active factor. He is of the Republican faith, and has long been recognized as one of the Republican leaders of New York. He has been importuned many times to be a candidate for public office, but has been too closely interested in his business to take a hand in the practical manipulation of politics upon his own account, content to do a citizen’s duty, and to remain in private life. But he has done that duty whenever occasion offered. He is a member of the Union League, and president of the Business Men’s Republican Association, and has done much to make that one of the most efficient and useful political associations of the country. He has ever taken a deep interest in the Ohio Society, and is at present its first vice-president, and has held that office from the date of its organization.

No words can too strongly describe the high repute in which is held the business house of which Col. Strong is the head. It is among the most prominent, popular and successful in the trade. It represents some of the largest mills in this country engaged in the manufacture of dress goods, flannels, blankets and other woolens and worsteds, also important accounts in cotton goods. It has branch houses in Boston and Philadelphia for the supply of the trade in those markets. The firm was organized January 1, 1870, as above stated, and has continued in uninterrupted and successful operation ever since. Through all the panics and business disturbances that have visited this country at various periods since 1870, the house passed in safety with increased business prestige and financial strength. The able business[52] management of this large commission house is proverbial in mercantile circles.

All that has been said in the above, in commendation of the house of which Col. Strong is the visible head, may be truthfully repeated of himself in his personal relations. His connection with many enterprises of importance in the business community and his prominent position in the same, are evidences of the business ability which he possesses and which his associates have so practically recognized. Modest and unassuming, his clear and analytical mind grasps the problems of business with such skill that fortune has smiled upon every enterprise with which he is or has been associated. His connection with so many financial institutions as director or president, further attests the confidence of the public in his integrity and marked ability.

While his business qualifications are of very high order, there are other traits in the character of Col. Strong that are no less marked. He is a man of the people, and his sympathies are wholly with the people. No worthy object to relieve or to make the struggling masses happy, ever fails to receive from him the substantial sympathy which his broad mind and liberal heart so freely give. He is an American, in every sense of the term. Plain and simple in his habits, he frowns upon everything that seeks to make one man higher than another, except as merit or exceptional service, have elevated him. He is, as one has well said, “One of the few men equal to the occasion, wherever placed, and deservedly possesses the entire confidence of the people.”

Hon. George Hoadly, Ex-Governor of Ohio.

George Hoadly, who has won at the bar of New York, a position of eminence equal to that he for years maintained in Ohio, is, in all the essentials of affection and personal loyalty, yet an “Ohio man,” for he remembers the home of his youth, the scene of his early labors and professional advancement, and the State that chose him to the highest position within her gift. Like General Ewing and Col. Strong, he is already a well-known figure in the metropolis, and is one of the men by whose labors the Ohio Society has been made what it is.

If a man is aided by the “sort of grandfathers” he has inherited, Judge Hoadly had as fair a start as is given anyone. The older lawyers of Ohio speak with tender remembrance of “Squire Hoadly,” who for years was one of the imposing figures of the bar of Cleveland, and whose purity of character was matched only by his[53] legal knowledge, and the justice with which, in his magisterial character, he arbitrated the affairs of his fellowmen. He made Cleveland his home in 1830; served one term as Mayor, and for fifteen years as justice of the peace, then an office of greater honor and responsibility than in these days of multiplied minor and municipal courts.

The son, George Hoadly, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 31, 1826, of a mother (Mary Anne Woolsey), who counted Jonathan Edwards among her direct ancestors, President Dwight her uncle, President Woolsey her younger brother, Theodore Winthrop, Sarah Woolsey, (“Susan Coolidge,”) her nephew and niece. Carried to Ohio when but four years of age, his primary education was received in the private school, conducted by the late Franklin T. Backus, afterwards the leader of the Cleveland bar, and Judge William Strong of Oregon. When fourteen years of age he entered Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio, from which he was graduated in 1844. It had already been impressed upon him by natural bent of mind and inclination, and by the advice of those who had studied his character and watched his growth, that the law was his proper profession, and he accordingly spent a year in study at the famous law school at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was under the instruction of Judge Story and Prof. Greenleaf. One more year of close study was passed in the office of Judge Charles C. Convers, at Zanesville, Ohio, and then young Hoadly went to Cincinnati, and in the fall of 1846 entered the law office of Chase & Ball, where he completed his studies, and was admitted to the bar in August of the following year. An incident of more than passing moment in his personal and professional life grew out of this connection. “Young Hoadly,” says one of the governor’s biographers, “at once attracted the attention and secured the warm and lasting friendship of his preceptor, Salmon P. Chase, afterwards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was well aware of the importance of attaching to himself young men of ability, and, after a period of service as a clerk, Mr. Hoadly was admitted, in 1849, as a junior partner into the firm, which took the name of Chase, Ball & Hoadly. Mr. Chase was soon thereafter elected United States Senator, and withdrew from professional activity in Cincinnati, and this led to Hoadly’s appearing in important cases very early in his career.”

Strong and able in his profession, and popular with the people, the young lawyer’s way to official distinction was soon opened. In 1851, the State Legislature elected him Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, for the residue of the term to which that court had been limited by the constitutional convention. He ably served in this position until 1853, when the court ceased its functions, and he then formed a co-partnership with Edward Mills. He was city solicitor[54] of Cincinnati in 1855, and 1856, and became a member of the present Superior Court in 1859. Twice was he offered a seat upon the Supreme Bench of Ohio, but each time he declined. In 1856, the proffer came from Governor Chase, and in 1862 from Governor Tod. In 1864 he was re-elected to the bench, but resigned in 1866, at which time the firm of Hoadly, Jackson & Johnson was formed. The late Judge Alphonse Taft was his successor upon the bench. The new combination was soon ranked among the great law firms of the country, and Judge Hoadly was classed as one of the ablest and soundest of American jurists. Of this period of his life, an historian of Ohio has said: “They (the above mentioned law firm), have successfully tried some of the great railroad cases of the day, and are as noted in these cases in Ohio as was Samuel J. Tilden in New York ten years ago in litigation of the same kind. Judge Hoadly has also appeared as counsel in the most important litigations of other kinds tried in Ohio of late years, having among others conducted victoriously the cases involving the use of the Bible in the common schools of Cincinnati, the constitutionality of the Pond and Scott laws, and in the United States Supreme Court overthrown the Federal trade-mark system, and compelled the State of Tennessee to redeem the issues of the Bank of Tennessee.”

A position where his peculiar legal powers were called into play, and his knowledge of constitutional law and readiness in debate made him a leader, was his membership in the Ohio constitutional convention of 1873-4, to which he was elected without opposition from Hamilton County. Yet while engaged in the manifold duties of his profession, he found time to engage in other fields of usefulness, serving as professor in the Cincinnati Law School, a chair of which he held for over twenty years; a trustee of the University of Cincinnati, and of the Cincinnati Museum; member of the Committee of the School of Design; and was in other ways the patron of the arts and sciences, and a promoter of their development in his home city. Among other self-imposed tasks, he made himself acquainted with the Spanish and German languages, and became as he calls himself “a poor stenographer.”

While Judge Hoadly had thus far allowed his name to be used only in connection with official positions directly in the line of his profession, and while he had little taste and less time for the practical part of politics, he still held pronounced views upon public questions, and carefully watched the drift of events. He was from the first a Democrat—as his father had been before him—a believer in democratic principles as enunciated by the founders of the party who were among the greatest of the founders of our government. And being a Democrat to the logical conclusions of democracy, he took issue with his party upon the question of human slavery. During[55] the war, he acted politically with the Union elements; when peace was restored and the slave freed, he took part in the Liberal Republican movement of 1872, and was a member of the Cincinnati convention, and of its Committee on Resolutions, but disapproved of the nomination of Mr. Greeley with whom he had no political principles in common except hatred of slavery and belief in hard money. He withdrew from the convention immediately after the nomination was made, and entered into correspondence with leading Democrats, endeavoring to bring about the nomination of a Democratic candidate whom he stood ready to support. Failing in this, he reluctantly voted for Grant’s second election.

In 1876, Judge Hoadly earnestly entered into the movement known to contemporary history as “Tilden and Reform,” believing that the interests of the country would be best subserved by the election of Tilden and Hendricks. In the memorable legal contest that ensued, before the electoral commission, the Democratic Committee invited Judge Hoadly to argue the Oregon and Florida cases before that body, which he did in such manner as to make national a reputation for legal ability that had heretofore been largely confined to his own portion of the West. This probably caused his call to the (temporary) presidency of the Democratic National Convention of 1880.

One of the immediate but unpremeditated fruits of this political activity came in 1883, when Judge Hoadly was named by the Democrats of Ohio as their candidate for governor. He entered upon the canvas with activity, and his speeches at Hamilton and Piqua, were reported and eagerly circulated by the Democratic State Committee as campaign documents. After making some ten speeches, he was unfortunately stricken with malarial fever, which prevented his continuing upon the stump until the last week of the campaign. Although not yet entirely recovered, he was able to appear in Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo and Dayton, addressing immense audiences with marked effect. A campaign that had of necessity lagged because of the absence of its chief, took on a new vigor, the Democratic heart was fired anew, and George Hoadly became Governor of the State by the emphatic majority of 12,529 over Judge Foraker, the Republican nominee. Not only this, but the close counties went Democratic, a legislature was secured, and Henry B. Payne, the life-long friend of Governor Hoadly’s father, was sent to represent Ohio in the United States Senate.

It is a matter of settled historical opinion, that the Buckeye State, with all its famous governors, was never possessed of a better chief magistrate than the one whose administration opened under such favoring influences. A knowledge of the needs of the state, gained from long acquaintance, a[56] wisdom that could be made effective in practical affairs, calm judgment, and an eye that could look higher than the levels of mere partisanship, were among the things that aided him; and “the greatest good to the greatest number” was the principle that inspired all his acts.

A renomination was, of course, a foregone conclusion. In 1885, the Democratic State Convention proclaimed by acclamation that George Hoadly should again become its candidate for governor. He accepted, although knowing that Ohio was then practically a Republican State, and that one man could hardly expect to accomplish the miracle of permanent Democracy. Judge Foraker was once more the Republican choice, and in the fall election was chosen by a vote of 359,281 to 341,830 for Hoadly; the Rev. A. B. Leonard, the Prohibition candidate receiving 28,081, and John W. Northrup, the Greenback candidate 2,001 votes. Although the defeat was decisive, it was sweetened to Governor Hoadly by the fact that in 1885, as in 1883, he ran ahead of his ticket, being defeated by the smallest, and, in 1883 elected by the largest plurality given against or for any of the gentlemen upon the same ticket.

When Governor Hoadly saw his successor duly inaugurated, he cheerfully returned to the active labors of his profession, in Cincinnati, where he remained until March, 1887, when the call to the chief city of the Union came in such shape that it could not be ignored. His practice had extended into such fields that the removal was almost a necessity, and his health demanded a change of climate. He located in New York, and became a partner in the firm of Hoadly, Lauterbach & Johnson—a firm that stands in the front rank, and that has an immense clientage, not only in New York, but all through the country. His chief thought and ambition since then has been in his profession. In the spring of 1890, Governor David B. Hill appointed him a member of the commission to revise the judiciary article of the constitution of New York, but because of professional engagements which detained him in the trial of a case in Detroit, Michigan, during the entire spring and summer months of that year, he was compelled to decline the appointment.

In recent years, Judge Hoadly has been honored by the degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred by Yale College in 1885, by Dartmouth College in 1889, while his own college, once Hudson but now Adelbert, gave him the same title some years ago. He is a Free Mason, a Knight Templar, and has taken the 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite, and has always performed anything in his power to advance the interests of the order.

Of Judge Hoadly’s professional life in New York, much might be said, were this the place to say it. Outside of that, little can be said, for he has had time for little else. As “an Ohio[57] man” he is always at home to any Buckeye neighbor, or impression, or memory that connect him with the days and scenes of his youth and early manhood. He may be seen occasionally in the gatherings of the Ohio Society, and when there, he is not allowed to remain in his seat unheard. Few men are as approachable in any walk of life; few men more companionable when he can command leisure for companionship. His friendships are strong, his decisions intuitive, his principles those of his honored ancestors, and Jonathan Edwards’ severe theology has had little reflection in his generous religious views. A single phrase might sum up his whole life and character: A typical American jurist and gentlemen.

James Harrison Kennedy.

North Americans will probably always take a special interest in the adventures of the army of the Spanish commander De Soto, apart from the general charm of the subject, for it is to the chronicles of the same that they are indebted for the very earliest accounts of the Indian nations, who, in the sixteenth century inhabited the territory now comprising the southeastern quarter of the United States.

The route pursued by the expedition during the years 1539 to 1543 has long been the subject of much discussion, but no satisfactory conclusions have been arrived at concerning the matter as a whole. Indeed there can scarcely be said to be a single point on the entire line of march which has been established beyond cavil. It is not now my intention to add to the mass of general comment, but merely to treat of a certain point of the route which personal enquiry and exploration in the field have enabled me to make up my mind about in all surety.

This point is the location of the particular village of the Chickasaws in northeastern Mississippi, where De Soto went into camp on December 17, 1540, and of the smaller village to the northward whither he retreated about the first week in the ensuing March, after the fierce night attack of the natives which almost ruined the Spaniards.

Before proceeding to give my own conclusions as to the true position of these villages, it is but proper to furnish an abstract of the descriptions given by the old writers, together with the opinions of the modern historians of Mississippi and of other people now inhabiting the northeastern counties of the State. The various authorities (excepting the popular views) will be quoted in the order in which they have appeared in printed form before the world.

The anonymous “Gentleman of[58] Elvas” one of the Portuguese volunteers, an eye-witness, comes first. His work, the “True Relation” etc., appeared in 1557. He says that Chicaza was a small town of twenty houses, and that the land was thickly inhabited, and that it was fertile, the greater part being under cultivation. Also that the Spaniards removed from that town where they wintered to the one where the cacique was accustomed to live, half a league off, because it was in the open country, on a prairie favorable for them.

The second authority is Garcilaso de la Vega, “the Inca,” who, however, was only a compiler, writing in 1591, from information given by three separate members of the little army. His book, “La Florida del Ynca” etc., first appeared in 1605. It furnishes a more elaborate account of the Chicaza transactions than the proceeding one, and to the following effect. The place had two hundred fires and was situated on a hill extending north and south, which was watered by many little brooks covered with nut, oak, and other similar trees. In order to lodge more commodiously they built themselves houses with wood and straw that they procured from the neighboring villages. Three days after the fight referred to, the General ordered the force to advance a league, search for wood and straw, and build a town to be named Chicacilla.

Factor Biedma’s account of the expedition, first published (in French) in 1841, is a very brief one. In the Chicaza affair, Buckingham Smith (1866) renders his words as stating that the army moved to “a cottage about a mile off.”

Nor does the abridged journal of Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s private secretary, which was not printed till 1851, afford any information as to the first town. But he relates how the Spaniards, after their defeat, at once went to a savana or prairie a league off, where they erected huts and barracks, and established camp on a declivity and hill.

As may be easily supposed the next Europeans to visit that region, the English and French traders and soldiers of the eighteenth century, had more urgent matters to attend to than the verification of historical statements, for no mention of De Soto or the expedition is made in their scanty writings or reports on this region, and apparently the Chickasaws had forgotten all about his invasion. The American settlers of nearly a century later were still less likely to know about the matter, for the De Soto expedition can scarcely be said to have become known to people in general in the United States till after the publication of Theodore Irving’s interesting book in 1835.

Searching next in all accessible modern histories and books, the first attempt at definite localizing that I can find is in the appendix to the Smithsonian Report for 1867. The Rev. Samuel Agnew, writing from Guntown, Mississippi, under date of[59] January 11, 1868, states that twelve years before, there had been pointed out to him on a long ridge between John’s Creek and Friendship Church, in Pontotoc County, the remains of ancient ditches or embankments. These he surmised might probably be the remains of De Soto’s winter camp, but he hoped that some intelligent antiquarian would look further into the matter.

The most comprehensive attempt however, to identify these camps, was made by Hon. J. F. H. Claiborne, in his “Mississippi as a Province” etc., published in 1880. In this book he wrote that:—

“There (the old Indian trail) struck Pontotoc ridge, four miles east of the ancient Chickasaw Council House. Near this point stood the first Chickasaw town, and in this vicinity the Spaniards went into winter quarters.

“At that period a portion of the Chickasaws still resided in the mountain region of east Tennessee, but a large body of them had taken possession of the territory where De Soto found them, and their principal settlement or town, or series of villages, was on the ridge from the ancient Council House (near Redland) north fifteen miles (near Pontotoc) and northeast, on the ‘mean prairie’ eight or ten miles, within a few miles of Tallahatchie River....

“Four miles east of the ancient Council House, on the Pontotoc ridge, near the source of the Suckartonchee Creek, are the vestiges of a fortified camp, evidently once strongly entrenched, after the European style of that day, with bastions and towers. Leaden balls and fragments of metal have been often found in these ruins. The enclosure was square, and the whole area, as evidenced by the remains, would have afforded shelter to the Spaniards and their live stock.... The chief of the Chickasaws resided about two miles southeast of the present town of Pontotoc, on the head-waters of Coonawa, now called Pontotoc Creek.... The exact position of this entrenched camp is still indicated by the vestiges that remain. Some persons contend that De Soto left this stronghold, advanced to Chickasilla, one mile northwest from where Pontotoc now stands, and commenced the attack on the Chickasaw towns. This would be to reverse the detailed accounts of the writers that accompanied him.... After the destruction of their camp, the Spaniards moved three miles to the village of Chickasilla, where they were annoyed by desultory attacks.”

In forming his opinions on the matter, Claiborne acknowledged his indebtedness to W. J. N. Walton of Aberdeen, Mississippi, a gentleman who “in early life was secretary of Levi Colbert, head chief of the Chickasaws, familiar with their language and with all their traditions,” and to W. B. Wilkes of the same place, a man whose tastes inclined him to archaeological pursuits. It is with diffidence therefore, that I venture to disagree[60] with these conclusions, in my own statement.

As to the ideas of the farmers and others living in the old Chickasaw County, there is no uniformity of opinion as to the site of Soto’s camps. There are many local candidates for that honor, and so far as I could find out, there is no good reason to adopt one more than another. The place pointed out to Mr. Agnew is probably the site of Mound Builder’s work, of which class of remains there is no lack in northern Mississippi.[11] The same may be said of the position assigned to Chicaza by Claiborne, though the locality he means is rather to the southeast of Redland and in Chickasaw County.

The Chicaza of Soto’s time was on a high ridge or hill located about one mile northwest of Redland, on the S½ of the S¼ of Section 21, and the N½ of the N W½ of Section 28, town 11, range 3E. in Pontotoc county. The hill extends north and south, and on both sides there are many little spring branches flowing out of the base of the hill and uniting with the larger streams at a distance of from one to four or five rods. The main part of the town was located on Section 28. A part of it is under cultivation and has farm buildings upon it, while the remainder of the site is covered by young timber and brush.

Many years ago there was an Indian mission school that is said to have been located where the farm building now stands. In the new ground broken up within recent years, there were beds of charcoal and ashes found at different points, and even in the old portion of the cultivated land charcoal is occasionally brought to the surface by the plough. These are undoubtedly remains of old Chicaza, and the beds of charcoal and ashes mark the sites of the houses burned by the Indians. As regards the location, there is no other place in either Lee or Pontotoc counties—where the oldest Chickasaw settlements were undoubtedly situated—that corresponds to the topographical description given by the Inca.

Chicacilla was probably located on the S E¼ of Section 5, town 11, range 3 E., about 3½ miles north and a very little west of Chicaza. At this point there is debris, etc., indicating that there was once an old Chickasaw village there. The narratives of the expedition, however, do not give sufficient data regarding this site, so that it is impossible to fully identify the place by them, there being nothing beyond the statement already quoted that it was located on a sloping hill, a league distant from Chicaza. This being the only ancient Chickasaw village site properly lying on sloping ground, and at about the right distance from the burned town; it is more than probable that the position given above is the correct one. It is presumable that after the place was abandoned by the[61] Spaniards, the Indians took possession of it, and occupied the houses in lieu of those destroyed by both parties. Besides this, it supplied them with a well fortified (palisaded) town in which to re-establish themselves.

At these two towns of Chicaza and Chicacilla, there are no vestiges of fortifications or entrenchments of any description, in fact there are none to be found in any of the Chickasaw old towns (or “fields”) that can be identified. It is probable that the fortified towns described in the De Soto and the early French expeditions were merely wooden walls or palisades, for otherwise there would be traces of them still remaining, so that at least some of them could be recognized as such.

The above conclusions were incidentally arrived at in the course of some archaeological explorations made in January and February 1891, in the former country of the Chickasaws, and may be considered as a contribution to some future revision of the generally accepted route of De Soto and his little army east of the Mississippi.

T. H. Lewis.

Hon. Isaac N. Arnold.

Isaac Newton Arnold was born at Hartwick, near Cooperstown, Otsego Co., New York, Nov. 30, 1813. His father George Washington Arnold was a physician of honorable standing, and the family in America dates back to the earliest settlement of New England, some of its members being associates of Roger Williams and other sterling men, who established in Rhode Island the first real Republic that ever gladdened the hearts of men with its assertion and protection of liberty and independent, sovereign manhood. The natural surroundings of his youth—the romantic scenery of Otsego County, with its beautiful lakes and extensive forests, so delightfully picturesque—were well calculated to develop a strong and noble manhood. Amidst this beauty of nature and comparative solitude, the man who was to make such a success of life drank in inspiration and learned to love the pure and the beautiful. Early thrown upon his own resources, self-made and self-reliant, he reached a position of greatness, through a career of usefulness, honor and integrity. His early education was obtained in the country schools and the village academy. From seventeen to twenty years of age he employed his time in teaching half the year and in attending school the other half, his revenue from teaching enabling him to support himself in his pursuit of an education. Ultimately he began to prepare himself for the profession in which he afterwards achieved such a notable success. Reading law in the offices of Richard Cooper and Judge Morehouse of Cooperstown, Mr. Arnold was admitted to the bar in 1835, and after practicing for a brief time as a partner of Judge Morehouse, he came to Chicago in 1836, and at once began that illustrious professional career which placed him among the foremost jurists not only of Illinois, but of the nation. It is scarcely possible to have a more graphic and faithful picture of a life than was drawn by Hon. E. B. Washburne in his eloquent eulogy of Mr. Arnold before the Chicago Historical Society. He said: “During all the active years of a long and well-spent life, Mr. Arnold has been a citizen of Chicago, contributing by his indefatigable industry, his unimpeachable integrity, his patriotism, his public[63] spirit, his rare abilities, his great acquirements, his spotless moral character, his high social qualifications and instincts as a thorough gentleman to give lustre to the city of his residence and to the generation to which he belonged; a successful lawyer that stood in the front ranks of his profession; a cautious, far-seeing and wise legislator, distinguishing himself in the halls of legislation, national as well as state; a successful public speaker and a writer of great power and wide-spread popularity, he has left to the generations that succeed him the legacy of a noble example and a noble name.”

Mr. Arnold was enrolled at the bar of the Supreme Court in Illinois Dec. 9, 1841, and in that same year he became counsel in a case which established his ability as a lawyer and brought him prominently before the profession. It was a time of great business depression, and a recreant legislature had passed an act of repudiation of public debts and providing that unless the property of a judgment debtor should bring two-thirds of its appraised value, it should not be sold under execution. Mr. Arnold was a determined opponent, of such legislation, and being employed by a New York judgment creditor to enforce his claim against a debtor, he attacked the constitutionality of the act, carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the case came on in January, 1843. Mr. Arnold presented an irrefutable written argument and Chief Justice Taney in one of the ablest and most elaborate opinions ever delivered in the court, sustained the position of the counsel for the appellant. Mr. Arnold was a powerful advocate whether before court or jury. He was exceedingly pains-taking in the preparation of his cases—which is half the battle with the lawyer—and before a jury he had no superior. As one of his associates at the bar has put it: “He was a learned lawyer, a jurist in the same sense of the term, and for more than thirty years stood at the head of the Chicago bar.”

In 1842 he was elected to the Lower House of the Illinois General Assembly. There were in that body at this time many men of distinction and marked ability, but none that were superior to the subject of this sketch. In 1844 Mr. Arnold was again elected to the House. At the close of this session of the legislature in 1846, Mr. Arnold retired from public life, and did not re-enter it until 1856. In politics he had been a Democrat, and in 1844 was a presidential elector on the Polk ticket. But becoming indignant at the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he became what was known as an anti-Nebraska Democrat and in 1856, at the urgent solicitation of the anti-Nebraska Democrats and Republicans of Cook County, he again consented to become a candidate for the House of Representatives in the State Legislature. This was at the time that Bissel was elected Governor and his right to take the seat was challenged by the[64] Democrats on the ground that he once accepted a challenge to fight a duel. Mr. Arnold championed the Governor’s cause, and his speech in his defense not only really settled the question, but gave him a high reputation over the whole State, marking him as one of the ablest public men of the time.

In the historical election at which Abraham Lincoln was first elected President of the United States, Mr. Arnold was elected a representative in the Thirty-seventh Congress from the Chicago district. That Congress met in extra session, July 4, 1861, and has passed into history as one of the most notable and momentous events in the life of the Republic. The Administration at the time was confronted by an open rebellion against the National authority, and it was for this session of Congress to determine just what should be done in the premises. Mr. Arnold had long known Mr. Lincoln, and between the two men there was a warm feeling of regard, and perhaps no man took his seat in this memorable session upon whom the President placed greater reliance than he did upon Mr. Arnold. The respect that was generally entertained for his abilities was evidenced by the fact that he was selected to pronounce the eulogy on the occasion of the death of Stephen A. Douglass. The regular session of the Thirty-seventh Congress met on the second day of December, 1861, at a time when the country was fully plunged into the midst of civil war. Mr. Arnold took his seat in the House, and at once entered actively into all the important proceedings of the body. His labors as a representative were very great and of the highest usefulness. Among his official acts that will live forever as a memento to his manhood and his statesmanship was his vote to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and his introduction of a bill, which against a determined opposition he persistently pushed to enactment, to prohibit slavery in every place subject to the National jurisdiction. One who knew him well, expressed the opinion however, that the ablest and most notable speech which he made in Congress, was the one delivered May 2, 1862, in the support of the bill to confiscate rebel property. This speech, because of its value as an exponent of constitutional law, challenged the attention of the lawyer members. He was ceaseless in administering blows against the institution of slavery. He acted in this regard steadily upon his own declaration: “Whenever we can give slavery a constitutional blow, let us do it.” On February 15, 1863, he introduced a resolution, which was passed, declaring that the constitution should be so amended as to abolish slavery in the United States; and this was the first step ever taken in Congress in favor of the abolition and prevention of slavery in the country.

In his speech advocating this resolution, he uttered the following vigorous language and eloquent sentiment: “In view of the long catalogue of[65] wrongs that slavery has inflicted upon the country, I demand to-day in the Congress of the United States the death of slavery. We can have no permanent peace while slavery lives. It now reels and staggers in the last death struggle. Let us strike the monster this last decisive blow. Pass this joint resolution and the Thirty-eighth Congress will live in history as that which consummated the great work of freeing a continent from the curse of human bondage. The great spectacle of this vote which knocks off the fetters of a whole race will make this scene immortal.” Further on he said: “I mean to fight this cause of the war—this cause of the expenditure of all the blood and treasure from which my country is now suffering; this institution which has filled our whole land with sorrow, desolation and anguish—I mean to fight it until neither on the statute-book nor in the constitution shall there be left a single sentence or word which can be construed to sustain the stupendous wrong. Let us now in the name of Liberty, Justice and of God consummate this grand resolution. Let us now make our country the home of the free.”

Mr. Arnold’s congressional career ended with the Thirty-eighth Congress March 3, 1865. He had served his country so well, had given the Administration such loyal, able and efficient support and won such a splendid fame that it was generally regretted that he would not consent to be returned. After President Lincoln’s assassination, he accepted the appointment from President Johnson of Auditor of the Treasury for the Port Office department, as a residence in Washington afforded him a more ready access to documents that were necessary to enable him to complete his work entitled the “History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery in the United States,” the preparation of which he had commenced before the assassination. He finally resigned the position however, and returned to Chicago in 1867. He then completed his work referred to, which is one of surprising interest and of exceptional historic value. In 1872, he resumed his bar practice in Chicago and continued actively in his profession for two or three years, when failing health compelled him to abandon it. From that time until his death, he lived a retired life in his pleasant home among his books and papers, where surrounded by his family and congenial friends he dispensed an elegant and gracious hospitality. He now had leisure to devote himself to favorite literary pursuits. He devoted himself to historic themes as he had a love for historical research, and a power of analysis which enabled him to do valuable work in historical and biographical writing. In 1880, he brought out a work entitled “Life of Benedict Arnold—His Patriotism and His Treason.” It is generally acknowledged to be a work of ability and fairness. Certainly it showed the independence and courage of the author for it required something[66] of courage to meet the popular prejudice with which the name of Benedict Arnold is regarded. But the author said that he wished to “make known the patriotic service of Benedict Arnold; the sufferings, heroism and the wrongs which drove him to a desperate action and induced one of the most heroic men of an heroic age to perpetrate an unpardonable crime.” The book is really one of great historic value. Mr. Arnold was never quite satisfied with his work on Mr. Lincoln and the overthrow of slavery. About two years before his death, therefore, he began to write the “Life of Abraham Lincoln,” and it is upon this work, says one of his ardent admirers, that his reputation as a biographer and historian must rest.

He was the author of a great number of sketches. “To whatever he undertook,” says one, “Mr. Arnold brought the qualities of a ripe intelligence, great vigor and a sound judgment.” At an age when most men rest, he was pursuing to its legitimate honors and rewards the career of a man of letters and of a historian. With an intellectual and finely chiseled face, of an erect and well-formed person, of quiet and gentlemanly manners and courteous carriage and bearing, Mr. Arnold was a man who always attracted attention. He was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and for many years a vestryman of St. James’ Church in Chicago. The successes of life and the usual hardening influences of public life had no effect upon his manly Christian character. The better side of his nature was at all times in the ascendancy. His earnest, paramount desire was to be useful in the world, and he freely understood that to gratify that desire man must be alive to the claims of his fellow man upon him. On his seventieth birthday he wrote: “Three score and ten; Death must be at no great distance. I wish to live only so long as I may be to some extent useful, and not when I shall be a burden. May my remaining days be useful and innocent.” He was possessed of many noble traits of character, not likely to be known outside of his immediate circle of friends. He was a great lover of children, and devotedly tender in his own home.

Mr. Arnold was twice married. His first marriage was with Catherine E. Dorrance of Pittsfield, Mass., who died October 1839. His second marriage was with Harriet Augusta Dorrance, a sister of his former wife, August 4, 1841. Nine children were born of this marriage. Mr. Arnold died at his residence in Chicago, April 24, 1884, mourned by the great city in which he lived and a multitude of others who appreciate the worth of true manhood. No citizen of Chicago ever had more numerous or more eloquent eulogies pronounced upon his death; the memory of no citizen was ever honored by such a gathering of distinguished people as assembled to pay the last sad tribute to Mr. Arnold’s memory.

Howard Louis Conard.

Scarcely anything indicates so accurately the predominant traits and condition of a people at any given period, as do the laws by which they are governed and the mode in which those laws are administered. Hence, in studying the early history of Massachusetts much important aid may be derived from the records of the courts and magistrates of that time. These give us a tolerable correct idea of the laws then in force which were designed to regulate the conduct of men in the various relations of life and show what was the practical administration of those laws. This is quite as true (perhaps more so), of the laws concerning what may be termed minor offences or breaches of social duty, for which men were held legally accountable, as it is of the graver crimes.

Some of the laws relating to this class of minor offences have undergone changes within the last two hundred years, particularly since our separation from the Mother Country.

These changes have been not so much in regard to the nature and description of the offence itself, as in regard to the penalty. They have in Massachusetts at the present time, and have had ever since the American Revolution, laws against drunkenness, vagrancy, petty larceny, libel and slander, profane cursing and swearing, Sabbath breaking, unlawful games or plays, lewdness, common railing and brawling, and idle and disorderly conduct generally. Our Colonial ancestors had laws substantially like those in force so far as relates to the offences themselves.

In fact, the present statutes on these subjects are many of them copies of the provincial statutes. But the penalties are quite different. They now punish breaching of these laws by a small fine or by imprisonment for a short term, or by both. For similar breaches of the statute and common law in the early history of Massachusetts some very different penalties were provided. These were actually enforced in frequent instances, which is hardly true of similar cases at the present day.

The Magistrates and Courts that administered the laws in Massachusetts during the first century and a half after its settlement were full believers in the propriety and efficacy of corporal punishment for a certain class of transgressions. Having based their criminal code largely upon that of Moses, they were well persuaded that, if in no case they exceeded the Hebrew[68] limit of forty stripes, they would have the Divine sanction. With this illustrious precedent constantly in view as a rule of action, they did not hesitate to apply the rod whenever it seemed to them appropriate and adequate penalty for the offence. Crimes of a graver character were dealt with by tribunals of larger jurisdiction and punished by imprisonment or death. But for a large class of misdemeanors, particularly such as were considered scandalous or tending to disorder and of evil example, the rod was a very frequent instrument of punishment.

It was a matter within the discretion of the Magistrate to some extent. This office was held by William Pynehon, of Springfield, Mass., for the first eleven years, afterwards for half a century by John Pynehon and his associates. In awarding this punishment of whipping little regard seems to have been paid by the court to the sex or social position of the offender. If the infliction of the penalty tended to disgrace the culprit, the commission of the offence was in itself disgraceful. The degrading punishment was regarded the just and proper sequence of the disgraceful crime.

The constable was the officer by whom the sentence was executed, and the public whipping post was the place. The time was sometimes the day on which the court was held. Occasionally, the day of the weekly religious lecture was designated as the time for the infliction.

Sometimes whipping was an alternative sentence to be inflicted if the offender failed to pay his fine. Often it was the only punishment awarded.

Some instances will be given, taken from the records—most of them are from the Pynehon record, containing cases tried by William Pynehon as a Magistrate, and cases tried by his son, John Pynehon, in connection with Eleziar Holyoke and Dr. Samuel Chapin who were commissioners appointed by the General Court.

False Reports, Slanders, etc.

In May, 1645, the General Court enacted a law designed to suppress the invention and circulation of false reports, whether injurious to private individuals or to the public in general.

The preamble was in these words:

“Whereas, Truth in words, as well as actions, is required of all men, especially of Christians who are the professed servants of the God of truth; and

“Whereas, All lying is contrary to truth, and some sort of lies are not only sinful (as all lies are), but also pernicious to the public weal and injurious to particular persons. It is therefore ordered that every person who shall wittingly and willingly make or publish any lie pernicious to the public weal or tending to the damage or injury of any particular person, or with intent to deceive and abuse the people with false news and reports shall be punished.

For the 1st offence a fine of 10 shillings, &c.

[69]

For the 2d offence a fine of 20 shillings or be whipped upon the naked body not exceeding 10 stripes.

For the 3rd offence a fine of 4 shillings or 15 stripes, &c., &c.”

The following is a case for slander in imputing to a woman the offence witchcraft.

“May 29 and 30, 1649—The widdow Marshfield, complains against Mary, the wife of Hugh Parsons, of Springfield, for reporting her to be suspected for a witch, and she produced Jo Matthews and his wife for her witnesses who were examined upon oath. Jo Matthews said that Mary Parsons told him how she was taught to try a witch by a widdow woman that now lives in Springfield, and that she had lived in Windsor, and that she had three children, and that one of them was married, and at last she said it was the widdow Marshfield. Jo Matthews answered that he believed no such thing of her—but, thereupon, said he, Mary Parsons replied, you need not speak so much for goody Marshfield, for I am sure (said she), she hath envied every woman’s child in ye end (?) till her own daughter had a child, and then said she yt child died and ye cow died, and I am persuaded said she, they were bewitched, and she said moreover, it was reported to her by one in town that she was suspected to be a witch when she lived in Windsor, and that it was publicly knowne that the devill followed her house in Windsor, and for aught I know said she follows her here.

Goody Matthews saith upon oath that when Goody Parsons came to her house she said to her, I wonder what is become of the half pound of wool. Goody Parsons said that she could not tell except the witch had witched it away. I wonder, said I, that you talk so much of a witch—do you think there is any witch in towne? Yes, said she, and she came into my house while the wool was cardinge. Who is it, said I? She said that An Stebbinge had told her in Mr. Smith’s chamber that she was suspected to be a witch in Windsor, and that there were divers strange lights seen of late in the Meddow that were never seen before ye widdow Marshfield came to town, and that she did grudge at other women that had children because her daughter had none, and about the time (namely of the grudging) ye child died and ye cow died.

Goody Parsons did stiffly deny the truth of their testimonys, but the said witness had delivered their testimony upon oath, and finding that she had defamed ye good name of the Widdow Marshfield I sentenced her to be well whipped on the morrow after lecture with twenty lashes by the constable unless she could promise the payment of 3L to ye Widdow Marshfield for and towards the reparation of her good name.”

Marriage—Plymouth Colony Laws.—1638.

“Whereas divers persons unfit for marriage both in regard of their young years and also in regard of their[70] weake estate, some practising the enveagling of men’s daughters and maids under guardines contrary to their parents and guardians likeing, and of maid servants without leave and liking of their masters.

“It is therefore enacted by the Court that if any shall make any motion of marriage to any man’s daughter or mayde servant not having first obtayned leave and consent of the parents or master so to doe, shall be punished either by fine or corporal punishment or both, at the discretion of the bench and according to the nature of the offence. It is also enacted that if a motion of marriage be duly made to the master, and through any sinister end or coveteous desire he will not consent thereunto, then the cause to be made known unto the Magistrates and they to set down such order therein as upon examination of the case shall appear to be most equal on both parts.”

Courtship and Marriage—Province Laws.

“May 1647. Whereas God hath committed the care and power into the hands of parents for the disposing of their children in marriage, so that it is against rule to seek to draw away the affection of young maidens under pretence of purpose of marriage, before their parents have given way and allowance in that respect; and whereas it is a common practice in divers places for young men irregularly and disorderly to watch all advantages for their evil purposes to insinuate into the affections of young maidens, by coming to them in places and seasons unknown to their parents for such ends, whereby much evil hath grown amongst us to the dishonor of God and damage of parties; for prevention whereof for time to come:

It is further ordered that whatsoever person from henceforth shall endeavour, directly or indirectly, to draw away the affection of any maid in this jurisdiction, under pretence of marriage, before he hath obtained liberty and allowance from her parents or governors, or in the absence of such, of the nearest magistrate, he shall forfeit for the first offence five pounds, for the second towards the party ten pounds, and be bound to forbear any further attempt and proceedings in that unlawful design without or against the allowance aforesaid; and for the third offence upon information or complaint by such parents or governors to any Magistrate, giving bond to prosecute the party, he shall be committed to prison; and upon hearing and conviction by the next court, shall be adjudged to continue in prison until the court of assistants shall see fit to release him.”

In 1641, before this statute was enacted, a case occurred which Mr. Pynehon records, in which he sentenced parties for the misconduct forbidden by this statute. This must have been under his general authority to examine misdemeanors and inflict corporal punishment.

“January 11, 1640, it is ordered that[71] John Hobell shall be well whipt by the constable for two misdemeanors, first for proceeding to get promises of marriage from Abigail Burt, after that both he and she had been prohibited by her father several times (and also for offering and attempting to doe the act of fornication with her as they both confesse, though as far as we can discerne by any proof of justice the act was not done).

Also Abigail Burt is found guilty in both the said faults, and is also to be well whipt by the constable for the said faults.”

Common Railers and Brawlers were punishable by the old provincial laws as they are by our present laws, but in a different way. A curious case is recorded by Mr. Holyoke as having come before the courts at the time John Pynehon, Samuel Chapin and Eliziar Holyoke were the Magistrates.

“March 13, 1655—Obadiah Miller complaynes against Joane, his wife, for abusing him with reproachfull tearmes or names as calling him foole, toad, vermine and threateninge him; as also for yt yesterday shee fell upon him endeavoring to beat him, at which tyme shee scratched his face and hands. The case being examined it was found that Joane, the wife of Obadiah Miller was guilty of very evil behavior towards her said husband; it being proved by the testimony of John Lamb and Tho. Miller.

John Lamb testifyed he heard her say shee would knock him on the head, and yt shee did often call him foole and other reproachful tearmes.

Thomas Miller testifyed yt wn his brother Obediah, his wife lived with him she did comonly call him foole and vermine; and he doth not remember he ever heard her call him husband, and that shee said shee did not love him but hated him; yea shee here said shee did not love him and shee should not love him.

For which, her vile misbehaviour towards her husband, she was adjudged to be taken forth to ye whipping post, there to receive soe many stripes on ye naked body as ye commissioners should see cause to inflict on her; whereuppon shee was brought forth, but by her humileation and earnest protestations for better carriage towards her said husband, the punishment was remitted and this sentence passed yt for the least miscarriage to her husband after this tyme, shee should be brought forth agayne to receive a good whipping on the naked body well laid on.”

Husband or Wife Striking.

Colony Laws, Chap. 66.

October 1650. “It is ordered by the Court and authority thereof, that no man shall strike his wife, nor any woman her husband, on penalty of such fine not exceeding ten pounds for one offence, or such corporall punishment as the County Court shall determine.”

The Colony laws regarding the Observance of the Sabbath were quite numerous and strictly enforced by various penalties.

[72]

At a court before the Commissioners John Pynehon, Eliziar Holyoke and Samuel Chapin. May 8th, 1654.

“Daniel, a Scotchman servant to Thomas Merick being found to profhane the Sabbath in idle walkinge about, and not cominge to ye ordinances of ye Lord, yea though he had warninge to ye contrary; and being also complayned of by his said master for his grevious idleness in neglecting his busyness for severall dayes, yea synce he was called before authority for the like misbehaviour formerly at wh tyme he promised amendment; but he grew worse and worse and therefore was adjudged to be whipped on ye bare back wth five lashes well laid on, and execution was done accordingly.”

Another case in which four young men were charged with violation of the Sabbath was attended with this peculiarity—that two of the culprits were sons of Holyoke, one of the two Magistrates before whom the trial was had.

This trial was in 1664, and was thus recorded in the handwriting of Holyoke.

“Thomas Noble, Constable, presenting Thomas Thomson and John Horton for that last Sabb., was fortnight, June ye 7, they made a fray in ye street in ye evening about ½ an hour after sunsett. Samuel & Elizar Holyoke being accessory in ye said fray.

The Commissioners uppon examination of ye case doe fynd that the said foure persons did profane the Lord’s day, and therefor doe determine that they all shall be admonished thereof & that Thomas Thomson, John Horton, and Samuel Holyoke shall pay a fyne of five shillings apeece to the County, or be whipped by the Constable on ye naked body with three stripes apeece; whereuppon they were all admonished & the 3 former desiring to pay ye fynes, then otherwise were ordered to pay them to ye County Treasurer.”

Samuel Holyoke upon whom this sentence was passed by his own father, was then a boy of seventeen years. Twelve years afterwards in 1676, he was the Capt. Holyoke who so greatly distinguished himself in the celebrated Falls fight with the Indians.

Assaulting of Women.

Province Laws Ch. 105-1711.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that whosoever shall be convicted of assaulting or offering any insolence or violence to any woman or mankind in the fields, streets or lanes in any town, or of despoiling them, damnifying or defacing of their attire or ornaments, or attempting the same, shall be punished by being publickly whipped, not exceeding two stripes, or by being committed to the house of correction to receive the discipline of the house and continue there by the space of thirty days.

The discipline of the house by a law passed in 1699, included among other[73] things, “moderate whipping not exceeding ten stripes at once, which shall be inflicted at their first coming in and from time to time, in case they be stubborn, disorderly or idle.”

(At a Court holden at Northampton, June 19, 1672, John Edwards, of Northampton, who came to that place from Virginia, was tried for some misdemeanor in lascivious carriage towards divers women of Northampton, and the case being searched into. It is found and proved yt the sd Edwards hath been notoriously lascivious and hath carried himself very debauchedly towards diverse women of N (as by test on file appears) and yt he hathe traded? this way:)

“The Courte doth adjudge him to be whipt on ye naked body with 20 stripes well laid on.”

A different case with a different penalty is this. At a County Corte holden at Northampton, March 31, 1674.

“Martin Smith, resident at Pacomtuck, being bound over to this Corte by N. Comiss: for offering abuse to Jedidiak Strong’s wife (in ye street near her father Woodwards house) laying hold on her to kiss her as shee thinks, and she testifying her offence to be soe affronted whereby shee sayth also shee was somewhat affrighted; he appearing in Corte and owning his fact and condemning himself and seeming sorrowful that he should be left to such folly, was fyned only 20s. to be pd to ye Treasurer and 2s. and 6d. as ye Recorder’s fees.”

Sitting in the Stocks was a mode of punishment for certain offences to which persons of either sex were sometimes subjected. Occasionally it was ordered as an alternative sentence in a case where the culprit failed to pay the fine imposed.

Webster’s Unabridged describes the stocks as a machine consisting of a frame of timber, with holes in which the feet, or the feet and hands of the criminals were confined by way of punishment. The picture gives a much better idea of this punishment than can be gained from the definition. The offender sits on a bench with a high back, his feet projecting through two holes in an upright plank in front secured so that they cannot be withdrawn or moved. In this situation he can neither lie down or stand up, but must remain fixed until released. The stocks were usually located in some public place where the culprit could be seen by all passers by—and not seldom he was subjected to the taunts and ridicule of the crowd that were sure to gather on such an occasion.

Profane Cursing and Swearing was one of the offences subjecting the transgressor to the punishment of the stocks.

Colony Laws, Chap. 94.

An Act Against Swearing and Cursing.

“Sec. 1. It is ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that if any person within this jurisdiction shall swear rashly or vainly by the holy name of God, or other oath, he shall forfeit to[74] the common treasury for every such offence ten shillings; and it shall be in the power of any Magistrate by warrant to the constable, to call such person before him, and upon sufficient proof to sentence such offender, and to give order to levy the fine; and if such person be not able or shall refuse to pay the said fine, he shall be committed to the stocks, there to continue not exceeding three hours nor less than one hour.

Sec. 2. And if any person shall swear more oaths than one at a time before he remove out of the room or company where he so swears, he shall then pay 20 shillings. The like penalty shall be inflicted for profane and wicked cursing of any person or creature, and for the multiplying the same as is appointed for profane swearing, and in case any person so offending by multiplying oaths or cursing, shall not pay his or their fines forthwith, they shall be whipt or committed to prison till they shall pay the same at the discretion of the Court or Magistrate that shall have cognyance thereof.”

The wife of Henry Gregory, one of the early settlers here, transgressed this law, and her case came before Mr. William Pynehon as a Magistrate. His record of it is as follows under date of February 15, 1640:

“Goody Gregory being accused by oath of John Woodcoke & Richard Williams for swearing before God I could break thy head: She did acknowledge it was her great sin & fault & saith she hath bin much humbled for it.

She is fined 12d (12 pence) to the poore to be paid to Henry Smyth within a month; or if she doe not she is to sit 3 hours in the stocks.”

Common Scold.

By the English common law in force here in the early times a common scold was liable to a peculiar form of punishment. Blackstone (4 Black. Com. 168) says:

“A common scold—communis rixatrix—(for our law confines it to the feminine gender) is a public nuisance to her neighborhood for which offence she may be indicted, and if convicted shall be sentenced to be placed in a certain engine of correction called the trebucket, castigatory or cucking stool, which in the Saxon language is said to signify the scolding stool, though now it is frequently corrupted into ducking stool, because the residue of the judgment is that when she is placed therein she shall be plunged in the water for her punishment.”

Oct. 24, 1673—“John Petty complaines agt Goodwife Hunter for offering to mischiefe his wife & giving her ill language; calling her as ye testimonys speake:

Railing, scolding & other exorbitancys of ye Young appearing as by ye Testimonys of Mary Brookes & Mercy Johns on file & also ye neighbors, declaring her continual trade upon every occasion to be exorbitant in her Toung[75] as particularly Sam Marshfull & John Bagg so declared. I sentenced her to be gaged or else set on a ducking stool & dipped in water as law provides. Shee to choose wh of ym shee pleases within this half houre; or else I do determine & order either as I see cause. Shee not choosing either, I order her to be gagged & so to stand half an hour in ye open street wh was done accordingly; & for her reproaching Goodie Petty shoe did openly cleare her of all shee spake agt her & asked forgiveness wch G. Petty accepting of shee was released as to yt.”

The Puritan Fathers are often blamed on account of their witchcraft persecutions. Long after Massachusetts had confessed her wrong-doing, England and Germany put people to death for witchcraft. Twenty-five years after persecution had ceased in New England, Chief Justice Matthew Hale, of England, sent a mother and her little daughter to the scaffold for the same offence; and one hundred and one years afterwards Germany did likewise. The age in which these men lived is responsible for these things, and not the men themselves. They were founders of schools, and were not intolerant. I do not believe in the cry of the “good old times” simply. There are more good men and women now than ever before. I think it almost unfortunate to explain away witchcraft and some other peculiar things of those times, as then some people would have nothing to talk about and sneer at and criticise the Pilgrim Fathers. Some persons like to continue this. Dr. Blake of Boston, says that a good Baptist brother had often met him and chaffingly asked, “How is Roger Williams to-day?” when Mr. Blake, tiring of the question, answered, “Oh, he is warm and dry by this time.” The Pilgrims had especially three noble qualities: Earnestness, definiteness of belief and stalwartness of spiritual life.

With the death of General William E. Strong of Chicago, in April of the present year, there passed away another of the distinguished volunteer soldiers of the United States who won distinction during the War of the Rebellion, and at the close of that great conflict returned to civil life to become the flower of American manhood, and a perfect representative of American citizenship. Brave, loyal and patriotic, when the call came for his services in support of the Union he was prompt to respond, and was a faithful and gallant soldier until the struggle was ended and victory achieved. When that time came it found him equally ready to return to peaceful pursuits in which in later years his high character and ability made him both successful and distinguished.

William Emerson Strong was born in Granville, in Washington County, New York, August 10, 1840. The family to which he belonged was one of the oldest and most noted of the Puritan families of New England. Elder John Strong, the founder of the family in America, was a native of Taunton, England—where his ancestors had been honorably mentioned in public records as long ago as 1545. He sailed from Plymouth in the ship “Mary and John,” March 20th, 1630, in company with one hundred and forty other persons. They landed at Nantasket, (twelve miles s. e. of Boston) at the end of a voyage of more than seventy days, and John Strong settled at Northampton, Massachusetts. Here several generations of his descendants lived, and from thence representatives of the family drifted into other States, to become conspicuous in all the walks of life.

One of these descendants, but three or four generations removed from the pilgrim John Strong was Caleb Strong, one of the framers of the Federal Constitution, Governor of Massachusetts from 1800 to 1807, and again from 1812 to 1816, and also one of the first United States Senators from the “Old Bay State.”

Other representatives of the family who have achieved extraordinary distinction have been Gen. George C. Strong, who was mortally wounded while leading the Federal troops in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18th, 1863, Rear Admiral James Hooker Strong of the United States Navy, Theron R. Strong, at one time a Judge[77] of the Supreme Court of New York State, William Strong one of the most noted of American jurists, and Simeon Strong, who sat on the Supreme Court Bench of Massachusetts from 1800 to 1805.

General William E. Strong was descended on the father’s side from the Emerson family of New England, one of his near kinsmen being Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet-philosopher, whose name is revered by all those who appreciate the purest and best in intellectual culture.

Gen. Strong’s father, John Emerson Strong, was a wealthy manufacturer and merchant of Granville, New York, up to 1849, when he met with business reverses which changed the character of his business and led him to seek a new location. In the spring of 1853 he removed from New York to Wisconsin, and settled with his family at Jefferson Prairie, in Rock County, where he purchased a farm and turned his attention to bringing it under cultivation. His son William was at this time thirteen years of age. Prior to the removal of the family from New York he had enjoyed all the educational advantages afforded by the excellent schools of the town in which he had lived and had made good progress in his studies. From the time he was thirteen until he was seventeen years of age however, he was busily employed at work on his father’s farm and only attended school during the winter months of each year with the exception of one year, when he had the privilege of spending six months in the preparatory department of Beloit College.

In the fall of 1856 when he was in his seventeenth year, he entered the law office of Strong & Fuller, at Racine, Wisconsin, and under their preceptorship began the study of law. He was at that time an active, manly young fellow, and he entered upon the work of fitting himself for a professional career with all the ardor, enthusiasm and determination which characterized him in later years. Whatever he undertook to do, he endeavored to do better than it had been done before. In everything he strove to excel, and in this he observed the spirit of the old motto “Tentanda est Via,” placed upon the Strong escutcheon three hundred years ago.

After a time he temporarily dropped his law studies and went to Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, where he prepared for college and was admitted to the sophomore class of Harvard. Before completing his college course however, he determined to enter upon the practice of law, and in accordance with the course he had mapped out for himself, he made application for admission to the bar of Wisconsin. He was examined at Racine, in open court, by a committee appointed for the purpose in accordance with the usages of that period, and the examination being passed successfully he was duly authorized to begin practicing his profession in the courts of the First Judicial Circuit of[78] Wisconsin. This was in 1861, and it will be observed that notwithstanding the fact that he had had to contend with disadvantages of various kinds, before he was twenty-one years of age he had fitted himself to enter the profession in which so large a number of those bearing the same name and belonging to the same stock had achieved unusual distinction.

The day he received the certificate which entitled him to begin the practice of law, was that which brought the news of the fall of Fort Sumpter. This suddenly changed all his plans, and ultimately the whole course of his life. At once he resolved to tender his services to the government, and on the same day that President Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers, he was regularly enlisted in the government service. He proceeded to raise a company, known as the Belle City Rifles, which was assigned to the Second Regiment of Wisconsin Infantry. When the company was organized, William E. Strong was commissioned Captain and went into the field in command of it, the regiment becoming part of a brigade commanded by Colonel (afterward General) W. T. Sherman. He retained the command of the company between four and five months, participating in the battle of Blackburn’s Fort and Bull Run. He was also in command of his company when the next advance of the army into Virginia was made by way of Chain Ridge. It was during his first campaign that Captain Strong met with one of his most thrilling experiences, and demonstrated that his fighting qualities were such as could be depended upon under all circumstances. At one time while extending his picket line, he ventured too far out and found himself inside the lines of the enemy. Before he could retire from this embarrassing and dangerous position he was surrounded by a band of five confederates, three of whom were mounted and two of whom were on foot, and was taken prisoner. The confederates demanded his pistols, and with great courtesy and suavity he responded “certainly gentlemen,” at the same time drawing the weapons from their holsters. His “suaviter in modo” threw his enemies off their guard, but he had no intention of being captured without a struggle, and no sooner were the pistols in his hands than they were brought to bear on the confederates and two of them fell at his first fire. The suddenness and vigor of the attack caused the remaining captors to beat a retreat, and Captain Strong reached the Federal lines in safety. In this encounter he was shot through the cheek, but although the wound was painful he did not regard it as serious and did not allow it to interfere with his regular discharge of his military duties.

On the 12th of September he was commissioned Major of the 12th. Regiment of Wisconsin Infantry, serving with it in Kansas, Missouri, and New Mexico. In October of 1862, he was assigned to duty on the staff of General[79] McLean, as Inspector General of the first division, right wing of the Army of the Tennessee. He served in this capacity two months and was then assigned to duty on the staff of General James B. McPherson, as inspector General of the right wing of the Army of the Tennessee. In February, 1863, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and became Assistant Inspector General of the Seventeenth Army corps. On the 20th of April, 1864, he was appointed Inspector General of the Department and Army of the Tennessee, serving in that capacity until the close of the war. He was chief of staff to General O. O. Howard, on the march to the sea and through the Carolinas to Beaufort, Goldboro, Raleigh and thence to Washington. At Atlanta he was promoted to a Colonelcy, dating from July 22d, 1864, for “gallantry on the field of battle,” and on the 21st of March, 1865, he was brevetted a brigadier general of volunteers, having attained this distinction while still under 24 years of age.

After participating in the grand review of troops at Washington in May, 1865, General Strong was assigned with General Howard, to duty in connection with the conduct and management of the Freedman’s Bureau, and in September, 1866, was then mustered out of the service at his own request, having served in all over five years.

Throughout his entire term of service he was recognized as a brave and capable officer, and his gallantry was attested on numerous occasions. It was he who raised the stars and stripes over the Courthouse at Vicksburg immediately after the capitulation of the confederate forces.

He received the last order from the brilliant and lamented McPherson, while acting as his chief of staff, and led the desperate and daring charge which was made to recover the dead chieftain’s body. The following is a list of battles and campaigns in which he participated; The battles of Blackburn’s Ford and Bull Run in July, 1861. The campaign in Kansas, and also the campaign in Kentucky, Tennessee and Central Mississippi in 1862-63; the campaign against Vicksburg by way of the Mississippi River; and also in the battles of Port Gibson, May 1st; battle of Raymond, May 12th; battle of Jackson, May 14th; battle of Champign Hills, May 16th; battle of Black River Bridge, May 17th; Siege of Vicksburgh, May 17th to July 4th, 1863; the campaign against Meridian, Mississippi, and that against Atlanta in 1864, in which he participated in the battle of Resaca, Dallas, New Hope Church, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Ezra Chapel, Jonesboro, Lovejoy Station, and later Fort McAllister, and Bentonville, one of the final contests of the war, and was present at the final surrender of Johnston’s army on April 26th of that year. Esteemed by his superior officers and subordinates alike for his soldierly[80] qualities, he was equally noted for his uniform courtesy and his efficiency as an executive officer.

In 1867, soon after he left the military service, General Strong formed a business connection with the Peshtigo Company, one of the largest corporate organizations engaged in the lumber trade in the United States. The same year he was married to Miss Mary Bostwick Ogden, an accomplished young woman, daughter of Mahlon D. Ogden, one of the pioneer citizens of Chicago. Establishing his home in Chicago at that time it continued to be his place of residence to the date of his death, and with many of its most important enterprises and undertakings of late years he was most prominently identified. Chosen secretary and treasurer of the Peshtigo Company in 1867, he retained that position until 1873, when he became president of the corporation. This position he filled for eighteen years, and was holding at the time of his death, April 10th, 1891. He was one of the promoters and builders of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, became a director and was also treasurer and assistant secretary of the Sturgeon Bay & Lake Michigan Canal Company, and was largely instrumental in developing the resources of the lumber regions of the northwest. In his business life he showed great capacity for the conduct of affairs of more than ordinary magnitude. His management of the important interests committed to his care was uniformally successful. He never lost his interest in military affairs, and after he became a citizen of Illinois was among those most active in promoting the organization and providing for the proper discipline and equipment of the National Guard of the State. In 1876, he was commissioned by Gov. Beveridge, Inspector General of the Illinois’ National Guard. Gov. Cullom, the immediate successor of Gov. Beveridge, commissioned him Inspector General and Inspector of Rifle practice on his staff, with the rank of Brigadier General in 1877, and again in 1879. In addition to his interest in the National Guard, he was active in building up and promoting the growth of the veteran organizations particularly of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, of the Illinois commandery of which he was a charter member and also commander.

In politics he took a moderately active interest as a member of the Republican party to the principles of which he was devotedly attached. He was a member of the Local Committee of Arrangements which had charge of the preparations for the meeting of the National Republican convention of 1880, was designated to take charge of the convention building, and to act as sergeant-at-arms after the sessions began. This convention was memorable for the length of time it lasted, for the large number of distinguished men who participated in the proceedings, and the multitude of people from all parts of the country in attendance. The great crowds were handled by[81] General Strong with remarkable skill, and at the close of the convention he was publicly thanked for his services by General James A. Garfield, who had been made the Presidential nominee.

From early boyhood General Strong was a lover of field sports, and was passionately found of hunting wild fowl and large game, and visited at one time and another, almost every portion of the United States, having attractions of this kind to offer. In company with General Phil. Sheridan—for many years, one of his most intimate friends—he made several visits to the Yellowstone Park region, and wrote numerous interesting sketches of these experiences, adventures and explorations. While the busy life he led did not allow him to give as much attention as he would have liked to literature, he gathered together a valuable library, one of the most conspicuous features of which was the amount of war literature which it contained, inclusive of rare manuscripts, autograph letters, papers, documents, and photographs, which it is said can scarcely be duplicated in the United States. He was a member of the Literary Club of Chicago and also of the Commercial Club. His last public service was rendered to the city in the capacity of a director of the Worlds Fair, an enterprise with the inception and inauguration of which he had much to do.

General Strong was in the prime of a splendid manhood when failing health admonished him that he must seek rest and a change of climate. Accordingly on the 14th of March last, he sailed from New York to join his wife and daughters in Europe. Traveling by easy stages he reached Florence, Italy, where the end came suddenly, and at least to his thousands of friends in the United States, unexpectedly on the 10th of April. His remains were brought back to the land of his nativity and to his former home in Chicago. From thence they were carried by the comrades of former days and the devoted friends of his later years to his last resting place in Graceland cemetery, where he sleeps peacefully, wrapped in the national colors which he so bravely defended in his young manhood.

At the obsequies of General Strong the fact was made apparent that a man had passed away whom a great busy community, felt called upon to honor, and the tenderest tributes of love, respect, and admiration were laid on his grave. Said one who paid tribute to his character and worth as a man and patriot: “It is befitting to preserve in memory and hand down to the generations something about a man who has helped to make citizens heroic soldiers, and to render possible the triumph of liberty and manhood. While his was a beneficent existence of many manly years, it seems to the view of man that he died before his time. It is but just to say of him that his conduct as a soldier, sprang from a truly patriotic, martyr spirit which enabled him to dare unflinchingly,[82] with a smile to the green earth, and a smile to the bright heavens, and a cheer to his companions.”

Of striking appearance, pleasing manners and great personal magnetism, he drew around him a circle of friends which was composed of many of the men best known in public and official life, in the world of trade and commerce, and in the various professions. These men were drawn to him by his geniality, his candor, his culture, his broad liberality and his unswerving fidelity to his friends. He was of that chivalrous nature which was regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of the Preux Chevalier in the days of knight errantry and with it all, was the practical, level-headed man of affairs.

A brave soldier, a good citizen, a courteous gentleman, General Strong was a splendid type of American manhood.

Howard Louis Conard.

Among the wrong impressions and mistaken ideas which have been conveyed by writers and speakers during the last two hundred and fifty years, and even down to the present day, there are, perhaps, none more prominent and important than those relating to, and connected with, that most interesting body of people and most important event in our history—the Pilgrims and their coming to America. In no instance that is now called to mind, of the settling of a country or planting of a colony, have the motives and purposes of the colonists been so misrepresented and falsified, and so much fiction made to hang about their acts, as in the case of the Pilgrims. It is proposed in the present article to deal with two main ideas—who were the Pilgrims, and what were their objects or motives in coming to this country.

With regard to the first idea there seems to be great and unpardonable ignorance and confusion, for they were not Puritans nor Persecutors, as the latter became both in England and early in America, but were Separatists. Much has been done by Mr. Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of the City of London, towards setting this matter right and putting it in proper shape before the public, and, he in turn, obtained much information through the studies and investigations of Dr. Waddington. The latter says: “The ignorance still existing on this subject is almost incredible. We find men of education who seem to have no exact information respecting the Pilgrim Fathers. Quarterly reviewers, members[83] of Parliament, Christian divines and ecclesiastical historians speak of them with the same complacent disregard of facts.” The church presumed to dictate as to what kind of christians the Puritans should be, and the form and manner of worship they should adopt and be governed by. To these requirements there was a partial submission.

The Pilgrims separated from them because of this church imposition, and so became “Separatists.” Parliament declared, in Mary’s reign, the Pope to be the spiritual head of the church in England. When Elizabeth ascended to the throne 1558, she was confronted with this state of affairs respecting these matters, and issued a proclamation forbidding any change in the forms of religion, until they should be determined according to law. Thus it happened that there was no freedom to worship according to conscience for either Roman Catholics or Protestants. Elizabeth was opposed to Popery, but she was just as vindictive toward Protestants who did not shape their religious course and belief in accordance with her standard and the law of the State.

This Act of Supremacy, which she caused to be passed soon after she came into power, was not long after followed by the Act of Uniformity, which required everybody to worship, not only as the State directed, but also in the parish churches. Two years later came the crowning act in the adoption of the Articles of Religion; and the Church of England was established by the highest authority of the realm, and then commenced separations and persecutions. There were a few people, a small band, who found some errors yet left in the wake of the Reformation against which they protested. They also objected to any human power assuming that headship which they claimed belonged alone to Christ, and also asked the privilege of worshiping according to the simplicity of form and practice of the primitive Christians. Minor questions, such as baptism and the like, which have since given rise to divisions and sects, were not considered, and this little band of people, together with the Roman Catholics, were the only persons throughout England who objected to the church as the law had established it. Accordingly they formed themselves into distinct bodies, or associations, or churches, chose their own teachers and determined their own affairs. They claimed that the church was a spiritual association and should, therefore, be separated from the world, and was amenable only to the laws of Christ as given in the New Testament. Hence the name “Separatists.” They were simple in their manners and conduct and morals, and all these things rendered them unpopular and drew upon them the ill-will and enmity of the church, which found plenty of reason and many excuses and opportunities for persecuting them. There arose at this period another party, some of whom were[84] English reformers, who had been driven from the country and had returned on the ascension of Elizabeth, but were disappointed to find that religious matters and laws had been settled and established.

Many of them however, accepted the change, including Royal Supremacy, Uniformity of Worship and Articles of Religion. They were nevertheless much dissatisfied, but hoped to effect still further changes and reformations. But in this they failed. This as will be seen, was a party within a party, a church within a church, or a party within the “establishment,” and they were the “Puritans.” In other words, the Protestants may be said to have been divided into three classes. The High Ritualists, Puritans and Separatists. High Ritualists claimed divine authority for the form of government, and the ceremonial of the Church of England. The king, they claimed, was the head of the church, as well as supreme in all civil matters and had power and authority over persons and property. The Puritans, on the contrary, believed none of these doctrines, although they were as devoted to the Church of England as was the other party, the High Ritualists, and the reforms they desired, they sought to make from within the church. Separation they regarded as the rankest kind of an offense, a terrible sin. To draw a comparison, or to make an illustration—the Puritans were Episcopalians—the low-church wing of that period. In another sense there was a difference or distinction between Puritans and Pilgrims: The Puritans had among their number, as influential persons, many of the nobility, men of business, capitalists and educated, fashionable and accomplished people. Indeed, during the entire reign of James I, they formed a majority in the House of Commons, and no person not a communicant of the Church of England could then sit in that body.

From this body of Puritan Episcopalians sprang that company who landed at Salem and settled at Boston in 1630, not the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth in 1620. The latter, the “Separatists,” renounced the Church of England, and separated from it. They were likewise socially from the humbler walks of life. Some of their number, it is true, were persons of education, culture and refinement, but as has been said, the great bulk were from among the common people, without means, power or influence. Indeed, they sustained about the same relation to other classes and denominations that the Methodists, in their beginning, did to other religious denominations. In short, they were persecuted by the Church of England by the Puritans and by the Roman Catholics.

The Separatists, one and all, suffered every indignity, privation and want, while many, among them Barrow, Greenwood, Dennis and Penry, were hung. Others still were thrown into prison, and died from neglect, hunger and cold. Others were permitted to[85] leave the country, but were informed that if they returned, their lives would be the forfeit. Later on, this was even denied them, and their departure from the country was forbidden. For these reasons, the Separatist congregations fled secretly to Holland, and even in Holland the Dutch shunned them, for they were afraid of offending King James, whose good will and help they wanted. These “Separatists,” or Pilgrims, therefore gradually disappeared from English soil, and from the English mind, and in 1607, there remained in the kingdom only one organized congregation of this kind, which was within the limits of the little town of Scrooby. Here their pastors were Richard Clifton and John Robinson, the latter a somewhat rash and inconsiderate young man, but they depended chiefly for material aid and favors, as well as sympathy and encouragement, on William Brewster, afterwards their “venerated elder.” He was postmaster, and his duties included the charge of public travel, which necessitated a house of large dimensions, and in this building he permitted the “Separatists” to worship weekly, lodging and entertaining them. About this time there appeared another person, a mere lad, who became interested in, and identified himself with, the Pilgrims, and who subsequently occupied a useful and prominent position in their history.

This was William Bradford, who came from a very respectable family in a neighboring village. They were not long, however, to remain here in peace and unmolested quiet. Their retreat was sought out and persecutions anew visited upon them, and there remained only two alternatives, the one to yield a hypocritical conformity and submission, or to become exiles from their native land, from “the graves in which their fathers slept.” They accordingly gathered themselves together, and under the leadership of the youthful and brave Bradford, fled to Amsterdam—Brewster, Robinson and Clifton remaining behind, like the marshal of Napoleon’s grand army, to guard the rear, when, having seen all safely on their journey and beyond the reach of the “King’s hirelings,” they followed on and soon joined those who had gone before. They were disappointed however, and failed to find peace and quiet and rest, for at Amsterdam there were two societies or congregations of English worshipers who had fled their country, but they were in continual dissensions with each other, and rendered the situation of the little band of “Separatists,” uncomfortable and unpleasant. There remained therefore, nothing for the latter to do but to “move on,” which they did, forty miles distant to the “goodly and pleasant city” of Leyden. Here at last they found peace and quiet and freedom of worship, but were not without perplexities and disadvantages.

They had to depend upon manual labor for subsistence, which employment they sought from the Dutch, of[86] whose language they understood not a word. In their own land they had been chiefly agriculturists, but many of them now became manufacturers and mechanics of various kinds. Thus were they, by the force of circumstances, fortunate in learning trades which were useful to the community in after years in their home beyond the sea. Bradford engaged in the silk dyeing business and Brewster set up a printing office. It could not be expected that this condition of affairs, even, although a great improvement, would long satisfy the spiritual and intellectual longings and demands of such men as the Pilgrims. Their life, on the whole, was far from satisfactory. True their numbers had more than doubled, grown from one to over two hundred, yet their lot here seemed to have been cast in a hard place. Their children were losing English habits, character and language. Sunday, as was generally the case in European countries, was a day of recreation and was given up to merry-making and the playing of games. Influences, associations and examples were unfortunate, and all these things caused serious apprehensions in the minds of the Pilgrims. The old adage, too, that “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” was strikingly illustrated in their case. Years and life were passing rapidly away.

They had, many of them, become physically weakened from the hardships they had endured and were nearing old age, Brewster being sixty at the time of the landing, and they had the very natural feeling and desire to “lay up something for a rainy day.” After much thoughtful and prayerful consideration, in view of all these facts and circumstances, they decided to emigrate to America.

At this period in their lives, from their wanderings, misfortunes and persecutions, nearly every member of the Separatist-Pilgrim Company had become reduced to the direst straits. Indeed, this had been the common lot and experience of a large majority of them from their youth up, and when it was determined to seek homes in the new world, they were without means to secure their passage.

To obtain this, they made the best terms and conditions that they could with the London merchants.

The conditions were hard, but they were in the power of the merchants and there was no alternative. Concerning this Mr. Cushman who, acted as agent in the matter, says: “Although they (the proposals) were very afflictive to the minds of such as were concerned in the voyage, and hard enough for the poor people that were to adventure their persons as well as their estates,” they had to be accepted. Had they not done so, Mr. Cushman adds, “the whole design would have fallen to the ground.”

At the end of the seven years all the original and acquired assets of the colony, were to be equally divided between the merchants and the Pilgrims. So practically, it cost the Pilgrims[87] seven years of severe labor to get from England to America. Nor was this all. There had been disaffection among the merchants and some had withdrawn from the co-partnership, leaving an accumulation of indebtedness. Those remaining friendly to the Pilgrims, wrote the latter: “As there has been a faction among us more than two years, so now there is an utter breach and sequestration. The company’s debts are no less than 1400 pounds, and we hope you will do your best to free them. We are still persuaded that you are the people that must make a plantation in those remote places where all others fail. We have sent some cattle, clothes, hoes, shoes, leather etc., for Allerton and Winslow to sell as our factors.”

And these goods the Pilgrims were to purchase at an advance of seventy per cent. Thus matters went from bad to worse, until the Pilgrims, seeing no way of “making out” of the difficulty became convinced that the best thing they could do was to break up the co-partnership and wind up its affairs. With this in view, they sent Miles Standish to London to “oblige them to come to a composition.” He took up 150 pounds of the indebtedness at the rate of fifty per cent.

Matters were in bad shape in England for the colonists, and among disheartening things, Standish found that both Robinson and Cushman had died. Finally, late in 1626, Mr. Allerton went over and through influence brought to bear on the merchants, the latter agreed to sell out to the colonists for 1,800 pounds, in payments of 200 pounds a year, beginning with the year 1628. Here were nine years more of hard labor before they could hope to be clear of the indebtedness incurred for their passage money with living expenses added. An arrangement was at last affected by some of the leading men of the colony with a few staunch friends in London to take the trade of the colony for six years, pay off the debts and send the remainder of the Leyden church over. The six years would end in 1632, a period of twelve years from the time of landing. It was also the length of time spent by the Separatists in Holland after they left England. What a history! Almost a generation in time, and crowded full of trials, hardships, discouragements, sickness and death.

The Pilgrims doubtless were a kind, tender hearted and sympathetic people naturally, and their surroundings and experiences in life would tend to render more marked these characteristics. They as clearly were a christian people and deeply religious, and it could hardly be expected that the Reformation of the sixteenth century, setting men’s minds and thoughts religiously free, would result in aught else than great diversity of opinion, and that beliefs and doctrines would be sharply outlined and stoutly maintained; Luther died but a few years before Brewster was born, and Melanchthon,[88] his coadjutor and ally, lived for several years after. Bradford and Robinson were born before religious feeling and ardor had become cooled. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise, when we find Robinson taking a hand in the discussions of the day. This suited his nature; he seemed to be in his “element,” for he was yet young, only 32, when the “Separatists,” went from Scrooby into Holland.

Lest it be thought that the opinion we have expressed concerning Robinson was incorrect and unjust, the language is here given of an eminent, English writer and speaker: “It was with the Calvinists that Robinson took part, entering into the subject with all the learning of which he was master and all the ardor of a man of his temperament, and still not 40 years old. It is to be regretted that, like all the other polemics of his day, his zeal betrayed him into intemperate warmth, and the adoption of harsh, acrimonious and uncharitable expressions. It must be remembered that the most vehement, violent and vituperative language used by the most ultra bigot of our times is as mild as milk, compared with the controversial tone of the theological disputants of the seventeenth century.” Bradford also says of Robinson that “he was a man of quick and sharp wit, an acute and expert disputant, very quick and ready;” and Winslow adds: “’Tis true, I confess, he was more rigid in his course and way at first than towards his latter end,” when the “fiery vehemence of youth” had given place to the cooler judgment and conservatism of riper years. But Robinson did not come to America with the Pilgrims, nor at all, for he died at the age of 49, in 1625.

He had expected to come, but a majority of the flock at Leyden decided to remain at that place instead of emigrating, and he concluded to remain also.

Leaving Robinson out, who had been obliged in early manhood, to resort to daily labor for a living, it is very doubtful if the desire for freedom in religious worship was the main motive for their emigrating.

Bradford was thirteen years younger than Robinson, and but a mere boy when the church at Scrooby was formed, and only nineteen at the removal to Leyden. He was a noble youth (and a nobler man) and was easily influenced and led by Brewster and Robinson. The whole company went to Leyden expecting probably to spend their lives there, and engaged in various business callings and occupations. On coming of age, Bradford inherited some money. This he sank in unfortunate business operations. Brewster had been postmaster at Scrooby from 1594 to 1607, when he resigned, presumably because his sympathy with the “Separatists” was obnoxious to the government, which, in all probability, would have removed him had not he himself deprived it of that pleasure, by vacating[89] office, following which action he immediately went to Holland.

It will be borne in mind that the Pilgrims, as a congregation or church, were not the first Separatist body or organization, for one John Smith had organized a company of these people as early as 1602, at Gainsborough, numbering some three or four hundred, and in 1604 went with them to Amsterdam. This was undoubtedly one reason for the Pilgrims going to that place under Brewster and Bradford, instead of going to any other place. It is believed that Robinson had little or no connection with our Pilgrims until after Brewster left the post-office, and they were about to leave Scrooby. On the way to Amsterdam, and later, on the way to and at Leyden, accessions were made to the company, so that before the final emigration their numbers had reached between two and three hundred. These latter additions were from the common or laboring class, who, in all probability, joined in the wake of the movement, thinking to better their worldly condition.

On this point another English writer has said: “The vicinity of Scrooby was an agricultural district, having a few villages scattered about, each with its church and perhaps an esquire’s seat, but the population was for the most part employed in husbandry, an occupation little congenial to the growth of extreme opinions in either religion or politics or of voluntary sacrifices to a severe estimate of duty, or a supposed call of conscience.” The same writer, speaking of those who were even prominently identified with the movement, says: “Neither Bradford nor Brewster, nor the divines who were concerned in the movement, were of the eminent of the earth, about whom there is curiosity widely extended through the country which gave them birth, and concerning whom nothing is thought unimportant. It may even be said that they were but inconsiderable persons at home, and their consequence has undoubtedly arisen out of the grand results which, unforeseen by themselves, have ensued on their great resolve. So that there is scarcely anything to be told of their early history besides those very small facts which make the history of men who are of but small account in the midst of a large and advanced population.” It has also been said that the Pilgrims, as we speak of them, would scarcely have been heard of had it not been first for Robinson and Brewster and Bradford, and there can be no doubt that the great majority of them came to this country that they might find homes and advance their worldly circumstances.

An American of high historical standing and learning has said: “Here lay a new world for the most part unoccupied, inviting colonization, and it was as natural for men to come and settle here as to embark in any other enterprise in life. The only wonder is that the work of colonization was not begun earlier and pursued by[90] thousands rather than by hundreds.” This colonizing, this settling and developing a country, the desire to own the roof under which one sleeps “raise the personal importance and dignity of the subject or citizens,” and “it can never be too well understood that the generations of men sow and plant for their successors.” It seems to have been an entire and pushing necessity that these people should get away from Holland in order to secure a comfortable living and to make any provision for their posterity. Bradford says: “The country (Holland) was hard and many were discouraged. Grim and grizzled poverty was coming on them as an armed man, old age was coming upon them and no amelioration of their condition came with it.” That they should come to America, and for the reasons given, seems quite reasonable and natural when it is remembered that Captain Smith and others, returning to England, had expressed the opinion that the fisheries on the New England coast might be made profitable. And we know that this was one of the first industries engaged in by the Pilgrims. Smith states that in 1616 four ships of London and two of Plymouth and Sir Richard Hawkins were again in the fishing waters in the vicinity of Massachusetts and Maine.

Early in 1620, also, six or seven sailing vessels set out for the western country for the same purpose and visited the country about the harbor where the Pilgrims landed in December following.

That there was a Providence in their coming here is altogether probable. That the same Providence reached out and extended its ruling and benignant hand on the journey and after the arrival is certain.

“There is no doubt, a great over-ruling power in all human affairs, but our concern (the emigration) is with second causes, and it is to be believed that we often deceive ourselves when we attempt to recover general principles from which things remarkable in the acts of men have sprung.” “And if we conclude that these people had mistaken the path or duty, or had imposed upon themselves a severer burthen than God ever intended for them, there it still a heroism in their conduct which forbids us to regard them with indifference, nay rather, which will call forth the sympathy of every generous mind.”

There has been neither design nor desire, in what has been said, to reflect on the character of the Pilgrims, or to detract from the high fame and renown to which they are justly entitled. No one has more appreciation of their virtues or greater veneration for their memories than the writer. A train of thought only has been followed which led in a channel that seems to be altogether reasonable and intelligent. When a genealogist thought to please Napoleon by telling him that his descent could be traced from some[91] ancient line of Gothic princes, he replied that he dated his patent of nobility from the battle of Monte Notte (his first victory.) The Pilgrims inherited their patent of nobility and derived their claim to immortality by the excellence of their example and the beauty and usefulness of their lives.

D. W. Manchester.

It will admit of but very little dispute that Verrazano in 1524, and Gomez in 1525, anticipated Henry Hudson by several decades in the discovery of New York Bay and the Hudson River. There is also a claim for previous discovery however, put forward in behalf of the Dutch. One confident historian of the Metropolis starts out bravely and unhesitatingly with the assertion that the Dutch were here as early as 1598; but he gives no authorities from whence he had gathered this startling piece of information,[92] yet before one has read thirty pages of such a well-known work as Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan’s, “History of New Netherland,” the source of the statement is plainly indicated, and fortunately, also the opportunity for a careful weighing of the testimony supporting it.

Dr. O’Callaghan refers his readers to a Dutch document in the State Archives at Albany, discovered by Mr. Brodhead at the Hague, copied by him for his collection of documents and translated and published in that invaluable store-house of historical material, the “Documents relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York,” vol. I, pp. 149, et seq. Here we read: “New Netherland ... was first frequented [explored] by the inhabitants of this country [Holland] in the year 1598, and especially by those of the Greenland Company, but without making any fixed settlements, only as a shelter [resort] in the winter. For which purpose they erected on the North [Hudson] and South [Delaware] Rivers there, two little forts against the incursions of the Indians. A charter was afterwards, on the 11th of October, 1614, granted by their High Mightinesses to trade exclusively to the newly discovered countries.”

Without discussing the nature or merits of this document itself just now, we will first weigh the value of its statement. The Hollanders who “frequented” Manhattan Island in 1598, were in the employ of a Dutch “Greenland Company.” Now it would seem to be of some importance for the establishment of the interesting fact under discussion, that there be brought forward some evidence of the existence of such an association as this Greenland Company. For certainly if no trace of its existence can be found, this would cast serious doubt upon the exploits of its servants in these waters.

We have to begin with announcing the lamentable fact that after a thorough search of every imaginable source of information, we have been unable to discover the existence of a Dutch Greenland Company prior to the year 1600. The works of Dutch historians, both ancient and modern, were carefully scanned, but all in vain. We began with a modern writer, N. G. Van Kampen, sometimes called by his fond and admiring countrymen, the Dutch Macaulay. He wrote an elaborate and extensive work of four or five octavo volumes on “De Nederlanders buiten Europa” (The Netherlanders outside of Europe), giving an eloquent as well as exhaustive review of those splendid achievements in various portions of the globe, which resulted in the establishment of the great Colonial Empire of the Dutch, even at this day second only to that of the English.

But there is found no mention of a Dutch Greenland Company or its doings either in these volumes or in Wagenaar, who lived in the eighteenth century and issued more than one monumental publication, or in Bor or[93] Van Meteren of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These older writers let no event or transaction or institution of any importance escape them. They were not afraid of multiplying their volumes and therefore not at all deterred from noting even the minutest affairs that came within their ken, as they laboriously proceeded from year to year. But they are all strangely silent about this apocryphal company whose mariners were in the habit of sheltering themselves on Manhattan Island before 1600.

But now it is only fair to indicate how the tradition may have originated that there ever was such an organization as the Greenland Company. An appreciation of any reasonable grounds for its origin, will help us understand better how the mistaken statement came to be made, and to see that it was a mistake. There did exist in Holland a “Noordsche Compagnie” or Northern Company and there exists the most abundant and indubitable evidence that the terms “Northern Company” and “Greenland Company” were used interchangeably, and were both applied to the former association. This company was at first confined to the merchants of the Province of Holland, who had received their charter from the States-General, after the approval and endorsement of such a measure by the States of Holland. In 1617, the charter was renewed, but the merchants of Zeeland wished for the same privileges and the States-General granted a charter to a Zeeland “Northern Company” in May 28, 1622. Turning to the “Groot Placcaet Book,” Vol. I, Cols. 673, 674, we discover the two names in question in curious but instructive juxtaposition. The title of the act has Noortsche Compagnie, while in the body of the act we read Groenlandtsche Compagnie. In this same year (Dec., 1622), the Zeeland and Holland Companies were combined into one general or national “Northern Company,” but the act granting a larger charter mentions only the above name both in the title and in the body of it. It is to this Company that Moulton refers in his “History of New York” (p. 362) when he makes the assertion that “the Greenland Company was created in 1622.” He places this association on an exact level with the East and West India Companies.

“Thus the Northern Seas, Asia, Africa and America, were partitioned to three armed associations, possessing powers nearly co-extensive with those of the Republic.” The company chartered in 1622, (as we have seen), can not properly be classed as equal in importance or influence or power with the two great commercial associations named in one breath with it by Mr. Moulton. And we have seen also, that it did not officially bear the name he gives it, although that name might be interchangeable with the true one in the case of subordinate companies. Yet even this is not the case with the charter creating the original[94] company confined to Holland Province alone, where there is no mention of the name “Greenland” in either the title or the body of the document. Lastly there is this significant circumstance about that earliest charter of any “Northern Company;” it bears date January 1614, and distinctly states “that no such company had ever been chartered before.”[12] This therefore settles the question as to whether it could possibly have been men in the employ of this company, miscalled the “Greenland Company,” who habitually sought relief from the rigors of an Arctic winter on the shores of the Hudson River in the year 1598. This could hardly have been when it was not erected or chartered until January 1614.

In the second place, if frequent or habitual visits to Manhattan Island were made by the Dutch in and after the year 1598, we are at a loss to comprehend the entire lack of recollection of such visits on the part of the Indians thereabouts. It is insisted on more than once in various accounts that both the vessel and the persons of its crew, were objects of boundless wonder to the natives, as they beheld the “Half-Moon” resting upon the waters of the bay or gliding up the river. De Laet, one of the earliest to write on Hudson’s discovery, publishing his “Nieuwe Wereld,” (New World) in 1625 and basing his statements on those of Hudson’s own journal, perhaps citing his very words, speaks as follows: “So far as they could judge and find out, there had never been any ships or Christians in this region before, so that they were the first who discovered this river and sailed up so far.” Such a declaration might need to be received with some suspicion, if the author had intended to maintain a claim of the first discovery for the Dutch as against other nations. But he could have had no reason to suppress the circumstance of the visits of the Dutch themselves to our river, in 1598. If that had been patent to De Laet he would have been only too glad to mention it, as only increasing the validity of the Dutch claims to those regions by the right of first discovery. He could have had no particular object in glorifying the Englishman Hudson’s exploit at the expense of the sailors of an exclusively and undoubtedly Dutch Greenland Company. But returning to the Indians, we notice in Vander Donck’s celebrated “Vertoogh,” written at New Amsterdam and published at the Hague in 1650, another arraignment of their poor memories. “Even at the present day those natives of the country who are so old as to recollect when the Dutch ships first came here, declare that when they saw them, they did not know what to make of them. Some among them when the first one arrived, even imagined it to be a fish or some monster of the sea.” Now[95] the Indians might indeed have forgotten a visit made so long ago as 1524 or 1525, if Verrazano and Gomez really did discover the Hudson then, making but a brief stay and a rapid examination of its banks at best, but an habitual resort to its shores, or even one winter spent on the island at its mouth, in forts built to repel their attacks, only eleven years before Hudson came among them, the Indians could not possibly, it would seem, have so utterly forgotten in 1609.

But we will now give our attention more particularly to the document which asserts that the Dutch were on Manhattan Island as early as 1598. What was the nature of it, and to what degree of credence is it entitled? Mr. Brodhead in the explanatory heading which he usually prefixes to the documents in his collection states that it is a report made in 1644 by the Chairman of a Committee or Board of Accounts, appointed by the directors of the West India Company. Several documents were placed in his (the chairman’s) hands for the purpose of enabling him to furnish to the company a succinct review of events connected with the origin of the settlement on Manhattan Island, and with its progress up to that date. The writer begins with the story of the Dutch and their forts in 1598. Immediately after this the official historian glides easily into what he evidently either considers himself, or wishes others to believe, is the next stage in the history of the Manhattan Colony; namely this: “a charter was afterwards on the 11th of October 1614, granted by their High Mightinesses.” As if nothing of importance had happened between 1598 and 1614!

The question therefore arises, if this was meant for history in 1644, why was it written so imperfectly? It could not be that the fact of Hudson’s discovery, so vitally connected with the origin of Manhattan Colony, had been completely forgotten at that time, much less that after a careful examination of all the papers available to directors of the West India Company, the chairman of their committee should not have come across the record of that discovery. How then did he happen to pass it over in utter silence in his official report? Was it purposely suppressed? If so, what could have been the motive for this singular proceeding?

We think we can readily divine what the motive was, when we read in more than one English writer what use that nation contrived to make of the fact that the discovery of the Hudson River was achieved by an Englishman. Peter Heylin, who wrote before the surrender of New Netherland in 1664, remarks: “With him [i. e. Hudson] the Hollanders, in 1609, compounded for his charts and maps; but they were hardly warm in their new Habitations,” when Argall, Governor of Virginia, disputed their title to this region, which was looked upon as part of Virginia territory. The latter advanced this ingenious argument in[96] support of his claim; “that Hudson, under whose sale they claimed that country, being an Englishman and licensed to discover those northern parts by the King of England, could not alienate or dismember it (being but a part or province of Virginia) from the Crown thereof.” This matter of a “sale” by Hudson, which was illegal, and the subsequent “right” of the English to New Netherland, is brought out again in a book written nearly a century later, or long after the problem which was unsolved in Heylin’s time—how to get the Dutch out and the English in—had been solved by Colonel Nicolls in 1664. In this book, William Smith’s “History of New York” (1757), we read, scarcely without a smile: “Henry Hudson, an Englishman, according to our authors[13] in the year 1608 [sic], under a commission from the King, his master, discovered Long Island, New York, and the river which still bears his name; and afterwards sold the country, or rather his Right to the Dutch. Their writers contend that Hudson was sent out by the East India Company in 1609 to discover a northwest passage to China. It is said however, that there was a sale; and that the English objected to it, though they for some time neglected to oppose the Dutch settlement of the country.”

Now we can readily appreciate why the Dutch West India Company might have a distinct and deliberate object in not being too exact in their history of Manhattan Colony. They would naturally be very shy of giving occasion or encouragement to a rival nation on the alert to press a claim avowedly made, however unjust, to territories entrusted to the Company’s care and government. It would to say the least have been very impolitic to give countenance to it in one of their own official papers. About twelve years later the directors, writing to Stuyvesant, while commending him for the reduction of New Sweden, at the same time remonstrated with him for having made a written agreement with the Swedish Commander. And they then put into so many words the shrewd policy which we suggest they followed in the present instance, saying; “What is written is too long preserved and may be produced when not desired, whereas words not recorded are in the lapse of time forgotten, or may be explained away” (O’Callaghan’s “New Netherland,” vol. II. p. 327). If Argall on the spot, and only a few years after the settlement; if Heylin in a book written and published before 1664, could make so much of Hudson’s nationality in the matter of his discovery, so that more than a hundred years after that event, sober historians could still cooly repeat the story of England’s supreme right, and quite cast aside the claims of the Dutch, then it may well have been considered in 1644 that it would be a dangerous concession to have even made an allusion to Hudson in a committee report. Under these circumstances, finding at home a possibly[97] prevalent and convenient rumor about the Greenland Company and its vessels in New York bay and river, without any intention to deliberately falsify, the chairman of the committee simply incorporated the statement under discussion in his report. For business purposes, on a paper prepared by business men and not by historians, this may have been good enough history; but being preserved in this documentary form, and read in an age eager for documentary evidence and too ready to give undue weight to unpublished and original matter, the assertion derived an importance which it does not really deserve, and was not intended to possess. And so entirely unsupported is it by other proofs, or by the facts of history, that even the documentary character of this evidence has not prevailed to deceive wise and judicious investigators. It is clear that it did not commend itself as quite trustworthy for historical purposes to Dr. O’Callaghan. In quoting it, though it own assertion is entirely positive, he introduces its language by the cautious phrase, “it is said.” Brodhead, whose researches brought the paper to light, also deals very gingerly with it, holding it off at arms length, so to speak, and saying: “it needs confirmation”—and indeed, it certainly does.

Daniel Van Pelt.

The most interesting political contest which has taken place in the State of Illinois since the days of Lincoln and Douglass, was that which ended with the election of General John M. Palmer to the United States Senate, on the 11th day of March, 1891. The contest was of historic interest because it elevated to the Senate, a man who had long been a conspicuous figure in American politics, and who had for many years cherished an ambition to occupy a seat in the Upper Bench of the national Legislature. It was of interest also because it gave to the Democratic party of Illinois, for the first time in many years, a representative in the United States Senate. It was moreover an intensely interesting and exciting contest—and greater interest attached to it on this than on any other account—because it developed a crisis in the political affairs of the State.

It is no harsh criticism of the Republican management of the State campaign of 1890, in Illinois, to say that the campaign was lazily conducted. At the Democratic Convention, held some months before the election, General John M. Palmer had been formally endorsed as the choice[98] of his party for United States Senator, and his adherents at once entered upon a determined and aggressive campaign. The result of this spirited Democratic campaigning, of Republican apathy, and of disturbing “side issues,” was, that when the roll of the Thirty-seventh General Assembly was made up, it was ascertained that there were 101 Democratic members elect, 100 Republicans, and three representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance organization.

This being the political status of the body which was to choose a United States Senator, it was evident that the three independent or Farmers’ Alliance members held the balance of power as between the two great political parties. These three legislators thought they saw before them great opportunities for the advancement of their interests, and starting a political revolution. Once before it had happened in the history of the State, that a little band of five legislators—the representatives of the “Anti-Nebraska” party—had placed in the field a candidate for United States Senator, of their own choosing, and in full sympathy with their political views, and at the end of a long contest that candidate had been triumphantly elected, and a new political party had been brought into existence.

The triumvirate of the Thirty-seventh General Assembly of Illinois, hastily jumped to the conclusion that there was to be a repetition of history, and that what the “Anti-Nebraska” legislators had accomplished in 1885, could be accomplished by the representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance in 1891.

When the Legislature convened they accordingly placed in nomination as their candidate for United States Senator, Alanson J. Streeter, a farmer by occupation, whose large wealth had enabled him to take up politics as a diversion, and whose views had been of a sufficiently variegated character, to enable him to claim political kinship with any of the existing partisan organizations.

General Palmer was already in the field as the Democratic candidate for Senator, and the Republicans named ex-Governor Richard J. Oglesby as their nominee. Balloting began on the 20th day of January and continued from day to day—when the Legislature was in session—until the 11th of March, when the contest ended as already stated.

The attitude of the Farmers’ Alliance members, from start to finish, toward the Republican minority, was in effect, that they presented to them the alternative of electing the Alliance nominee with Republican votes, or of allowing the Democratic nominee to be elected by Alliance votes. The proposition was one as humiliating to the great political organization to which it was made, as it was inconsistent in those who made it. Nevertheless, it was adhered to and all counter-propositions were rejected. Republican diplomacy was[99] tried without result, the Alliance members refusing to vote for a leading representative of their own interests when he was put forward as the Republican nominee.

As the contest was prolonged, the feeling between Republicans and Democrats became more intensely antagonistic, and a point was finally reached where some of the Republican leaders apparently determined to defeat General Palmer at any cost. To do this they determined to throw the support of the entire Republican membership of the Legislature to Streeter, thereby securing his election by a majority of two votes. Principles were for the time being lost sight of by those who favored this movement. Political trusts were relegated to the region of barren idealities, and rank heresies were to be swallowed without a grimace for the sole purpose of compassing the defeat of an old time political adversary.

That the dominant party of the third State in the Union was not in a sense, committed to the vagaries of a nondescript political organization, and made directly responsible for the acts of one of its most erratic representatives, was due to the sound judgment and positive convictions of a very small number of Republican Legislators, of whom Hon. Henry H. Evans, representing the Fourteenth Senatorial District, was the acknowledged leader.

While Colonel Evans had long been prominent in the politics of the State and had had much to do with shaping its legislatures for a dozen years or more, no other event in his life has brought him so conspicuously before the public as the determined stand which he took against, what could not have been regarded in the future, as anything else than a sacrifice of the political integrity of his party. While those who were engineering this movement may have been mistaken in their calculations, they frequently affirmed that they could deliver to the Alliance candidate for Senator, the entire Republican vote of the Legislature, provided Senator Evans would consent to have this vote so recorded, and it is reasonably certain that his colleagues of the opposition were largely influenced by him. The pressure brought to bear on him, to induce him to become a party to the combine with the Alliance, was of the most powerful kind, but to entreaties, arguments and threats alike, he returned the same answer, the gist of which is contained in a brief statement of his intentions, to which he gave utterance at one of the numerous Republican caucuses, at which this matter was considered. On that occasion he said: “I want to say to this caucus, that I will never vote for any of these men for United States Senator, no matter what this caucus may think. I am a Republican, and I am for a Republican. I was elected and sent here to vote for a Republican for United States Senator, and that I will do to the end of this contest. But I do not think we should humiliate the glorious old Republican[100] party of Illinois, by bartering away our independence for the sake of sending to the Senate a political nondescript for whose official action we must be responsible.”

This was the ringing declaration of an honest and courageous representative of well defined political principles. It was a declaration of his purposes from which he did not deviate during the contest, and no public servant ever made a better record for consistency and a strict observance of his obligations to his constituency.

The prominence which he attained in this honorable contest, and through public services previously rendered, have made him one of the prominent figures among the public men of Illinois, and the story of his life becomes interesting.

Born at Toronto, Canada, March 9, 1836, he has been essentially the architect of his own fortune. His father, Griffith Evans, and his wife, (Elizabeth Weldon), were both natives of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, being descendants of families ante-dating the Revolution—so that, although born on Canadian soil, Colonel Evans is of thoroughly American ancestry.

His father was a millwright by trade, who with his wife and family settled at Aurora, Illinois, in 1841. Colonel Evans was next to the eldest of ten children. The father was an industrious and intelligent mechanic who had more or less to do with the erection and equipment of several large mills in the neighborhood of Aurora, but he never accumulated any considerable amount of property, and his children had to depend mainly upon their own resources.

Col. Evans received his education in the public schools of Aurora, grew to manhood there, and then married Alice M. Rhodes, a lady of English birth and parentage. Soon after his marriage, he engaged in the restaurant business and continued in this business until September, 1862, when he enlisted in the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was mustered into the service at Springfield, Illinois, went into action first at Jackson, Tenn., participated in the siege of Vicksburg and in successive campaigns, being mustered out of service at the end of three years days from the date of his enlistment.

Immediately after his retirement from the military service, he returned to his old business in Aurora. Enterprising, shrewd and capable, his business expanded and he became the proprietor and then owner of the leading hotel of the city, and one of its most enterprising and public spirited citizens. He became largely interested in real estate, laying out several large additions to the city, and realizing handsome profits from his investments. In 1882, he organized the Aurora Street Railroad Company, took charge of the construction of the road, and pushed to completion, an enterprise which has since been developed into[101] one of the most perfect electric railroad systems in the West. He was also the projector of the Joliet and Aurora Northern Railroad, an enterprise with which he was most actively identified up to the date of its going into operation, and at a late date as one of its leading officials. In everything calculated to contribute in any way to the growth and prosperity of Aurora he has taken a most active interest, and as a natural consequence of this, coupled with a cheering geniality, he has always enjoyed great popularity.

His political life began in 1876, when he was elected an Alderman for one of the wards of Aurora. In the fall of the same year he was elected a member of the State Legislature. After serving one term in the House of Representatives, he was elected, in 1880, a member of the State Senate, and has been twice re-elected since that time. As a member of the General Assembly, he has become recognized as a careful and conscientious legislator, with a large stock of practical ideas, and a capacity for energetic and persistent efforts, which have made his services peculiarly valuable to his constituents. While serving his first term in the Legislature he introduced and succeeded in having enacted into a law, the bill providing for the establishment of a State Soldier’s Home in Illinois—an institution which does great credit to the State.

He was also the author of the law under which the National Guard is now organized, a measure which met with determined opposition at the time of its introduction. Despite the opposition however, it became a law, and the wisdom of the act has since been demonstrated on numerous occasions.

In recognition of his services in perfecting the organization of and rendering effective the State Militia, Governor Shelby M. Cullom made him a member of his military staff, with the rank of colonel. He was appointed to the same position on the staff of Governor Hamilton and Governor Oglesby, and is now serving on the staff of Governor Fifer.

The Police Pension bill was another of the important measures which had his successful advocacy.

The life of Col. Evans strikingly emphasizes the marvelous industry, tireless energy, and broad spirit of enterprise that are to-day so characteristic of the American man of affairs.

W. H. Maguire.

The present (November) number of the Magazine of Western History, which is the first number of the new volume (Vol. XV) appears under a new name which will more adequately describe its present character.

The title chosen—“THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE—A Journal Devoted to American History—” is in keeping with the enlarged scope and purpose of the publication. When it first came into existence, its proposed mission was to gather and preserve the history of that great West which lies beyond the Alleghanies, and while that labor has been pursued with results that have enriched American history, the boundaries have been gradually enlarged until the whole country has become its field of research, and readers and contributors are found in every State and territory.

The Magazine has become National, and it is believed that the present name will be accepted as more appropriate than the one that has been outgrown.

The new name defines, perhaps with sufficient fullness, both scope and purpose, but for the sake of clearness we add that it is proposed to confine our interest exclusively to the field of American History, and whatever directly illustrates it. By this we mean not alone or chiefly the history of our remote past with its discoveries, its early settlers, and its struggling colonies, but the history as well of the present century—the planting of colonies by railroads, the evolution of States, the founding of cities, the building up of a literature, the history of politics, and of all that unexampled material progress that makes America the wonder and admiration of the world.

The great civil war has served necessarily as an extraordinary stimulus to historical writing and research concerning its antecedent causes, the tremendous conflict itself, and its far reaching and still potent consequences. It is plain however, that the history of the war has yet been written only in outline. The historical material which when gathered and sifted would give it completeness and fullness is as yet largely unwritten. This exists in the recollections of men yet living—actors and witnesses—in their letters, journals and other written memoranda, and in the traditions carefully cherished by families and friends of those that are gone. We propose to collect such material as far as possible, and give it a permanent record in our pages.

One of the interesting features of our national life is the growth of societies for the encouragement of historical studies as well as the preservation of valuable historical material which would otherwise be lost. The historical societies having permanent homes, number nearly or quite two hundred and fifty, and while some of the largest support intermittent publications of their own, we believe there is no general organ devoted to their interests and furnishing a medium of intercourse between them. The National Magazine proposes, as far as possible, to supply this want and will conduct a separate department giving all notes of interest[103] regarding the Historical Societies of the United States which we may be able to obtain.

It is believed that a large amount of historical material of great interest both to the general reader and the historical student exists in the shape of papers prepared by members of these various Historical Societies for the interest and instruction of their particular organizations.

Such papers as we refer to are prepared for the most part by members who have both leisure and taste for historical research, or who find in such work a grateful relief from the exacting cares of successful professional and business careers, and although addressed to a limited circle, have frequently a value and interest that entitles them to a larger audience and to preservation in more permanent form.

It is proposed to present in the pages of the Magazine, in pursuance of our general purpose to broaden the field of its interest and usefulness, a selection from such papers. It is believed that the literature of American History would be greatly enriched from this source. Papers of even local interest are not without value to the student of history in any portion of the country, and all these various efforts at writing history are building up that great body of historical material from which American History at least in the nineteenth century is to be exhaustively and philosophically written.

“In lighter vein” we propose to touch on the picturesque side of historical research, and to seek material in the legends and traditions that attach to certain localities. The very fact that a certain headland, valley, mountain or river has a legendary interest is not undeserving the attention of the scholar and is a matter of legitimate historical interest if not value. A country as new as ours can well afford to jealously preserve whatever of such legendary and historical lore it may have. It at least serves to “adorn the tale” which has a more solid basis. Other changes are contemplated that will add value, and interest to the pages of the Magazine.

The present number contains the first installment of a series of articles from the advance sheets of the forthcoming Memorial History of New York, edited by Gen. James Grant Wilson. It is the intention to select for publication in the Magazine such parts of this work as will in our judgment be of great interest to its readers, and as far as possible present a continuous narrative. These articles will be amply illustrated from the plates prepared and selected for the original work with great care. The exhaustive character of the work, the time given to its preparation, the staff of contributors each pre-eminent in his special field, are fully set forth on the cover of the present number.

In the August number of this Magazine we remarked upon the fact that the historic property of Valley Forge was in danger of being sold and divided among individual purchasers and that in this event the ancient ramparts of Fort Washington, the site of the forge, the cold spring, and the Headquarters of Washington, Lafayette and Knox would be obliterated. It is a pleasure to learn that the march of such “improvement” will probably be arrested. A meeting of the members of the National Society of the Daughters of the Revolution residing in Washington was held on Oct. 13th, and a plan was considered for purchasing and preserving this property. The Illinois chapter of the same organization has also held a meeting to advance the same cause. With the patriotic ardor of women thoroughly awakened there should be no question about[104] preserving to the nation the field of Valley Forge with all its “visible history.”

A monument to the great Indian Chief Red Jacket, Chief of the Senecas and the renowned orator of the six nations was dedicated at Waterloo, N. Y. on Oct. 14th. President Welles of the Waterloo Historical Society under whose auspices the monument is erected presided. The Hon. W. C. Bryant of Buffalo delivered an historical address. The monument is unique in design, being carved from a block of granite to represent the trunk of an oak tree, and stands on the west shore of Cayuga Lake near the spot where Red Jacket was born. The base bears four descriptive bronze tablets, and around the base are clustered six small bowlders bearing the names of the six nations of the Iroquois. Red Jacket was one of the unique figures of his time, his character a peculiar mixture of the noble and the ignoble, a sagacious statesman, a cunning demagogue, but always an Indian.

A gathering both important and unique was held in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on the 12th of October. The occasion was the reunion of a committee which has undertaken to organize a Pan-Republic Congress and Human Freedom League, and to arrange an international meeting in connection with the anniversary ceremonies of 1892. The leaders of the movement claim that their ideas have been gradually disseminated through organized societies in all civilized countries. Their meaning and purpose they broadly state to be: That the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of this continent should be celebrated by a convocation, first of the representatives of all governments based on an acknowledgment of the rights of man, and secondly, of representatives of the people of high purpose everywhere, independent of the form of government under which they live. That these two bodies acting in concert on the soil of the greatest of the governments founded upon freedom, should consult together on the means of widening the domain in which the earth’s dwellers may enjoy the rights claimed for us by our immortal Declaration of Independence.

Youngest among the sisterhood of the States of our Union stands Washington, on the borders of the far Pacific. It is very gratifying to observe the citizens of a community of such regent origin, amid the eager competitions of life and the pressure of material interests, turning aside from these practical pursuits to secure for future generations a record not only of their own achievements, but of the humbler and more heroic doings of the pioneers of their State. Such is the aim and purpose of the Washington State Historical Society, organized during the present month in the city of Tacoma, and the latest to join the ever widening circle of these societies. In the words of its president, the Hon. Elwood Evans, “the State of Washington has reached a time when the need of collecting original historical material has become imperative since the history of the State and Territory runs back 38 years, and most of the early settlers are dead. The hardships and heroism of the pioneers should be handed down and recorded as material for the historian of later years.”

The quarterly meeting of the Chicago Historical Society, (Illinois,) was held on Tuesday evening, Oct. 20. A paper was read prepared by Samuel C. Clarke of Marietta, Ga., entitled “Some recollections of Chicago in the Forties.”

The Pejepscot Historical Society (Brunswick), Maine, are considering the erection of a fireproof building.

The Maryland Historical Society (Baltimore), are discussing with active interest the successor to John H. B. Latrobe, Esq., late President of the Society, S. Teakle Wallis, Esq., and Gen. Bradley T. Johnson are the most prominent names mentioned.

The Wakefield Historical Society, Mass., at its monthly meeting in October, received some valuable donations, the most interesting of which was the diary of Capt. Natl. Cowdrey, kept by him during the campaign in New York which included Arnold’s treason and the attempt to capture West Point.

The annual meeting of the Beverly Mass., Historical Society was held on the evening of Oct. 14th. The occasion was the 223rd anniversary of the settlement of the Town of Beverly.

The Old Colony Historical Society, (Taunton) Mass., held a large meeting on Thursday, Oct. 15. Geo. Fox Tucker, Esq. of New Bedford, gave an elaborate address on the Quaker element in New England, and the Old Colony life in the middle of the seventeenth century.

The Cape Ann Historical Society (Gloucester) Mass., was formed on the evening of Oct. 7th. Joseph L. Stevens was elected president and Alfred F. Stickney corresponding secretary.

The Suffolk County Historical Society N. Y., held its annual meeting at Riverhead on Oct. 6th. A committee was appointed to consider the erection of a suitable fireproof building for the use of the society and the preservation of its treasures, many of which are original parchments and manuscripts which could not be replaced.

The Westchester County Historical Society, N. Y. held its annual meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 28th—the anniversary of the battle of White Plains—Judge J. O. Dykman gave an address on County Affairs during the Revolutionary War.

Waterloo Historical Society N. Y.—See Editorial Notes.

The Dauphin County Historical Society, (Harrisburgh) Pa., held an interesting meeting on Oct. 8th, and received many valuable documents connected with the war. A paper on “Historic Localities” by Mr. E. J. Stackpole was read.

The Ohio Historical Society (Columbus), with characteristic enterprise and timeliness has appointed a committee of three into whose hands will be placed the arrangements for the historical and archeological display of Ohio at the Columbian Fair.

The October meeting of the Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society (Providence), was held on Oct. 20. Several interesting historical donations were received. Gen. Viall read a paper entitled[106] “Sketch of the 14th R. I. Heavy Artillery.”

The Rhode Island Veteran Citizens Historical Association (Providence) held one of their regular meetings on Oct. 20th. It was announced that Noah J. Arnold, Esq., was preparing a paper on “Adrien Block and Block Island” which should prove very interesting.

The Tennessee Historical Society (Nashville), held its monthly meeting in the Watkins Institute on Oct. 13th. The noteworthy event of the meeting was their action in formally requesting their senators and members in Congress to lend their aid to the erection of the proposed national gallery of history and art in commemoration of our 400th anniversary. It is hoped that other societies will support the Tennessee Historical Society in this object.

The Vermont Historical Society (Montpelier), held their annual meeting at their rooms in the State House on Oct. 20th. President Hiram Carleton, presided. The old officers were re-elected.

The Washington State Historical Society was organized at Tacoma on Oct. 8th. Hon. Elwood Evans was made President and C. H. Hobart, Secretary.

“Historical Essays.” By Henry Adams. Chas. Scribners’ Sons.

In this volume are gathered a number of essays, chiefly on historical subjects, which have appeared at various times in magazines. They are characterized, as might be expected, by the clear and attractive style and the incisive thought that belongs to all of Mr. Adams’ literary work.

Some of the essays are of pronounced value and interest. Notably the essay on the Gold Conspiracy, which to any one who is at all familiar with the details of one of the most remarkable episodes in American financial history, will prove absorbingly interesting. It contains a sketch of Jay Gould, which, in the light of recent occurrences, has a peculiar interest.

In no field of investigation at the present time is the skeptical spirit more active than in the historical, and the essay on Capt. John Smith will provoke some criticism and more regret, as it is an effort to cut away the historic basis from the beautiful story of Pocahontas. As Dr. Schliemann has lifted Troy and its legends to the dignity of history, perhaps some historical explorer may be inspired to undertake the same task for the Pocahontas incident.

We have received in pamphlet form, as one of the published collections of the Minnesota Historical Society for 1891, the account of the ceremonies of the two hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Falls of St. Anthony by Father Hennepin in 1680, and the different papers read on that interesting occasion. This “Part” is a continuation of the series of short sketches and papers which had been interrupted, and makes a valuable addition to the data for Western History. It is a real pleasure to praise the beautiful typographical appearance of this pamphlet.

“Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley.” By W. H. Venable, L.L.D. Robert Clarke & Co., 1891.

Dr. Venable has been very successful in his undertaking to show the progress of literature, education, art, politics and religion in the Ohio Valley, from the days of the early settlers until the present time. He has done this by sketching the careers of those who have been conspicuous in these fields of culture and practical interest, and has gathered a great fund of information, anecdote and biographical detail, which has made his narrative very interesting as well as full.

“James Freeman Clarke. Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence.” Edited by Edward Everett Hale. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891.

A book on James Freeman Clarke, by Edward Everett Hale, encourages “great expectations,” and these expectations are not disappointed.

It is a delightful mixture of the handiwork of two bright thinkers and recognized lights in our native literature. After a modest account of himself, the subject of the sketch is delineated still further by a fond and appreciative friend. The man, broad and free and catholic in his thinking and in his feeling, opens his heart to us in diary and letters. And what he fails to tell, as eminently improper for himself to tell, Dr. Hale gives to us, so that the picture may be complete. The keynote to the book, and the real use of it, are[108] indicated on the first page by Dr. Clarke himself: “I have lived in an important period; have known many eminent men and distinguished women; have seen great changes in social life, in religious opinion, in private morals and public manners. If I can succeed in making a few suggestive pictures, or memory sketches, it may be a gratification to my children and friends, and possibly contribute matter for the future historian of this period.”

“Historical Collection of Ohio.” By Henry Howe, L.L.D.

The two concluding volumes of the Historical Collections of Ohio are now published together, and complete a monumental work. Dr. Howe has given many years to this undertaking, and is said to have personally visited every locality of which he treats, and collected his facts from the lips of living men and women as well as from written records. The work is more than a formal history. It unfolds before the reader the whole life and annals of Ohio, from the earliest settlements to the present day. Geography and statistics go hand in hand with narration, reminiscence and details of social life and customs.

“Ohio Archæological and Historical Society, vol. III.”

We have received the third volume of the publications of The Ohio Archæological and Historical Society. This volume is mainly concerned with the anniversary exercises connected with the centennial of the settlement of Gallipolis. Exhaustive papers on “The French Settlement and Settlers of Gallipolis,” “The Scioto Company and its Purchase,” and the “Early Judiciary of Ohio,” attest the historical value of this volume. It also contains a report of the sixth annual meeting of the society, February 19th and 20th, 1891. The secretary (Mr. A. A. Graham), very pertinently says in his preface, “The State is now indebted to the Ohio Archæological and Historical Society for three valuable historical volumes, and if the society had done nothing else, its existence is more than justified.”