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CORNELL 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028814196 
 
SONS 
 OF THE PURITANS 
 
SONS 
 01<' 'IHF, PURITANS 
 
 A Group of Brief Biographies 
 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 
 
 ■ VERITATlsffl 
 
 AMERICAN 
 
 2; 
 
 BOSTON 
 UNITARIAN AS 
 BEACON STREI 
 
 SOCIATION 
 IT 
 
Copyright 1908 
 American Unitariao Association 
 
The sketches making up this 
 volume are reprinted from the 
 
 HARVAED graduates' MAGAZINE 
 
 hy kind permission of the editor 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR, 182&-1904 .... 1 
 
 By Francis C. Lowell 
 MORRILL WVMAN, 1812-1903 29 
 
 By Henry P. Walcott 
 HORACE GRAY, 1828-1902 45 
 
 By Ezra Ripley Thayer 
 CHARLES FRAXKLIN DUNB.Ui, 1830-1900 . 59 
 
 By Charles W. Eliot 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS, 1835-1803 . . 93 
 
 By Charles Carroll Everett 
 FRANCIS CHAWING BARLOW, 1834-1896 . 121 
 
 By Edwin H. Abbot 
 HENRY STURGIS RUSSELL, 1838-1905 . . . 155 
 
 By John T. Morse, Jr. 
 ROGER WOLCOn', 1847-1900 .... 16r> 
 
 By William Lawrence 
 WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL, 1857-1890 . . .183 
 
 By Charles Eliot Norton 
 CHARLES ELIOT, 18.->!l-1897 219 
 
 By William R. Thayer 
 WILLLAM HENRY BALDWIN, 1863-1905 . . .231 
 
 By George R. Nutter 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The eleven men whose careers are described in 
 this book were all efficient servants of the public 
 welfare. They were successful men of affairs, 
 but each of them owed his efficiency to a certain 
 moral idealism which is a part of the Puritan 
 inheritance. In their various callings and pro- 
 fessions these men were dominated by ideals of 
 private honor and public serviceableness which 
 made their careers different from those of men 
 who seek selfish ends. Their conception of life 
 and its uses was derived from impulses and tra- 
 ditionary feelings in the blood, which are the 
 distinctive, though not the exclusive, character- 
 istics of men of the Puritan descent. 
 
 These men illustrate many different forms of 
 usefulness. One was a United States senator, 
 two were governors of the Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts, a fourth was an able municipal 
 administrator. One was a renowned jurist, 
 another a beloved physician, another an influen- 
 tial editor and teacher, another a great preacher, 
 another a brilliant soldier, another an adminis- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 trator of corporate trusts, another a lover of 
 beauty and promoter of the health and recrea- 
 tion of tlie people. They were as diverse in 
 teinpcrunicnt as in vocation. Governor Wolcott 
 was the cnibodinicnt of chivalric charm and Dr. 
 Wynian of j^cniul wisdom and ceaseless activity. 
 Colonel Russell was quick in decision and alert 
 in motion ; Judge Gray was deliberate and ma- 
 jestic. Mr. Dunbar and ^Ir. Eliot, though men 
 of deep feeling, were rescr\'ed and comparatively 
 silent in company, while Senator Hoar and Gov- 
 ernor Russell and Mr. Baldwin were expansive 
 in speech and demonstrative in manner. Gen- 
 eral Barlow, while steadfast for the right, was 
 not naturally sanguine or expectant of good ; 
 while Phillips Brooks overflowed with optimism, 
 believing in the latent good in all mankind and 
 rejoicing with buoyant confidence in the pur- 
 poses of God. 
 
 But however they differed in temperament and 
 outward habits they all illustrate one principle 
 of conduct. They wanted to make their lives 
 tell in the increase of freedom and the upbuild- 
 ing of a hapjiior Commonwealth. They were 
 eager to do something for the regeneration of 
 their fellowmcn. Faith and conscience met in 
 them and made their power. The sense of duty 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 and the consciousness of responsibility were in- 
 formed by the spirit of good-will. The states- 
 men here described were successful politicians, 
 but not by reason of craft or timid vacillation 
 or bending to catch the popular will. They 
 owed their political successes, not only to their 
 ability, but also to their integrity and independ- 
 ency, — their clear grained human worth and 
 " brave old wisdom of sincerity." The good 
 physician did not merely make his round of visits 
 and pocket his fees. Without any thought of 
 his own gain or loss he spent his time and 
 strength and ability in widening medical knowl- 
 edge, in inventing means for the prevention or 
 amelioration of disease, in founding a hospital. 
 The man of business was also a wise leader 
 of many philanthropic and educational en- 
 terprises, the dynamic of many a civic reform. 
 The editor practised journalism as an art and 
 not merely as a business. He contributed not 
 only information, but intelligence and sound 
 judgment. He was an initial force in form- 
 ing public opinion, a reUable monitor of the 
 public will, and an inspirer of patriotism. 
 The judge saw things in the large way which 
 was natural for a man of his massive frame 
 and mind. The preacher illustrated all that is 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 universal in religious thought and all that is 
 lofty in human character. His commanding 
 figure was a fit symbol of a generous and 
 magnanimous nature. As the streams which 
 move the wheels of modern industry flow from 
 secret springs among the high hills, so the ac- 
 tivities of these men had their source in the life 
 of idealism, vision, and faith which was theirs 
 by inheritance. They transmitted an undepart- 
 ing and undiminished inspiration. 
 
 All of these men lived simply after the old 
 New England fashion. In every relation of life 
 they rang true. With all the force of their 
 Puritan forebears they hated the things that 
 are mean and base and unclean, and with steady 
 enthusiasm they loved the things that are true 
 and lovely and of good report. They were ac- 
 customed to speak their minds plainly and to go 
 to their ends by the shortest and most sunny 
 road. They possessed the manly reasonableness 
 and the high-minded devotion which intelligent 
 Americans demand in the leaders they trust and 
 honor. 
 
 Most of these men possessed exceptional ability 
 and all enjoyed the advantages of a good educa- 
 tion ; some inherited wealth ; two or three of them 
 had a touch of tlie unexplicable quality we call 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 genius, and others had larger power of emo- 
 tional expression than is common with New Eng- 
 landers; but the quahties that gave them influ- 
 ence were courage and unselfish purpose and 
 confidence in right principles. They were men 
 who believed that this universe is ruled by a 
 loving God and that the best way to love God is 
 to love and serve one's fellowmen. They be- 
 lieved that " no man liveth unto himself alone " 
 and that we are " all members of one another," 
 and they tried to make those convictions prac- 
 tically effective in the land they loved. 
 
 We who have seen and known such men can 
 never believe that the power of money or the 
 enervation of pleasure can rob American life of 
 high breeding and the sense of romantic chiv- 
 alry. We know that life may still be lifted into 
 enchantment and lit with spiritual charm. To 
 read the record of these lives is to have our eyes 
 and thoughts lifted to the heights of honor. 
 
 Samuel A. Eliot. 
 
I 
 
 GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS C. LOWELL 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 George Frisbie Hoar was born on Aug. 29, 
 1826, at Concord, Massachusetts, of pure 
 Yankee stock. Leonard Hoar, the brother of 
 his ancestor, was president of Harvard College 
 from 1672 to 1675. His paternal grandfather, 
 his two paternal great-grandfathers, and three 
 of his great-uncles served with the Lincoln Com- 
 pany in the fight at Concord Bridge. His 
 father, Samuel Hoar, was a leader of the Mid- 
 dlesex bar. After he had given up the regular 
 practice of law by reason of his age, he was 
 asked by Massachusetts to maintain before the 
 courts of South Carolina the rights of negro 
 seamen of Massachusetts arrested in Charleston 
 by virtue of a statute believed to be unconstitu- 
 tional. Though the Legislature of South 
 Carolina directed the governor to expel him 
 from the state, and though the mob of Charles- 
 ton threatened him, he refused to abandon his 
 clients, and withdrew only when some of the 
 leading people, intending to save his life, gave 
 him the choice of embarking with or without 
 
 [ 1 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 physical violence. In 1898 the New England 
 Society of Charleston invited Senator Hoar to 
 the city, saying that " Charleston would fain 
 give the honored son a welcome which shall 
 obliterate the past." Of Samuel Hoar, Emer- 
 son said that " He returned from courts and 
 congresses to sit down with unaltered humility 
 in the church or in the town house or on a plain 
 wooden bench, where Honor came and sat down 
 beside him." Two of his three sons and two 
 grandsons in the male line have been chosen to 
 Congress. Senator Hoar's mother was a daugh- 
 ter of Roger Sherman, who signed not only the 
 Declaration of Independence, but the Associa- 
 tion of ITT-l, the Articles of Confederation, 
 and the Constitution of the United States. 
 Thus sprung from the seed for which God 
 had sifted three kingdoms, Senator Hoar grew 
 up in Concord, a rich soil for that planting. 
 There he shared the life of New England both 
 in tradition and in the present. The bov saw 
 and heard the old men who fought in the Revo- 
 lution, as Scott in his boyhood lived with the 
 men of "45. Hawtliorno and Thoroau walked 
 about the village, and Emerson was the intimate 
 friend of liis family. 
 
 From a licalthy boyhood Mr. Hoar went to 
 [2 ] 
 
lixjRGE FRISBEE HOAR 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 Harvard, and there graduated in 1846, without 
 diflBculty or academic distinction. He turned 
 naturally to the law, spent two years in the Law 
 School, and studied for a year or two in the 
 offices of his older brother and of Judge Thomas, 
 good masters in the law. In 1849 he went to 
 settle in Worcester, and there made his home 
 for the rest of his life. There he died Sept. 
 30» 1904. The Yankee has much pride of 
 place, believing himself the citizen of no mean 
 city. In the heart of the Commonwealth this 
 pride is conspicuous, and Mr. Hoar was proud 
 of the city and county of Worcester. He knew 
 the land, the hills, and trees, and birds ; he 
 understood the farmer's way of speech, his prej- 
 udices, and his heart. He was justly proud 
 that at one time or another he had as his client 
 every town in the county ; and there are more 
 than fifty. Yet he never lost his love of Con- 
 cord, and he kept an undivided interest in liis 
 father's home until he was nearly seventy years 
 old. It was a most valued possession, and he 
 thought that if his physical or mental power 
 should fail and he were compelled to give up 
 his home and library in Worcester, it might 
 provide him a home for his old age. When, 
 however, his nephew thought that the title should 
 [ 3 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 be united in one owner, he accepted the price 
 fixed for his share, and gave the money to 
 Clark University to defray an expenditure which 
 was much needed. 
 
 As a lawyer he impressed both court and 
 jury, learned, persuasive, and sound. His heart 
 was in his profession, and for twenty years he 
 gave most of his time to it, remembering the 
 while that the duties of a citizen are paramount. 
 He served with credit and usefulness as Ref>- 
 resentative in the Massachusetts Legislature of 
 1851 and as Senator in 1857. The Republican 
 party was forming to oppose the extension of 
 slavery, and he did not doubt that it was bom 
 in Worcester County. It was the love of his 
 youth, his maturity, and his old age. In 1868 
 he was tired out, and went to Europe. In his 
 absence he was nominated for Congress. The 
 people of his district knew liim so well that 
 their choice cannot have been quite accidental, 
 as he afterwards suggested. He accepted the 
 nomination, partly in order to get the rest 
 which comes from a change of occupation, and 
 intending to decline reelection. This intention 
 persisted for several terms, and yielded only 
 to reasons which he deemed of peculiar strength. 
 Soon after his first election he was offered an 
 [ 4 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 appointment to the Supreme Court of Massa- 
 chusetts, but he believed that his duty to his 
 constituents forbade his acceptance. This de- 
 cision settled his career, though he did not know 
 it at the time. After eight years' service in 
 the House of Representatives he positively re- 
 fused a renomination, and his successor was 
 chosen in the autumn of 1876. During the 
 short session of Congress which followed he was 
 selected with General Garfield to represent the 
 Repubhcan minority of the House on the Elec- 
 toral Commission. A man so trusted could 
 hardly have remained out of public life under 
 any circumstances, and while the Commission 
 was sitting, the progressive wing of the Repub- 
 lican party in Massachusetts secured his election 
 to the Senate. 
 
 For tw enty s eve n years -his .history in the 
 Senate was an important, part fl£ .ihS-Justory 
 of thgJJftited States. He was the adviser of 
 President Hayes and the intimate friend of 
 President Garfield. Notwithstanding their dif- 
 ferences about the question of the Philippines, 
 President McKinley relied on his judgment. In 
 (nearly every important debate he took part. 
 The usefulness of thirty-five years' service in 
 a legislature is not to be judged by one or two 
 [ 5 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 leasurcs passed or defeated, however important, 
 'he chief credit for important legislation often 
 jlongs to jjLTsoii.s outside the legislature, and 
 le member whose thoughts arc all given to one 
 ill, however desirable, usually docs more harm 
 lan good. So long as legislatures exist, the 
 ember who is in his seat day after day, and 
 1 day, laboring with intelligence to pierfect 
 le good bill, to make safe the dangerous bill, 
 id to defeat the bad bill, will be the most useful 
 presentativc. The work is not pleasant. It 
 infinitely laborious, and generally wearisome. 
 1 England the legislative leader is in the cab- 
 et, and under the parliamentary system is able 
 I shape legislation by compelling his followers 
 i do his bidding or go into opposition. A 
 sponsible ministry implies a rigid party dis- 
 phne. In the loose party discipline of Con- 
 ress the task of watching legislation is more 
 fficult. Little public credit attaches to it, 
 id much unpopularity, for the watchman is 
 mstantly ojiposod to bad, foolish, and eccentric 
 gislators, and must bear the abuse of them all. 
 o deal with general legislation is the especial 
 inction of the chainnan of the judiciary com- 
 ittce, a place which Mr. Hoar held for many 
 ;ars. 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 For example: The present bankrupt law is 
 not particularly connected with his name. It 
 was urged upon Congress by intelligent and 
 enthusiastic outsiders. It was opposed by men 
 who thought it bore hardly on the debtor. As 
 it passed, the Act was not what Mr. Hoar would 
 have made it, but he believed it to be better 
 than the chaos which preceded it ; he helped make 
 it as good a measure as would pass Congress, 
 and then he helped its passage. It is said that 
 a man, inclined to think the bill too lax, met 
 !Mr. Hoar while it was pending. " I have been 
 reading your bill over," he said, " and, upon 
 consideration, while it is too lenient to the 
 debtor, yet it is not nearly so bad as I had 
 supposed." " Hush," said Mr. Hoar. " For 
 
 Heaven's sake, do not tell that to Mr. [an 
 
 opponent of all bankruptcy legislation], for I 
 have been trying to persuade him that it lets 
 the debtor off too easily, and is quite unjust to 
 the creditor. He is almost ready to vote for 
 it." 
 
 Not all Mr. Hoar's public work was done in 
 Congress. He presided over the Republican 
 national convention of 1880 which nominated 
 Garfield for president. In some years this pres- 
 idency of the convention is an empty honor, but 
 [7 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 in 1880 Mr. Hoar led the delegates of whom 
 Senator Cameron said : " There were twenty- 
 three men from Massachusetts who went there 
 to keep six hundred men from doing what they 
 wanted to, and by God, they did it." 
 ( " My life from that time [1869] has been 
 devoted altogether to the public service." j Every 
 educated man should read these words -tJver two 
 or three times and consider what they mean ; 
 what sort of life that is of which Mr. Hoar 
 spoke. It puts an end to rest and peace and 
 gain of wealth. Ambition may be gratified, 
 but the gratification is hard-earned. The pub- 
 lic servant gets more abuse than the heretic 
 or a foreign enemy. That many EngUshmen 
 who might live at ease and in pleasure give 
 tlicmsclves to this life is a source of English 
 strength ; but in England success brings social 
 distinction and heritable rank, which are want- 
 ing as incentives in this country. Even here 
 all good work is not the product of pure dis- 
 interestedness, but the presence in the Senate 
 of men whose lives have thus been long given 
 to the public service maintains the influence of 
 that body in the government of the United 
 States. Mr. Hour's way of life was simple, 
 adapted to accomplish most effectively his day's 
 [ 8 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 work. It was frugal from necessity, taste, and 
 habit. When, in an excess of dehrium, a news- 
 paper had charged him with idleness, luxury, 
 and gluttony, specifying a fondness for cham- 
 pagne and terrapin, Mr. Hoar made answer: 
 
 ... I never inherited any wealth or had any. 
 My father was a lawyer in very large practice for 
 his day, but he was a very generous and liberal 
 man and never put much value upon money. My 
 share of his estate was about $10,500. All the in- 
 come-producing property I have in the world, or 
 ever had, yields a httle less than $1,800 a year; 
 $800 of that is from a life estate and the other 
 thousand comes from stock in a corporation which 
 has only paid dividends for the last two or three 
 years, and which I am very much afraid will pay 
 no dividend, or much smaller ones, after two or 
 three years to come. With that exception, the 
 house where I live, with its contents, with about 
 four acres of land, constitute my whole worldly 
 possessions, except two or three vacant lots, which 
 would not bring me $5000 all told. I could not 
 sell them now for enough to pay my debts. I 
 have been in my day an extravagant collector of 
 books, and have a library which you would like to 
 see and which I should like to show you. . . . 
 Your " terrapin " is all in my eye, very little in my 
 month. The chief carnal luxury of my life is in 
 [91 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 breakfasting every Sunday morning with an ortho- 
 dox friend, a lady who has a rare gift of making 
 fish-balls and coffee. You unfortunate and be- 
 nighted Pennsylvanians can never know the ex- 
 quisite flavor of the codfish, salted, made into balls 
 and eaten on a Sunday morning by a person whose 
 theology is sound, and who believes in all the five 
 points of Calvinism. I am myself but an un- 
 worthy heretic, but I am of Puritan stock, of the 
 seventh generation, and there is vouchsafed to me, 
 also, some share of that ecstacy and a dim glimpse 
 of that beatific vision. Be assured, my benighted 
 Pennsylvania friend, that in that hour when the 
 week begins, aU the terrapin of Philadelphia or 
 Baltimore and all the soft-shelled crabs of the At- 
 lantic shore might pull at my trousers legs and 
 thrust themselves on my notice in vain. 
 
 Stupidity and malice may sometimes be an- 
 swered without degrading one's self or dignify- 
 ing one's opponent. 
 
 To criticise Mr. Hoar is not easy to a man 
 thirty years younger. Each generation has its 
 own spirit, and the sons cannot enter perfectly 
 into the spirit of the fathers. By its disbince 
 their criticism may gain in breadth of compar- 
 ison, but it loses in sympathy. Only a con- 
 temporary can illustrate perfectly Senator 
 Hoar's manner of thought and feeling. 
 [ 10 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 Bishop Lawrence has said that Samuel Hoar, 
 nephew of the Senator, was in character the 
 typical Puritan of this generation. That 
 Senator Hoar was a typical Puritan of his gen- 
 eration no one wiU doubt. What does the 
 phrase mean.? Seven generations of pure blood 
 may breed a Puritan, and they may not. The 
 proof is in the man, not in his ancestry. The 
 typical Puritan of the 17th century was a 
 theologian. From his theology Senator Hoar 
 differed so widely that Puritans who could have 
 foreseen his heresies would probably have denied 
 him the name of Christian. How then can his 
 character be derived from theirs by legitimate 
 spiritual descent, while we deny their name to 
 men whose theology is less changed.'' The 
 Purita n was a man of ideals, who looked for- 
 ward, finding his satisfaction in the future, not 
 in the present ; his ideals were moral, not esthetic 
 nor of material comfort. He was not a dreamer, 
 but a man who used the means at hand to realize 
 his ideal. The Puritan felt himself personally 
 responsible for everything done on the earth. 
 If there was a wrong, he was called to right 
 it without fear of meddling. These two Puritan 
 traits, idealism and a sense of responsibility, 
 were Mr. Hoar's, together with qualities less 
 
 [ 11 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 important, but worthy of notice. So strong 
 was the Puritan imagination that it had Httle 
 need of material form to represent its ideals. 
 Hence its religion was bare of ritual. The 
 Puritan's sense of responsibility was so great 
 that it referred to God alone, and so he dispensed 
 with priest and ecclesiastical organization. His 
 temper was austere, industrious, and frugal. 
 There was, indeed, a great difference between 
 Mr. Hoar and his Puritan ancestors. They 
 believed that mankind was essentially vile. He 
 believed that it was essentially noble and trust- 
 worthy — the gospel preached by Channing 
 early in the 19th century. Hence he believed 
 that human nature, left to itself and tested in 
 sufficiently large mass, is a safe guide to ex- 
 cellence. This belief in mankind was joined 
 to a considerable distrust of particular indi- 
 viduals. Like many moral idealists, he tended 
 to think that those who did not agree with him 
 erred morally as well as intellectually, and he 
 did not easily make allowance for difference of 
 opinion. As he grew older his temper sweet- 
 ened by ripening, until his judgment of his op- 
 ponents became full of charity. 
 
 Faithful to the political vision of his youth 
 and young manhood, Mr. Hoar had to overcome 
 [ la J 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 difficulties of which the early Republican did 
 not dream. The interest of his career, like that 
 of most men of action, lies in his adaptation 
 to new conditions. Many an abolitionist, 
 brought up to the work of ending slavery, 
 found his occupation gone when that work was 
 done, and fell to praising the reformer of the 
 past while abusing the reformer of the present. 
 For nearly forty, years after the war was over, 
 Mr. Hoar was deahng with questions of the 
 tariff and currency, of education, of capital 
 and labor, of immigration and foreign policy, 
 as well as the details of legislation. He rejoiced 
 in his work, and never feared to undertake a 
 job because it was new. While he did not be- 
 lieve education a panacea, yet, like a New 
 Englander, he believed there was little hope for 
 a community without it, and so he tried to aid 
 it from the national treasury. For the most 
 part the plan failed, but it was characteristic 
 of Mr. Hoar, and showed that he did not fear 
 to enlarge the functions of the national gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 He knew the need of parties in political 
 
 life, and, like all public men and like most 
 
 serious students, he did not dream of doing 
 
 without them. Joining the Republican party 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 because the end it proposed satisfied his ideal, 
 he ideah'zed somewhat the means to that end. 
 There was danger that criticism of his party 
 would defeat the end he had in view, and so 
 do more harm than good, inasmuch as the party 
 was of worth only for the results it accomplished. 
 In the heat of political controversy, criticism is 
 seldom sincere or good-tempered, and its unfair- 
 ness further irritated him. To vote for a man 
 whom he deemed dishonest was out of the ques- 
 tion, no matter what his politics, but he saw 
 no reason to vote for a free trader or for a 
 candidate opposed to free elections in the South, 
 because upright in his private business. 
 
 Conscious of his own integrity of purpose, 
 he dealt with appointments to office. As he said, 
 he " always held to the doctrine of what is called 
 civil service reform," and voted for the appoint- 
 ment of clerks and other subordinates by com- 
 petitive examination. He deemed this reform 
 in administration, however, of less importance 
 than the great political principles which he 
 professed. He found in use another system of 
 appointing many federal officers. He advised 
 the Executive, as he was expected to do, and 
 so distributed the patronage which was deemed 
 to be his for the benefit of the community by 
 [ 1^ 1 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 the appointment of worthy men. On occasion 
 he recommended Democrats, even for the most 
 important positions, but that the appointees 
 must be mainly Republicans was a custom which 
 did not much disturb him. To make the chief 
 end of government the appointment of reputable 
 men to minor offices, did not suit his sense of 
 ppeportion. 
 
 j The right of men to govern themselves he 
 pelieved supreme and unchangeable. The Fif- 
 teenth Amendment guaranteed the negro against 
 discrimination in the suffrage. Mr. Hoar ap- 
 proved the amendment when adopted, and he 
 did not thereafter change his mind, as did many 
 others. He believed that the nation should make 
 its guaranty good, and so he favored the Force 
 Bill, so-called, and similar legislation. But at 
 length his political sense showed him that the 
 attempt to enforce the Amendment was impos- 
 sible. 
 
 I am clearly of the opinion [he said in his auto- 
 biography] that Congress has power to regulate 
 the elections of Members of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives and to make similar provisions for hon- 
 est elections and an honest ascertainment of the 
 result, and that such legislation ought to be en- 
 acted and kept on the statute book and enforced. 
 [ 15 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 But such l(-gislation, to be of any value whatever, 
 must be permanent. If it only be maintained in 
 force while one political party is in power, and re- 
 pealed when its antagonist comes in, and is to be 
 constant matter of political strife and sectional 
 discussion, it is better, in my judgment, to abandon 
 it than to keep up an incessant, fruitless struggle. 
 ... I thought the attempt to secure the rights 
 of the colored people by National legislation 
 should be abandoned until there was a considerable 
 change of opinion in the country, and especially in 
 the Soutli, and until it had ceased to become matter 
 of party strife. 
 
 Mr. Hoar was an orator and delighted in 
 the exercise of his art. His education was in 
 the masterpieces of Demosthenes and Cjcero, of 
 Chatham and Burke. He had heard Daniel 
 Webster. Tlie oratory of these men obsen'ed 
 certain conventions from which speakers in the 
 present generation have largelj- departed. Now- 
 adays arguments are for reading or for hearing, 
 and the two senses are appealed to by different 
 methods. If more persons are addressed than 
 a speaker's voice can reach, the form of argu- 
 ment is the printed page with paragraph and 
 headline, italics and index, citation of authorities 
 and appendix of statistics. To please the ear 
 [ 16 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 is hardly attempted. Even if the matter be first 
 stated to an audience, the effect is that of reading 
 to them a book, well or ill written, as the case 
 may be. On the other hand, where the attempt 
 is to convince only those who can hear, as in 
 an argument to a jury, or in real legislative 
 debate, permanence of expression is little re- 
 garded, and everything which does not have im- 
 mediate effect on the hearers. Mr. Hoar's tra- 
 ditions were of the older school, and he debated 
 for years with men still young. His style of 
 pubHc speech — and he took pains with it — 
 kept some of the old formality, and had much 
 of modem directness. He connected Webster 
 and those of whom Lincoln was the prototype. 
 " I am a passionate lover of England," he 
 said. " Before I ever went abroad, I longed to 
 visit the places famous in history, as a child 
 longs to go home to his birthplace." Yet he 
 could see no excuse for the Boer war or for the 
 denial of Home Rule to Ireland. He would 
 open the door of America to all who wished to 
 come in, without regard to poverty, or igno- 
 rance, or race. He withstood the intolerance of 
 the Know Nothing in his youth, and thirty years 
 later that of the A. P. A. Concerning Chinese 
 exclusion, he said in 1902, " I hold that every 
 
 [ n ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 human soul has its rights, dependent upon its 
 individual personal worth and not dependent 
 upon color or race, and that all races, all colors, 
 all nationalities contain persons entitled to be 
 recognized everywhere they go on the face of 
 the earth as the equals of every other man." 
 And alone in Congress he voted against the 
 Exclusion Bill. The risk did not frighten him, 
 for to fear was to doubt man's duty to succor 
 the needy, to redeem the oppressed, and to pro- 
 claim the acceptable year of the Lord. " I 
 believe that the immortal truths of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence came from the same source 
 with the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the 
 jVIount. We can trust Him who promulgated 
 these laws to keep the country safe that obex's 
 them." Even those who do not agree with Mr. 
 Hoar, when they consider the love he won from 
 men who differed from him in race and language, 
 in politics and religion, may hope to remove 
 some dangers of immigration by cultivating his 
 hospitality. 
 
 In his political theories, as has been said, he 
 was a radical. A change which brought liberty 
 to some man had no terror for him. But 
 his youth in Concord, his lawyer's training, 
 his learning and his sentiment, made him re- 
 [ 18 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 joice when some good thing had the charm of 
 age. 
 
 He had exquisite pleasure in procuring the 
 return of Governor Bradford's history to Mas- 
 sachusetts. To the Bishop of London, in whose 
 library it was kept, he said, " My Lord, I am 
 going to say something which you may think 
 rather audacious. I think this book ought to 
 go back to Massachusetts." The Bishop said, 
 " I did not know you cared anything about it." 
 " Why," answered Mr. Hoar, " if there were in 
 existence in England a history of King Alfred's 
 reign for thirty years, written by his own hand, 
 it would not be more precious in the eyes of 
 Englishmen than this manuscript is to us." 
 The words are good rhetoric, but to those who 
 heard the story from Mr. Hoar the words gave 
 the least part of the impression. 
 
 A building of the College of William and 
 Mary had been destroyed in the Civil War. 
 By the laws of war the college's claim for com- 
 pensation was weak, but Mr. Hoar's mananim- 
 ity was roused. For twenty years in House and 
 Senate he labored till he succeeded, learning 
 with satisfaction that even his first unsuccessful 
 effort created the good feeling which was the 
 end he had most in view. 
 
 [ 19 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 I have said that this is not a legal claim. It is 
 stronger and not weaker for that reason. The 
 rule which binds nations at war to respect insti- 
 tutions of learning can in no way be made so ef- 
 fectual as by adopting the practice of reparation 
 wherever that rule is broken. America certainly 
 will not leave these ruins as a perpetual witness 
 that Louis XVI, a monarch, was capable of loftier 
 and more generous regard for learning than a re- 
 public itself. America will not leave these ruins 
 to testify that England in the bloody and bar- 
 barous Wars of the Roses five hundred years ago 
 was more humane and civilized than we are to-day. 
 We cannot refuse, in dealing with the college 
 which Washington administered and loved, to fol- 
 low the example wliich he set us in the case of 
 Princeton. 
 
 But ^Villiam and Mary has also her own peculiar 
 claim on our regard. The great principles on 
 which the rights of men depend, which inspired 
 the statesmen of Virginia of the period of the 
 Revolution, are the fruits of her teaching. The 
 name of Wasliington, to whose genius in war and to 
 whose influence in peace we owe the vindication 
 of our liberties and the successful inauguration of 
 our Constitution, is inseparably connected with 
 William and Mary. She gave him his first com- 
 mission in his youth; he gave to her his last public 
 service in liis age. Jefferson, author of the Decla- 
 [ 20 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 ration of Independence, who announced the great 
 law of equality and human rights in whose light 
 our Constitution is at last and forever to be inter- 
 preted, drank his inspiration at her fountain. 
 Marshall, without whose luminous and far-sighted 
 exposition our Constitution could hardly have been 
 put into successful and harmonious operation, who 
 embedded forever in our constitutional law the 
 great doctrines on which the measures that saved 
 the Union are based, was a son of William and 
 Mary. By the cession of the great Northwestern 
 Territory, largely due to the efforts of one of her 
 illustrious sons, she lost a great part of her rev- 
 enues. Next to Harvard she is the oldest of 
 American colleges. The gift of the famous Rob- 
 ert Boyle was held by her for many years on con- 
 dition of an annual payment of i90 to Harvard. 
 Boyle was a friend of many of the early friends 
 and benefactors of Harvard, and a correspondent 
 of one of its presidents. Each of tliese two semi- 
 naries in its own part of the country kindled and 
 kept alive the sacred fire of liberty. In IT-tS, the 
 year Jefferson was born, Samual Adams main- 
 tained, on taking his degree of Master of Arts at 
 Harvard, the affirmative of the thesis, whether it 
 be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate, if the 
 Conmionwealth cannot be otherwise preserved. In 
 this hour of the calamity of her sister college I am 
 glad to believe that Harvard does not forget the 
 [ 21 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ancient tic. The mother of the Otises and the 
 Adamses would gladly extend her right hand to the 
 mother of Jefferson and Marshall. 
 
 As he grew older Mr. Hoar seemed to enjoy 
 more keenly the society of all sorts of people, 
 especially the young, and the exercise of his own 
 powers. His labors in Congress did not lessen 
 his fresh joy of life. He welcomed invitations 
 to make addresses, political, reminiscent, his- 
 torical, and religious. The faith in mankind 
 which had guided his youth, in his last years 
 blended with love of individuals about him. In 
 exuberant spirits he wrote the story of his own 
 life, not a philosophical autobiography, verified 
 as to dates and details, but a revelation of him- 
 self abounding in generosity to his friends and 
 his opponents, and enlivened by good-natured 
 wit at the expense of himself and others. " I 
 know men," he wrote, " who have been in public 
 life more than a generation . . . who never 
 said a foolish thing, and rarely ever when they 
 had the chance failed to do a wise one, who are 
 utterly commonplace. You could not read the 
 story of their public career without going to 
 sleep ... I have a huge respect for them. 
 I can never myself attain to their excellence, 
 [ 22 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 yet I would as lief spend my life as an omnibus 
 horse as live theirs." Belonging, as he said of 
 a brother Senator, to a religious denomination 
 small and unpopular, at least in Washington, 
 he was constant in his attendance on its worship 
 both there and at home. He attended its na- 
 tional councils, addressed them, and presided 
 over them. In 1899 at the National Unitarian 
 Conference he said, in declaring his own reli- 
 gious belief, " I have no faith in fatalism, in 
 destiny, in blind force. I I believe in God, the 
 living God, in the American people, a free and 
 brave people, who do not bow the neck or bend 
 the knee to any other, and who desire no other 
 to bow the neck or bend the knee to them.r 
 " I believe that a Republic is greater than an 
 Empire." " I believe finally, whatever clouds 
 may darken the horizon, that the world is grow- 
 ing better, that to-day is better than yesterday, 
 and to-morrow will be better than to-day." 
 
 After his second election to the Senate in 
 1883, for twenty years Mr. Hoar enjoyed the 
 utmost confidence of the people of Massachu- 
 setts. If the statement sounds exaggerated, the 
 facts were unusual. The confidence existed in 
 every political party, race, religion, and social 
 condition. It honored alike the men who gave 
 [ 23 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 and the man who received it. It did not prevent 
 difference of opinion. There were times when 
 Mr. Hoar was opposed to a majority of his 
 constituents, there was no time when he was 
 not opposed in important matters to many of 
 them. But whether they agreed or disagreed 
 with him, the men of Massachusetts trusted him, 
 and knew him as the first citizen of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 At the end of his life. Senator Hoar's behef 
 in the worth of mankind, as involving the fit- 
 ness of all men to govern themselves, was tried 
 grievously. The United States and the Re- 
 publican party denied independence to the Fil- 
 ipinos. The defection was the mort grievous 
 because of his love for his country and his 
 party, but he opposed them both. He voted 
 against the treaty of annexation ; he voted 
 against the increase of the army, because he 
 would not raise soldiers to carry on war in the 
 Philippines. His term in the Senate was ex- 
 piring, but, as he said, " I meant that if the 
 Legislature of Massachusetts were to reelect 
 me, no man would ever have it to say that I 
 bought my reelection by silence on this ques- 
 tion." Ch'er and over again he denounced the 
 policy of the administration. He did not give 
 [ 24 ] 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 
 up his principles, his party, or his country. He 
 voted for the President, with whom he agreed 
 on other matters, rather than for the Demo- 
 cratic candidate, whose influence had secured 
 the ratification of the treaty and had defeated 
 Mr. Hoar's efforts to stop annexation at the 
 outset. His faith in his country and his party 
 was strong enough to assure him that at length, 
 though after his death, they would come to his 
 way of thinking. 
 
 Democracy does not declare that all men are 
 of equal worth or use. If it did it would de- 
 clare a he. It is content that every man do 
 his best for the commonwealth unhindered by 
 privilege which does not depend on worth. As 
 it cannot make all men of equal stature or in- 
 telligence, so it cannot — and would not — 
 hinder a special call of some men to the service 
 of mankind. In laziness, or idleness, or selfish- 
 ness the call may come, not so loud as to dis- 
 pense with the aid of any generous feeling. 
 The traditions of his village, the training of his 
 college, his father's honor, his mother's love, 
 the fear of his child, may so emphasize the call 
 as to make a man believe that on him is laid a 
 duty or responsibihty heavier than that of 
 others. Of all generous feelings, an unbroken 
 [ 25 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 family tradition handed down for generations 
 seems the strongest. There is hope for the ill- 
 bom, as history shows, but no democracy can 
 deprive a man of his father's example, can give 
 to the son of a worthless man that incentive 
 to public virtue which descends to each son of 
 the family of Hoar. 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
II 
 
 MORRILL WYMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY P. WALCOTT 
 
 [ 27 1 
 
MORRILL WYMAN 
 
 Morrill Wyman was born in Chelmsford, Mass., 
 on July 25, 1812, and died at his home in 
 Cambridge on January 30, 1903. He was the 
 second son of Dr. Rufus Wyman, and Anne 
 Morrill. The Wymans were early settlers in 
 Wobum and its vicinity, and the family has 
 given to the country many men of eminence 
 in man.- callings; but none more distinguished 
 that Dr. Rufus Wyman and his sons Morrill 
 and Jeffries. 
 
 Rufus Wyman, after leaving college, began 
 at once the study of medicine, and upon re- 
 ceiving his degree entered upon the practice 
 of his profession at Chelmsford. His abilities 
 were soon recognized and he gained a reputa- 
 tion which extended far beyond the limits of 
 the town. 
 
 He was chosen in 1817 to be the head of the 
 newly established McLean Asylum for the In- 
 sane. After a most faithful and successful 
 service there of seventeen years, he resigned his 
 place and passed the remainder of his life in 
 [ 29 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ■'■ " ■■ " ■ " ' " ■ " ■' - " » 
 
 Roxbury, where he died in 1842. He was pres- 
 ident of the Massachusetts Medical Society and 
 universally respected. Dr. Luther V. Bell, one 
 of the greatest of his successors, uses these 
 words in speaking of him : — 
 
 " Entering on his duties with no similar 
 undertaking for an example to guide him, the 
 weight of difficulty and responsibility which 
 necessarily fell upon him must have been far 
 greater than any of his successors in such trusts, 
 who have had the aids of his ingenuity and 
 labors, can have experienced. What is due to 
 his memory as a public benefactor can never be 
 realized or appreciated except by the small num- 
 ber whose opportunities and duties enable them 
 to judge of the difficulties he encountered and 
 the means he projected to meet them." He was 
 also singularly averse to any notoriety except 
 such as might come to him from the small 
 number of those really capable of adequately 
 judging the quality of his work. The qualities 
 which distinguished the father were equally 
 marked in the two sons, who devoted themselves 
 to the same profession. 
 
 Morrill and Jeffries prepared for college at 
 Phillips Exeter Academy, entered Harvard to- 
 gether, and were graduated in the Class of 18S3. 
 [ 30 ] 
 
MOtilILL WYMAN 
 
xr±\j±ixi±±j±j TV X iixtxiS 
 
 They received their medical degrees in 1837 ; 
 though Morrill had immediately after his gradu- 
 ation from college spent six months as a member 
 of a party of engineers who were employed in 
 laying out the route of the Boston and Worces- 
 ter Railroad. His medical studies were directed 
 by his father and his father's friend, Dr. Wil- 
 ham J. Walker, of Charlestown. 
 
 Dr. Walker had had all the advantages of a 
 medical education in France and England, dur- 
 ing the years when Corvisart, Pinel, Laennec, 
 and Dupuytren taught in the capital of one 
 country and Sir Astley Cooper in the capital 
 of the other. Walker's success in his profession 
 was great, and until he suddenly abandoned his 
 practice in 1846, he was one of the leading 
 surgeons of the state. Whatever may have 
 been Walker's failings in any other direction, 
 his relations to his favorite pupil were such that 
 the latter cherished for him an admiration and 
 devotion that never wavered. 
 
 For a year Wyman weis house physician at 
 the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he 
 had the good fortune, never forgotten, of serv- 
 ing under James Jackson, " the model of the 
 good and wise physician," and Jacob Bigelow, 
 " the most accomplished man of our profession." 
 [ 31 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 The liouse surgeon of the year was Samuel 
 Parknian, an intimate and much loved friend, 
 whose death in the prime of early manhood took 
 from medicine one of its brightest ornaments. 
 
 Upon leaving the hospital he at once estab- 
 lished himself in Cambridge and remained there 
 to the end. Though his early professional life 
 was a busy and very successful one, he found 
 time to compete for the Boylston Medical Prize, 
 which he received in 1846 for an essay on venti- 
 lation. This was published in the same year 
 increased to a volume of 400 pages ; it is a 
 thoroughly original treatise illustrated by a 
 number of ingenious experiments. 
 
 Dr. J. S. Billings, one of the best authorities 
 upon this subject, says of the book, " It is one 
 of the most valuable that we have ; it states the 
 general principles of ventilation in a clear, con- 
 cise style and in a form which, as a means of 
 instruction for the ordinary reader, can hardly 
 be surpassed, and is one of the few books on 
 heating and ventilation which advocates no pat- 
 ent or proprietary apparatus." 
 
 Two years later he prepared, in behalf of a 
 
 committee of the American Academy, a report 
 
 upon the effect of various forms of outlet cowls 
 
 for chimneys. This paper, published with the 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
MORRILL WYaL^N 
 
 Academy's Proceedings for 1848, is still quoted 
 in the best treatises upon heating and ventila- 
 tion. 
 
 The interest which he here showed in a sub- 
 ject of prime importance to both the sick and 
 the well remained with him through life. A 
 few weeks only before his death he was busy 
 measuring with an anemometer the air currents 
 in various portions of the Cambridge Hospital. 
 At a later day he again entered the field with 
 success as a competitor for a prize offered by the 
 Massachusetts Jledical Society for an essay 
 which should describe in plain language an 
 effective and ready method of ventilating sick 
 rooms. 
 
 Twenty-six essays were received, and to one 
 marked X Y Z the prize was awarded, this hav- 
 ing met all the requirements of " simplicity, 
 cheapness, effectiveness, and readiness of appli- 
 cation." X Y Z refused to reveal his name 
 and requested that the prize money be expended 
 in the publication of the essay. For those 
 familiar with his language and his methods, 
 the letters were a thin veil before the man, who 
 made it his business at all times to use a phrase- 
 ology so plain that all might understand it. 
 
 An operation for the opening of the chest 
 [ 33 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 in order to remove the collections of fluids there 
 had been known to medicine from the days of 
 Hippocrates. It was dangerous and difficult in 
 execution and uncertain in its results. With 
 the greater knowledge of all diseases of the 
 chest, consequent upon the discovery of modem 
 auscultation and percussion, it had seemed to 
 many men that a safer operation than the one 
 in use might be devised ; this had not, however, 
 been accomplished. 
 
 Dr. Wyman had thought much upon the sub- 
 ject, and early in the year 1850 put into use 
 the simple operation which he had invented. It 
 saved the life of a woman near to death and in 
 great suffering. 
 
 Dr. Henry I. Bowditch had bestowed much 
 thought on the same problem; he heard with 
 pleasure of his friend's success and invited him 
 to perform the same operation upon a patient 
 who had consulted Dr. Bowditch in similar cir- 
 cumstances. The operation again brought 
 prompt relief, and its place among the great 
 gains to medicine in America was secure. 
 
 With characteristic modesty Dr. Wyman felt 
 
 that his task, so far as it related to the general 
 
 publication of the merits of the new operation, 
 
 was completed. He knew that his friend would 
 
 [ 34 ] 
 
MORRILL WYMAN 
 
 see to it, as he did, that the medical world should 
 be fully acquainted with the discovery ; he knew 
 also that no credit to which he had a claim would 
 be taken from him, and it would have been an 
 undeserved indignity to both to have even hinted 
 the possibility of it. 
 
 From 1853^1856 he was adjunct Hersey 
 Professor of Medicine in Harvard College for 
 the purpose of relieving Dr. John Ware, whose 
 infirm health required assistance in his duties. 
 During the year of Dr. Ware's absence in 
 Europe, Dr. Wyman gave all the instruction 
 in this department. In 1856 he resigned his 
 office ; the methods of the Medical School of that 
 day do not appear to have been altogether con- 
 genial to him. But whatever may have been 
 the causes of his early withdrawal from a pro- 
 fessorship in which he had been eminently suc- 
 cessful, they never led him to lose his interest 
 in the teaching of medicine in the University. 
 
 In the early part of the year 1857, in con- 
 nection with his brother Jeffries, Hersey Pro- 
 fessor of Anatomy, Dr. John Ware, and Pro- 
 fessor J. P. Cooke, he became a teacher in a 
 school of medicine in Cambridge, he giving the 
 instruction in materia medica and midwifery. 
 The school had a fair measure of success and 
 [ 35 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 a list of students whose names are well and 
 favorably known to-day in many parts of the 
 country. 
 
 When Jeffries Wyman assumed the curator- 
 ship of the Pcabody Museum, the school came 
 to an end. In fact the real inducement that 
 led ]\Iorrill Wyman to take part in this school 
 was the desire to give to his brother a some- 
 what larger field for the teaching of anat- 
 omy than that offered by his college professor- 
 ship. 
 
 With some otiier members of his family, he 
 had been a lifelong sufferer from an autumnal 
 catarrh, corresponding in its symptoms to the 
 affection described bj' Bostock in 1829 as 
 catarrhus acstivus, rose or June cold. The 
 form of the disease from wliich Dr. Wyman 
 suffered had not hitherto attracted the atten- 
 tion of medical men, and was first accurately 
 described by him in his lectures to the students 
 of the Medical School in 185^. In 1866 he 
 brought the subject to the attention of the ]SIas- 
 sachusetts Medical Society and gave to the mal- 
 ady the name autumnal catarrh, adopting the 
 general nomenclature of Dr. Bostock, a title 
 which commended itself much to his favor, be- 
 cause it involved no theory as to the cause of 
 [ 36 i 
 
MORRILL WYMAN 
 
 the disease. In 1876 he published a volume of 
 200 pages upon the subject. 
 
 Early in his career he was elected fellow of 
 the American Academy and was for many years 
 a very active member of the Rumford com- 
 mittee of that body. In addition to a number 
 of papers presented to the Academy upon the 
 subject of ventilation, he prepared and pre- 
 sented in 1887 an elaborate memoir of his 
 friend Daniel Treadwell. Dr. Wyman had 
 many of the qualities peculiar to his associate ; 
 the tendency of their minds was essentially ex- 
 perimental. Both had the ingenuity of the 
 mechanical inventor and the philosopher's pas- 
 sion for truth. 
 
 At eighty-five he regarded himself as no 
 longer subject to the calls of those seeking 
 medical assistance ; as a matter of fact, he re- 
 corded in his case book the attendance upon a 
 limited number of his old patients as late as 
 June, 1902'. Rest in the sense of inactivity was 
 not possible for him ; and his activities had 
 always some definite and useful object in view. 
 It might be an observation upon the ventilation 
 of the hospital, or possibly he was busy over 
 some disabled mechanical contrivance which his 
 deft hand could still correct. 
 [ 37 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Alwa^fs active in the council of the Massa- 
 chusetts ]\Iedical Society, he was chosen in 1863 
 to deliver the annual address; his father had 
 received the same honor in 1830 and had made 
 it the occasion for a statement of the great 
 work of his life. The son took the same serious 
 view of the opportunity offered to him and 
 undertook the defense of his art, as one who 
 knew it thoroughly and believed in it, and there 
 is not one in this long series of anniversary ad- 
 dresses more worthy of notice and faithful 
 study. His subject was the " Reality and Cer- 
 tainty of Medicine." By an interesting coinci- 
 dence, an important measure proposed by him 
 at a previous meeting of the council was unani- 
 mously adopted at the meeting to which the 
 president of the society announced Dr. Wyman's 
 death. 
 
 The Cambridge which he first knew was a 
 village; when he died it was a great city. He 
 had lived through great events in country, in 
 state, and in city — had watched them all with 
 eager eyes, sometimes inclined to blame but more 
 often to approve. He was interested in all the 
 affairs of the community in which he lived, 
 but he never allowed them to interfere with the 
 [ 38 ] 
 
MORRILL WYMAN 
 
 real business of his life — the care of the sick. 
 In 1866 the whipping of a girl of sixteen 
 years in one of the public schools of Cambridge 
 attracted the attention of the citizens and filled 
 Dr. Wyman with a righteous indignation. The 
 school committee declared the punishment to be 
 strictly within the rules established for the gov- 
 ernment of the schools and were unwilling to 
 change the rules. By all reasonable means, a 
 number of citizens among whom he was foremost 
 endeavored to secure from the committee some 
 regulation sufiScient to prevent the corporal pun- 
 ishment of a young woman of this age. All 
 efforts were in vain, and as a last resort he 
 carried in a citizens' caucus a resolve that the 
 corporal punishment of girls should be abolished 
 in each and every school in the city. The next 
 city election changed the character of the school 
 committee and a more humane rule was estab- 
 lished. His efforts in this cause were always 
 remembered by him with great content, and 
 rightly so, for to him more than to any other 
 man belonged the credit of the reform. He 
 had through it all the cordial support of his 
 old close and tried friend. Dr. W. W. Welling- 
 ton, to whom the public school system of 
 [ 39 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Cambridge owes much. Two of the public 
 schools of the city now bear the names of Wel- 
 lington and Wyman. 
 
 Several members of his family had suffered 
 from a disease of the lungs and he too had re- 
 ceived a serious warning, in middle life, that 
 he was not exempt from the inherited disability. 
 Beyond a brief vacation in Europe — the first 
 respite he had given himself in seventeen years 
 from the burdens of a very large practice — 
 he apparently bestowed but little attention upon 
 his own condition, was at his work in aU weathers, 
 at all hours of the day and night, and in 
 a course of treatment which he could not have 
 recommended to a patient conquered the malady. 
 His extensive and time-consuming practice did 
 not prevent him from keeping fully abreast 
 of the best medical literature of the times, and 
 few men in the profession had a better knowl- 
 edge of the works of the fathers of medicine. 
 
 He was a good citizen, and interested himself 
 in the first duties of a citizen ; on the cold bleak 
 morning of the last municipal election in Cam- 
 bridge he quietly walked over to the polling 
 place and cast his vote before the larger part 
 of his neighbors were astir. 
 [ 40 ] 
 
MORRILL WYMAN 
 
 Among the various interests that centred in 
 Cambridge, no one was greater, next to his 
 patients, than the College and his friends who 
 were in charge of it. Intimately associated 
 with all the great men who, during the past 
 seventy years, have taught here, he had him- 
 self served the University in many useful capaci- 
 ties. Professor from 1853-56, he was elected 
 member of the Board of Overseers in 1875 
 and reelected in 1881. In 1885 the College 
 bestowed upon him its highest honorary degree, 
 and he was a member of the visiting committee 
 of the Overseers to the Medical School and 
 active there until the end. 
 
 The record of his services to medicine and 
 the medical charities of Cambridge will remain. 
 His friends will not forget the well-built, well- 
 kept figure, the serious but kindly and always 
 impressive face, the alert and vigorous move- 
 ments of the body, that never grew to be infirm ; 
 and above all the man himself, tender-hearted, 
 tireless in service, sagacious, full of courage, 
 impatient of opposition perhaps with regard 
 to questions upon which his own mind was 
 made up and sometimes aggressive, but never 
 forgetful of the rights or interests of others. 
 [ 41 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 No person in all the wide circle of his ac- 
 quaintance ever doubted that he would speak the 
 truth that was in him or be ready to acknowledge 
 the truth that was in another. He, too, was a 
 model of the good and wise physician. 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
Ill 
 
 HORACE GRAY 
 
 BY 
 
 EZRA RIPLEY THAYER 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
HORACE GRAY 
 
 Horace Gray was bom in Boston on March 24, 
 1828, of the best New England stock. His 
 father was Horace Gray, a leading Boston mer- 
 chant. His mother was Harriet Upham, the 
 daughter of Jabez Upham, of Brookfield, who 
 was a member of the National House of Repre- 
 sentatives, and a celebrated lawyer. His grand- 
 father, William Gray, a State Senator and 
 Lieutenant-Governor, is said to have been the 
 largest ship-owner of his day in the United 
 States. He owned at one time sixty square- 
 rigged merchant vessels. William Gray married 
 Elizabeth Chipman, who came of a family of 
 much legal and judicial eminence, and was her- 
 self distinguished for charitable works. 
 
 Horace Gray the younger graduated at Har- 
 vard in 1845. After leaving college he traveled 
 much in Europe. He had at first no thought of 
 becoming a lawyer. Referring to his plans at 
 this time, Mr. Charles Francis Adams has said, 
 in a paper read before the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society, " In the very last talk I had 
 [ 45 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 with him, on the gallery of his house overlooking 
 the sea about Nahant, a few weeks only before 
 his death, referring to that unformed period, 
 he told me that, in all human probability, had 
 Professor Agassiz come to this country two 
 years earlier than he did, he (Gray) would have 
 been a scientific man. At college his inclina- 
 tion had been to natural history ; for, outgrow- 
 ing his strength while a boy, — at the age of 
 twelve he had attained the full height which al- 
 ways afterwards made him noticeable, — he was 
 threatened with pulmonary troubles, and an 
 open-air life with gun and rod was prescribed 
 for him. So, for a time, he devoted himself to 
 the study of birds and butterflies, while, almost 
 to the close of his life, he was an eager angler." 
 Circumstances, however, made it necessary 
 for him to choose a profession, and he decided 
 to study law. Accordingly he entered the Har- 
 vard Law School, from which he graduated in 
 IS-IQ. He then read law in Judge Lowell's 
 office, was admitted to the bar in 1851, and 
 practiced his profession in Boston. After 1857 
 he was in partnership with Judge Hoar. From 
 1854 to 1861 he served with distinguished ex- 
 cellence as Reporter of Decisions for the Su- 
 preme Judicial Court. The value of a report- 
 [ 46 ] 
 
HORACE Cm^S 
 
HORACE GRAY 
 
 er's work and its possibilities in point of com- 
 pleteness, elegance, and brevity are shown in 
 no better example than the sixteen volumes of 
 reports bearing his name. While he did not 
 take an active part in politics, he was deeply in- 
 terested in public questions. He was one of the 
 early members of the Free Soil party, and later 
 of the Republican party, and in 1857, in collab- 
 oration with Judge Lowell, he published a 
 learned and powerful pamphlet, which attracted 
 much attention, on the decision in the Dred Scott 
 case. 
 
 On Aug. 23, 1864, he was appointed to the 
 Supreme Judicial Court by Governor Andrew, 
 who had already learned the value of his advice 
 on the weighty questions which arose during the 
 Civil War. He was made Chief Justice of 
 Massachusetts by Governor Washburn in 1873, 
 and continued in that position until he took his 
 place on the Supreme Court at Washington, and 
 as his resignation had not taken effect when he 
 died he never ceased in thirty-eight years to hold 
 office as a judge. 
 
 The Massachusetts Reports contain an en- 
 during record of much of Chief Justice Gray's 
 judicial service to his native State. But there 
 was an important part of his work — very im- 
 [ 47 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 portant then, because the jurisdiction of the 
 Supreme Court as a trial court was more exten- 
 sive than it is now — of which there is no written 
 record. Of tills his intimate and lifelong friend. 
 Senator Hoar, has said : " He was an admirable 
 Nisi Prius judge. 1 think we rarely have ever 
 had a better. He possessed that faculty which 
 made the jury in the old days so admirable a 
 mechanism for performing their part in the ad- 
 ministration of justice. He had the rare gift, 
 especially rare in men whose training has been 
 chiefly upon the bench, of discerning the truth 
 of the fact, in spite of the apparent weight of the 
 evidence. That court, in its time, had exclu- 
 sive jurisdiction of divorces and other matters 
 affecting the marital relations. The judge had 
 to hear and deal with transactions of humble 
 life and of country life. It was surprising how 
 this man, bred in a city in high social position, 
 having no opportunity to kno v the modes of 
 thought and of life of poor men and of rustics, 
 would settle these interesting and delicate ques- 
 tions affecting so deeply the life of plain men 
 and country farmers, and the unerring sagacitj' 
 with which he came to the wise and righteous 
 result." 
 
 Traditions which are still strong in Massa- 
 [ 48 ] 
 
HORACE GRAY 
 
 chusetts tell of the respect which he himself paid 
 and exacted from others to the dignity of the 
 court. If at times his lofty view of the judicial 
 office led to manifestations of some severity, the 
 consequences did not fail to show his kind heart 
 and large nature. 
 
 On Dec. 20, 1881, he was commissioned by 
 President Arthur as an Associate Justice of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, and on 
 Jan. 9, 1882, he qualified and took his seat on 
 that bench. 
 
 His views and habits of thought made the ap- 
 pointment very appropriate. With a broad 
 idea of the powers of the National Government, 
 which showed itself soon, and finely, in his opin- 
 ion in the Legal Tender case, he combined a high 
 conception of the sovereignty of the States and 
 the warmest love for his own Commonwealth. 
 His learning in its legal history and tradition 
 was unequaled, and his twenty years' residence 
 in Washington did not dull in the least his local 
 pride as a citizen of Boston. Throughout 
 his opinions on constitutional questions there is 
 to be found a happy mean between the views of 
 those judges who have hesitated before a free 
 view of federal authority and those who have 
 been disposed to press that authority too far. 
 [ 49 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 He was also singularly fitted to deal with the 
 questions of international and public law with 
 which the Supreme Court has so much to do. 
 It marked the quality of his mind that with all 
 his extraordinary learning in the common law, 
 and his positive dehght in details of practice,* 
 he had no less interest in those larger matters 
 on the border line of our system of law which 
 have wakened so little interest in many a learned 
 common lawyer. This narrowness of view in the 
 " mere municipal lawyer," upon which he would 
 sometimes comment, was far from his own habit 
 of thought. Indeed it is with questions of in- 
 ternational law that many of his greatest judg- 
 ments are concerned. 
 
 He had always before his mind the character 
 of his decisions as a precedent ; and no considera- 
 ation affecting the exigencies of the particular 
 case ever caused him to lose sight of its wider 
 influence in the future. His first and last care 
 was ' that the law be not wounejed ; ' and to that 
 
 * Judge Lowell has said, in an admirable memoir 
 printed in the proceedings of tlie American Academy of 
 Arts and Sciences, vol. 39, p. 639, " It is literally true, I 
 believe, tliat, without notice, he could have discharged in 
 any American or English court the duties of any officer 
 from crier to chief justice, so that his example would 
 have profited the regular incumbent." 
 
 [ 50 ] 
 
HORACE GRAY 
 
 end he spared no pains that every one of his 
 opinions might come as near to absolute perfec- 
 tion as he could bring it. His industry never 
 hurried and never tired; and he gave to every 
 point which he considered, whether in an opinion 
 of his own or another's, the same enthusiastic 
 interest. He studied the briefs with scrupulous 
 care ; he searched the stores of a memory which 
 seemed nothing less than complete and infaUible ; 
 and he pushed his research in every conceivable 
 direction with a thoroughness which was the 
 despair of the observer. To quote again from 
 Senator Hoar, " his wonderful capacity for re- 
 search, the instinct which, when some interesting 
 question of law was up, would direct Gray's 
 thumb and finger to some obscure volume of 
 English Reports of Law or Equity, was almost 
 like the scent of a wild animal or a bird of prey." 
 He hked best to do his thinking aloud and de- 
 velop his views of a case by discussion. In 
 this way his secretary, who was each year a 
 student fresh from the Law School, had the rare 
 privilege of following his opinions as they were 
 formed ; and his secretaries will recall, with warm 
 gratitude, his unvarying kindness and consider- 
 ation, and the patient courtesy with which he 
 would hear to the end the crudest deliverances of 
 [ 51 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 youth. His flexibility of mind and willingness 
 to reexamine without bias or pride of authorship 
 liis own curlier views were wonderful in a man 
 of his strong convictions. In point of fact 
 no view was accepted by him because it 
 seemed to be settled by decision, and no theory 
 denied full consideration because it was new. 
 After his matter had been absolutely digested in 
 his mind he would write it out with his own hand, 
 with a characteristic scorn of stenography as of 
 other modern improvements, not relaxing his 
 care and study until the last comma in the proof 
 had been considered. Always in the end his 
 opinion (to quote from one of the beautiful 
 tributes tohis colleagues which are not the least 
 remarkable among the records of his service as 
 Chief Justice of Massachusetts) " had that 
 clearness of statement which was the result of 
 clearness of apprehension, and which made the 
 matter under discussion plain to every hearer — 
 so plain indeed that one did not always appre- 
 ciate the extent of one's obligation to hiiti." 
 
 It is sometimes said that his opinions are the 
 product more of great learning than of original 
 thinking. This impression is due in part to the 
 historical turn of his mind which is so conspic- 
 uous in his opinions. But it is also largely 
 
 [ 5a ] 
 
HORACE GRAY 
 
 caused by a conception of the judge's duty which 
 it may well be thought he carried to an extreme, 
 but to which he held with the strength that char- 
 acterized all his views on questions of principle 
 and obligation. In the matter of giving credit 
 to others his standards were the highest appli- 
 cable to forms of literature in which originality 
 is a more essential quality than in opinion writ- 
 ing, and he would say nothing as his own which 
 another judge had said before him. His secre- 
 tary would often urge him to incorporate in his 
 opinion the forcible and brilliant original rea- 
 soning by which he had reached his conclusion 
 in oral discussion. But he would only answer, 
 "You will find it all there" (indicating a pas- 
 sage where another judge had said something 
 like it, but generally not half so well), or else he 
 would point to the paragraph which can always 
 be found somewhere in his opinions, usually near 
 the end, in which his conclusions are summed up 
 almost with the conciseness of a head-note, and 
 would say, " Why doesn't that cover it, after 
 all? " Since there was practically nothing in 
 the records of the past which escaped him, and 
 since his habit of condensing his own reasoning 
 was as severe as his quotations from others were 
 generous, his personal share in the work often 
 [ 63 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 fails to receive full justice. But the free and 
 powerful mind which formed the judgment, and 
 the direct and ripe and patient thought which 
 developed it, may be seen in his grasp of the sub- 
 ject and in the clear light which he makes to 
 shine upon its darkest places. 
 
 He married on Jan. 4, 1890, Jane Matthews, 
 the daughter of his colleague and close personal 
 friend, Stanley Matthews. Passing each winter 
 in Washington, he nevertheless alwaj's kept his 
 house in Boston, and at the time of his death at 
 Naliant, Sept. 15, 1902, he was making his 
 plans to occupy it the next year. His private 
 life was remarkably happy and complete. He 
 was strongly religious, and was an intimate 
 friend of Phillips Brooks. Although he gave 
 himself to his work wholly and with character- 
 istic enthusiasm, his general reading was very 
 wide, and he followed current affairs with in- 
 terest. His conversation was delightful, full of 
 humor, and enriched by a wealth of anecdote 
 and memory that seemed to take the listener into 
 the bodily presence of the great men of an earlier 
 time. The tastes of his youth were strong in 
 him always, and his love of the woods and the 
 open air were quick to show themselves in any 
 recess from his judicial duties. He carried to 
 [ 54 ] 
 
HORACE GRAY 
 
 the end of his life the freshness of spirit and 
 vigor of mind of a young man ; and it was easy 
 to think of his majestic physical stature as typi- 
 fying a like eminence of mind and soul. No 
 one who was privileged to enjoy the warmth 
 and charm of daily intercourse with him and to 
 come under his personal influence can fail to 
 hold his memory in lasting admiration and love. 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
IV 
 CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES W. ELIOT 
 
 [57 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 Charles Franklin Dunbar, born at Abington 
 in July, 1830, was of Scotch descent, as his 
 sandy hair and complexion, his shrewdness, reti- 
 cence, and quiet humor plainly testified. He 
 was much interested in his family descent, and 
 gave no little time to tracing it both in Scotland 
 and in Massachusetts. In one of his journeys 
 to Scotland he visited the chief seats of the Dun- 
 bar Clan in Morayshire, and found reason to be- 
 lieve that from and after the year 1400 Dunbar 
 was one of the prevailing names in that region. 
 The first Dunbar in Massachusetts was Robert 
 Dunbar of Hingham, who said of himself, in a 
 deposition he made in court in 1659, that he was 
 a servant of Mr. Joshua Foote when Mr. Foote 
 lived in Boston. By a series of careful investi- 
 gations Charles Franklin Dunbar established the 
 strong probability that this Robert Dunbar who 
 was held to the services of Joshua Foote for a 
 term of years as early as 1655, and possibly as 
 early as 1652, was one of Cromwell's Scottish 
 prisoners taken at the battle of Dunbar in 1650, 
 [ 59 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 or at the battle of Worcester in 1651. It is cer- 
 tain that some of the prisoners taken at the battle 
 of Dunbar were sent to the Colony of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay in 1650—51, after having endured 
 frightful sufferings which killed three quarters 
 of the prisoners originally captured. Robert 
 Dunbar, who died in Hingham in 1693 at about 
 sixty years of age, was therefore, in all proba- 
 bility, of very tough fibre. 
 
 The father of Charles Franklin Dunbar was 
 Asaph Dunbar, who was bom in 1779 and died 
 in 1867. Charles was Asaph's 3'oungest child. 
 He had three brothers, all of whom filled out a 
 reasonable span of life, and two sisters, one of 
 whom died in infancy and the other at the age of 
 twenty-one. The father's business was making 
 boots and shoes, and Charles's three older 
 brothers grew up in that business in Plymouth 
 County, but while still young went away to New 
 Orleans to sell there the goods which their father 
 manufactured. One of these three brothers re- 
 turned to New York to establish himself there in 
 the same business. Charles was the only one of 
 the brothers who received a liberal education. He 
 was sent to Phillips Academy, Exeter, — prob- 
 ably because he had always shown a strong de- 
 sire to read and an aptitude for study. The 
 [ 60 ] 
 
CHARLES FRAKKHK fiiUNBAR 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Harvard Law School, and in the office of Eben- 
 ezer Rockwood Hoar, and was in due course 
 admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1858. Practice 
 coming to the young lawyer but slowly, he had 
 ample time to write for the Boston Daily Ad- 
 vertiser, and, finding this occupation congenial, 
 he became within a little more than a year editor 
 and part owner of that influential newspaper. In 
 this enterprise he was supported and helped by 
 the occasional labors of a group of young men 
 whom he had known at Exeter and in College; 
 but he himself gave his whole time and strength 
 to the paper. He remained in the position of 
 editor for ten years, — all through the Civil 
 War, and through the early years of recon- 
 struction and gradual pacification. During the 
 Civil War he personally wrote every editorial 
 article in any way related to the war which ap- 
 peared in that newspaper. The Advertiser be- 
 came by common consent tlie leading paper in 
 Boston, and no newspaper since has . exercised 
 the same influence in this community. His po- 
 sition brought him into contact with a large pro- 
 portion of the leading men of the time in eastern 
 Massachusetts, — with merchants, manufac- 
 turers, politicians, soldiers, lawj'crs, and preach- 
 ers. He wrote, of course, constantly on mili- 
 [ 62 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 tary events and prospects; but the subjects he 
 best liked to deal with were financial, economic, 
 or political, — such as the war loans, tariffs, and 
 banking acts, the suspension of specie payments, 
 and the measures taken to collect a great internal 
 revenue. The amount and the quality of the 
 work he did in the ten years between 1859 and 
 1869 were remarkable, considering that he be- 
 gan this work at twenty-nine and ended it at 
 thirty-nine years of age. At thirty years of 
 age he was wielding an influence which would 
 now seem almost impossible of attainment at 
 that age. 
 
 A few citations from his editorials will suffice 
 to give an idea of the elevation of their tone, 
 and of their moderation, judicial quality, and 
 prophetic insight. 
 
 As early as July 4, 1861, he thus defined the 
 objects of the war for the Union, and the spirit 
 of the Northern peopk : — 
 
 " We are fighting now, as eighty-five years ago, 
 to defend a cause in which the grandest principles 
 of government and the highest interests of man are 
 involved. Our people now as then have thrown 
 aside all remembrances of old divisions, and have 
 united in an enterprise which they believe to be 
 just and holy. Life, fortune, and sacred honor 
 [ 63 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 arc again pledged to the support of the patriotic 
 declarations with which the second war for liberty 
 has been undertaken; and again has Congress as- 
 sembled, prepared to forego the ordinary topics of 
 political strife, to forget as is believed all tests 
 save the one question of fidelity to country, and to 
 take counsel in singleness of heart for the one great 
 object." 
 
 Immediately after the heavy defeat of the 
 Union troops at the first battle of Bull Run, he 
 wrote, July 23, 1861 : — 
 
 " We said at the outset that this reverse had 
 temporarily defeated the scheme for advancing 
 through Virginia. Let no man to-day whisper the 
 thought of abating a jot of our vast undertaking. 
 Taught by one reverse the nation will rise above 
 its misfortune, and press on in its just and holy 
 cause. The people who have poured out their 
 blood and treasure so freely will be kindled to new 
 efforts. . . . Our present misfortune will disclose 
 to all the true secret of our weakness, and will 
 teach all that the advance for which some have so 
 long clamored is not to be accomplished in a single 
 effort. With a full knowledge on all hands of the 
 nature of our undertaking, and with such further 
 preparation as must now be made for this grand 
 enterprise, we can doubt its final success as little 
 as we can doubt the justice of the cause in which 
 
 [ 6* ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 it is undertaken, or the wisdom of the Providence 
 which rules all things for our good." 
 
 He early foresaw the fate of slavery as an 
 institution. Writing on the last night of the 
 year 1861 a survey of the events of the year, he 
 made this prophetic utterance a year before the 
 Emancipation Proclamation was issued : — 
 
 " It leaves our own people with renewed cour- 
 age, united beyond all hope in support of the gov- 
 ernment in a most trying case, and fully alive to 
 the importance of closing the war at once. It also 
 leaves the majority with an unshaken resolution to 
 confine the war to its proper objects, and to sus- 
 tain the President in the firm and conservative 
 course which he has pursued through the ten 
 months in which he has held office. At the same 
 time, the year has demonstrated to our whole peo- 
 ple the great fact, that in the designs of Omnip- 
 otence the South has been led through its own folly 
 to write the doom of slavery. Heavier and heavier 
 are the blows which descend upon that institution, 
 and more and more significant are the proofs that 
 the South built upon a weak foundation, when, 
 within this very year, it announced slavery as the 
 cornerstone of its fabric, political and social." 
 
 Near the close of the year 1862 Secretary 
 Chase communicated to the Committee on Ways 
 [ 65 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 id Means the draft of a bill to provide the 
 cessary resources for the prosecution of the 
 ir. The second section authorized the Sec- 
 tary of the Treasury to borrow nine hundred 
 llion dollars in any of the modes heretofore 
 ithorized for making loans. The bill also 
 ntainc'd the details of the national bank 
 heme. ]\Ir. Dunbar's comments on this bill 
 e in part as follows : — 
 
 " The most important feature of this bill, so far 
 regards the immediate emergencies of the coun- 
 7, is the second section, and this it seems to us 
 s been well conceived. . . . Should this power be 
 anted by Congress, we trust that the secretary 
 11 use it with liberal forethought. Armed with 
 11 powers, he will be able to feed the market with 
 ?h securities as are most popular, at times when 
 ices are favorable. Unrestricted by needless 
 immcls, he can avail himself of the most favor- 
 le proposals which may be suggested from time 
 time by those who Imve money to loan, or who 
 1 present well-considered plans for meeting the 
 nts of the Treasury with the least cost to the 
 tion." 
 
 Of that very important part of the bill which 
 ated to the establishment of the national bank 
 <tcm he speaks as follows, in his few words 
 [ 66 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 showing that he had a clear vision of the wide 
 scope and far-reaching consequences of the pro- 
 ject: — 
 
 " It has been taken for granted that this meas- 
 ure wiU provoke a violent opposition, which, never- 
 theless, as yet has not manifested itself in any very 
 definite shape. It is nowhere denied that the Sec- 
 retary's plan insures several very decided advan- 
 tages ; it looks rather to the establishment of a 
 sound currency for the country upon a permanent 
 basis than to any immediate results. If it be said 
 that it will be time enough to legislate to this end 
 when we have got out of the war and the financial 
 difficulties incident thereto, it may be answered 
 with at least equal force that the necessity of re- 
 form will then be less generally apparent. ' Why 
 don't you mend your roof? ' asked a traveler of a 
 negro in whose leaky hut he had taken refuge dur- 
 ing the shower. ' 'Cause it rains ' was the an- 
 swer. ' But why don't you mend it at some time 
 when there is no rain ? ' ' 'Cause then it don't 
 leak.' This sort of logic will hardly justify Con- 
 gress in refusing a careful attention to Mr. 
 Chase's plan, notwithstanding the statement pa- 
 raded in advance, that ' the majority of the Ways 
 and Means are hostile to Mr. Chase's scheme,' and 
 that ' this sentiment of disapproval cannot possibly 
 be changed.' " 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 After the great victories at Gettysburg and 
 Vicksburg, July 3-5, 1863, .Mr. Dunbar wrote 
 as follows on the 8th of July : — 
 
 " W'c speak of these events as of extreme polit- 
 ical importance, because they have now for the 
 first time fairly established the ascendency of the 
 national power over the rebellion. Hitherto the 
 struggle has been often a drawn game, and even in 
 our moments of success has left the military 
 strength of the rebels so formidable as to keep 
 their hopes alive. The handwriting is now on 
 the wall in characters which the rudest may read, 
 warning the rebels that henceforth theirs is a hope- 
 less cause, and that from this time their efforts 
 must decline. We may now, at any rate, count 
 upon the moral effect of defeat and loss of faith 
 in their cause, and may hope for the appearance of 
 those discontents and divisions to which despond- 
 ency gives rise, and which precede the final ruin of 
 a cause which, like the rebellion, has no root in 
 sound principle." 
 
 Looking buck on this statement after an in- 
 terval of thirty-seven years, we are struck with 
 its absolute accuracy. 
 
 In ills review of the year 1863, on tlie Slst of 
 December, bis comments on the Proclamation of 
 Emancipation illustrate the perfect balance of 
 bis judgment : — 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 " The most distinctly marked event in the con- 
 duct of the war for the year, however, is unques- 
 tionably the Proclamation of Emancipation issued 
 on the 1st of January, 1863. Of this measure it 
 can now be said, that it has equally disappointed 
 its advocates and its opponents. It has failed to 
 effect the dissolution of the rebel power which was 
 so confidently predicted as certain to be its instan- 
 taneous effect, and has left the actual work of 
 emancipation to be performed by the steady ad- 
 vance of military operations. On the other hand, 
 it has failed to make that disastrous division among 
 the loyal which was predicted by many of its op- 
 ponents. The mass of the people have acquiesced 
 in it as a military measure taken in good faith. 
 But we must remark, they have done this the more 
 readily since on independent grounds the policy of 
 emancipation has gained favor in the popular mind 
 rapidly during the j'ear." 
 
 Speaking of the extraordinary sales of 5-20 
 bonds in the summer and autumn of 1863, he 
 writes as follows : ■ — 
 
 " Throughout the country these bonds have been 
 eagerly sought, with the noblest demonstrations of 
 confidence and affection towards the government in 
 defense of which the money is contributed. The 
 success with which the government now deals with 
 a debt of great magnitude has inspired the country 
 
 [ 69 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 with faith in its ability to cope with the future, 
 heavy as are tlie burdens promised by the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury." 
 
 How far-sccing is the following pauagraph, 
 which occurs in the same review of the year 
 1863 : — 
 
 " The feelings of the French Emperor towards 
 the United States had long been suspected, but 
 were first fully appreciated by our people when his 
 designs in Mexico were fairly unmasked, and when 
 he announced his deliberate design of erecting a 
 throne in that country to be occupied by a prince 
 nominated by himself. It was immediately per- 
 ceived that France had created for herself upon 
 this continent an interest adverse to that of the 
 United States. The occupation of the Rio Grande 
 by our forces, however, together with the estab- 
 lished certainty that the Emperor will for the 
 present find enough to do in dealing with the 
 Mexican people, who do not accede to the fiction 
 that Maximilian is their choice, has finally quieted 
 all fears as to the course of France for the pres- 
 ent." 
 
 In his review of the year 1864, Mr. Dunbar 
 wrote as follows : — 
 
 " Never has the struggle seemed so gigantic as 
 in this year, never have the contending forces so 
 [ TO ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 convulsed the continent with their efforts, or so 
 appalled the spectators of a strife as terrible and 
 unrelenting as that of the elements. Indeed, this 
 is an elemental strife, which we have seen ap- 
 proaching its climax and crisis, — a strife which, 
 in the words of a philosophic observer who was 
 lately among us, is waged ' not only between Aris- 
 tocracy and Democracy, between Slavery and So- 
 cial Justice, but between ferocious Barbarism and 
 high Civilization. 
 
 " It is only when we view the contest in this 
 light that it is possible to realize completely the 
 futility of such efforts at pacification as that which 
 has characterized this year, and which was de- 
 feated by the will of the people a few weeks ago. 
 These raging elements are as far beyond the reach 
 of all such attempts to quiet their agitation as is 
 the tempest which purifies the physical atmosphere. 
 The forces have long been gathering, they are in 
 the full height of their sublime power, and are 
 not to be stayed until the mission assigned to them 
 by Providence is accomplished. A great political 
 party thought otherwise, and sought by months of 
 carefully studied effort to still the contention by 
 premature peace ; and it finds itself to-day shivered 
 to atoms, and its candidates swept aside like chaff 
 and forgotten. The judgment of the nation and 
 its will have risen to the height of the occasion, 
 and have settled irrevocably the devotion of this 
 [ Tl ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 people to their grand task to the very end. In its 
 moral aspects, then, the result of the election has 
 been the great event of the year and of the war." 
 
 Mr. Dunbar was often called upon to express 
 the strongest emotions of the people under cir- 
 cumstances of tremendous excitement. After 
 listening all day to the rejoicings in the streets 
 of Boston over the surrender at Appomattox, 
 he wrote at night an editorial in which two out 
 of the four paragraphs are as follows : — 
 
 " Four years ago this morning we were obliged 
 to say in this place " we do not seek to pierce the 
 gloom which now seems to overspread the future.' 
 Four years of that future as they have enrolled 
 themselves have shown many another crisis, or 
 agony more acute, but none of gloom so depressing 
 as settled on us all in that week of uncertainty. 
 This day is the anniversarj' of the humiliating cor- 
 respondence between General Beauregard and 
 Major Anderson, in wliich he demanded the sur- 
 render of Fort Sumter as a foregone necessity. 
 To-morrow is the anniversary of the day on which 
 he opened his fire. These four years have called 
 upon the nation to show its steadfast endurance. 
 They have called fc* that loyalty to institutions 
 which does not seek to pierce the gloom of the 
 future. They have bidden the nation stand firm 
 on the eternal i)riiicij)!cs of its government, 
 [ -2 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 and trust God to give it victory, when for victory 
 the time had come. Through that gloom, or the 
 flushes of hope which at one moment or another 
 varied it, the nation has stood firm, and at last the 
 end has come. . . . 
 
 " Such are the moral advantages of the victory. 
 They make a nation so strong that war in its fu- 
 ture is wholly unnecessary, — it seems hardly pos- 
 sible. This nation is j ust, — it can be as generous 
 as it is just. It has no entangling foreign alli- 
 ances, it need have no petty foreign jealousies. 
 God has shown it His mercy in a thousand ways, 
 and now that He blesses it with Peace, it has His 
 promise that Peace shall lead in every other angel 
 of his Kingdom." 
 
 At the close of the year 1865 he wrote as 
 follows, prophesying a period of discussion and 
 evolution which has not yet ended: — 
 
 " The year, we may trust, is the last in the suc- 
 cession of years which by striking and exciting 
 events compete for the leading place in our annals. 
 The period of great deeds is perhaps over ; we now 
 have remaining questions of magnitude to be de- 
 bated and settled, or to be suffered to work to- 
 wards their own solution by process of time, and 
 not concentrating their fierce interest into single 
 great transactions, of which we have known so 
 many since I860. The question as to the future 
 [ 73 J 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 of the frcedmcn is not to be settled by the turn of 
 any crisis, but by many discussions, the long-con- 
 tinued operation of opinions, and the progress of 
 immigration, of industry, and of ideas. Financial 
 questions, of which we Lave so many of importance, 
 are as little to be determined by any special action, 
 but cast their shadow far over the coming years. 
 The foreign questions, of which the closing year 
 leaves us a supply not trifling in importance if 
 scanty in number, are as little likely, we may hope, 
 to assume such form as to bring back the unhealthy 
 excitements which have long been familiar, but will 
 rather relapse into the ordinary course of interna- 
 tional litigation, or be settled by causes and in- 
 fluences which in power are far above the counsels 
 of emperors. In short, we now enter in public 
 matters upon a period of discussion; and if results 
 appropriate to this method of action are wrought 
 out with half the skill and power which we have 
 seen displayed in the marvelous twelvemonth now 
 ending, we shall find our prosperity and happiness, 
 and our development in all that ennobles a people, 
 settled on a foundation more solid than our fathers 
 ventured to hope for." 
 
 During his administration the Advertiser as a 
 property increased greatly in value ; so that 
 when in 1869 Mr. Dunbar found it necessary 
 again to pay attention to his health, and to give 
 
 [ T4 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 up work for a time, he sold his interest in the 
 newspaper for a sum which amounted to a com- 
 petency for himself and his family. This was 
 really a value which his own mental gifts and 
 moral character had imparted to the newspaper. 
 There is no more satisfactory way in which a 
 man can earn a competent support for his fam- 
 ily before he is forty years of age. All through 
 his hfe Mr. Dunbar was a careful, frugal, and 
 successful man of business, although he gave 
 but a very small portion of liis time to that side 
 of Hfe. 
 
 In order to recover from the nervous ex- 
 haustion which he experienced in 1868, he made 
 two journeys to Europe, the first alone, but the 
 second with his family. I had come into the 
 Presidency of Harvard College in 1869, and one 
 of the first measures M-hich the Corporation re- 
 solved to prosecute with vigor was the estab- 
 lishment of a Professorship of Political Econ- 
 omy, and the selection of an incumbent for the 
 chair. Mr. Dunbar being well known to all 
 the members of the Corporation, the appoint- 
 ment was offered to him in 1869, and he gave a 
 conditional acceptance to take effect two years 
 later. A quiet life in various parts of Europe 
 restored his health and gave him opportunity 
 [ 75 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 for the prosecution of studies which prepared 
 him furtlier for his new function ; and in 1871 
 he took up the work of his professorship, to 
 which he thereafter steadily devoted himself for 
 more than twenty-eight years. 
 
 Professor Dunbar was the first Professor of 
 Political Economy that Harvard University 
 ever had. That great subject had previously 
 been one of the numerous subjects assigned to 
 the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, 
 Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity. Profes- 
 sor Dunbar announced for the year 1871-72 a 
 course prescribed to Juniors on Rogers's " Po- 
 litical Economy " and Aldcn's " Constitution of 
 the United States," two hours a week for half 
 a year, and an elective course in Pohtical Econ- 
 omy for the Senior Class, based on Adam 
 Smith's "Wealth of Nations," Bowen's 
 " American Political Economy," and J. S. 
 Mill's " Political Economy ; " but these courses 
 were announced under the head of Philosophy. 
 The elective course was attended by seventy- 
 five Seniors. The next year his elective course 
 appears under its proper heading, — Political 
 Science, — the description of the course being 
 altered to the following : J. S. Mill's " Pohtical 
 Economy," McCulloch on Taxation, Subjects 
 [ '6 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANICLIN DUNBAR 
 
 in Banking and Currency. Professor Dunbar 
 also conducted in 1872—73 a required course for 
 Juniors in Political Science, two hours a week 
 during half a year. That year he used as text- 
 books for the Junior's Fawcett's " Political 
 Economy " and the Constitution of the United 
 States. In 1873-74 Professor Dunbar had for 
 the first time the assistance of an instructor, 
 because the required course in the Elements of 
 Political Economy was transferred from the 
 Junior to the Sophomore year, — on its way to 
 extinction, — so that this required course had 
 to be given that year to two large classes. Un- 
 der Professor Dunbar's elective course, Bage- 
 hot's " Lombard Street " appears for the first 
 time. In the next year Professor Dunbar gave, 
 in addition to the prescribed Political Economy, 
 two elective courses parallel to each other, one 
 being preferable for students of History. The 
 rapidly increasing number of students in the de- 
 partment made it desirable to offer these two 
 parallel courses, so that neither class should be 
 too large. One hundred and thirty-one students 
 chose these electives. In 1875-76 Professor 
 Dunbar was conducting three progressive 
 courses : the prescribed elementary course, a first 
 elective course on J. S. Mill's " Political Econ- 
 [ 77 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 omy," and the Financial Legislation of the 
 United States ; and an advanced course on 
 Cairns's " Leading Principles of Political Econ- 
 omy ; " and McKcan's " Condensation of 
 Carey's Social Science ; " and the number of 
 students attending his course was steadily in- 
 creasing. In the following year Professor 
 Dunbar became Dean of the College Faculty, 
 an administrative position which he held for six 
 years. The prescribed course in Political Econ- 
 omy for Sophomores now disappeared. The 
 elective courses were full}- maintained. Pro- 
 fessor Dunbar had some assistance in the ele- 
 mentary elective course, because of the necessity 
 of devoting a good deal of his time to the ad- 
 ministrative work of the Dean's office. His as- 
 sistant in the year 1877-78 was Mr. ]Mac\'ane, 
 now Professor of History in Harvard Uni- 
 versity. The next year his assistant was Dr. 
 James Laurence Laughlin, who had the title of 
 Instructor in Political Economy. In 1880-81 
 another course in Political Economy was added 
 to the two already given, Professor Dunbar 
 working in all three courses, but being assisted 
 in the first two by Dr. Laughlin. The most 
 advanced elective under Professor Dunbar was 
 based on Cairns's " Leading Principles of Po- 
 
 [ '8 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 litical Economy," McLeod's " Elements of 
 Banking," Bastiat's " Harmonies Economiques." 
 In the year 1882-83 Professor Dunbar took 
 leave of absence in Europe. His work was car- 
 ried on by Dr. Laughlin and a new instructor, 
 Mr. Frank W. Taussig, now Professor of Po- 
 litical Economy in Harvard University. A new 
 half-course was added this year, — a course on 
 the Economic Effects of Land Tenures in Eng- 
 land, Ireland, France, Germany, and Russia. 
 The next year brought considerable expansion 
 to the Department. Professor Dunbar re- 
 turned to his work ; Dr. Laughlin was made an 
 assistant professor ; and Dr. Taussig offered for 
 the first time a course on the History of Tariff 
 Legislation in the United States. The number 
 of courses offered by the Department suddenly 
 expanded to four courses running through the 
 whole year, and three running through half a 
 year. Economic History appeared for the first 
 time as part of the instruction given by the De- 
 partment, Professor Dunbar having charge of 
 the course. It was in that year that the plans 
 of Professor Dunbar for the development of 
 his department in the University became appar- 
 ent to the academic world. Dr. Taussig soon 
 became an assistant professor ; Dr. Laughlin was 
 I T9 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 promoted to a full professorship at Cornell 
 University, whence he was subsequently trans- 
 ferred to the University of Chicago ; and a 
 scries of young men, all selected by Professor 
 Dunbar, were brought forward in the Depart- 
 ment as teachers. The number of teachers and 
 courses increased until, in 1894>— 95, this De- 
 partment, called Economics since 1892-93, em- 
 ployed three full professors, one assistant pro- 
 fessor, and three instructors, and the number of 
 courses had risen to six full courses and seven 
 half-courses. In 1899 the lowest elective course 
 in Economics was opened to Freshmen ; so that 
 the Harvard student thenceforth had access to 
 that subject in all the four years of his college 
 course. For the present year, 1899—1900, 
 courses were announced which gave employment 
 to three full professors, one assistant professor, 
 and six instructors. In the academic 3'ear 
 1 898-99 the choices made of courses in Econom- 
 ics numbered 1263. 
 
 Such was the development given in twenty- 
 eight years to a subject which certainly should 
 be second to none in value or dignity at an 
 American university. At every step of the 
 process it was Professor Dunbar's sagacity, so- 
 briety, and fairness which commanded confidence 
 [ 80 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 and secured success. He thus made, in the 
 course of twenty-eight years, as it were with his 
 own hands, a complete collegiate instrument for 
 training young Americans in Pohtical Econ- 
 omy, the first such instrument ever constructed. 
 If it should occur to any one that this growth 
 was made possible by the general atmosphere at 
 Harvard, the answer would be that Professor 
 Dunbar had much to do with determining the 
 quality of that atmosphere. 
 
 In 1886 a timely gift of a fund of $15,000 
 from one of Professor Dunbar's pupils enabled 
 the Corporation to establish the Quarterly 
 Journal of Economics, published for Harvard 
 University. They took this step by the advice 
 of Professor Dunbar, and on the condition that 
 he should edit the Journal. He acted as editor 
 for ten years, and in that time established the 
 position of the Journal in this country and in 
 Europe as a valuable medium for economic dis- 
 cussions and researches. The subjects of some 
 of the articles which he wrote for this Journal 
 will indicate the wide range of his studies: In 
 1886, "The Reaction in Politics;" in 1887, 
 " Deposits and Currency," and a note on 
 Ricardo's Use of Facts ; in 1888, a notice of an 
 old tract entitled "The New-Fashioned Gold- 
 [ 81 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 smiths," a tract which appears to have been the 
 source of the generally accepted statement as 
 to the origin of private banking in London in 
 the seventeenth century. In the same year ap- 
 peared " Notes on Early Banking Schemes " 
 from his pen, and an article on " Some Prece- 
 dents Followed by Alexander Hamilton." At 
 the end of this last paper, after a learned re- 
 view of the system advocated by Hamilton, and 
 of the sources of the measures which he recom- 
 mended. Professor Dunbar said in conclusion : 
 " No statesman could have a greater task set 
 for him, and political science can hardly have 
 in store any greater triumph than tliis applica- 
 tion of the experience of other men and other 
 nations." In 1889 he wrote for the Quarterly 
 Journal an article on the Direct Tax of 1861, 
 the conclusion of which was, " The direct tax 
 provided for by the Constitution has at last 
 been discredited as a source of revenue, and it 
 has also been too prolific of misconception and 
 confusion to have any influence henceforth as a 
 practical measure of finance." A single sen- 
 tence from an essay he published in the Journal 
 in 1891 on the academic study of political econ- 
 omy admirably expresses the true conception 
 of the function of an instructor in any moral 
 [ 82 J 
 
CHARLES FRANIvLIN DUNBAR 
 
 science : " That the student should learn to 
 reason truly is of far more consequence than 
 that he should perceive and accept any partic- 
 ular truth, and the real success of the instructor 
 is found, not in bringing his students to think 
 exactly as he does, — which is unUkely to happen, 
 and, indeed, unnatural, — but in teaching them 
 to use their own faculties accurately and with a 
 measure of confidence." In another passage in 
 the same essay, speaking of the conditions under 
 which an instructor may or may not be silent 
 concerning his own beliefs, he says, " There are 
 few men whose weight of authority is such as to 
 compel any extraordinary caution in the dec- 
 laration of their minds." Those two statements 
 are highly characteristic of Professor Dunbar's 
 habitual attitude towards his own students. 
 
 One may easily trace through all the activi- 
 ties of Professor Dunbar as a teacher and writer 
 the effect on his mind of his ten years' work as 
 the editor of a daily paper during a period of 
 startling and far-reaching military, financial, 
 social, and political events ; but it is interesting 
 to observe that commercial and economic ques- 
 tions began to engage his attention some years 
 before the war. Thus we find in the North 
 American Review an article by him on the Dan- 
 [ 83 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ish Sound Dues written as early as 1856, when he 
 was twenty-six years of age. His services as a 
 university teacher grew naturally out of the 
 studies and interests of his early manhood. 
 
 Professor Dunbar was Dean of the old Col- 
 lege Faculty for six years, from 1876 to 1882, 
 and the first Dean of the new Faculty of Arts 
 and Sciences from 1890 to 1895. He therefore 
 gave a large amount of administrative service 
 to the University. As an administrative officer 
 he was prompt, efiicient, and wise. One pecul- 
 iarity he had which was rather trying to some 
 of the many students and parents of students 
 with whom he came into contact, — he was some- 
 times too reticent and silent. He would listen 
 patiently to a long tale in which the narrator 
 felt great interest, and take it all in, but hardly 
 utter a word in reply. Sometimes, however, 
 after his interlocutor had despaired of getting 
 an answer, he would give a concise but compre- 
 hensive reply which showed how sympathetically 
 he had apprehended the whole subject under dis- 
 cussion. Ordinarily patient and cautious, he 
 was entirely capable of quick decision and 
 prompt action. On a rcconnoissance he was cir- 
 cumspect and tliorougii ; but when he once made 
 [ 84 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANIvLIN DUNBAR 
 
 up his mind how the land lay and how the 
 adversary was intrenched, he moved on the posi- 
 tion, in the safest possible way, to be sure, but 
 with energy and persistence. As a rule, his 
 aspect was serene and mild; but on occasion 
 his face could become set, and from his blue- 
 gray eyes there came a steel-like gleam danger- 
 ous to his opponent. In his judgment of others 
 he was gentle, unless he became satisfied that 
 some man he had been observing did not play 
 fair, or was untrustworthy at the pinch ; then 
 he became stern and unrelenting. It was these 
 qualities which made him the successful journal- 
 ist that he was at thirty years of age. The 
 Faculty was always afraid to take a step of 
 which he did not approve, and seldom did so, 
 unless his occasional infirmity of silence had con- 
 cealed from them his opinion. They felt in 
 him a remarkable sagacity combined with quick 
 insight and unwavering disinterestedness; and 
 they found him to be uniformly just. If he 
 now and then betrayed a prejudice, they felt 
 sure that he had good grounds for it, and 
 were much disposed to share it with him. Every 
 one who has seen much of the world will per- 
 ceive how rare a combination of quahties was 
 [ 85 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 embodied in tliis modest and retiring man, and 
 will understand how great a loss the University 
 has suffered in his death. 
 
 In addition to the solid satisfactions Mr. 
 Dunbar derived from his forty years of pro- 
 fessional work, he had great delights in his 
 domestic life. He married, soon after leaving 
 college, Julia Ruggles Copcland, of Roxbury, 
 and he survived his wife only two months. Five 
 children were born to them between 1855 and 
 1862, of whom three sons and a daughter sur- 
 vive their father and mother. 
 
 I have already mentioned the life of the 
 young family at Lexington. When he became 
 editor of the Advertiser, he moved, first, to Rox- 
 bury ; but finding the inevitable exposures of 
 returning to Roxbury from his office late at 
 night (often after the omnibuses had ceased 
 to run) too great for his strength, he moved 
 to a small house on River Street, at the foot of 
 Beacon Hill. This house was comparatively 
 sunless, and, though close to Beacon Street, 
 had no outlook whatever. It was a great de- 
 light to him and his wife and his growing chil- 
 dren to establish the household in 1872 in a 
 spacious house on the hill which rises north of 
 Brattle Street, Cambridge, not far from Elm- 
 [ 86 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 wood, a house which commanded a charming 
 prospect, and was surrounded by fine trees. He 
 had earned the luxury of fine prospects, abound- 
 ing sun and air, and garden grounds, as prod- 
 uct of the work of his own brain. His tastes 
 and habits were simple, but refined. Luxuries 
 and superfluities had no charm for him. He 
 was fond of driving and sailing, but needed no 
 elaborate equipment for obtaining these pleas- 
 ures.^ He valued these sports mainly as means 
 of getting into contact with the beauties of na- 
 ture by land and by sea. He had the natural 
 healthy enjoyment in food and drink, but al- 
 ways preferred simple things to elaborate, and 
 was displeased by extravagance or excess. 
 
 In 1886 he bought the larger part of Bear 
 Island, off Mount Desert, the smaller part being 
 already occupied by the United States as the 
 site of a lighthouse; and here he built in 1893 
 a cottage for the summer occupation of his 
 family. When visiting friends on the neigh- 
 boring shore of Mount Desert, he had often 
 marked the beautiful form of this island, and 
 admired the exquisite views it commanded in 
 several directions. In deciding upon the site 
 of his house on this island, it was his chief care 
 to avoid impairing the aspect of the island from 
 [ 87 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 the neighboring shores, — a thoughtful result 
 ■which he perfectly achieved. All his life he 
 had great pleasure in carpentering. He always 
 had a carpenter's bench in any house he occu- 
 pied, and delighted in good tools and in using 
 them with skill. He could build with his own 
 hands fireplaces, corner buffets, desks, tables, 
 and other pieces of furniture. At Bear Island 
 he built a large boat-house with chambers in 
 its upper story, doing most of the work with 
 liis own hands, after the heavy framing had been 
 put up. He enjoyed thinning the woods which 
 covered the northern shore of the island, and 
 studying the flora and fauna of his isolated 
 kingdom. A thrifty little spruce, looking as 
 if it could easily resist all the ice and snow, all 
 the gales, and all the droughts of that northern 
 clime, a single graceful birch, a mountain ash 
 loaded with red berries, or a clump of ferns, 
 sufficed to give him great enjoyment. With 
 reading and writing interspersed, such pleasures 
 filled his summer days so completely and so 
 happily that he seldom wished to leave his island. 
 Friends came to stay with him ; but he seldom 
 cared to go far from his cottage, unless on a 
 sail or a drive with one of his neighbors of the 
 main island. Tlicro was no road on his island, 
 [ 88 ] 
 
CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR 
 
 and hardly a path, except little tracks between 
 the hummocks and ledges ; and there were no 
 sounds, except the beat of the waves on the 
 rocky shores, the singing of birds, and the rush- 
 ing of the wind through the trees. One of 
 the peculiarities of the climate of the Maine 
 coast had singular charm for Professor Dunbar. 
 On almost every summer evening near sunset, 
 there falls a great calm and stillness. No mat- 
 ter how boisterous the day may have been, near 
 sundown there comes a widespread, profound 
 silence, unspeakably grateful to such a tem- 
 perament as his. The hills of Mount Desert, 
 in fuU view from his island, reminded him of 
 the similar hills built of primary rocks which 
 his Scottish forbears had looked on in far-away 
 Morayshire. 
 
 Outside his family circle his intimate asso- 
 ciates were not numerous; but his friendships 
 were intense, and his rare and concise expres- 
 sions of affection were overwhelmingly strong. 
 As I look back on this completed life, it seems 
 to me filled with productive labors and large 
 services from which came deep satisfactions. 
 Grave trials and sorrows hallowed it; but its 
 main warp and woof were both made of in- 
 numerable threads of happiness and content. 
 [ 89 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 In his religious convictions he was a Uni- 
 tarian, and he valued highly that simple and 
 optimistic faith; but his mind was hospitable 
 to all forms of theological opinion, while he was 
 strenuously averse to ecclesiasticism and aesthet- 
 icism in religion. Simplicity, cheerfulness, 
 duty, and love were the articles of his faith, 
 and human joy and well-being their natural 
 fruit. 
 
 [ 90 ] 
 
V 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT 
 
 91 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 The more closely we study the career of Phillips 
 Brooks, the more remarkable does it appear. 
 At a time when many are saying that the power 
 of the pulpit is declining, he, simply as a 
 preacher, exerted an influence which would have 
 been noticeable In any age of Christian history. 
 From the fact that when he was in college he 
 is said to have manifested no desire to be a 
 leader among his fellows, it would appear that 
 he reached his position with little impulse from 
 ambition. In his sermons there is nothing mere- 
 tricious. He was a typical Harvard man in 
 his fastidiousness, so far as anything like sen- 
 sationalism was concerned. Certain aspects of 
 theology that are often thought especially to 
 move the popular mind were hardly, if at all, 
 touched upon in his preaching. The fact that 
 under these circumstances he reached the com- 
 manding position which he held is one of the 
 most promising signs of the times, as well as an 
 indication of the greatness of the man. 
 
 When we come to seek the source of the won- 
 [ 93 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 derful power which he possessed over the hearts 
 of men, the answer commonly given is that it 
 is to be found in the goodness of his heart. He 
 was a man of such broad sympathies, it is said, 
 of such tender interest in those about him, and 
 of such earnest faith, that he was felt by all 
 to be a friend and a helper; and thus men re- 
 sponded to his interest in them with an answer- 
 ing love and trust. This statement does give, 
 indeed, the ultimate source of his influence ; but, 
 however paradoxical it may seem, it does not 
 give the explanation of it. There are multi- 
 tudes of men and women, of ministers and lay- 
 men, who have a religious faith as earnest as 
 his, and a love for their fellow-men as strong. 
 In many cases this love for man is subjected to 
 tests far more severe than were found in any 
 experiences of his. He, in spite of occasional 
 criticism and opposition, was alwaj-s surrounded 
 by enthusiastic love and applause. He had 
 from the beginning recognition of himself and 
 of his work ; while many of those of whom I 
 speak are giving their lives to their fellows, 
 without recognition or encouragement. He 
 himself delighted to contemplate the beauty of 
 these so often unappreciated lives. He says, 
 " I have seen rooms, wliere such men or such 
 [ 94 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 women, 'weak, and ignorant, perhaps, were breath- 
 ing out their long days of . suffering, which were 
 very Holies of Holies." 
 
 To the possession of these qualities by the 
 great preacher, we have then to add the power 
 to manifest them in such ways that men felt 
 their influence, and yielded themselves to their 
 might. 
 
 We cannot fail to notice, as helpful in this 
 manifestation, his magnificent personal endow- 
 ments ; his noble form, his face that was so 
 often all aglow with the inner light, his air of 
 culture and refinement, which might at first 
 seem to stand between him and the popular 
 sympathy, but which, when the difficulty was 
 overcome, added new elements of attraction and 
 influence. Men loved to see such spiritual 
 power so superbly embodied. They loved to see 
 a nature so endowed for worldly success sur- 
 rendering itself to a life of service. They loved 
 to see culture and refinement fired with an en- 
 thusiasm such as they too often repress. The 
 humblest felt a strange charm in the brother- 
 hood that was offered to them across lines which 
 are so often those of separation. It was the 
 naturalness of it all, the spontaneity, the un- 
 consciousness, that gave to such relations their 
 [ 95 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 great uttractiveness. Even the rapidity of his 
 utterance, which at first repelled, soon became 
 associated with the man, and added a certain 
 air of eager impetuosity to his discourse. 
 
 All these characteristics, which I have im- 
 perfectly described, unquestionably contributed 
 to the power of the preacher. They are not, 
 however, sufficient to explain this power. We 
 have to recognize the fact that his printed ser- 
 mons retained this influence. The noble pres- 
 ence, the eager utterance, were absent ; but the 
 power remained. To multitudes throughout the 
 English-reading world who had never felt the 
 magnetism of his personal presence, these ser- 
 mons have come with a power of inspiration such 
 as few works of their class could claim. They 
 have appealed to the same diversities of culture 
 and of belief to which his spoken word appealed. 
 
 We have then to recognize the fact that Phil- 
 lips Brooks was a man of genius. He was as 
 truly such as any one of our great poets. It is 
 not important, nor, indeed, would it be possible, 
 to make a comparative estimate of his genius with 
 that of any specified poet or artist. All that 
 is to our purpose is to notice the fact of his 
 wonderful genius, and to illustrate, as may be 
 possible, its nature and its methods. 
 [ 96 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 The genius that Phillips Brooks possessed 
 was that of the preacher as truly as that of 
 Longfellow or of Tennyson was that of the 
 poet. I cannot say under what other forms this 
 genius might have manifested itself, or what 
 other types of success might have been accom- 
 plished by it. What was actually displayed in 
 his hfe was the genius of the preacher. There 
 are many preachers of genius who have not the 
 special genius for preaching. Some preachers 
 do helpful service by their reasoning; some in- 
 spire by the power of their imagination: there 
 are comparatively few in whom the special 
 genius which marks the truest preacher as such 
 makes itself felt. This genius was preem- 
 inently the gift of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 The genius of the preacher, I need hardly 
 say, consists in the power of so uttering spiritual 
 truth that it shall be effective in influencing the 
 hearts of men. This implies a profound insight 
 into religious truth, — an insight that shall re- 
 veal implications and applications of whicli the 
 ordinary mind is not conscious. It implies also 
 a gift for the presentation of what is thus beheld 
 in an attractive and effective form. It is thus 
 a genius of expression, which is something very 
 different from a genius for expressions. Shakes- 
 [ 97 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 peare had a genius for expressing the passions 
 of the human heart. This imphed an insight 
 into the depths of human life, a power of crea- 
 tion by wliich what he perceived was embodied 
 in Hving forms, and a power of presentation 
 by which these forms that lived for him should 
 live also for the world. This may illustrate the 
 elements that enter into the genius of the 
 preacher, so far as the sphere which limits his 
 work is concerned. 
 
 No one can have failed to notice the change 
 which, to a large extent, the sermon has under- 
 gone in these later years. The older sermon 
 we may call classical. It was dignified. It was 
 intense, in the sense that there was in it Uttle 
 wandering from its special theme. It held itself 
 within the limits of tiieology or religion, strictly 
 so called. It touched very few points in the life 
 of man. It did not seek to amuse ; we might 
 almost say it did not seek to interest. It com- 
 manded attention to the truth upon which it 
 dwelt. By it the hearer was brought face to 
 face with the great realities. If the hearer was 
 affected, it was largely through the reason — 
 that is, by the recognition of some truth, or 
 of something that was regarded as truth — 
 which appealed to his moral or religious nature. 
 [ 98 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 Perhaps the sermons of Channing may stand 
 among the best examples of this form of preach- 
 ing. It was lofty, invigorating, profoundly 
 religious, and contenting itself with an appeal 
 to the spiritual nature by the means of the im- 
 pressiveness of truth. 
 
 The modem sermon stands less upon its dig- 
 nity. It seeks first of all to interest. It touches 
 the life of man at all points. It is familiar 
 with the home and with the street. It finds 
 illustrations on every hand. It is discursive. 
 It dwells upon an illustration tiU, for a moment, 
 one may forget what is illustrated. In a word, 
 it seeks to have a human interest as well as a 
 religious interest. 
 
 If we may accept these characterizations as 
 representing, loosely and generally, two differ- 
 ent classes of sermons, we may reach the best 
 idea of the sermons of Phillips Brooks by say- 
 ing that they possess the dignity of the classical 
 type, with the human interest of what might 
 be called the romantic type of preaching. 
 
 In his sermons there is almost a total lack of 
 discursiveness. At the beginning of each there 
 may be a few words of introduction, simply to 
 make a connection between the mind of the hearer 
 and the special theme to be considered; but, 
 [ 99 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 after tliis, tlic special tlieme is never for a mo- 
 ment lost from the mind. You may open one 
 of his voluniL's anywhere, and a very few words 
 will make clear what the subject is that the 
 sermon before you presents. Even the sermons 
 of Robertson, which Phillips Brooks rightly 
 exalted as at least among the best of our mod- 
 ern world, have often a discursiveness, a tem- 
 porary absorption in details, of which the ser- 
 mons of Phillips Brooks show little trace. There 
 are not many popular preachers from whose 
 sermons the bearer would carry away fewer 
 special impressions. He did not deal in epi- 
 grams ; thus there were few separate sayings 
 to be recalled. He was a perfect master of 
 words, but never their sen'ant. Each word 
 filled its place as perfectly as if it stood in some 
 finished poem, but no one was allowed to claim 
 undue preeminence. If any particular illus- 
 tration was remembered, it was most often the 
 illustration that formed the heart and life of 
 the sermon. What one did carry away was, 
 I imagine, most generally, a text that from 
 henceforth would have a new significance, an 
 illustration that would never be forgotten, a 
 truth that had opened depths undreamed of 
 [ 100 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 before, or a religious feeling, a sense of divine 
 realities, wliich refreshed the hfe. 
 
 Those who knew Phillips Brooks know how 
 keen was his sense of humor. Things disclosed 
 their humorous side to him as he went through 
 life. In his Yale lectures he shows how aptly 
 he could use a humorous illustration to give 
 point to his teaching. I doubt if in his ser- 
 mons there could be found an^ trace of this. 
 In sermons of the discursive sort a bit of pleas- 
 antry, naturally suggested and illustrative of 
 the theme, may be effective. In a camp-meet- 
 ing the " amens " are often redoubled after a 
 ripple of laughter has run over the assemblage. 
 In the sermons of Phillips Brooks, in which 
 the solemn truth presented was never lost from 
 the consciousness, such moments of relaxation 
 would seem to have no place. 
 
 This dignity and this intensity represent, 
 however, only one aspect of the sermons of 
 Phillips Brooks. We find, united with these, 
 elements that we might have supposed to be 
 incompatible with them, namely, the charm of 
 the imagination and the varied interest of human 
 experience. In fact there is nothing more strik- 
 ing in these sermons than their sense of the 
 [ 101 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 relations of our daily life. The world about 
 him was evidently very real to the preacher, 
 lie .sLciiis never, for a moment, to have lost his 
 congregation out of his mind. This is strik- 
 ingly illustrated in his sermon on " The Con- 
 solations of God." He begins by recognizing 
 the fact that the need of consolation is not felt 
 by all. " This side of God's life shows itself 
 only to certain conditions of this life of ours. 
 It is not for everybody. It is not for the young 
 and jo^'ous." But as he went on, he seems to 
 have felt these words upon his conscience. He 
 could not bear to have any hearers feel that he 
 was not speaking to them. At last he exclaims, 
 " I would not seem to count out of my subject 
 for to-day those of mj' people the youngest, 
 the happiest, the most hopeful, on whom I 
 should be sorry any Sunday to turn my back, 
 and say, ' There is nothing for you to-day.' " 
 So he goes on to speak of the child's need of 
 consolation ; and only after this recognition of 
 that part of his congregation which he had 
 originally excluded, does he proceed to the de- 
 velopment of his theme. ^\t another time he 
 breaks off in the midst of a sermon to exclaim, 
 " Oh, it may well ho tliat there are some of 
 you who arc listoiiing intently at this moment, 
 [ 102 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 thinking perhaps that now, after a thousand 
 disappointments in a thousand sermons, you 
 may hear the word you need." This sense of 
 a waiting congregation was of itself enough to 
 banish from his sermons all mere abstractions 
 and all playing with his theme. He was not a 
 man who wrote and spoke merely to express his 
 own thought, as a poet sings for the mere 
 pleasure of the singing. He was not carried 
 away by a temptation against which he warned 
 the Yale students of theology, the temptation 
 to make of his sermon a work of art. The 
 sermon was to him an instrument fashioned and 
 used for a special end. He spoke to living 
 souls, not seeking merely their sympathy, seek- 
 ing least of all their applause, but striving to 
 awaken within them a consciousness of higher 
 things, striving to shape the lives before him 
 into conformity with the divine ideal. 
 
 Though Phillips Brooks was right in warn- 
 ing the young preacher against the temptation 
 to look upon his sermon as a work of art, and 
 though he himself, as we have seen, regarded 
 his sermons simply as the instruments for accom- 
 plishing each a special work ; yet, in spite of 
 this purpose that animated them, or possibly 
 because of it, his sermons are works of art 
 [ 103 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 in the sense that each has a positive, aesthetic 
 charm, which may be felt even by one who has 
 httle interest in their direct object. The pur- 
 pose for which they were written was sufficent 
 of itself to exclude all foreign elements, and to 
 shape the elements which really belong to the 
 theme discussed into a form of organic unity. 
 Given, in connection with this, a poetic nature 
 which informs the whole with the life-giving 
 power of the imagination, and the result must 
 of necessity have grace and beauty. In classic 
 and mediseval times, the most common imple- 
 ments of daily life, while perfectly fitted for 
 the use for which they were designed, possessed 
 artistic beauty, simply because the artistic spirit 
 of their makers could not create them otherwise. 
 Thus some classic or mediaeval vase, possessing, 
 it may be, nothing foreign to its destined use, 
 charms us to-day simply through its grace of 
 form, this grace of form being that through 
 which it is preeminently what it was meant to 
 be, namely, a vase. The sermons of Phillips 
 Brooks are works of art in this unconscious 
 and unpremeditated way. 
 
 A sermon is often considered dreary reading, 
 because it consists so largely of commonplaces. 
 Indeed, it is happily true that in this age of 
 [" 104 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 the world the fundamental principles of morals 
 and rehgion are commonplaces. The personal- 
 ity of a speaker may give to them a special 
 interest or power, just as moral advice ceases 
 to be commonplace as it is urged by a mother 
 striving to guard her son against some special 
 temptation. When the living presence of the 
 preacher no longer animates them, such utter- 
 ances a- apt to assume their commonplace char- 
 acter. There can therefore be few more striking 
 proofs of genius than the power to give to such 
 truisms permanent or general interest. After 
 all, however, the problem is like that which 
 meets genius under every form of its manifesta- 
 tion ; for the basis of all these manifestations, 
 even in the case of a genius like that of Shakes- 
 peare, is the commonplace. In this matter of 
 the sermon, the genius of Phillips Brooks con- 
 sisted, in part at least, in the power to see more 
 deeply into the nature and significance of these 
 commonplaces than other men. Indeed, it may 
 be said that if anything is commonplace, it 
 IS so only to the commonplace mind. A stone 
 on the street, or a flower by the wayside, is 
 commonplace enough ; but the geologist, or the 
 botanist, will find in it that which will excite 
 our wonder and interest. It was as such an 
 [ 105 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 expert that Phillips Brooks exhibited to us the 
 fundaiiicntal principles of life. Under his guid- 
 ance men saw in them what they had not dreamed 
 of seeing before. 
 
 I cannot better illustrate what I mean than 
 by quoting a description that he gives in one 
 of his sermons of a gem illuminated by the sun- 
 light. He is speaking of the mystery of light. 
 He says: "But now supposing that the object 
 of our scrutiny, being something really rich 
 and profound, were brought out of the dark- 
 ness into a sudden flood of sunlight, would it 
 grow less or more mysterious? Suppose it is a 
 jewel, and instead of having to strain your eyes 
 to make out the outline of its shape, you can 
 now look deep into its heart, see depth opening 
 beyond depth, until it looks as if there were no 
 end to the chambers of splendor that are shut 
 up in that little stone; see flake after flake of 
 luminous color floating up out of the unseen 
 fountain which lies somewhere in the jewel's 
 heart." This jewel penetrated by the sunshine 
 is the best possible illustration of a fact or an 
 idea illuminated by the insight of his faith and 
 genius. Perhaps it is a text from the Bible 
 that opens thus depth beneath depth, and sends 
 up " flake after flake of luminous color from 
 [ 106 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 the unseen fountain at its heart." A striking 
 example of this power of penetrating insight is 
 found in the last public address that was mada 
 by him. It was to the choir guild of Grace 
 Church in Newton. It was largely addressed 
 to the choir boys. The occasion seems simple 
 enough, but he saw in it deep meaning. He 
 looked into the unknown future, as the genera- 
 tion to which these boys belonged should take 
 possession of the world, and rejoiced to see 
 them going forward, " singing the great psalms 
 of the Church, the boys taking up those strains 
 which have been upon the lips of the fathers, 
 and have expressed the glorious aspirations of 
 the multitudes of the past." Then he went on 
 to speak of " the beauty of doing a greater 
 work than one can understand." " The man 
 who perfectly understands the work he is doing 
 is not doing the work which he is worthy of 
 doing." Thus these boys were doing a work 
 larger than they could comprehend. " They 
 sing words which mean very much to them, 
 but whose full meaning they cannot begin to 
 understand until they have gone forward into 
 the manifold experiences of life, and have caught 
 the spirit of the revelations of the past." In 
 this manner does every phase of life open at 
 [ 107 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 his touch into deep and varied significance. It 
 is not that he made much of every such occa- 
 sion ; it is that he found much in it. 
 
 Phillips Brooks not only brought out in this 
 manner the meaning of whatever theme he 
 touched ; unconsciously he revealed himself. He 
 had the power of expressing not merely his 
 thought, but himself. It is happily no very 
 rare thing to listen to a sermon with interest. 
 Too often, however, what we listen to is simply 
 the sermon. We may admire it ; we ma^- be 
 moved and profited by it ; but still it is all the 
 while the sermon alone that occupies us. It is 
 a rare and happy occasion when we listen not 
 to the sermon, but to the man. Wlien Phillips 
 Brooks preached, men listened, for the most 
 part, not to the sermon, but to him. They felt 
 themselves in the presence of a strong, loving, 
 aspiring, and believing soul. iSIany such spir- 
 its, we are glad to say, speak from our pulpits, 
 and bring messages of strength and cheer; but 
 few have this genius of expression by wliich 
 they reveal themselves such as they are, and 
 uplift as truly by their presence as by their 
 thought. Even more than this was revealed 
 in those moments when this preacher accom- 
 plished his highest work. Men felt not only 
 [ 108 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 in the presence of this spirit, so strong and 
 pure; but through it they felt themselves in 
 the presence of the infinite spirit that spoke 
 through this devout and earnest soul. 
 
 It is to be noticed that in his sermons he 
 almost always dwelt upon the positive aspect 
 of hfe. He dealt very little with denunciation. 
 He did not believe that men could be helped 
 much in that way. He said once, " If you could 
 kill all a man's sins you would only make him 
 a less bad man. You would not make him a 
 better man." This abstinence from denuncia- 
 tion was all the more remarkable because he is 
 said to have possessed great powers of sarcasm 
 and invective; and men who discover that they 
 possess these powers generally like to use them. 
 Only now and then in his printed sermons do we 
 have a slight touch of sarcasm; as when he 
 speaks of " the superficial grief of a superficial 
 mourner at a funeral, all tears and crape." 
 
 What he really loved to do, and what at the 
 same time he felt that it was the special work 
 of the preacher to do, was to hold up the ideal 
 of Christian living, and to strive to make men 
 feel the power of the life of God. Certainly 
 this method was calculated to bring his congre- 
 gation near to him. There was no chasm, to 
 [ 109 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 be crossed ; no repulsion to be overcome. The 
 preaclier stood simplj' with words of encour- 
 agement and welcome. 
 
 Another thing to be noticed in these sermons 
 is the slight place that is held in them by theol- 
 ogy. The great preacher was either very Uttle 
 of a theologian, or else he felt that when he 
 addressed his people there was something vastly 
 more important to be considered than theology. 
 The probability is that his interest in theology 
 was largely, if not wholly, in its practical as- 
 pects. I doubt if he concerned himself very 
 much with the current discussions in regard to 
 these matters, or at least he probably took in 
 them only a preacher's interest. He stood with 
 a certain child-like fearlessness unharmed amid 
 the creeds of the Church and the questionings 
 of the time : — 
 
 " Non sine Dis animosus infans." 
 
 He took from all only what was the best. He 
 left the harshness of the creeds, and took only 
 what was tender and life-giving. He took its 
 beauty from the Church, and knew nothing of 
 its narrowness. From the awakened thought 
 of the time he took its breadth and its freedom ; 
 but its negations seem not to have moved him. 
 [ "0 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 As in some cities of the old world where ran 
 the line of fortifications are now broad streets 
 or pleasure-grounds, so the defenses which the 
 Church had set up to guard itself against the 
 intrusion of those whose beliefs do not conform 
 to its standards with him seem to have become 
 avenues of approach, attracting instead of ex- 
 cluding. 
 
 No characterization of the sermons of the 
 great preacher would be complete which did not 
 recognize the fact that some found this lack 
 of theological definiteness to be a real drawback 
 to their enjoyment of them. They complained 
 that when some themes were approached there 
 came a certain mistiness into the thought. For 
 instance, in the course of the sermon that he 
 preached on the occasion of the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard College, 
 he exclaimed, " And what and who is Jesus 
 Christ? In reverence and humility let us give 
 our answer." At this point the minds that de- 
 mand precise statements of belief became intent. 
 At last Phillips Brooks was going to declare 
 clearly his position. The preacher went on: 
 " He is the meeting of the Divine and Human, 
 — the presence of God in humanity, the per- 
 fection of humanity in God; the Divine made 
 [ 111. ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 huiiiun, the human shown to be capable of union 
 witli the Divine; the utterance, therefore, of 
 the nearness and the love of God, and of the 
 possil)ilitj of man. Once in the ages came the 
 wondrous life, once in the stretch of history the 
 face of Jesus shone in Palestine, and his feet 
 left tlicir blessed impress upon earth ; but what 
 that life made manifest had been forever true. 
 Its truth was timeless, the truth of all eternity. 
 The love of God, the possibility of man, — these 
 two which made the Christhood, — these two, 
 not two, but one, had been the element in which 
 all life was lived, all knowledge known, all truth 
 attained." — This is magnificent, but it is not 
 theology ; at least it is not the theology of the 
 theologians. It is not strange that on the one 
 side some suspected heresj', and, on the other, 
 some discovered obscurantism. Yet the very 
 heart of Phillips Brooks spoke in this utterance. 
 Why did he not give a direct categorical answer 
 to the question that he asked, an answer that 
 would have satisfied the theologian or the free- 
 thinker? The only reason can be that he was 
 interested in the fact, and not in any formula 
 in regard to the fact. He aimed to promote 
 righteousness and the religious life among men. 
 He aimed directly at the heart of his hearers. 
 [ 112 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 He brought to bear upon them rehgious truth 
 in what seemed to him its simplest and most 
 efifective form. 
 
 I would be among the last to underestimate 
 the importance of theological thought, and to 
 undervalue the sermons that seek to make clear 
 and to defend the truths of religion. I do not 
 forget how the sermons of Channing purified 
 the religious atmosphere of the Christian world. 
 The world still needs such clear utterance of 
 religious truth. There are, however, diversities 
 of gifts. We should remember, further, that 
 theology is for the sake of religion. If it is 
 the work of those who have done battle for re- 
 ligious liberty that has made the preaching of 
 Phillips Brooks possible, it is in such preaching 
 that this work finds its worthiest fulfillment. 
 If a man can be brought, even for a short time, 
 actually to experience the religious feeling, or 
 something akin to it, he has received a proof 
 of the truth of religion more convincing than 
 any presentation of arguments could accom- 
 plish. 
 
 However this may be, what has been said 
 
 may illustrate the nature of the preaching of 
 
 Phillips Brooks. The fact that Christianity 
 
 was reduced by him to such simplicity of form 
 
 [ 113 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 may do much also to explain his vast liberality, 
 which was not tolerance of opinions which he 
 rejected, but the recognition of the fundamental 
 principle of Christianity under varied names 
 and forms. Much of what the sects are warring 
 about seemed to him too trivial to demand serious 
 consideration. He was too true a churchman 
 to think it necessary to guard himself within 
 artificial limits. Thus the whole church was 
 open to him. He could take part in the instal- 
 lation of the pastor of Plymouth Church as 
 simply and naturally as if it had been a service 
 within the limits of his own communion. Never 
 did such largeness of spirit receive wider or 
 heartier recognition. Wherever he went he was 
 welcomed as the true minister of God. The 
 bankers of Wall Street left their offices at noon 
 to listen to his words. Harvard students 
 thronged to hear him preach. Ministers and 
 laymen, of whatever name, were alike eager to 
 catch his utterances. 
 
 At the beginning of this paper it was urged 
 that the goodness of Phillips Brooks would not 
 account for his wide influence ; for this was 
 needed great genius, the genius for expressing 
 himself, and for presenting the truth which 
 he had at heart. In conclusion we must recog- 
 [ 114 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 nize the fact that his genius would not have 
 accomphshed the work, if it had not had behind 
 it his great personahty. One did not need to 
 know the story of his life to feel this power. 
 One felt it through his very presence. The 
 more we know of his life, the more is this im- 
 pression deepened. He showed his fearlessness 
 at the start, by pleading the rights of the slave ; 
 and yet more by pleading the rights of the 
 negro on the streets of the city where he lived. 
 He showed the depth of his sympathy by his 
 labors for the good of the soldier and for the 
 comfort of the sick and the wounded in the hos- 
 pital. When quieter times came, his labors for 
 those who needed help went on more privately 
 but no less earnestly. We cannot conceive of a 
 life more open than his to every demand that 
 might be made upon it. He appears to have had 
 little more fondness for machinery in benevo- 
 lence than for systems in theology. Perhaps 
 his nature was more marked in nothing than 
 in its love for freedom and spontaneity. This 
 is not the place to dilate upon his many deeds 
 of kindness. The story of them is written upon 
 many a grateful heart. His days of usefulness 
 began early, and ended late. He shrank from 
 no scene of poverty or sickness. Thus, as truly 
 [ 116 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 as any man could, he represented to those with 
 whom he had to do the gracious power and love 
 of Him whom he recognized as his Divine Mas- 
 ter. 
 
 This life of loving service won the hearts 
 of those to whom he ministered. It uttered 
 itself in his sermons, even for those who knew 
 nothing of its outward manifestations. Thus 
 it was that men loved him and honored him 
 and opened their hearts to him. It is no won- 
 der that the voice of the people within his com- 
 munion and outside of it united to lift him to 
 the highest position of honor and service which 
 his church could offer. He was felt to be the 
 Bishop not of a church, but of a people. 
 
 Thus it was that when he died there was such 
 sorrow throughout the English-speaking world. 
 We must seek far to find a parallel to this uni- 
 versal mourning. The expressions of grief at 
 his funeral ; the solemn pomp of the service 
 within the church that was so dear to him ; the 
 waiting crowds outside that thronged the square, 
 made up so largely of those whom his life had 
 blessed ; the turning aside of the funeral pro- 
 cession to pass through the grounds of the col- 
 lege that he loved, amid the ranks of students 
 to whom ho had ministered so gladly ; the final 
 [ 116 ] 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 leaving him at rest in the beautiful inclosure 
 where he had so often read the burial service 
 of the Church ; the utterance since of so many 
 words of sorrow and of gratitude from all sorts 
 and conditions of men, — from Jew and Catholic, 
 from Orthodox and Free-thinker, — all this re- 
 calls the earlier times when the Church was one, 
 and its Bishop was the Bishop of all. May we 
 not say rather that it is a foregleam of the com- 
 ing time, when, if the divisions of the Church 
 shall still maintain themselves, they will do it 
 in a spirit of mutual sympathy and with a sense 
 of sharing in a common work ; so that if one 
 member suffers all the members shall suffer with 
 it; not merely by a sympathetic and reflected 
 grief, but because what is a loss for one is felt 
 to be truly a loss for all? 
 
 [ IIT ] 
 
VI 
 FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN H. ABBOTT 
 
 [ 119 1 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 Major-General Francis Channing Barlow died 
 at his home in New York, on Jan. 11, 1896. 
 He was bom in Brooklyn, Long Island, of New 
 England parentage, on October 19, 1834. His 
 father, David Hatch Barlow, the first scholar in 
 his class (H. U. 1824), and also its class poet, 
 was at this time the pastor of the First Uni- 
 tarian Church in that city. General Barlow 
 spent the last years of his hfe so quietly in 
 the practice of law, that the generation now 
 at the front scarcely appreciates how large a 
 figure he was during the War of the Rebellion 
 and the next ten years while he continued in 
 public life. 
 
 Having graduated in July, 1855, at Harvard, 
 he went to New York in September, and was 
 occupied with private pupils for about twelve 
 months. He then entered the office of William 
 Curtis Noyes, Esq., and was admitted to the 
 bar in May, 1858, and in the autumn of that 
 year formed a partnership with George Bliss, 
 Jr., Esq. He was practicing law in that city 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 wlien the attack on Fort Sumter took place, in 
 April, 1861. On April 19 he enlisted as a 
 private in the Twelfth Regiment of the New 
 York State Militia. He was married on April 
 20 to Arabella Wharton Griffith, of Somer- 
 ville. New Jersey, and on April 21 he marched 
 with his regiment to take part in the defense 
 of Washington. He was appointed first lieu- 
 tenant in that regiment on May 3, but the brief 
 need of militia troops was soon satisfied, and 
 on Aug. 5 he was mustered out of service with 
 that regiment, and returned to his office. He 
 was not content to stay there, however, and on 
 Nov. 9, 1861, was appointed lieutenant-colonel 
 of the Sixty-first Regiment of New York Vol- 
 unteers and started for the field at once. Dur- 
 ing the Peninsular campaign liis regiment 
 formed a part of General Howard's brigade, 
 and he was promoted to be its colonel on April 
 14, 1862. The Sixty-first Regiment under his 
 command behaved with conspicuous gallantry 
 at the battle of Fair Oaks, and received high 
 commendation for its steadiness and skilful 
 handling. General Howard was wounded early 
 in this battle, and Colonel Barlow then succeeded 
 to the command of the brigade. During the 
 seven days' fight on the retreat to Harrison's 
 [ 122 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 Landing Barlow's regiment assisted in covering 
 the rear, and took part in four fiercely fought 
 engagements. At Charles City Cross Roads 
 his horse was shot under him, and his regiment 
 captured a stand of rebel colors. He is men- 
 tioned in the official reports of these battles with 
 strong terms of praise. General Caldwell, who 
 commanded the division, said in his reports: — 
 
 " I cannot forbear to mention in terms of the 
 highest praise the part taken by Colonel Bar- 
 low of the Sixty-first A'olunteers. Whatever 
 praise is due to the most distinguished bravery, 
 the utmost coolness and quickness of perception, 
 the greatest promptitude and skill in handling 
 troops under fire is justly due to him. It is 
 but simple justice to say that he has proved 
 himself equal to every emergency, and I have 
 no doubt that he would discharge the duties of 
 a much higher command with honor to himself 
 and credit to his country." 
 
 When the Army of the Potomac reached 
 Washington, although the Sixty-first Regiment 
 could rally hardly more than seven officers and 
 one hundred men, this fragment was joined with 
 the Sixty-fourth New York, and Colonel Bar- 
 low commanded it during the Maryland cam- 
 paign, and at the battle of Antietam. " Seiz- 
 [ 123 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ing a tactical opportunity, and changing front 
 at the right moment and on the right spot, he 
 takes in flank a body of the enemy in the sunken 
 road, pours a deadly volley down their line, and 
 puts them to flight, capturing three hundred 
 prisoners with two flags. . . . The enemy are 
 beaten off^ by the quick and resolute action of 
 Barlow." But near the end of the fight Bar- 
 low received a severe wound in the groin from a 
 canister-shot. He was borne insensible from 
 the field, and the wound very nearly proved 
 fatal. His commission as brigadier-general of 
 volunteers, which reached him two days after 
 the battle of Antietam, reads, " For distin- 
 guished conduct at the battle of Fair Oaks," 
 " a promotion," says General Francis A. Walker 
 in his history of the Second Corps, " won by a 
 gallantry and address of which it is impossible 
 to speak in terms too high." During the winter 
 of 1862—63 he was absent from duty on ac- 
 count of his wounds ; but, reporting again on 
 April 17, 1863, he was assigned to the com- 
 mand of the Second Brigade, Second Division, 
 Eleventh Corps ; General Howard commanding. 
 On May 23 he took command of the First 
 Division of that corps, and served with it 
 through the Gettysburg campaign, where he 
 [ 124 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 was badly wounded again on July 1, 1863, and 
 fell into the enemy's hands, but was recaptured 
 when their assault was repulsed, and our troops 
 again held the ground. His wounds kept him 
 upon the sick list during the winter of 
 1863-64. On April 1, 1864, he returned to 
 the front, and was assigned to the First Division 
 of the Second Corps, under the command of 
 Major-General Hancock, and took part in the 
 Wilderness campaign. On Aug. 14, 1864, he 
 was made major-general by brevet. It was 
 during the Wilderness campaign that he earned 
 his double stars, and thus became the senior 
 major-general whose name is borne on the roll 
 of Harvard soldiers. His brilliant capture of 
 the salient * at Spottsylvania, where his division 
 
 * The salient, or angle which formed the obstrusive 
 portion of the Confederate lines, was the key of their 
 position at Spottsylvania. Its capture would break their 
 centre, as the Confederate breastworks stretched more 
 than a mile on each side. It was held by Ewell's Corps. 
 The assault was ordered by General Grant to be made 
 at four o'clock in the morning of May 13th. General 
 Comstock's intended reconnaissance of the ground had 
 unfortunately failed from various causes. General Bar- 
 low started his column on the march about ten o'clock 
 in the evening, but the night was pitch darF and very 
 rainy and the roads bad. His troops did not reach the 
 point of attack until after midnight; and, before they 
 could be got into position across a dearuig in the wood, 
 
 [ 125 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 stormed the works and carried them at the point 
 of the bayonet, was one of the rare achievements 
 of the war. There is an old saying in the army 
 that the colonel is half the regiment ; and Bar- 
 low's leadership really made the success of this 
 assault. 
 
 Barlow had his share in those personal griefs 
 which were the common heritage of almost all 
 
 it was daylight, though the fog was very thick. " Gen- 
 eral Barlow made anxious inquiries about the nature 
 of the ground over which he was to move, and, not get- 
 ting any satisfactory information, desired at length to 
 be told whether there was a ravine a thousand feet deep 
 between him and the enemy. When he could not be 
 assured even on this point, he semed to think he was 
 called upon to lead a forlorn hope, and placed his val- 
 uables in the hand of a friend." He ordered the charge 
 about half past four. " As soon as the curve in the 
 clearing allowed Barlow's men to see the red earth at 
 the salient, they broke into a wild cheer, and, taking the 
 double quick without orders, rushed up against the 
 works. Tearing away the abattis with their hands, 
 Miles's and Brooke's brigades sprang over the intrench- 
 ments, bayoneting the defenders or beating them down 
 with clubbed muskets. Almost at the same instant Bir- 
 ney entered the works on liis side and the salient was 
 won! Nearly a mile of tlie Confederate line was in our 
 hands." Four thousand prisoners, two generaJ officers, 
 thirty colors, and eighteen cannon were the fruits of 
 tlie victory." — -Walker's History of the Second Army 
 Corpt, pp. 465-t70. 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 during that war. The wife who sent him to 
 the front on her wedding-day died on the 27th 
 of July, 1864, during the Wilderness cam- 
 paign. Barlow believed that he owed his life 
 to her tender nursing after his desperate wound 
 at the battle of Gettysburg; and old friends 
 will remember how bravely he bore his loss. 
 On Aug. 24, 1864, his health again broke down 
 under the burden of his sorrow and the hard- 
 ships of war, and he was forced to leave the 
 field. " He had fought," says General Walker, 
 " against disease and the effect of his ghastly 
 wounds received at Antietam and Gettysburg no 
 less bravely than he had fought against the pub- 
 lic enemy. During several days preceding he 
 had been more like a dead than a living man. 
 A few days later he made an attempt to resume 
 command of his division, but had to be carried 
 on a stretcher from the field at Ream's Station 
 shortly before the opening of the battle." He 
 was finally sent in November to Europe to re- 
 cover his health. He returned to duty March 
 1, 1865, and on April 4 was assigned to the 
 command of the Second Division of the Second 
 Corps under General Hancock, and bore a gal- 
 lant part in the final scenes of the war until it 
 [ 127 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ended at Appomattox Court House. His com- 
 mission as major-general bears date May 26, 
 1865. 
 
 He was married in 1867 to Miss Ellen Shaw 
 of Staten Island, the sister of Colonel Robert 
 G. Shaw, whom Barlow had fitted for college in 
 the summer of 1856, and also of Mrs. Charles 
 Russell Lowell, and Mrs. George William Curtis, 
 and Mrs. Robert B. Mintum. Two sons, 
 Robert Shaw and Charles Lowell and a daughter, 
 Louisa Shaw, were bom to them. 
 
 Barlow was not merely brave. His courage 
 was more than ignorant insensibility to risk and 
 the consequences of exposure to danger, for he 
 was twice grievously hurt. He seemed through- 
 out life, in civil as well as military affairs, lit- 
 erally incapable of fearing anything in any 
 form. Fear was not in him. Another class- 
 mate. Colonel Theodore Layman, who was serv- 
 ing as aide-de-camp on the staff of General 
 Meade at the headquarters of the Army of the 
 Potomac, had abundant personal knowledge of 
 Barlow's conduct during those days. From the 
 seclusion of that sick-chamber toward which so 
 many look with loving reverence upon great 
 affliction nobly borne, he dictates with difficulty 
 a few words at the writer's special request, while 
 [ 128 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 this article is passing through the press. They 
 are the last flowers which he lays upon the grave 
 of his comrade, whom thirty years ago, on the 
 tenth anniversary of our graduation, he had 
 greeted at our board, in the pride of youth and 
 freshness of fame, as " the hero of the salient at 
 Spottsj'lvania." They dwell upon Barlow's 
 personal courage. " Barlow was so brave," 
 writes Colonel Lyman, " that he made a joke 
 of danger. Once he and General Humphreys, 
 who was just such another man, rode toward the 
 enemy on a reconnaisance. Neither of them was 
 willing to face about, and they nearly went 
 over the rebel's skirmish line, when a shower of 
 bullets persuaded them to retreat, both laughing 
 heartily at the peril." 
 
 There is no living man more competent to 
 testify from personal knowledge as to the char- 
 acter and worth of Barlow's military services 
 than General Nelson A. Miles, — himself one of 
 the bravest of the brave, — who now commands 
 the Army of the United States. He was in 
 1862 on General Howard's staff when Barlow's 
 regiment formed part of Howard's division in 
 front of Richmond. He led the reinforcements 
 which were hurried to support Barlow's regi- 
 ment at the Battle of Fair Oaks (or Seven 
 [ 129 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Pines). He succeeded Barlow as lieutenant- 
 colonel of the Sixty-first New York Volunteers, 
 when Barlow became its colonel ; and, finally, 
 when Barlow was promoted to be brigadier-gen- 
 eral, Miles succeeded him in his colonelcy. 
 Afterwards, in 1864, in the Wilderness cam- 
 paign. General IVIiles's brigade was in Barlow's 
 division when the memorable night march was 
 made to attack the salient at Spottsylvania ; 
 and Miles's brigade was a part of the first line 
 of Barlow's division in the assault which cap- 
 tured it. Miles was in the midst of the charge 
 which took the works, and was present during 
 the terrific storm of battle which raged all day 
 long within the captured lines. General Miles, 
 last February, came from Washington to at- 
 tend the dinner of the Harvard Club in New 
 York, because, as he told the writer, he thought 
 it was his duty to tell the present generation 
 what great and splendid service Barlow rendered 
 as a soldier so many years ago. And now, as 
 the last thing he can do for his old commander, 
 ho contributes from his own personal knowl- 
 edge his story of Barlow's military career. 
 
 " It was my good fortune,'' says General 
 Miles, " to make the acquaintance of General 
 Barlow in 1861. Returning home after the 
 
 [ i;Jo ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 three months' service, he had been appointed by 
 Governor Morgan lieutenant-colonel of the 
 Sixty-first New York Regiment, and with that 
 regiment returned to Washington, in the autumn 
 of 1861, to what was known as ' Camp Cali- 
 fornia,' about six miles south of Alexandria, 
 where the Second Corps was being organized 
 under the veteran general, E. V. Sumner. It 
 was at this camp where we first came together, I 
 occupying the position of aide-de-camp on the 
 brigade staflF at that time. Our acquaintance 
 ripened into friendship and mutual regard, 
 and lasted up to the time of General Barlow's 
 death. 
 
 " The clear and comprehensive intellect that 
 had enabled him to pass his rivals in his educa- 
 tional race also enabled him to absorb the books 
 on military affairs and to acquire a useful 
 knowledge of military history. Within a few 
 months he had made himself absolute master of 
 military tactics. It was as familiar to him as 
 the alphabet or the multiplication table, and 
 equally so were the Army Regulations. lie 
 not only knew what they required, but compre- 
 hended the principles, and was enabled to com- 
 ply with them, and also to instruct his subordi- 
 nates in the necessities .ind principles and re- 
 [ 131 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 quiremciits of the regulations governing mili- 
 tary organizations. 
 
 "During the months of preparation — the 
 wintir of 1H61— 62 — his time was devoted to 
 this work, and on being commissioned colonel of 
 his regiment, Sixty-first New York, he disci- 
 plined it as carefully and as rigidly as if it had 
 been part of the regular military establish- 
 ment of the United States. He paid close at- 
 tention to its sanitary condition, the promotion 
 of its health and good order in every respect, 
 and exercised the utmost vigilance and energy in 
 preparing it for the terrible ordeals through 
 which that regiment was to pass in the coming 
 battles of the great war. 
 
 " During the great onslaught of the Confed- 
 erate army at Seven Pines, Maj' 31, 1862, and 
 June 1, 1862, his regiment was brought forward 
 as part of the reserve, and, although not en- 
 gaged in that battle, camped on part of the field 
 on the night of ^\a\ 30. On the following 
 morning his regiment with the rest of the com- 
 mand was moved forward to occupy a dense tim- 
 ber field and to receive the advance of the enemy, 
 which was then moving down in expectation of 
 repeating the success of the day before. 
 
 " At this time the regiment had not been ' fire- 
 [ 132 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 tried,' and of course there was more consterna- 
 tion in preparing for the first conflict than on 
 subsequent occasions. He, however, dehberately 
 formed his regiment in hne of battle, took es- 
 pecial care to see that every officer and non-com- 
 missioned officer and soldier was in his correct 
 position, and then, taking his place in rear of 
 the center and close to the colors of the regiment, 
 he addressed a few words to his command, which 
 were simply the announcement that in a few mo- 
 ments the advance of the enemy would reach their 
 line, and an engagement would be fought. He 
 did not hesitate fully to impress upon the minds 
 of those under his command the fact that a 
 serious encounter would occur, and also that he 
 expected every man to stand in his place and 
 fulfill his duty to the utmost with faithful forti- 
 tude. Having said these few words of warning, 
 encouragement, and admonition, he drew his 
 sword, and closed his remarks by saying that 
 the first man who left his place and attempted to 
 retreat from the presence of the enemy would 
 receive his swift administration of subjugative 
 discipline. His language may not have been 
 clothed in those exact words, but they were so 
 forcible, and so strongly had he impressed his 
 character and discipline upon the regiment, that 
 [ 133 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 every man knew what he might expect if he un- 
 dertook to play the role of a coward, and they 
 felt u consciousness that it would be quite as safe 
 to take the risk of the enemy's fire as to en- 
 counter the vengeance of his sword. There ap- 
 pears, however, to have been no disposition to 
 take a backward step. The regiment received 
 the onslaught of the victorious and exultant 
 host as the granite wall receives the rush of the 
 tidal wave, with a solidity and strength that 
 hurled it back broken, crippled, and defeated. 
 Although the regiment lost severely in killed and 
 wounded, including the gallant lieutenant-colo- 
 nel, yet they all fell in line as correctly in posi- 
 tion as if they had been formed for parade, and 
 the ground in front of the regiment was thickly 
 strewn with the bodies of the brave enemy. The 
 rebel force, however, was defeated, and from a 
 strong defense the regiment quicklj' assumed 
 the offensive, and, making a countercharge, 
 swept the enemy from the field, and formed a 
 part of the line that drove them back in disorder. 
 " This was a type of liis military service. 
 The same cool, deliberate courage, undaunted 
 defiance of danger, and intelligent and judicious 
 judgment characterized his actions through the 
 various engagements that followed at Peach Oi^ 
 
 [ 13^^ ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 chard, Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Glen- 
 dale, or Nelson's Farm, as it is sometimes called, 
 and Malvern Hill. During the last two engage- 
 ments his regiment was in the thickest of the 
 fight, and in the most exposed positions; yet its 
 action was like the true steel, strong and inflexi- 
 ble in all its encounters. 
 
 " From Malvern Hill the regiment moved to 
 Harrison's Landing, where it remained until the 
 army was withdrawn from the Peninsula — 
 moved back again to Alexandria, Virginia, where 
 they had embarked several months before. It 
 then moved south to Ccntreville, where it acted 
 as a partial reserve, but was not brought into 
 serious engagements. From Centreville it was 
 withdrawn back to the District of Columbia, 
 thence through Maryland to the vicinity of 
 South Mountain, and finally fought upon the 
 field of Antietam. In this engagement he dis- 
 tinguished himself, and crowned the regiment 
 with glory. Being a part of the reserve of the 
 Second Corps, it was not at first engaged, but 
 during the battle was brought forward to 
 strengthen the advancing line, and in a well- 
 spirited charge pierced the enemy's Hne, wheeling 
 to the right took the enemy in flank, captured 
 two battle-flags and between two and three 
 [ 135 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 liundred prisoners, in what is known as the 
 ' Sunken Road,' which was covered with the 
 bodies of tlie dead and wounded of the enemy. 
 
 " From this position he again assumed the 
 advance, but was stricken down by the dis- 
 charge of a battery of artillery in his front, and 
 received the severe wound of a shrapnel shot in 
 the groin, which crippled him for several 
 months. He was then promoted to the grade 
 of brigadier-general, and returned to the field 
 in the spring of 1863, and was assigned to a 
 division of the Eleventh Corps. He exercised 
 the same vigilance in the care and discipline in 
 this as he had in former commands, and was 
 engaged at Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg, 
 where he was again disabled by a severe wound, 
 and in the retreat the first day was left upon 
 the field, and fell into the hands of the enemy. 
 He was, however, treated with due consider- 
 ation, and the following day in the advance of 
 our forces he was rescued and sent back to the 
 hospital. This severe wound kept him out of 
 the field for several months, but he returned in 
 time to take part in the campaign the following 
 spring, and was assigned to the first division of 
 the Second Army Corps. 
 
 " He was engaged in the fierce battles of the 
 [ 136 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 Wilderness, where his command took a most 
 important part, and also at Po River. When 
 it was determined to make the assault upon the 
 angle of the enemy's line at Spottsylvania, it 
 was decided that the Second Corps should be 
 the leading command in that great assault, and 
 his division was selected to act as the pivot in 
 that movement. It was considered a most 
 hazardous undertaking, and great doubt was 
 expressed as to the success of the enterprise. 
 He, however, determined to make it a success as 
 far as possible, and decided to make the assault- 
 ing column so strong as to render it invincible. 
 He therefore gave orders for the division to be 
 massed in double column by regiments, two bri- 
 gades in the front line and two brigades im- 
 mediately in reserve. The character of the 
 country was not very well known. He was ex- 
 pected to charge, and there was some specula- 
 tion as to the results. After a long, tedious 
 march during the dark night, the command ar- 
 rived in position in the gray of the morning, 
 and what little information he could gain from 
 the officers who had been reconnoitring the day 
 before was somewhat vague; yet without hesi- 
 tation they went from column of fours into the 
 formation known as double column on the cen- 
 [ 137 1 
 
SON'S OF THE PURITANS 
 
 tre, and advanced practically forty men deep 
 over rolling country and through some timber, 
 until they readied the picket line of the enemy, 
 and received their fire without returning it. 
 They rushed on as rapidly as possible to gain 
 the main line of works as soon as practicable. 
 The troops were embarrassed by ha\ing to go 
 through slashed brush and timber, and also re- 
 ceiving the fire of the enemy's Ijatteriej^ and in- 
 fantry, yet without a halt. They rushed on 
 until they reached the chevaux-de-frise, and by 
 main force seized them, tore them to pieces, and 
 rushed on to meet a line of bayonets in the 
 hands of men who had stoutly held their posi- 
 tion to receive the attack. By a preponder- 
 ance of numbers and great overwhelming force, 
 however, the bayonets were crossed but an in- 
 stant of time, and the line of battle was practi- 
 cally overrun by the great force of the assault- 
 ing party. Twelve battle-flags, twenty pieces 
 of artillery, and about three thousand prisoners 
 fell into the hands of the division, as the fruits 
 of one of the most desperate and successful as- 
 saults that was ever made. 
 
 " Its victory, liowcvir, was not to be en- 
 joyed unmolested. A counter-charge was im- 
 [ 138 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 mediately made by the enemy's troops in re- 
 serve, and a most desperate battle was fought 
 over the ground, lasting for nine hours, in 
 which portions of the ground were absolutely 
 covered with the dead and wounded. In many 
 places it was impossible to walk without step- 
 ping upon the bodies of the dead, and acres of 
 ground were thickly covered with the dead and 
 wounded of both armies. 
 
 " From this field the command moved on to 
 the field of North Anna and Tolopotomy, 
 where it was severely engaged, and also in the 
 desperate battle of Cold Harbor, where it suc- 
 ceeded in piercing the enemy's line ; but as other 
 parts of the line were not successful, the fruits 
 of its victory were of little value. Thence it 
 crossed the James River, and engaged in the 
 desperate battles in front of Petersburg, and 
 at Deep Bottom, on the north side of the James 
 River. The severity of the campaign had so 
 undermined his strength as to compel him to 
 leave the field for a time, and he was out of the 
 field until the following campaign of 1865. 
 
 " On returning to the Second Corps, he was 
 present during the retreat of the Confederate 
 army from Richmond and Petersburg, and took 
 [ 139 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 part in the engagements at High Bridge, Farm- 
 ville, and was present at the surrender of the 
 Confederate army at Appomattox. 
 
 " Under the most depressing circumstances 
 he never was without hope and fortitude. He 
 was apparently utterly devoid of the sensation 
 of fear, constantly aggressive, and intensely 
 earnest in the discharge of all duties. His in- 
 tegrity of purpose, independence of character, 
 and sterling honesty in the assertion of what he 
 believed to be right and just, made him a marked 
 man among public men. He abhorred a 
 coward; had a perfect contempt for a dema- 
 gogue, and despised a hypocrite. He beheved 
 in the administration of public affairs with the 
 most rigid integrity', and did not hesitate to 
 denounce wrong as he believed it to exist, and 
 maintain what he believed to be right under all 
 circumstances. 
 
 " The gentle, wholesome influence and teach- 
 ings he received in his youth doubtless inspired 
 him to fulfill those principles contained in the 
 lines of ' Fair Harvard :' — 
 
 With freedom to think, and with patience to 
 
 bear. 
 And for right ever bravely to live.' 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 " I esteem myself fortunate to have enjoyed 
 for more than thirty years his friendship, — a 
 friendship that was both sincere and earnest, 
 and, with the thousands who knew and respected 
 him, I can but offer my humble tribute to his 
 memory." 
 
 Such is the military history of the senior 
 officer in the War of the Rebellion among the 
 Harvard soldiers. He had entered college in 
 1851, and throughout his entire course was 
 poor and struggling under peculiar burdens. 
 He was a fine scholar in all departments of 
 study. He did not manifest special fondness 
 for any particular branch at that time, but 
 seemed to be equally good in all kinds of intel- 
 lectual work. When he graduated at the head 
 of the Class of 1855, he had a colleague in this 
 honor in Robert Treat Paine, but Barlow was 
 the elder twin. College standing in those days 
 was determined by the gross total of the marks 
 received during the four years' course. The 
 system of computation was crude ; for absence 
 and behavior both affected in some degree the 
 amount of credits. But the curious coincidence 
 of identical totals did actually occur in the case 
 of Barlow and Paine. Professor Joseph Lover- 
 ing, whose function as Regent included the 
 [ 141 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 preparation of the rank-list, told the writer some 
 years after our graduation that he twice went 
 tliroufrh the calculation and reached both times 
 the same result. 
 
 When wc graduated, nothing could liave 
 seemed more wildly improbable to Barlow's 
 classmates tlian that he should ever attain mili- 
 tary' renown. Neither his personal bearing nor 
 his tastes had foreshadowed in any degree a 
 military career, although he was generally be- 
 lieved to have once discharged certain heavy 
 artillery in the State Arsenal yard, on a winter's 
 night during his Freshman year. But retro- 
 spect in the light of subsequent events dis- 
 closes in his college life very distinctly those 
 qualities which characterized his later career and 
 made him so successful as a soldier. He al- 
 ways perceived existing facts and relations with 
 singular precision and quickness. He prided 
 himself in college upon having no illusions, and 
 was resolved to see things as they really were. 
 He then, and ever afterwards, spoke his thoughts 
 without restraint, and with a singular and al- 
 most contemptuous disregard of consequence. 
 He indulged throughout his life in a very un- 
 usual freedom, not to say license, of speech. 
 He acted and spoke without paying any regard 
 
 [ 1^^^ ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNIN G BARLOW 
 
 to what man could do, or say, or think about 
 him. His total want of reverence and appar- 
 ent inability to be afraid tended undoubtedly to 
 impair his capacity to form high ideals. He 
 lacked that keen perception of eternal verities 
 which was the source of Phillips Brooks's 
 power in men's lives. Nevertheless, this limita- 
 tion upon his power for veneration and imagi- 
 nation and poetic conception rendered pecul- 
 iarly conspicuous a certain honesty of thought 
 and independence in action which is by no means 
 common among men. The secret of Barlow's 
 success in military life lay in his clear percep- 
 tion of the actual situation, and his fearless 
 readiness to realize that perception in action. 
 His boldness enabled him instantly to carry into 
 act what his quick eye saw ; and this power of 
 prompt decision and utter fearlessness pecul- 
 iarly fitted him to lead men in the crisis of bat- 
 tle. He was reputed among our leading sol- 
 diers to possess singular ability for seizing the 
 right moment for daring act in the crisis of an 
 event. The good which he could win, he never 
 lost by fearing to attempt. This habit of cool 
 promptitude enabled him to seize the right in- 
 stant for storming the salient at Spottsylvania, 
 just as the want of this quality in other leaders 
 [ 143 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 caused tlie disaster in the Mine on the Peters- 
 burg front. If this intelligent courage, not 
 to say (lutlacity, of temper was the mainspring 
 of liis military success, it is also plain that he 
 had acquired at his University a trained intel- 
 ligence which much increased his power for 
 effective action. When he became a soldier, 
 he turned the full strength of his mental pow- 
 ers with intense energy to studj' the science of 
 war. He made himself master of every detail 
 of tactics, and was eminent for his minute and 
 thorough knowledge and rigid discipline. He 
 thus established his control over his troops by 
 filling his men with absolute faith in his ability 
 to lead them. In his subsequent life he ex- 
 hibited the same undaunted spirit and power to 
 see through appearance, which made him first 
 among our college soldiers. 
 
 It is well to remember how young were the 
 men who fought that war. When Barlow 
 shenthcd his sword, and his war record was 
 closed forever, he had been not quite ten years 
 out of college. 
 
 When the war was ended, he declined a com- 
 mission in the regular army, and in September, 
 1865, was elected by the Republicans to the 
 office of secretary of state in New York. This 
 
 [ Ml ] 
 
PRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 event led him to resume the practice of law in 
 New York, where he opened an ofiSce in May, 
 1866. Faihng to be renominated, he contin- 
 ued his practice at the bar until May, 1869, 
 when General Grant, upon the recommendation 
 of Judge E. R. Hoar who was then attorney- 
 general, appointed him United States marshal 
 for the southern district of New York. He re- 
 tained this office about six months, but took 
 much satisfaction during that time in cleaning 
 out what had become a nest of corruption. He 
 removed every person there within the first week 
 and filled all the places with honest and capable 
 men. During his term of office, the attempts 
 of fihbusters to send men, arms, and supplies 
 to aid the Cuban insurrection came very near 
 involving the United States in controversy with 
 Spain through violation of the neutrality laws. 
 That these attempts did not produce serious in- 
 ternational complications between Spain and 
 the United States may justly be credited to 
 Barlow's energy. The President, by special 
 commission, conferred upon Barlow extraordi- 
 nary powers, under the Act of 1818, and gave 
 him command over the military, naval, and 
 revenue forces of New England, New York, 
 and New Jersey. He really conducted a cam- 
 [ 145 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 paign, and actually captured by force in New 
 York harbor a large party of Cuban recruits, 
 with materials of war, as their vessel was about 
 to leave the harbor. He thus broke up com- 
 pletely their expeditions, and stopped the de- 
 parture of men and arms from that city. When 
 this emergency was over and he had prevented 
 an occurrence which Spain seemed ready to re- 
 gard as an act of war, he resigned, because the 
 salary was inadequate and the duties of the 
 office prevented his professional work, on which 
 he depended for his living. His career as 
 marshal showed both legal judgment and per- 
 sonal courage in a very unusual degree. 
 
 In 1871 he was one of the founders of the 
 Bar Association, the first institution of its kind, 
 and began the attack upon Fisk, Gould, and 
 David Dudley Field, their counsel. He pre- 
 ferred formal charges against Field which in- 
 volved Judges Barnard and Cardozo. He be- 
 came one of the Committee of Seventy, and 
 afterwards was one of its paid counsel. He was 
 then elected attorney-general of New York, and 
 held that office during 1872 and 1873, and, as 
 attorney-general, had superintendence of the 
 counsel and direction of the contest which re- 
 sulted in the overthrow of Tweed and his as- 
 [ 146 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 sociates. He oflScially instituted most of the 
 legal proceedings which, under the guidance 
 of Charles O'Connor, Samuel J. Tilden, and 
 other eminent lawyers, resulted in the removal 
 of Judge Barnard and the reformation of many 
 other judicial abuses. 
 
 He dared to attack a corrupt judiciary when 
 success seemed as doubtful as the forlorn hope 
 had seemed desperate in storming the salient. 
 The moral courage he displayed in his leader- 
 ship in this civic struggle was magnificent in- 
 deed. Others followed, but he led. How im- 
 portant a part he played appears in a letter of 
 the Hon. Charles S. Fairchild, late Secretary 
 of the United States Treasury, from wliich it is 
 permitted to quote : — 
 
 " The law firm of which I was at that time 
 a member was employed in some suits against 
 canal contractors, and it fell to me to attend to 
 that business. This brought me in close pro- 
 fessional contact with General Barlow. His 
 devotion to public duty, his bravery and aggres- 
 siveness therein, and disregard of selfish con- 
 siderations or consequences to himself, filled me 
 with admiration and enthusiasm, and, I see, as 
 I recall it now, set me a standard of public duty 
 that has influenced all my life since. I believe 
 [ 147 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 that, if it had not been for General Barlow's 
 zealous work, it would never have come to Mr. 
 Tilden to take the position that he did upon 
 canal matters, a position to which Mr. Tilden 
 owed the immediate prestige that compelled his 
 nomination for the presidency in 1876. Tilden 
 but took up and carried on the work that Gen- 
 eral Barlow had begun, and begun under cir- 
 cumstances of great difficulty and great danger 
 to himself, for he was all alone. Not another 
 State officer dared stand with him at the begin- 
 ning of the fight. Before that time he had so 
 pursued and pointed out the judicial wrongs 
 that surrounded the Erie and other litigations 
 that his work was one of the chief contributions 
 to what culminated in the impeachment of the 
 judges. I believe that the State owes General 
 Barlow more than she does any single man for 
 results without which the life of an honest man 
 would have been intolerable in this State." 
 
 But Barlow was not renominated for his 
 office. He did not work well in political hai^ 
 ness. Plis readiness to speak his mind as to 
 what he thought, and to tell the whole truth 
 about what he saw, did not harmonize well with 
 those methods which achieve political success 
 where offices depend upon caucuses and popular 
 [ 1^8 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 votes. He had also made many enemies, who 
 sought his defeat for personal ends. There is 
 an unhappy significance in the fact that almost 
 all of the high public functions which Barlow 
 administered, and which gave him the oppor- 
 tunity to do great deeds, came to him rather by 
 appointment than election. 
 
 At the time of the Hayes and Tilden contro- 
 versy about the presidency in 1876, Barlow was 
 one of the prominent Republicans who were in- 
 vited to go, and went, to Florida, to witness the 
 count and investigate into the details of the 
 electoral vote of that State. His bold and 
 frank statement of the facts did not suit at all 
 the purposes of some other visiting statesmen, 
 as they were termed, or of the party with which 
 Barlow had acted. It was said that he was 
 never forgiven for telling the whole story, as he 
 did, about the transactions of that time in 
 Florida, and the facts of the election. He dis- 
 played the same spirit then which he had shown 
 when he was United States marshal and had 
 been assessed by his party's committee for a 
 party subscription. The amount of his assess- 
 ment was based upon the very large income 
 which was generally believed to be, directly or 
 indirectly, within the marshal's reach. The 
 [ 149 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 letter in which General Barlow declined to pay 
 an assessment based upon supposed pickings 
 and stealings, and not upon the honest salary 
 of his office, did credit to his old teacher of 
 rhetoric. It attracted much attention, and re- 
 ceived much commendation from men who were 
 not practical politicians, but it was not accepta- 
 able to the managers of political affairs in his 
 party at that time. In short, it became very 
 evident, in the course of years, that he lacked 
 that suppleness of disposition which is an ele- 
 ment so potent in gaining political office in this 
 country. 
 
 Memorial Hall at Cambridge is for the 
 graduates of Harvard a shrine of memory and 
 reconciliation. The different classes which 
 graduated just before the Civil War have placed 
 in the great dining hall a series of windows 
 commemorative of their own classmates. The 
 window of the class of 1855 contains the figures 
 of the great preacher and the great soldier of 
 the First Crusade. These figures actually re- 
 produce the faces, and symbolize the lives of 
 the two most famous members of the class, 
 Phillips Brooks and Frank Barlow. Each in 
 his own way was the embodiment of duty faith- 
 fully done in the presence of a cloud of wit- 
 [ 150 ] 
 
FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW 
 
 nesses. What ancient heroes are more fitted to 
 stir with noble aspirations the hearts of the 
 young men who pass year after year through 
 the University? WTiat pictured forms can 
 better shadow forth to future generations the 
 kind of man the college tries to make? 
 
 [ 151 1 
 
VII 
 HENRY STURGIS RUSSELL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 
 
 [ 153 ] 
 
HENRY STURGIS RUSSELL 
 
 Colonel Russell's lineage, on both sides, was of 
 the best New England type. His grandfather, 
 Jonathan Russell, was Minister to Sweden, 
 Charge d'Affaires at Paris, Commissioner at 
 Ghent to frame the treaty after the War of 
 1812, and a Representative in Congress. 
 George Russell, son of Jonathan, graduated at 
 Brown University, studied law with the distin- 
 guished John Sergeant of Philadelphia, but 
 later turned to commerce and founded the house 
 of Russell & Sturgiss in Manila. Returning 
 thence, after eleven years, with a comfortable 
 fortune, he married Sarah (Parkman) Shaw, 
 daughter of Robert G. Shaw. Thereafter he 
 lived at West Roxbury, and later on his estate 
 in Jube's Lane. He was a gentleman of lit- 
 erary taste, and of note and influence. Henry 
 Sturgis Russell, the first son and second child, 
 named after his father's partner, was born June 
 21, 1838, at Savin Hill, then a seaside resort 
 for the summer months. 
 
 Henry, always more pleasantly known as 
 [ 155 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Harry, in early boyhood drifted through several 
 schools, of which one was that of Brook Farm 
 where the famous Social Experiment was then 
 in progress. Later he studied several years at 
 the private school of Mr. E. S. Dixwell, whence 
 in 1856 he went to Harvard College, and grad- 
 uated in 1860. Though little addicted to book 
 learning, he acquitted himself fairly well by 
 steadfastly facing the duty of study. He was 
 popular; of too sober a temperament to be a 
 leader, but for the same reason highly respected. 
 In 1861 Russell was in the office of that excel- 
 lent merchant, William Perkins, the business nur- 
 sery of so man}' young Bostonians. Promptly 
 joining the Fourth Battalion, he went with it to 
 Fort Independence, in Boston Harbor ; and 
 there, for a month, he was thoroughl}' drilled by 
 Gen. Thomas G. Stevenson, a born commander 
 of soldiers. From this admirable tutelage he 
 passed into active sen-ice as 1st Lieutenant in 
 the 2d Mass. A'ol. Infantry (:May 28, 1861); 
 Dec. 13, 1861, he got his company. His first 
 serious engagement was at Cedar Mountain 
 where the blunder of General Banks caused so 
 shocking a slaughter. When the regiment was 
 ordered to retreat, Capt. Russell performed an 
 act of generous loyalty to his dear friend Lieu- 
 [ 156 ] 
 
HteNRY STURGIB RUSSELL 
 
HENRY STURGIS RUSSELL 
 
 tenant-Colonel Savage, which afterwards, at the 
 Harvard exercises held in honor of the grad- 
 uates slain in the war (July 21, 1865), was 
 thus narrated by Governor Andrew ; 
 
 " I know of no incident of more perfect, of 
 more heroic, gentility, bespeaking a noble na- 
 ture, than the act performed by one Captain 
 of the 2d Mass., . . . who, standing by the 
 side of Lieut. -Colonel Savage, . . . fatally 
 wounded, not believed by the enemy to be worth 
 the saving, refused to surrender until he had 
 wrung from the enemy the pledge that they 
 would, in capturing him, save also his comrade 
 and bear him back to the nearest hospital ; de- 
 claring that, if they did not, he, single-handed 
 and alone, would fight it out, and sell his life 
 at the dearest cost." At these words Col. 
 Henry Lee, '36, sprang up and called for three 
 cheers for Col. Harry Russell, which were well 
 given. Col. Savage died of his wounds a few 
 days afterward, and later Russell named his 
 first-bom son after his friend. The result of 
 Russell's sacrifice was a miserable captivity in 
 Libby Prison. He was liberated Nov. 16, 
 1862; and on Jan. 22, 1863, was made Lieuten- 
 ant-Colonel of the 2d Mass Cav. On April 5, 
 1864, he accepted the colonelcy of the 5th Mass. 
 [ 157 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Cav., a negro regiment. He was loath to leave 
 his comrades of the Second Cavalry ; the ad- 
 vancement in rank was inconsiderable; the com- 
 mand of colored troops was then little desired. 
 The inducement, however, was characteristic. 
 Between Russell and his cousin, Robert G. Shaw, 
 '60, there had existed since childhood a close, 
 even a romantic friendship. Shaw's death at 
 the head of his colored troops at Fort Wagner 
 had then lately occurred ; and now Russell, tak- 
 ing the offered colonelcy, quietly said, " Bob 
 would have liked to have me do it," and thus 
 simply settled the matter. The Shaw family 
 had long been ultra- Abolitionists ; Air. George 
 Russell, more moderate, was yet decidedly anti- 
 slavery. Col. Russell shared his father's views, 
 insisting always that the war was for the Union, 
 but welcoming the disappearance of slavery as 
 a happy result. It was at the head of this 
 regiment on June 15, 1864, before Petersburg, 
 that Col. Russell received his first wound, a 
 severe one ; but he also received special com- 
 mendation from General Grant which led, a year 
 later, to his brevet as Brigadier-General of A'ol- 
 unteers " for distinguished gallantry and good 
 conduct." 
 
 On May 6, 1864, Col. Russell married Mary 
 [ 158 ] 
 
HENRY STURGIS RUSSELL 
 
 Hathaway Forbes, daughter of the Hon. John 
 M. Forbes. Feb. 14, 1865, by reason of illness 
 in the family, he left the army, and entered 
 his father-in-law's firm, where he remained three 
 years, but developed little taste for business and 
 gladly escaped to more congenial pursuits. He 
 estabUshed at West Roxbury the famous Home 
 Farm, which two years later he removed to his 
 handsome estate midway between Milton Hill 
 and the Blue Hills, where he passed the rest of 
 his life. Here he indulged his passion for 
 horses, built fine stables, laid out broad pastures, 
 and kept some of the most famous trotting stal- 
 hons in the country, notably Fearnaught, Smug- 
 gler and Edgemark. Later he turned his at- 
 tention to Jersey cattle. In 1878, he accepted, 
 from Mayor Pierce, the position of Chairman 
 of the Board of Police Commissioners. The 
 police, hitherto managed by an aldermanic com- 
 mittee, had of course sunk into a pitiable con- 
 dition, from which Russell was expected to re- 
 trieve it by his great faculty for organization 
 and his extraordinary capacity for the control 
 of men. For two years he toiled hard, vigilant 
 by night and laborious by day, and brought 
 the force into fine shape. Then he resigned; 
 for in fact he was altogether too much of a 
 [ 169 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PUUITANS 
 
 man to be only a tliird part of anything ; he was 
 not meant to be a fraction, or to contribute to 
 averages and compromises. So he returned to 
 his fields, and had some long, pleasant years 
 there until, Jan. 14, 1895, Mayor Curtis ap- 
 pointed him Fire Commissioner. Here also there 
 was nominally a board of three ; but it was 
 understood that the other two should not be 
 appointed save at request of Col. Russell, which 
 request of course never came. So until his 
 death he remained in absolute control. It was 
 long and arduous work to bring the department 
 up to his ideal, but he left it undoubtedly' the 
 best organized, and the most efficient fire de- 
 partment in the country. At the beginning the 
 politicians came with their usual demands for 
 " influence," but quickly learned that they had 
 absolutely none ! Shocked and angry at so 
 " un-American " a condition, they would fain 
 have ejected the Colonel; but they found him 
 evenly indifferent to threats, gallantly backed 
 by the powerful insurance interests, and attend- 
 ing to business as if such cattle as politicians 
 did not exist. In time they appreciated the 
 situation, and ceased from troubling ; and no 
 mayor of either party ever disturbed the Fire 
 Commissioner. With his subalterns he was 
 [ 160 ] 
 
HENRY STURGIS RUSSELL 
 
 popular; and even with the rank and file; for 
 though "very rigid and a strict disciplinarian, 
 he was not a martinet. During his term, he 
 made short work of disquieting agitations con- 
 cerning hours and pay which meddlesome pol- 
 iticians sought to stir ; yet his men, proud of 
 being parts of so fine an organization as he 
 had created, did not audibly murmur. He was 
 a strong commander, and he reaped the fruits 
 of it. During the last year of his life, failing 
 health prevented his always giving the close 
 dailj- attention which he had hitherto rendered 
 without a day of vacation, but he rested easy 
 in the knowledge that the perfect machinery 
 could run a long while without disorder. So 
 he was still in office when death came to him, 
 in Boston, Feb. 16, 1905. 
 
 Though he achieved much, his friends knew 
 that his qualities surpassed his achievements. 
 Character counted in him for more than intel- 
 lect. His mind worked in a simple, straight- 
 forward way, and he reached his conclusions 
 by direct processes, without subtlety. Thus 
 his convictions were strong and definite, and his 
 judgment positive. Naturally, his action fol- 
 lowed resolutely, decisively, without compromise. 
 He gave the impression of reserved force, and 
 [ 161 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 was a man not lightly to be opposed. He 
 was modest, yet conscious of his strong qualities, 
 and by consequence self-reliant. His moral 
 courage was equal to his physical, and fear 
 of any sort was utterly absent in his make-up; 
 but with his masculine strength he combined 
 a very affectionate nature ; loyal and kindly-, 
 he gave and received warm affection ; domestic 
 in his tastes, he knew nothing ebe so pleasant 
 as to live always at home ; the family circle, 
 his own house, his own fields gave him complete 
 and suificient happiness. Though neither im- 
 pulsive nor demonstrative, he came instinctively 
 into human touch with all men in every rank 
 of life. Without being imperious, he was al- 
 ways thoroughly the master of his soldiers, his 
 policemen, his firemen, and his employees. His 
 judgments of them were strict, but just, and 
 as generous as the circumstances would permit. 
 At times taciturn, and indisposed to sustained 
 conversation, he yet had a terse, original, and 
 lively wit, which never failed him even in the 
 latest days of weakness and suffering. 
 
 [ 162 1 
 
VIII 
 ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM LAWRENCE 
 
 [ 163 ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 When Roger Wolcott died, the Commonwealth 
 mourned, for there had been taken from her 
 one who, holding her highest office, had ex- 
 pressed in his character her finest traditions, and 
 who had thereby won the affection as well as 
 the admiration of the people. 
 
 Roger Wolcott was happy in his ancestry. 
 For two centuries his fathers had been men of 
 force and influence. His very name suggested 
 heroic incidents in American history ; for it was 
 his ancestor, Roger Wolcott, lieutenant-gov- 
 ernor of Connecticut, who in 1745 was second 
 in command of the expedition of Sir William 
 Pepperell against Cape Breton, which resulted 
 in the capture of Louisburg. In the war of 
 the Revolution another ancestor, Oliver Wolcott, 
 was made brigadier-general, — the same Oliver 
 who was a signer of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and second governor of the State of 
 Connecticut. His son, Oliver, was in the cab- 
 inet of President Washington, as Secretary of 
 [ 165 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 the Trc/xsury. On his mother's side, too, there 
 was a long line of worthy men and patriots. 
 
 He was born in Boston, July 13, IS^T, and 
 was the son of Joshua Huntington and Cornelia 
 (Frothingham) Wolcott. His father had come 
 to Boston from Connecticut in 1822 to enter 
 the office of A. & A. Lawrence, merchants. He 
 was later made a partner in the firm. During 
 his boyhood, therefore, Roger Wolcott became 
 familiar with the talk, interests, and principles 
 of Boston commercial life. Both parents in- 
 herited the love of culture which has been so 
 typical of New England's best life. A quiet 
 temperament, active mind, and sensitive consti- 
 tution led him to a deeper interest in literature 
 than was common amongst his schoolmates. A 
 strong religious atmosphere pervaded the home ; 
 for both parents, by inheritance and conviction 
 Unitarians, exemplified a high tj-pe of the reli- 
 gion of New England. 
 
 When young Roger was in the most forma- 
 tive period of his boyhood, there entered into 
 his life one of those tragedies of the home with 
 which the past generation was familiar, and 
 which left a deep mark in his character. The 
 war of the Rebellion was running its course. 
 The boys of DixwelFs School were following 
 [ 166 ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 with interest its victories and defeats. They 
 had seen one of its masters go to the front with 
 a sword in his hand which they had given him. 
 Huntington Wolcott, Roger's only brother, two 
 years older than himself, was in the first class, 
 not yet ready for college. He was a handsome 
 boy, with frank face, bright smile, and curly 
 hair; not so much of a scholar as his brother; 
 of athletic mould; the captain of the school 
 in its military drill, no boy in the school was 
 more popular. It was whispered among the 
 boys from time to time that " Hunty " Wolcott 
 was anxious to enlist, that his father was firm 
 against it, for the war was almost over, and 
 he was too young. Finally the report ran 
 through the school that his father had yielded, 
 and one bright day saw Dixwell's School pre- 
 senting their playmate with a sword, and heard 
 their cheers as he passed out of Boylston Place. 
 A few months later, and all that remained on 
 earth of the beautiful boy rested quiet in his 
 father's home: fever had laid him low and 
 brought him to death. 
 
 Roger, a boy of seventeen, was the only child 
 
 now left in that darkened house. The spirit 
 
 of patriotism which was bom in him now began 
 
 to bear fruit, and the devotion to his parents, 
 
 [ 167 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 which never flagged, and at times dominated his 
 life, was now revealed. 
 
 He entered Harvard College with the Class of 
 1870. The few who then knew him intimately 
 appreciated his simplicity and gentle nature as 
 well as his intellectual ability. He was not, 
 however, of a temperament to reach out to a 
 wider circle or to make himself immediately felt. 
 As the years passed, he developed, and his sin- 
 cerity, geniality, and force of character were 
 recognized by an ever-increasing circle. From 
 the day of his birth (Dr. Holmes would say two 
 or three generations before his birth) Roger 
 Wolcott was a gentleman. He was as much so, 
 yet in a perfectly boyish way, at Dixwell's 
 School as he was at the State House. Conse- 
 quently, he was elected into the social and lit- 
 erary clubs of the College, and, when the Class 
 Day elections came, he was by general consent 
 the one man to be considered for the position 
 of Orator. He was also selected to deliver a 
 Commencement part. 
 
 For a man of his tastes, the natural step was 
 to the Law School. He had no special love for 
 the law, and little ambition to excel in the courts. 
 His sympathies were with literature, he inherited 
 an interest in commerce, and he was alive with 
 [ 168 ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 the spirit of patriotism. A training in the law 
 would prepare him for whatever service he might 
 enter, for he was too earnest and industrious 
 a man to have ever dreamed of a life of leisure 
 or aimless culture. It was natural, too, that he 
 should, while studying law, become for one year, 
 1871-1872, a tutor at the College in History 
 and French. He entered the office of Thornton 
 K. Lothrop, Esq., and in 1874 became a member 
 of the Suffolk bar. During the next few years, 
 his professional calling was that of law, his real 
 interests were in literature, philanthropic insti- 
 tutions, and his home, with an increasing move- 
 ment towards public life. 
 
 In 1874, by his marriage with Edith Prescott, 
 the grand-daughter of Prescott the historian, he 
 united two of the noble families of New Eng- 
 land, and gained for his constant companion 
 one whose devotion, wisdom, and force of char- 
 acter were his support and inspiration to the 
 end. At the same time his filial piety was un- 
 flagging, and to his parents in their declining 
 years he gave a rare and beautiful devotion. 
 In 1885 he was elected an Overseer of Harvard 
 College ; and therewith continued his long service 
 to the University, which claimed his affections 
 to the last. 
 
 [ 169 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 It is one of the glories of democracy that, 
 when tlic public service calls, there come from 
 all ranks men ready and able to serve her. 
 From one class there have risen men who, sur- 
 rounded by everything that is associated with 
 privilege and aristocracy, have revealed a spirit 
 of democracy which is unexcelled. There was 
 no young man in Boston in 1877 who to the 
 superficial observer was more of an aristocrat 
 than Roger Wolcott : and the same was true 
 to the end. A noble ancestry, wealth, and cul- 
 ture were his. The whole bearing of the man 
 was that of the best aristocracy. That he had 
 the convictions and heart of the best democracy 
 is now recognized by all men. Evidence of this 
 is seen in the fact that men, women, and chil- 
 dren of every class — the bootblack, the plough- 
 boy, the school-teacher, the shopkeeper, and the 
 doctor — have claimed him as their friend and 
 the representative of their best ideals. It was 
 fortunate, therefore, that those who were cast- 
 ing about for a nominee for the common council 
 of the city of Boston in 1877 should have hit 
 upon Roger Wolcott, and that by his election 
 the community should have drawn him into its 
 service. 
 
 The seriousness of purpose, industry, con- 
 
 [ no ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 scientiousness, and ability which went with him 
 through lite now began to be revealed to a larger 
 circle. It was natural that soon after he had 
 served in the common council, in the years 1877, 
 1878, and 1879, with credit to himself and the 
 city, he should have been elected to the lower 
 house of the Legislature. During 1882, 1883, 
 and 1884, he was a hardworking and efficient 
 member of that house. On the committees he 
 did his full share of duty. He made no special 
 mark by any great speech or sensational action. 
 He simply gained and gained steadily in the 
 confidence of the members of the house. 
 
 In the year 1884, the Republican party had 
 reached a point where, under the domination of 
 its machine, it nominated, in spite of the protest 
 of a large fraction of its early and noblest mem- 
 bers, James G. Blaine for the presidency. The 
 moral sense and political judgment of Roger 
 Wolcott revolted against this action, and, though 
 still at heart in sympathy with the greater prin- 
 ciples of the Republican party, he cast his vote 
 in the presidential election for Mr. Cleveland. 
 Although he received high honors from the Re- 
 publican party in later years, no one, to my 
 knowledge, ever heard him express a word of 
 regret for that vote. He esteemed his action 
 
 [ ni ] 
 
SON'S OF THE PURITANS 
 
 then as the best service tliat he could do for the 
 nation, wliich was more to him than party, and 
 incidentally he ljc]iL\cd that it was- the best 
 service that he could do for the Republican 
 party. 
 
 In the reaction which set in against the Re- 
 publican party during the administration of 
 President Harrison, the Democrats gained 
 strength in Massachusetts. They had a worthy 
 and strong leader in William K. Russell. He 
 had won, as he deserved, the confidence and 
 loyalty not only of his own party but of thou- 
 sands of citizens who were good Republicans 
 or whose party affiliations sat lightly upon 
 them. A group of high-minded and ardent Re- 
 publicans of the ^younger generation felt that 
 something sliould be done to stem the tide and 
 to bring before the Commonwealth a type of 
 Republicanism which was different in some of 
 its characteristics from that element which was 
 in control of the national and state party. 
 They organized the Republican Club of Massa- 
 chusetts ; and in selecting a standard-bearer for 
 the younger Republicanism, their eye naturally 
 fastened upon Roger Wolcott as their first pres- 
 ident. His inaugural speech, with its outspoken 
 language, its program of a better Republican- 
 
 [ n^ ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 ism, its clarion call to the young men to set 
 before them higher ideals of political life, con- 
 firmed the wisdom of his selection and called 
 the attention of the Commonwealth to an element 
 of political life in their midst which had to be 
 reckoned with. 
 
 In September, 1892, was held in Tremont 
 Temple, Boston, the Republican State Conven- 
 tion. Mr. Haile, the lieutenant-governor, was 
 nominated for governor. The interesting issue 
 was upon the nomination for lieutenant-gov- 
 ernor. There was a conviction on the part of 
 some of the Republicans that the president of 
 the Republican Club was such a leader of youth 
 that he could enter into the lists at election with 
 that other youthful leader, Governor Russell. 
 The competition between the candidates was 
 sharp, but the question was settled upon the 
 second ballot, and by a vote of 499 to 473 
 Roger Wolcott became the nominee for lieu- 
 tenant-governor. His position as lieutenant- 
 governor under a Democratic governor, and 
 with a governor's council at odds with the gov- 
 ernor on certain questions of policy and matters 
 of appointment, was a delicate one. His court- 
 esy never failed him, and, while supporting 
 what he believed to be the true principles, he 
 [ 173 1 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 and the governor always sustained that respect 
 for eacli otlier's opinions and that mutual re- 
 gard which go with strong characters touched 
 by the graces of Christian culture. 
 
 After three years of honorable service as 
 governor, William E. Russell retired, and the 
 year 1894! saw a change of administration. 
 Frederick T. Grecnhalge, of Lowell, who made 
 an excellent record as representative to Congress, 
 a Republican, was elected, with Roger Wolcott 
 as lieutenant-governor. The same administra- 
 tion followed in 1895 and 1896. To be elected 
 four times to a public office which is clearly a 
 subordinate position, to hold it for over three 
 years with such dignity, efficiency, and grace as 
 to gain the confidence of the people and to keep 
 them assured that the faculty of leadership is 
 still there, is no mean task. When Grovernor 
 Greenhalge, with whom the lieutenant-governor 
 had always worked in sympathy and mutual 
 regard, died, there was no doubt in the public 
 mind that the acting governor could take up the 
 task and administer the office with force as well 
 as with that conscientiousness and grace already 
 familiar to the people. As acting governor he 
 served almost a whole year. Then for three 
 successive years he was elected governor. This 
 [ 174 ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 was not without some questioning and even op- 
 position within the recesses of the party. Roger 
 Wolcott was not a skilful politician ; his serious- 
 ness of purpose sometimes caused him to lose 
 even legitimate political influence. He never 
 deviated in the slightest from what he believed 
 to be the right and honorable path, for the sake 
 of any political gain either for his party or 
 for himself. The sentiment arose now and 
 again that he was not quite the man for party 
 leadership. He sometimes neglected to notice 
 sufficiently, he even off'ended by an honest and 
 outspoken word, some influential man in the 
 party. There were occasions when a more 
 skilled and at the same time an honorable action 
 would have enabled him to avoid some misunder- 
 standings by the people. It augurs well for 
 the Commonwealth that, whatever some politi- 
 cians might say, Roger Wolcott had the con- 
 fidence of the people. He was a vote-getter 
 because the people trusted him. They knew that 
 what he promised he would do. Therefore to 
 him belongs the honor of polling by far the 
 largest majority that has ever been given to a 
 governor of Massachusetts. 
 
 A glance at his administration reveals no 
 great political crisis or constitutional change. 
 [ 176 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 His work was simply the administration of the 
 highest executive office of the Commonwealth, — 
 an office far more burdensome and important 
 and far more potent for good or evil than most 
 people realize. Under the present arrangement 
 of government by commissions, the efficiency 
 of the administration of the public service is 
 largely dependent upon the personnel of the 
 commissions. Upon the governor rests the re- 
 sponsibility of appointment. It is often the 
 case that the men best fitted for public positions 
 are the most difficult to get. Therefore a gov- 
 ernor, besides having a high conception of the 
 class of men needed, and an insight into the 
 character and ability of men, must also have a 
 personality and a persuasive or magnetic quality 
 that will lead men to see the importance of the 
 office, and induce them to take it. Governor 
 Wolcott had that quality, and the result was 
 that his appointees were of an unusually excel- 
 lent character and ability. 
 
 In questions of legislation he felt deeply his 
 responsibility. The return of an act to the 
 legislature with his veto meant much labor and 
 serious thought, and sometimes real moral cour- 
 age. Possibly his sensitive conscience and ear- 
 nest desire to do what was right prevented him 
 
 [ n6 ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 at times from seeing things in their true per- 
 spective. With rare exceptions, however, he 
 was sustained by the legislature and public opin- 
 ion. By his word and action, the fear of his 
 veto was a potent influence, and on several occa- 
 sions caused the amendment or defeat of unwise 
 legislation. It was natural that his historic 
 sense and artistic temperament should have led 
 him to take an active part in saving the Bul- 
 finch front of the State House. 
 
 At the breaking out of the war with Spain, 
 Governor Wolcott was keenly alert to all the 
 demands of the nation and the people. He had 
 so anticipated action that under his administra- 
 tion Massachusetts sustained her ancient reputa- 
 tion for putting soldiers earliest into the field, 
 equipped and ready for active service. The 
 memories of his boyhood and of his soldier 
 brother, struck down by fever, prompted him 
 to organize the Volunteer Aid Association, 
 which, by its hospital ship, The Bay State, and 
 by its various agencies, ministered to the com- 
 fort and safety of soldiers of other States and 
 of the regular army, as well as those of Massa- 
 chusetts. During those months the governor 
 was as truly at the service of the nation night 
 and day as any soldier in the field. Wherever 
 [ 177 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 he was most wanted, there he went, — to camp, 
 to hospital, to the sick soldier in his home, or 
 to the council chamber. Although there was 
 still the bright smile and vigorous step, he 
 seemed to some of us perceptibly to age. 
 
 The people of the Commonwealth had become 
 familiar with his face and presence. He had 
 spoken to hundreds of thousands of them at 
 public meetings and dinners, and on the round 
 of public functions so wearing to the governor, 
 but sometimes so grateful in its public recogni- 
 tion. They were proud of his integrity, his 
 bearing, and his beauty. During the war, they 
 saw, or rather felt, the heart of the man re- 
 vealed, his sj'mpathy, tenderness, his thought 
 for the individual, his grace and Christian char- 
 ity. From that time he was built into the affec- 
 tions and heart of the people in a way that has 
 been the privilege of very few public servants 
 in the history of our country'. Those who saw 
 him at the dedication of Grant's Tomb in New 
 York will never forget the scene. Well mounted, 
 dressed with the severe simplicity of the gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts, a black frock coat and 
 tall hat, with no gilt or gay caparison to call 
 attention to him or to detract from his radiant 
 beauty, he sat the sjiddle for hours in that bitter 
 [ 1<8 ] 
 
ROGER WOLCOTT 
 
 wind, waiting the command to move. Then, as 
 he and his staff swept up the avenue and broke 
 from the rolling cloud of dust into the sight of 
 the people, the flash of his white hair, the flush 
 of his face, and the brilliancy of the whole man 
 moved the multitude, and there burst forth such 
 a shout as would in other ages have welcomed 
 home a Crusader. For to the people, even those 
 who knew not his name or office, he seemed to 
 represent the beauty and glory of the knight- 
 hood of America. 
 
 The opening of the year 1900 found Roger 
 Wolcott again a private citizen. For seven suc- 
 cessive years he had served the State with honor. 
 The people saw in him a man whom they wished 
 to promote to larger responsibilities and higher 
 honors. The President of the United States 
 off'ered him first a position upon the Commission 
 to the Philippines, and then that of Ambassador 
 to the court of Italy. He declined both with 
 full appreciation of the honor. For the present 
 he had done his duty in the public service. He 
 felt that he had a high and God-given respon- 
 sibility in his home and in leading liis children 
 into the paths their ancestors had walked. One 
 dream of his busy years was fulfilled. A few 
 bright and happy months in Europe with his 
 
 [ n9 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 wife and children were given him. The pleasure 
 was unalloyed, because won by hard work and 
 sacrifice. 
 
 He returned in the autumn in time to vote. 
 He was in the fulness of his powers, radiant. A 
 few weeks later, and all was over. The same 
 typhoid fever that laid his brother low brought 
 him to death. On the afternoon of December 
 21, 1900, at his home in Boston, his fight for 
 life was ended, and Roger Wolcott, a pure, 
 chivalrous, and high-minded gentleman, a pa- 
 triot, a humble Christian, fell asleep. 
 
 [ 180 ] 
 
IX 
 WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 
 [ 181 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL * 
 
 Three years ago this month, at the one hun- 
 dredth anniversary of Williams College, the 
 Governor of the Commonwealth began his 
 speech with these words : " An honorable, useful 
 life, whether of an individual or institution, is 
 always worth commemorating, not only as our 
 grateful remembrance of worthy things accom- 
 plished, but as a duty to make them an in- 
 fluence helpful to the present and future. And 
 when such a life is part of the history of the 
 State, interwoven with her work and fulfilling 
 her high ideals, it is fitting that she should give 
 it her recognition and commendation." 
 
 He who spoke these words was the man to do 
 honor to whose memory we are assembled here 
 to-night, a man whose life has now become, alas ! 
 a part of the history of the State, and who, 
 
 * A Memorial Address, delivered in Sanders Theatre at 
 the invitation of the City of Cambridge, Oct. 26, 1896. 
 Mayor W. A. Bancroft, '78, presided at the Memorial 
 Exercises, Bishop Lawrence, '71, offered a. prayer, and 
 the Beacon and Albion Quartets sang " Integer Vitae," 
 "Into the Silent Land," and "America." 
 
 [ 183 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 above any other of her younger sons in public 
 life, fulfilled tlie high ideals of the Common- 
 wealth, tlie dear mother of us all, who now 
 mourns for him. 
 
 It is especially becoming for this city to 
 commemorate gratefully, with every token of 
 respect and of affection, the life of her child, 
 bom within licr borders, trained in her schools, 
 who gave his early years of manhood to her 
 service, and displayed first in her offices those 
 qualities which secured for him the confidence 
 of the people of Massachusetts, and led them to 
 select him thrice, with special personal selection, 
 for the liighest office of the State. 
 
 The public career of Governor Russell is 
 comprised within the brief space of fifteen years. 
 He had graduated at Harvard in 1877, he had 
 been admitted to the bar in 1880, and in 1881, 
 at the age of 24 years, he was elected a member 
 of the Cambridge Common Council. His en- 
 trance into public service afforded a curious 
 forecast of his later successes. His election to 
 the Council was both unsought and unexpected 
 by him. He had received no regular nomina- 
 tion, but, on the morning of the election, when 
 he went to the polls to cast his vote, he found 
 to his surprise that friends of liis were distrib- 
 [ 18-1 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSMiL 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 uting slips bearing his name to be pasted on the 
 ballot in substitution for the name of the regular 
 nominee. It was too late to interfere, and when 
 the result of the voting was ascertained, it ap- 
 peared that he had been elected by a majority 
 of a single vote. 
 
 What is now known as the " Cambridge Idea " 
 had not yet become the principle and determined 
 the character of our civic politics. But of that 
 idea, which includes in its meaning the combina- 
 tion of good morals and good sense in the ad- 
 ministration of the affairs of the city, young 
 William Russell was the representative. After 
 a year's service in the Common Council he was 
 chosen for two years successively a member of 
 the Board of Aldermen. The affairs of the 
 City of Cambridge, from the date of its charter, 
 had in the main been discreetly and uprightly 
 administered. But good government was not 
 intrenched, as it now is, in the City Hall, and 
 there had been a period, not long before, when 
 the business of the city had been managed not 
 in the general interest, but with a view to private 
 ends and personal advancement. During Jlr. 
 Russell's term of service as alderman there were 
 symptoms in the Executive Department of the 
 government of a recurrence of such conditions, 
 [ 185 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 find it became obvious that effort was required 
 to withstand them. Mr, Russell had already 
 shown such quahties as put him at the head 
 of the movement for reform, and in the autumn 
 of 1884 he was nominated for the mayoralty 
 by an independent body of citizens, and in 
 December was elected mayor upon a ticket which 
 had the support of a majority of voters without 
 distinction of party. He was chosen mayor, 
 year after year, for the four years from 1885 
 to 1888, and such was the general approval of 
 his course as chief officer of the citj- that, for 
 two of these years, he was the only candidate 
 in the field. 
 
 The services which Mr. Russell rendered to 
 the city of Cambridge during his mayoralty 
 were signal and exceptional. In liis Inaugural 
 Address to the City Council in January, 1885, 
 he stated certain principles which he believed 
 should be followed in the administration of city 
 affairs. The result of applj'ing these principles 
 with efficiency and integrity was set forth in a 
 remarkable statement in his Address at the be- 
 ginning of his second year of office. " The 
 financial j'ear began," he said, " with an almost 
 empty treasury, witli unpaid bills of over $20,- 
 000, with a flouting debt for current expenses 
 [ 186 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 of $206,040, including a deficiency of $35,040 
 to the city sinking-fund, and with the example 
 before us of a year when expenses had largely 
 exceeded appropriations, and a higher tax-rate 
 had been fixed than for five years. The year 
 has ended with the bills of 1884 all paid, and 
 none of 1885 unpaid, the deficiency to the 
 sinking-fund has been made good, the floating 
 debt funded, $16,000 of it paid into the sinking- 
 fund, and no other floating debt created, ex- 
 penses have been well kept within appropriations, 
 the tax-rate is the lowest since 1874, and there 
 remains a surplus in the treasury of nearly $45,- 
 000. The needs of the city have been fully 
 met. More money has been spent on our 
 schools, more work done on our streets, more 
 lamps have been set, more sewers have been laid, 
 more has been done for health, fire and police 
 protection, and more for the gentle, kindly 
 care of our helpless poor, during the past year 
 than for many years." It was not strange that 
 the citizens approved an administration which 
 secured such results. The succeeding years of 
 Mr. Russell's term of service as mayor had a 
 similar character. Great works of permanent 
 local interest were undertaken and carried on 
 partly by his originating impulse, partly with 
 [ 187 J 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 his efficient concurrence. The last year of his 
 mayoralty was marked by one of the most mem- 
 orable and striking events in the history of the 
 city, — the gifts to it by Mr. Frederick H. 
 Rindge, — gifts unique in their munificence and 
 the importance of their objects. To this audi- 
 ence I need hardly recount them: the founda- 
 tion of the Manual Training School, the site and 
 building for the Public Library, the superb City 
 Hall, the fine site for the High School. Such 
 gifts were alike extraordinary in amount and 
 in the admirable selection of the objects to which 
 they were devoted ; and while the city will hold 
 the name of the donor in grateful honor and 
 remembrance, it will associate with his name in 
 similar remembrance that of the young Mayor, 
 who had deservedly won the confidence of Mr. 
 Rindge, and to whose wise suggestion the di- 
 rection which the gifts should take was pri- 
 marily due. 
 
 The fight which Mr. Russell had made against 
 municipal corruption, the capacity which he dis- 
 played in his official career, and the distinction 
 which he had secured for Cambridge as a mu- 
 nicipality whose affairs were better adminis- 
 tered than those of any other city in the Com- 
 monwealth, naturally drew attention to him 
 [ 188 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 throughout the State. The election of Mr. 
 Cleveland to the Presidency in 1884, and the 
 strong and able policy of his administration, 
 had given a new prestige to the Democratic 
 party, and restored a confidence to it which had 
 long been wanting. In Massachusetts, where it 
 had held a discredited position, not improved 
 by the short interval of partial control of State 
 affairs which it had obtained under the spectac- 
 ular lead of General Butler, an attempt was now 
 making, mainly by young men of high character, 
 dissatisfied with the conduct of both parties 
 alike, to restore credit to the Democratic party, 
 and they found in Mayor Russell a standard- 
 bearer admirably fitted for the functions of 
 leader. Bom, as he himself said, " a veteran 
 Democrat," in other words, a member of the 
 Democratic party by inheritance, yet not merely 
 a member of that party, but a Democrat in the 
 widest sense, alike by nature and by conviction, 
 young, but already trained by difficult experi- 
 ence in executive office, popular wherever he was 
 known, possessing in a rare degree the peculiar 
 capacities of a public man, with a clear intelli- 
 gence, a sound moral character and wide sym- 
 pathies, and gifted with an attractive person, 
 great capacity of labor, and unusual power of 
 [ 189 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 pliiin and forcible speech, addressed to the intel- 
 ligence ratlier than to the emotions of an audi- 
 ence, — with such qualities and gifts he stood as 
 the natural leader of his party in its efforts to 
 recover character and place. He was nomi- 
 nated Governor in 1888, and defeated by a 
 plurality of 28,000. But he had made himself 
 known, and increased his reputation by a series 
 of vigorous speeches throughout the State. 
 The next year he was renominated, again he car- 
 ried on an active campaign, again he was de- 
 feated, but by a largely reduced plurality, — 
 not 7,000. In 1890 he was renominated again, 
 and this year his character and his work brought 
 success. His party generally was defeated, but 
 he himself was elected by a plurality of more 
 than 9,000 votes. No younger man had ever 
 been elected bj' popular vote Governor of Mas- 
 sachusetts. He was reelected in 1891 and 1892. 
 Few men have ever deserved and received such 
 an expression of intelligent public regard. No 
 more remarkable personal triumph was ever 
 known in the political history of our Common- 
 wealth : and no more extraordinary combination 
 was ovtT known in the administration of the 
 State ; for during tiie three vears in which Mr. 
 [ 190 ]" 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 Russell held office as Governor, every other 
 elected official, with a single comparatively un- 
 important exception, from the Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor and the Secretary of State downwards, 
 was a Republican. Russell, the leader of the 
 Democratic party, was practically elected by the 
 votes of his party adversaries. The Gov- 
 ernor's Council and both branches of the Legis- 
 lature were Republican. 
 
 Such facts as these are absolutely exceptional, 
 and they are only to be accounted for by the 
 rare character of the man thus exceptionally 
 honored. He won, not because of any consid- 
 erable change in the relations of parties in their 
 comparative numerical proportions, but because 
 of the personal impression he had made on the 
 people of the State in the campaigns he had con- 
 ducted, and of the confidence he had established 
 in his integrity, in his capacity, his superiority 
 to mere party considerations, and his devotion 
 to the higher interests of the State. His tri- 
 umph was a testimony not only to his own high 
 qualities, but to the good sense of the body of 
 the voters in discriminating between the objects 
 of party victory and of public good. The 
 Democratic party as a party did not hold the 
 [ 191 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 confidence of the majority of voters, but the in- 
 dividual Democrat, strong party man as he was, 
 had deservedly gained their trust. 
 
 This unexampled triumph was, indeed, largely 
 the direct result of the mode in which Gov- 
 ernor Russell conducted his campaigns. He 
 threw himself into the combat with the unflag- 
 ging energy of youth, and with the zeal of 
 moral no less than political conviction. From 
 the hills of Berkshire to the shores of Plymouth 
 County, he went everywhere, addressing every 
 variety of the people of Massachusetts, till, as 
 he himself said, he had spoken from every stump 
 in the State. His addresses were carefully and 
 laboriously prepared. There was no repetition 
 in them. The main topics were indeed often the 
 same, but the course of his argument and the 
 quality of his illustration were always fresh and 
 always had special application to the particular 
 interests and concerns of the audience to which 
 he spoke. He was not a great orator in the 
 sense of being a master of rhetorical eloquence; 
 he did not appeal to the passions or prejudices 
 of his hearers with words of fire, he did not lift 
 them on the wings of imagination, nor thrill 
 them with bursts of splendid declamation. He 
 did not move them by the bitterness of sarcasm, 
 [ 192 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 or with heated denunciation of his oppoents ; he 
 did not pack his speech with epigram, he rarely 
 enlivened it with humor or with anecdote. He 
 had, in short, none of the arts of the professional 
 orator; but he possessed in large measure the 
 command of persuasive and effective speech, 
 above all, the power of impressing those who 
 listened to him with his entire sincerity. He 
 made them feel that he was speaking to them 
 what he believed to be the truth, and he was 
 able to set forth the truth as he held it with re- 
 markable clearness and consecutiveness of state- 
 ment, with great abundance of effective illustra- 
 tion, with steady enforcing of the main points 
 of his discourse, so that he succeeded, to use a 
 phrase of Burke's, in " leaving a sting in their 
 minds." He spoke as a man of good sense and 
 of strong convictions to men whom he addressed 
 as capable of appreciating sound reasoning and 
 valid argument. They might differ from him, 
 they could not but respect the fairness of his ap- 
 peal to them as rational beings, while his frank 
 manner of speech, his manly bearing, his 
 pleasantness of address, created toward hira a 
 sentiment of personal attachment. 
 
 The general character of his discourses was, 
 as I have already indicated, essentially practical. 
 [ 193 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 He was not an idealist or a theorist in politics. 
 Abstract speculation had but httle interest for 
 him. The special form of his democratic con- 
 victions was largely shaped hj the teachings of 
 Jefferson, and the traditions of the Jefferso- 
 ninn school, but they were not so much anything 
 that he had learned, as they were a part of the 
 body doctrine which every genuine American de- 
 rives unconsciously from the conditions of birth 
 and breeding in the social and political atmos- 
 phere of America. They were of his blood and 
 bone. The fundamental proposition of his 
 creed, or perhaps it were better to say the es- 
 sential principle of his life as a citizen of the 
 Republic, is expressed in the saying of Theo- 
 dore Parker, that " Democracy means not ' I'm 
 as good as you are,' but ' you're as good as I 
 am.' " And it was because Governor Russell 
 believed that the principles of the Democratic 
 party — not always the professions of its plat- 
 forms, or the doctrines and conduct of its lead- 
 ers — that its principles were nearer to a true 
 embodiment of democracy thus understood, than 
 those of any other party in the nation, that he 
 was a faithful servant in its ranks. He was a 
 Democrat, as ho said, " in heart and soul, not 
 for the triumph of any man, but for tlie triumph 
 [194 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 of ideas." He stated the creed of the Demo- 
 cratic party to be " from its first to its thirty- 
 ninth article an abiding trust in the people, a 
 belief that men, irrespective of the accident of 
 birth or fortune, have a right to a voice in the 
 government that rules them. Its principles are 
 the equality and freedom of all men in the 
 affairs of State and before the altar of their 
 God; that a government least felt is the best; 
 that in its administration there should be sim- 
 plicity, purity, and economy, and in its form it 
 should be closely within the reach and control of 
 the people." But there was a qualification of 
 them, or rather an addition to them, which he 
 held not less firmly. " While we insist," he 
 said, " that the proper sovereign of a nation is 
 its people, we realize that our safety and pros- 
 perity rest upon their intelligence and educa- 
 tion." 
 
 Of national questions, which affected the in- 
 terests of all the States of the Union, there were, 
 during his active political campaigns, three of 
 paramount importance, — the tariff, whether for 
 revenue or protection, the adoption of silver as 
 a basis for the currency, and the reform of the 
 civil service. In the discussion of each of these 
 questions he applied the touchstone of his Dem- 
 
 [ 195 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ocratic principles. The question of the tariff 
 was a question of taxation ; in other words, of 
 the right of government to exact for its support 
 or for public uses a portion of the property of 
 the individual citizen. " We believe," said Gov- 
 ernor Russell, " in the freedom of the individual 
 from unnecessary restrictions and unnecessary 
 burdens ; that taxation, with its enormous power, 
 is not to be used to take from one to give to an- 
 other, nor to enrich the few at the expense of the 
 man}' : that it is a necessary evil to be lessened 
 by prudence and economy, and that it should be 
 levied, not upon necessaries of life, nor upon 
 those comforts that may make the humblest fire- 
 side more cheerful, but upon the luxuries which 
 minister to extravagance and to selfish indul- 
 gence, and which beget a spirit of excess and of 
 selfishness dangerous alike to domestic virtue 
 and to public security." It was with this be- 
 lief that Governor Russell discussed before the 
 people of the State the question of the Protec- 
 tive Tariff". He did not deal with it so much in 
 its broader aspects, the false notions of the func- 
 tions of government ImpTie^ in a protective sys- 
 tem, its corrupting influence upon national char- 
 acter, its subtle sapping of the very roots of 
 equality, self-help, industry, and frugality; its 
 [ 196 ■] 
 
SON'S OF THE PURITANS 
 
 verse to that of wliich he was the representative, 
 made ]iis official position one of great difficulty, 
 and limited his oj)portunities of service to the 
 State. He was cliccked and thwarted at every 
 turn, but the opposition he encountered made him 
 the more ready to take advantage of those points 
 where he might promote the public interest with- 
 out meeting with the hindrance of principle or 
 of faction. His pleasant temper, his natural 
 tact, his conciliatory bearing, his readiness of 
 resource, his experience in dealing with men, his 
 practical turn of mind, all stood him in good 
 stead. He practiced, in fine, the method of true 
 statesmanship, the method of endeavoring to ac- 
 complish not the ideally best, but the best pos- 
 sible under the circumstances by which action is 
 controlled. 
 
 In the campaign preceding his last election 
 to the governorship, he took occasion in a speech 
 at Dedham to review the policy and acts of the 
 two years during whidi he had been chief magis- 
 trate; the reforms which he liad suggested, the 
 measures he had recommended, the vetoes which 
 he had put to acts of the Legislature, the ap- 
 pointments to office which he had made, the 
 standard of official duty wliich he had main- 
 tained; the responsibihtv for independent action 
 [198 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 which he had claimed as Governor. It is a 
 striking and significant review, in which the con- 
 sistency of his principles, and the elevation of his 
 views of his official duty are alike manifest. 
 Three main features of the record may be se- 
 lected as the most prominent and most important, 
 — first, the defense of local self-government, as 
 against the attempt to control the independent 
 action of cities and towns, by means of special 
 legislation, or by the appointment of independ- 
 ent commissions in charge of important branches 
 of administration ; secondly, the prevention of 
 special legislation for special interests ; thirdly, 
 the assertion of responsibility in executive office, 
 unshared by a Council with power to assert the 
 will of its members as against the judgment of 
 the elected Governor of the State. 
 
 The Annual Addresses of Governor Russell 
 to the Legislature are models of what such 
 papers should be, surveying broadly the inter- 
 ests and the needs of the State, not from the 
 point of view of a party, but with simple regard 
 to the general welfare ; straight-forward and 
 business-like in statement, large in their survey 
 of the aflfairs of the Commonwealth, sensible in 
 their recommendations, and earnest in their 
 urgency for reform in those portions of the 
 [ 199 J 
 
SON'S OF THE PURITANS 
 
 affairs in which reform was required. ^luch 
 that he advised was accomplished ; more still re- 
 mains to be done. 
 
 Disappointed and harassed as he often was 
 under the burden of opposition and the weight 
 of care, Governor Russell had the satisfaction of 
 knowing, when at the end of three years of hard 
 and difficult service he laid down the great charge 
 which had been committed to him, that he re- 
 tired from office with a stronger hold upon the 
 respect and confidence of the people of the 
 Commonwealth than that with which he had en- 
 tered upon it. However much the wisdom of 
 special acts, or of his general policy, might be 
 questioned, they recognized, with hardly an 
 exception, that he had served the State with en- 
 tire fidelity^ with no private ends, but with 
 steady regard to public interests. He had won 
 the ungrudging respect of his opponents ; he 
 had deepened the affection of his friends, and 
 had secured for himself the devotion of a large 
 personal following such as no other man in the 
 State possessed. Whenever he appeared on a 
 public occasion, he was greeted with plaudits of 
 genuine heartiness. If his familiar and almost 
 boyish figure were seen entering the gate at the 
 Harvard- Yale football game at Springfield, he 
 [ 200 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 was hailed not only with the cheers of the Har- 
 vard men, but of the whole vast crowd as he 
 passed along to his seat. Nor was such greet- 
 ing as this confined to his own State. In New 
 York, in Chicago, on occasion of great pro- 
 cessions in which he had place as Governor of 
 Massachusetts, he was singled out by the multi- 
 tude of spectators as the recipient of special, 
 distinguishing applause. He drank deep of the 
 infinite flatteries that are poured out to youth 
 and success, but they did not intoxicate him. 
 They never disturbed the even balance of his 
 judgment, or deluded him into self -flattery and 
 conceit. They were for him but stimulants to 
 virtue, but encouragements to new efl^ort. 
 
 It was, indeed, an extraordinary hold upon 
 public confidence and expectation for so young a 
 man to have gained ; and it had been gained by 
 legitimate means ; by the force of strong, simple, 
 upright character. 
 
 The first essential element of such a character 
 is a clear mind, trained in the exercise of its 
 own faculties, capable of reflection, accustomed 
 to think its thought out to a conclusion ; not 
 mistaking, as Sinbad's companions mistook the 
 floating back of a whale for an island, the float- 
 ing and shifting mass of popular opinion and 
 [ 201 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 of transient party doctrine for the immovable 
 ground of principle and the unshaken rock of 
 truth. And with this, inseparable from it, must 
 be the firm moral sense, the conviction of the 
 absolute .supremacy of the moral law as the 
 rule of conduct, with authority to control the 
 will, the affections, the passions, to determine 
 the direction and to limit the sphere of ambition, 
 and as possessing not only this authority, but 
 also the power in the long run to enforce its in- 
 junctions. 
 
 A clear mind and a firm moral sense were 
 united in Governor Russell with a remarkable 
 simplicity of nature. There was no pretension 
 in him, no affectation. He was a pattern of 
 simple manliness. Never unmindful of the dig- 
 nity of great office, he put on no official airs, 
 but secured through his own simple self-respect 
 the respect due to the position which he occupied. 
 He had no conceit, but he did not fear to trust 
 himself, for he was conscious of his own sin- 
 cerity. Sincerity is, indeed, but a part of such 
 simplicity as his. His simplicity and his sin- 
 cerity were the chief sources of the influence of 
 his public speech. However much men might 
 dissent from his opinion or differ from his policy, 
 they could not but believe in his honestv of 
 [ 5202 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 motive and directness of purpose. What Plu- 
 tarch says of the speech of the younger Cato 
 might be said of his, — that it was straight-for- 
 ward, full of matter, and the speaker's char- 
 acter, showing itself in aU he said, excited a 
 sympathetic response in the feelings of his 
 hearers. As a candidate for office he stooped to 
 no mean acts to secure success. He was a true 
 democrat, and therefore no sycophant of the 
 people ; he showed the genuineness of his de- 
 mocracy in never attempting to take advantage 
 of the lack of information or the lack of reason 
 of the multitude, by trying to deceive them with 
 fallacious arguments or with specious flattery. 
 He did not pander to their prejudices or excite 
 their passions by appeals to distinctions of class, 
 and to motives of envy and of jealousy. He 
 held in contempt and abhorrence the men in pub- 
 lic life, men, some of them, with advantages of 
 birth and education not inferior to his own, who 
 used such arts as these to advance their private 
 ends or to gain a partisan victory. He never had 
 to reproach himself with weakening the founda- 
 tions of free institutions by scoffs at the value 
 of higher education, or by sneers at the teacii- 
 ers who had helped to train him in knowledge, 
 and direct him in the paths of honor. 
 [ 203 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 His strong sense of duty compelled him to 
 continual labor to fit himself for the public 
 service. He was in earnest in whatever he un- 
 dertook. He gave himself wholly to his work, 
 and his sound health and his power of concen- 
 tration of his faculties on the work in hand en- 
 abled him to accomplish hard and laborious 
 tasks with comparative ease. 
 
 Few men surpassed him in the knowledge 
 requisite for dealing intelligently with the cur- 
 rent questions of politics. He was well in- 
 formed of the history of our institutions, and of 
 the development of the conditions and princi- 
 ples of our national life. Busily employed in 
 public affairs from early youth, he had little 
 leisure for wide general culture, but he had 
 read much, he had an excellent memory, and he 
 kept his mind fresh and enlarged its resources 
 by resort to the springs of history, and by occa- 
 sional readings of the poets. His tastes and his 
 mode of life displayed the simplicity and gen- 
 uineness of his nature. He loved the sports of 
 the woods and the river, he took a hearty inter- 
 est in the games of youth in which he himself 
 had been an adept; he was an excellent horse- 
 man. But more than all, he was a lover of na- 
 ture, with a quick eye and a keen sensitiveness 
 [ 204 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 to her charm, and with a ready responsiveness 
 in his own being to her capacity for the refresh- 
 ment alike of the mind and of the body of the 
 man worn with harassing cares and burdened 
 with heavy responsibilities. 
 
 His humane sympathies were wide, quick, and 
 generous. He had a most kindly disposition, 
 and his kindliness was not a matter of mere tem- 
 perament, but of principle and thoughtfulness. 
 It was a vital part of his democracy. For to 
 him the best lover and servant of his fellow-men 
 was the best democrat. He was a true friend; 
 he had one of the happiest of homes. Ready for 
 public service, ambitious to be of use, he yet 
 was content with private station, and satisfied 
 with the opportunities which it afforded for the 
 exercise of his powers, and for the discharge of 
 duties not the less important that they are of the 
 common order. 
 
 Upon laying down the office of governor, he 
 resumed, as we all know, the practice of his 
 profession, and gave himself to it with char- 
 acteristic ardor and fidelity. And I believe that 
 among the many tributes to his worth there is 
 none which, could he have foreseen it, would 
 have given him more satisfaction than the high 
 and honorable testimony borne to him as lawyer 
 [ 206 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 and as public mrin, in Resolutions adopted a few 
 days since at the Annual Meeting of the Bar 
 Association of the Citj of Boston, for presenta- 
 tion to the Supreme Judicial Court, and to the 
 Suffolk Bar. 
 
 But though, after laying down the burden of 
 office. Governor Russell in resuming the practice 
 of the law devoted himself with steadiness and 
 success to his professional engagements, his con- 
 cern in public affairs remained as deep and con- 
 stant as ever. While taking no active part in 
 them, he held himself in reserve readv to respond 
 to the call of public duty whenever it might 
 sound for him. A little more than two years 
 ago, disturbed by the course of a considerable 
 section of the Democratic party in its manifest 
 hostility to President Cleveland, and by the 
 popular misunderstanding and misinterpretation 
 of the causes which had brought about the 
 financial perplexities and distress from which the 
 country was suffering, he prepared a brief, clear, 
 and forcible paper, entitled " A Year of Demo- 
 cratic Administration," which was published in 
 The Forum for May, 1894. In this paper he 
 set forth what he regarded as the true aims and 
 duties of the party in the actual conditions of 
 tlie times, and insisting that the first test of suc- 
 [ 206 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 cess was fidelity to principle, he maintained that, 
 measured by this standard, the first year of Pres- 
 ident Cleveland's second administration had been 
 successful. The conclusion which he drew might 
 be disputed, but the whole tone and spirit 
 of the article were those of a patriot who was a 
 strong party man because of his honest con- 
 viction that the essential principles of his party 
 were those upon adherence to which the perma- 
 nent welfare of the country depended. His party 
 was indeed dear to him, but dear only as it rep- 
 resented and maintained these principles. For 
 him party success meant public good. He closed 
 his paper with striking and prophetic words : 
 " The Democratic party in the past," he said, 
 " has achieved success only by loyalty to prin- 
 ciple ; it never has succeeded by substituting 
 tactics for statesmanship, or compromise for 
 courage, and it never will. If now in the high 
 tide of its power it should fritter away its op- 
 portunity in quarrels over petty things, forget- 
 ting the larger ; if in the face of its united, ag- 
 gressive enemy, it should become rent by 
 factional or sectional discord, — there will be 
 ample leisure in the future for it to ponder on its 
 fatal blunders and wasted opportunities. We 
 cannot and must not overlook this danger. Per- 
 [ 207 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 sonal politics, local interests and sectional in- 
 fluences, which create discord and impair effi- 
 ciency, must yield to a higher view of party 
 duty and responsibility." He spoke in vain. 
 As has so often happened in the history of 
 parties, the voices to which the party listened, 
 the influences to which it yielded, were not those 
 of wisdom and of patriotism, but of unreason 
 and of selfishness. He watched with anxiety to 
 the course of aff'airs during the last two years, 
 foreboding defeat to his party and harm to his 
 country. But even he did not forsee the catas- 
 trophe which was to rend his party in twain, and 
 to make of one wing of it a menace to the na- 
 tional welfare. 
 
 In this very year, on the 13th of April, in 
 celebration of the birthday of Jefferson, Gov- 
 ernor Russell delivered at Monticello, in Virginia, 
 a speech which contains an admirable summary 
 of his interpretation of the principles of the 
 Democratic party. His discourse was earnest, 
 was eloquent, was high-minded. " We need not 
 fear defeat," he declared ; " defeat may be but 
 the preliminary to victory ; we should fear the 
 discredit of sacrificing principles to expediency." 
 
 Upon the question which was already dividing 
 his part}- in Virginia, and on which he had been 
 [ 208 ] 
 
WILLIAIM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 warned that silence might be expedient, he spoke 
 with the plainest words, with the full courage 
 of his convictions, and in a single sentence con- 
 densed the substance of a thousand speeches 
 which have since been made all over the land. 
 " Free coinage of silver," he said, " or its com- 
 pulsory purchase, or any compromise legislation 
 in that direction, in my judgment, is distinctly 
 class legislation, which would unsettle business, 
 impair credit, reduce all savings and the value 
 of all wages, and whose injurious results no 
 man can measure." 
 
 It was but three months after the delivery 
 of this speech that Governor Russell found him- 
 self at Chicago as a member of that extraordi- 
 nary convention, the result of which was the dis- 
 ruption of the Democratic party, and the adop- 
 tion of a platform of doctrine to most of which 
 he was radically opposed, and of which the 
 plank of " free silver " was the central and most 
 prominent part. 
 
 The spectacle presented at the convention was 
 unexampled. Never before in the history of 
 nominating conventions, unreasonable and head- 
 strong as many of them have been, and unex- 
 pected as have been their issues, had there been 
 such an overpowering predominance of hysterical 
 [ 209 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 passion and irrational action. It was no meeting 
 of men prepared for manly discussion, and for 
 temperate and well-advised counsel. It was a 
 mob of individuals deaf to reason, drunk with the 
 wine of folly, rejecting the authority of wisdom 
 and of experience, and plunging headlong into a 
 pit of confusion and of darkness. It was, in- 
 deed, a miserable spectacle of the wilfulness of 
 misguided ignorance and selfishness ; an alarming 
 spectacle to every one who believes that free in- 
 stitutions rest securely only on the intelligence 
 and moral sense of the mass of the people to 
 whose guardianship they are committed. 
 
 To this mob, hardly to be restrained even for 
 a moment to listen to him. Governor Russell ad- 
 dressed himself in the last words which he was to 
 speak to the public ear. They were words 
 worthy of him. He was deeply moved. He 
 was witnessing the degradation of the great 
 party which he had loved and served so well ; it 
 was the disappointment of his most cherished 
 hopes, the shattering of his desires, and the 
 arousing of new anxieties for the future of the 
 country for whose sake, and for whose sake 
 alone, he had loved his party. " I speak," he 
 declared, — " I speak, and I have a right to, for 
 the Democracy of my State. . . . We did not 
 [ 210 ] 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 think we should live to see the time when the 
 great Democratic principles would be forgotten 
 in a Democratic convention, when we should be 
 asked to give up the principles for which we 
 have labored, and at the demand of a section to 
 adopt a policy which we believe invites peril to 
 our country and disaster to our party. ... I 
 appeal to you, my associates of the Massachu- 
 setts delegation, do I not speak the true sentiment 
 of our State and our party when I utter its and 
 your earnest, emphatic, and unflinching protest 
 against the platform of this convention ? " But 
 it was not with protest or with despair that he 
 concluded, but with prophecy of confidence, that 
 when " this storm has subsided, and the dark 
 clouds of passion and prejudice have passed 
 away, and there comes after the turmoil of this 
 convention the sober second thought, then the 
 protest we of the minority now make will be 
 held as the ark of the covenant of the faith, 
 with which we shall meet, again united, to carry 
 our old principles to triumph and to victory." 
 
 Such words as these were not unworthy to be 
 the last which his country should hear from a 
 statesman whose appeal had always been to 
 reason and to judgment and to the higher 
 motives of patriotic duty ; who from the begin- 
 [ 211 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ning of his career had been faithful to principle, 
 and who loved honor more than victory. 
 
 He returned from Chicago, worn by the fa- 
 tigues of the convention, with a cruel burden of 
 disappointment, but not disheartened, rather 
 girding himself afresh for new and more difficult 
 efforts, with no abatement of confidence in the 
 principles which he had maintained, and with no 
 bitterness towards those who had brought about 
 their temporary defeat. 
 
 He had never stood in so commanding and so 
 conspicuous a position before the country as at 
 this moment. The qualities of his character 
 had produced their legitimate eflfect. " The 
 name of William E. Russell," said the Xac York 
 Tribune, a paper that seldom had a good word 
 for him, " the name of William E. RusseU is a 
 platform in itself." The uprightness and dig- 
 nity of his nature, the fairness, the solidity, the 
 liberality of his intelligence, the disciplined 
 powers of his mind, the self-respecting simplicity 
 and purity of his bearing and life, his freedom 
 from self-seeking ambitions, his devotion to pub- 
 lic ends, all made him the pattern of what a pub- 
 lic man should be. His career seemed but at its 
 opening; no man awakened juster expectancy, 
 [ 212 ] 
 
WILLIAJVI EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 or had fairer promise of rendering important 
 service to his country. 
 
 The promise was not to be fulfilled. His 
 death fell suddenly on the heart of the nation 
 as an irreparable loss and a great sorrow. Not 
 a week ago, a day or two after I wrote the 
 preceding words, I received a letter from a total 
 stranger, resident in another State, who wrote : 
 " Many tears were shed when Governor Russell 
 died, and much sorrow was felt all over the 
 country by men who, like myself, had never seen 
 him, but looked to him as the best promise of 
 statesmanship and leadership for the future." 
 The forces of good in politics were, indeed, dis- 
 tinctly weakened by his death. There was no 
 one to take his place. We could ill spare him. 
 He was greatly needed at the moment of his 
 death ; he is greatly needed now ; he will be 
 greatly needed in the coming years. We shall 
 long lament his death as untimely. And yet the 
 service he had already rendered was abundant, 
 and though short not transient. Death came to 
 him in a fair hour. " Alas ! " exclaims Ben 
 Jonson, in his noble ode on the death of Sir 
 Henry Morison — 
 
 [ 213 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 "Alas! but 'Morison fell young: 
 He never fcU, — thou faU'st my tongue. 
 He stood a soldier to the last right end, 
 A perfect patriot, and a noble friend. 
 
 All offices were done 
 
 By him so ample, full and round, 
 
 As, though his age imperfect might appear. 
 His life had the just image of a sphere." 
 
 Yes, I repeat, death came to our friend in a 
 fair hour, just at the close of j-outh, leaving his 
 memory to us as the exemplar of what youth in- 
 spired with the sense of public duty may accom- 
 plish in the service of the State. He stands as 
 the type of the youthful patriot in time of peace. 
 It was not by virtue of rare genius, not by intel- 
 lectual gifts which exalted him above his fel- 
 low-men, not by exceptional advantages of acci- 
 dent or felicities of fortune, that he won the 
 place which he holds and will keep in the affec- 
 tion and respect of his fellow-men ; but it was by 
 virtue of the right use of faculties which are a 
 common inheritance, and of qualities which every 
 youth may imitate and maj' hope to attain. He 
 stands all the brighter as an example to youth, 
 because the inspiration of his life was the simple 
 [ 214 J 
 
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 
 
 inspiration of duty. In this democracy of ours, 
 where we are all one in mutual and common in- 
 terests, where every man has a share in the fate 
 of all, the insistent call of his country upon every 
 youth is to make the best of himself that he may 
 serve her well. His life must be work ; and his 
 private work must be adjusted to public ends. 
 His duty as a member of society is his prime 
 duty toward himself. This was the motive of 
 Russell's life, and it is this which makes the 
 memory of his hfe precious, exemplary, deserv- 
 ing of our lasting reverence and gratitude. In 
 the last letter which he wrote to his wife, — a 
 sacred letter which she has permitted me to see, 
 — written from Chicago on the 8th of July, 
 from the midst of the turbulence and passion of 
 the convention, he said, " I had no idea how- 
 hard and distasteful this task would be. I have 
 but one comfort in it. I know I have done my 
 duty with fidelity." Memorable and impressive 
 words ! " I have done my duty with fidelity ; " 
 the summary of his life; the fit inscription for 
 his tomb ; his best legacy to his countrymen, for 
 they are words of highest counsel and of high- 
 est comfort which every man may make his own. 
 No man could desire a better memory than that 
 of having done his duty with fidelity. No man 
 [ 215 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 but nmy leave this memory behind him as a 
 blessing. 
 
 It was but three or four days after this letter 
 was written tliat Governor Ilusscll returned home. 
 He came back with joy to those whom he best 
 loved. He was tired, and to secure the refresh- 
 ment that he needed, after spending two days at 
 home, he went to a beautiful region among the 
 wilds of Canada, wlicre in the heart of nature, 
 and with out-door occupations, in the company 
 of friends, he had before, more than once, gained 
 health and recovered from weariness and de- 
 pression. He reached the camp in good heart 
 and hope. He thought a little rest would re- 
 store him to his wonted vigor ; but the blow 
 struck at his country had fallen too heavily upon 
 him. He went to sleep, and he never awoke. 
 Clarendon ends his character of Lord Falkland 
 with the words : " Whoever leads such a life 
 needs be the less anxious upon how short warn- 
 ing it is taken from him." 
 
 [ ^16 ] 
 
X 
 
 CHARLES ELIOT 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM R. THAYER 
 
 [ 217 ] 
 
CHARLES ELIOT 
 
 Charles Eliot, the elder son of Charles W. and 
 Ellen Derby (Peabody) Eliot, was born in Cam- 
 bridge, Nov. 1, 1859. As a boy he was not 
 strong, which led to unusual care being taken to 
 keep him out of doors. Three years of his boy- 
 hood were passed in Europe. After his father 
 was chosen President of Harvard College in 
 1869, Cambridge became the family home, and 
 there young Charles was fitted for college. His 
 studies were sometimes interrupted by ill health ; 
 he was taken to Florida and to Canada ; and he 
 spent many summers in camp or on a small yacht 
 on the coast of Maine. From a child, he had 
 learned to sketch, and he rarely failed to illus- 
 trate his log with drawings, or to make a map 
 of the country which he walked over in short ex- 
 cursions out of Cambridge. He entered Har- 
 vard in 1878 and had hardly more than a bow- 
 ing acquaintance with most of his classmates, an 
 almost morbid shyness, often misinterpreted, 
 preventing him from lifting the veil of reserve 
 which seemed to smother his intrinsic friendli- 
 [ 219 ] 
 
SONS OF THE rURITANS 
 
 ncss. The truth is, he was by nature self-dis- 
 trustful and subject to periods of depression, 
 to which iiis not strong physique unquestion- 
 ably contributed : and as a young man he passed 
 through several years of spiritual conflict, or 
 earnest pondering on the burden of the mj'stery, 
 which augmented his native taciturnity. Grad- 
 uating cum laude with the Class of 1882, he was 
 still undecided as to his profession but during 
 that summer, having by a process of elimina- 
 tion " rejected one after another of the com- 
 mon professions," he determined to fit himself 
 to be a landscape architect. The profession was 
 comparatively new, but he had heard something 
 of it from his uncle, Mr. R. S. Peabod>', a Bos- 
 ton architect, and the fact that it involved much 
 open-air life was a recommendation. Accord- 
 ingly he studied at the Bussey Institution until 
 April, 1883, when Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, 
 the foremost of American landscape architects, 
 took him into his office as an apprentice. The 
 connection was invaluable, since it afforded not 
 only the opportunity for an apt pupil to study 
 at close range the methods of a master, but also 
 to visit the various works, public and private, 
 which Mr. Olmsted then had under way, to learn 
 business details, to superintend workmen and 
 [ J2!>0 ] 
 
cil\RLl8 ELIOT 
 
CHARLES ELIOT 
 
 contractors, and to make useful acquaintances. 
 In moments of leisure, he read up the literature 
 of his profession. He left Mr. Olmsted's office 
 in May, 1885, and after six months spent chiefly 
 in making trips through New England and as 
 far south as Natural Bridge of Virginia, he 
 sailed for Europe in November. 
 
 It was an immense amount of work which 
 Charles Eliot accomplished during a year 
 abroad. He visited England, France, Italy, 
 Grermany, Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Hol- 
 land, studying the parks of the chief cities and 
 the great country estates, observing the char- 
 acteristic landscape of each region and the 
 flora natural to it, making innumerable notes, 
 diagrams and drawings, and above all, storing 
 up in his memory impressions which were thence- 
 forth a precious addition to his equipment as an 
 artist. His diary shows that besides the im- 
 mediate objects of his profession, he had a keen 
 eye for buildings, statues and paintings, a 
 healthy curiosity for the history of the lands he 
 visited, and an interest in the every-day life of 
 the people. He attended the Good Friday 
 service at St. Mark's, Venice. " Within the 
 church, shadows and darkness, quiet moving 
 crowds, — the singing most touching, I sat in a 
 [ 221 ] 
 
SON'S OF THE PURITANS 
 
 corner till all was done. Life more a dream 
 than ever." At St. Petersburg he says, " The 
 common people are dirty and of strangely pri- 
 meval appearance, so to speak. They might be 
 cave-men, most of them — long-haired, and 
 completely unkempt, and hungry-looking." Es- 
 pecially copious and enthusiastic are his mem- 
 oranda on pictures. " To stand before the 
 glorified men and women of Titian ! " he ex- 
 claims, after a visit to the Louvre. " What 
 superb creatures ! gifted with the same calm di- 
 vinity as the Victory ; more than humanly lovely, 
 healthy and sane. We folk of to-day — and 
 particularly these French — are the veriest apes 
 and idiots in comparison. How I wish I might 
 have a drop or two of their rich, warm blood put 
 into my feeble heart. . . . After a sight of 
 these, the rest of the Louvre counts for little, — 
 at least one cannot care for it the same day." 
 Many another quotation might be given showing 
 that the love of beauty, by virtue of which he 
 was an artist, and was to embody his artistic 
 talent in landscape architecture, made him ap- 
 preciative of the beautiful in the fine arts not 
 less than in nature. 
 
 On his return home in the autumn of 1886 
 Charles Eliot opened nn office in Boston. In 
 [ 222 ] 
 
CHARLES ELIOT 
 
 an admirable circular he designated himself a 
 " landscape architect," stated what sort of serv- 
 ice he was prepared to render, and gave a 
 schedule of his charges, from which it appeared 
 that " he decided not to undertake surveying of 
 any sort, not to take contracts for the execution 
 of his plans, and not to take commissions on 
 labor or materials, or on the amount of contract, 
 as architects habitually do, but to be in all cases 
 strictly a professional adviser like a lawyer." 
 Among his earliest works were the laying out of 
 the Norton estate and of the Longfellow Park, 
 Cambridge, and the suggesting of a proper dis- 
 tribution of shrubs and plants round the build- 
 ings and along the fences of the Harvard Col- 
 lege yard. Larger engagements soon came to 
 him, parks at Newburyport, at Concord, N. H., 
 and at Youngstown, O., the laying out of 
 private places, the design for a town-site on Salt 
 Lake, Utah, and many similar works. He con- 
 tributed frequently professional articles to 
 " Forest and Stream," and to the Boston 
 " Transcript " and other papers, he occasionally 
 sent articles describing the suburban beauty of 
 Boston, and urging that more should be done to 
 preserve them. 
 
 And here, at last, he found his hfe-work. 
 [ 223 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 The times were propitious — as we are accus- 
 tomed to say when an individual of independent 
 force comes along and accomplishes a great 
 work ; possibly, without Charles Eliot, as much 
 might have been done, by other persons, to effect 
 what has been effected: but the truth remains 
 that, so far as a retrospect of what actually hap- 
 pened can instruct us, he was indispensable. 
 The general idea that Boston, which was grow- 
 ing rapidly, ought to have a well-considered 
 park system, was already in the air. Enthusi- 
 asts, like Elizur Wright, had already urged that 
 such a rare tract of wild nature as the Middlesex 
 Fells ought to be preserved forever. But it 
 was Charles Eliot who concentrated these various 
 purposes. It was he who conceived the estab- 
 lishing of a Board of Trustees of Public Reser- 
 vations, to hold in behalf of the public such 
 pieces of land or water as they preempt in any 
 part of IMassachusetts. It was he who, as land- 
 scape architect to the Metropolitan Park Com- 
 mission, — he received the appointment in 1892 
 — gave the Commissioners, who were men of 
 broad views and unflagging zeal, the specific 
 information which they needed in order to form- 
 ulate wisely and to carry out to the extent which 
 we now see the park systiiii of the Boston Met- 
 [ 224 ] 
 
CHARLES ELIOT 
 
 ropolitan district. The work has progressed 
 so gradually that few persons realize how stu- 
 pendous it has been — 9,342' acres of land and 
 water set apart for the perpetual benefit of the 
 people of Greater Boston, and 24 miles of park- 
 way completed — all between 1892 and 1902. 
 Charles Eliot's ample project embraced not only 
 the Middlesex Fells, but the Waverly Oaks and 
 Beaver Brook, Revere Beach, the Blue Hills, 
 the Charles River, and the Mystic Valley. It 
 is significant that one who had been when 
 younger so self-distrustful proved now most con- 
 vincing in dealing with legislative and other 
 committees, on whose support depended the ap- 
 propriations necessary for carrying out the work 
 of the Commission. He had a simple, direct, 
 earnest way of speaking, backed by a complete 
 mastery of every professional detail, which won 
 over to his side the most reluctant lawmaker, 
 who might be impervious to every appeal to pre- 
 serve suburban scenery because of its beauty, 
 but who could not resist the appeal in behalf 
 of improving the healthfulness of Greater Bos- 
 ton, and who saw at once that a proposition, 
 which by increasing the attractiveness of prop- 
 erty would in the long run enhance its taxable 
 value, was a practical proposition. It seldom 
 [ 225 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 happens that a single advocate can command 
 tlie assent of his fellow specialists, of devotees 
 of beauty, and of the average personnel of 
 our legislative and municipal bodies: this Charles 
 Eliot did. The several reports, with maps, 
 which he prepared for the Metropolitan Park 
 Commission, are monuments to his professional 
 ability ; they are also remarkable for a literary 
 excellence seldom met with in writings of this 
 kind. 
 
 His work for the Park Commissioners did 
 not, however, consume all his time. In 1893 he 
 had become a member of Mr. Olmsted's firm, 
 which had a large practice, much of the respon- 
 sibility for wliich, owing to Mr. Olmsted's ad- 
 vanced age, fell on him. New problems of all 
 kinds were constantly pressing for solution, and 
 his professional letters show how squarely he 
 met each problem, applying to it the general 
 principles of his art, and then fitting his solu- 
 tion to the special needs of each case. He 
 was engaged on the Kcnney Park, at Hartford, 
 Conn., when he was seized with cerebro-spinal 
 meningitis, from which he died at his home in 
 Brookline, on March 26, 1897. He was indeed 
 " a lover of nature and of his kind, who trained 
 himself for a new profession, practiced it hap- 
 [ 226 ] 
 
CHARLES ELIOT 
 
 pily, and through it wrought much good." 
 " Charles Eliot found in this community," the 
 Trustees of Public Reservations recorded in their 
 minutes, " a generous but helpless sentiment 
 for the preservation of our historical and beauti- 
 ful places. By ample knowledge, by intelligent 
 perseverance, by eloquent teaching, he created 
 organizations capable of accomplishing his great 
 purposes, and inspired others with a zeal ap- 
 proaching his own." 
 
 Looking back over his life one sees how from 
 boyhood everything — even his not robust 
 physique, which kept him out of doors — con- 
 tributed to train him for the work in which 
 he came to excel. He was primarily an artist, 
 who worked not in marble, or colors, or words, 
 but with Nature herself, using her fields and 
 rocks and rivers, her lakes and seashore, her 
 trees and shrubs and flowers, as materials out 
 of which to compose a humanized Nature, 
 adapted to man's need of recreation, beauty, 
 rest. He was an artist, but he was also a true- 
 stock New Englander, filled with the desire to 
 serve his fellow-men: so that in the vital work 
 of his life his art was but the means for pro- 
 curing the largest benefits for the greatest num- 
 ber of persons. He employed Art to better 
 [ 227 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Nature, and thereby to better Man. In his 
 early days, after an evening of music, he wrote, 
 " I hope that, some day or other, work of mine 
 may give some human being pleasure, pleasure 
 of that helpful kind which beauty of music and 
 of scenery give me." His hope has been mag- 
 nificently fulfilled. To-day, and to-morrow, and 
 as far ahead as any one can foresee, thousands 
 and tens of thousands of human beings will 
 be healthier and stronger, gladder and more 
 virtuous, for what Charles Eliot accompUshed, 
 directly and indirectly, in his short life. Before 
 such an achievement, so lasting and so beneficent, 
 how cheap and transitory are the conquests of 
 the sword! 
 
 [ 228 ] 
 
XI 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, Jr. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE R. NUTTER 
 
 [ 229 ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 The story of Baldwin's life is best told by the 
 mere recital of his deeds, even if such a recital 
 may seem a Catalogue of Ships, For he was 
 essentially a man of action. Of no one could 
 it be said more truly, that he was " the son 
 of his own works." The number of them shows 
 his astonishing vitality, and in their character, 
 as his life, short in years, but full in accom- 
 pUshment, gradually unfolded, appears the fine 
 and noble spirit that was behind them. He 
 was bom in Boston on February 5, 1863, the 
 son of William H. Baldwin and Mary F. A. 
 (Chaffee) Baldwin. He came of good and 
 simple New England stock. For many years 
 his father has been the president of the Young 
 Men's Christian Union of Boston. 
 
 He fitted for College at the Roxbury Latin 
 School, the famous school founded in 1645 as 
 a free school for the youth of Roxbury to which 
 a Boston boy was eligible on the payment of a 
 small fee. His scholarship at school was only 
 fair, and in fact his vitality, which in after 
 [ 231 ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 years was a distinguishing characteristic, rather 
 inclined liim to fun and frolic; so much so that 
 at one period he was favored with a seat in the 
 front row, where he might be constantly under 
 a higher power. But he was always attractive, 
 and popular with his teachers and fellows alike. 
 When a petition was drawn up by the boys in 
 favor of a delinquent, it was Baldwin who 
 handed it in. He was a captain in the military 
 drill, and while in those days athletics in the 
 secondary schools were modest in comparison 
 with their importance to-day, he took part in 
 all the games. 
 
 He passed the examination for Harvard in 
 the spring of 1881 and entered College in the 
 Class of 1885. His course at College was 
 marked more by the broadness and diversity of 
 his interests than by preeminence in any one 
 of them, and he took most readily to those 
 sides of College life that called for executive 
 and administrative ability. Thus perhaps his 
 most absorbing work was his connection with 
 the Harvard Dining Association, of which he 
 was president. It was at a crisis in its history, 
 for during his administration a new steward had 
 to be procured and in the management of this 
 Association Baldwin showed the traits that after- 
 [ 232 ] 
 
WILLIAM HENSY BALDWIN, Jr. 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 wards were so conspicuous in his executive 
 work. On the social side, he was a member of 
 the Dickey, the A. A. *. and the Hasty Pud- 
 ding. He was a Freshman editor of the Har- 
 vard Echo, the first daily paper at College, 
 famous in its day chiefly for the eccentricities 
 of its proof-reading, and later became a member 
 of the O. K. He rowed on his Class Crew 
 in his Junior and Senior years and took a mod- 
 est hand at lacrosse. The love of music, which 
 he cherished throughout his life, led him to the 
 Glee Club, of which he became the leader, and 
 he sang some of the chief parts in the Pudding 
 theatricals. With all this diversity of employ- 
 ment, his scholarship at College, as at school, 
 was only fair, and he graduated without even 
 a " cum laude." But he became one of the 
 best known men of his Class and was elected 
 chairman of the Class Committee, a position he 
 held until his death. It is useless to speculate 
 upon what he would have accomplished had he 
 not gone to College or to Cambridge, But no 
 one who knew him there can doubt that Harvard 
 was the great influence in his life. He lived 
 his College life to the full and never for a 
 moment loosened the ties he formed there. But 
 more than aU, it was at Cambridge that he re- 
 [ 233 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 ceived the civic impulse that afterwards became 
 controlling in his life. 
 
 On his graduation he found, as many a grad- 
 uate has found before, that no particular oppor- 
 tunity offered itself, and as many a graduate 
 before had done, he took refuge in the Law 
 School. It is doubtful how far his tastes were 
 suited to the study of the law. After he had 
 once passed the period of study and had reached 
 the chance for action, he might have found it 
 interesting. But in those first days, he was 
 certainly restless in the study of it. He had 
 hardly been in the Law School, however, more 
 than a month or so, when an opportunity came, 
 almost by chance, which led him into very differ- 
 ent field and was the opportunity of his life. 
 Mr. Charles Francis Adams had become the 
 president of the Union Pacific Railway Com- 
 pany and was searching for young men of edu- 
 cation for that work. He offered a position 
 to an intimate friend of Baldwin's, who, how- 
 ever, had already decided upon a very different 
 course in life. The friend suggested Baldwin. 
 Mr. Adams sent for Baldwin, was attracted by 
 his personality, and after some conference with 
 President Eliot, offered Baldwin a chance on 
 the Union Pacific. The offer was accepted. 
 [ 234 ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 For a month or two Baldwin studied railroad 
 law in Cambridge, and in February, 1886, went 
 to Omaha to fill a place in the statistical de- 
 partment of the railroad. 
 
 The next eight years, to July, 1894, when he 
 went to Washington as a vice-president of the 
 Southern Railway, were for Baldwin a period 
 of preparation, when he devoted himself to 
 learning thoroughly the details of his calling. 
 He remained in Omaha until May, 1887, when 
 he was sent to Butte, Montana, as division 
 freight agent, and was in rapid succession made 
 manager of the Leavenworth Division in Kan- 
 sas, general manager of the Montana Union 
 Railroad, and finally in 1890, recalled to Omaha 
 as assistant vice-president of the Union Pacific 
 Railway. In 1891 he left the Union Pacific 
 and for the next three years was the general 
 manager of the Flint and P^re Marquette Rail- 
 road, with headquarters at Saginaw, Michigan. 
 The important events in his life during these 
 years were his marriage in 1889 to Ruth Stand- 
 ish Bowles of Springfield, Mass., a daughter 
 of the late Samuel Bowles of the Springfield 
 Republican, and the births of two children, Ruth 
 Standish Baldwin and William H. Baldwin, 3d. 
 As in every period of preparation, there was 
 [ 235 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 outwardly not much to tell in his life. Yet 
 as usual some of his vitality overflowed into 
 other channels. He organized the first Har- 
 vard Club in Omaha, and finding in Butte only 
 four Halyard men, he organized a University 
 Club, which took in all the University men, 
 with a membership of seventy. His love of 
 music led him to take part in the formation 
 of a male choral societv in Omaha. These 
 years in the West did not change him, but 
 seemed to broaden certain characteristics which 
 he had shown in his College daj-s. He became 
 even more democratic and unaffected. The 
 West seemed to give him a sense of the reality 
 and true proportion of things that made him 
 even more simple and direct and effective in 
 everything to which he laid his hand. 
 
 In July, 1894, he was appointed third vice- 
 president of the Southern Railway Company, 
 a consolidation of railways recent! v effected by 
 the Morgan interests, and later was made second 
 vice-president in charge of maintenance and 
 construction. This appointment necessitated 
 his removal to Washington. With this change 
 began the period of fruition, toward wliich his 
 years of preparation had tended. For it was 
 here that he came into contact at first hand 
 [ 236 ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 with men of national importance in financial 
 matters, and it was here that his strong leaning 
 toward civic work, always in his mind and only 
 waiting the opportunity to become effective, 
 led him into some of the leading educational 
 movements of the day. In his railroad work, 
 he succeeded in bringing the system out of 
 chaos. The best example of his management is 
 found in his treatment of a threatened strike 
 on the system. The condition of the Southern 
 Railway at this time was similar to that of 
 man}- railroads after 1893. It had been com- 
 pelled to reduce expenses in every direction, 
 including wages. The men sent a committee 
 to the management asking that the ten per cent, 
 reduction in wages should be restored. The 
 road was then operating over 4,000 miles of 
 railway and the prospect of a strike was alarm- 
 ing. After some reluctance on the part of the 
 management, Baldwin was finally given power 
 to deal with the situation in his own way. He 
 met the men in full confidence, laid before them 
 an elaborate report of the financial condition 
 of the road, and showed them unreservedly the 
 returns to the bondholders and stockholders. 
 After a full discussion lasting several days, 
 some trifling inequalities were adjusted, and the 
 [ 237 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 demands for an increase were withdrawn. Each 
 side came away with respect for the other, and 
 the strike was averted. Later when his name 
 was under consideration for the presidency of 
 the Long Island Railroad, Baldwin told the 
 directors of his attitude in this strike, which 
 was only typical of his general views on labor 
 questions, and said to them very frankly that 
 he was not the man of whom they were in search. 
 He was met with the unexpected reply that this 
 was among the very reasons why he was selected. 
 His outside interests at this time lay chiefly 
 in the line of education. He began then his 
 active interest in Tuskegee and the work of 
 Booker T. Washington. Mr. Washington 
 brought to him a letter of introduction from 
 the elder Baldwin, commending the enterprise 
 to his son. " I shall be glad to help you," 
 Baldwin said, " if on investigation I find it is 
 the real thing." For this investigation he vis- 
 ited Tuskegee, spent some time in going over 
 all the details, and became a trustee of the Tus- 
 kegee Institute. For some years he spent what 
 he called his spring vacation on the grounds, 
 making a thorough inspection of every depart- 
 ment of the institution. When he first took an 
 interest in Tuskegee, it had property of the 
 [ 238 ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 valuation of about $300,000, and an endowment 
 fund of $200,000. When he died the property 
 had increased, largely through his efforts, to 
 $700,000, and the endowment fund to $1,040,- 
 000. In this, as in everything else, his interest 
 never feiltered, and a week before his death, 
 he sent a telegram to Tuskegee, conveying his 
 Christmas greetings. 
 
 In 1896, he came to New York to assume the 
 presidency of the Long Island Railroad in suc- 
 cession to Austin Corbin, and there entered upon 
 the last and most important phase of his life. 
 Like the period of his preparation, it lasted 
 eight years. When he took hold of the Long 
 Island Railroad, it was in poor physical con- 
 dition. By his efforts, its physical condition 
 to-day averages very high. He immediately 
 entered upon the work of eliminating steam from 
 Atlantic Avenue, a problem which had been 
 under consideration by the railroad company 
 and the city of New York for thirty years. 
 The work has now been practically completed 
 at a cost of about $4,000,000. In 1900 he 
 carried through the negotiations by which the 
 Long Island Railroad became a part of the 
 Pennsylvania System. While his title after this 
 union still remained that of president of the 
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SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Long Island Railroad, his activities on behalf 
 of the Pennsylvania System assumed much wider 
 proportions, not only in the city of New York 
 hut elsewhere. He became a leading spirit in 
 the conception and execution of the extensive 
 projects of subways, tunnels, and bridge con- 
 nections now actually in operation or under 
 construction, which when completed will change 
 the entire question of transportation in New 
 York City. He was a member of the executive 
 boards in connection with the Interborough 
 interests and the Metropolitan Railroad in- 
 terests, and one of the committee which had 
 charge of letting the contracts for the great 
 subway. It is hardly too much to say that the 
 visitor to New York City will find Baldwin's 
 monument, as the epitaph reads of Sir Christo- 
 pher Wren, by looking about liim. At the same 
 time, his activitj' in other business directions 
 was almost boundless. \Vhen he died, he was 
 president or a director in over forty institutions, 
 including fifteen transportation lines, six banks 
 and trust companies, and such institutions as 
 the Equitable Life Assurance Society. 
 
 His civic side kept pace with his business 
 development. Continuing his interest in Tus- 
 kegec, he became chairman of the General Edu- 
 [ S-iO ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 cation Board, the special purpose of which is 
 the promotion of education in the South, and 
 a trustee of the Southern Education Board. 
 He had been for some years a trustee of Smith 
 College, and served the University of Tennessee 
 in the same capacity. He became a director in 
 the Armstrong Association and a trustee of the 
 John F. Slater Fund. Naturally he was led 
 into the many municipal problems of New York 
 itself, and perhaps his chief service in that direc- 
 tion was as chairman of the famous Committee 
 of Fifteen. This committee was organized in 
 November, 1900, as the result of a meeting 
 of citizens held at the Chamber of Commerce. 
 The object of the Committee was to trace the 
 relation between the Tammany government of 
 that day and the promotion of crime and to 
 point out the increasing corruption under the 
 political conditions then existing. He not only 
 assumed the general direction, but served as 
 chairman of a special Committee of Investiga- 
 tion, consisting of five members, who carried on 
 through the winter an investigation of the re- 
 sponsibilities for the affairs of the city. This 
 called for certain hours of work for some days 
 of each week for a term of a year, and Baldwin 
 remained in town during a large portion of a 
 [ 241 ] 
 
SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 liot summer in order that no part of the work 
 might be neglected. A portion of the labors 
 of the Committee was subsequently published 
 in book form, and is an important contribution 
 to the problem of the " Social Evil." 
 
 He took an active interest in the Citizens' 
 Union, and was himself mentioned in 1903 as 
 a candidate for the mayoralty, but refused to 
 be considered. He became a member of the 
 Civic Federation, the National Municipal 
 League, and was interested in Civil Service. 
 The East Side took much of his time. He 
 once said, and it was the keynote of his great 
 success with men, " I am for the man that is 
 down ; " and he was interested in the University 
 Settlement and served as a member of the Na- 
 tional and Local Child Labor Committees. To 
 recount these names is not to tell the work that 
 Baldwin really did. For he was not the man 
 who lent his name and not his heart to any 
 enterprise. When he took hold of anything 
 he did it to the utmost. " I have served with 
 many chairmen," writes a prominent man who 
 was with him, " and I have never known one 
 whose management of his responsibilities was 
 so thoroughly effective." 
 
 Ill the midst of it all, the time came for the 
 [ 24» ] 
 
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 wheel to be broken at the cistern. In a letter 
 of June 27, 1904, Baldwin wrote that he would 
 be in Cambridge for Commencement, but that 
 he had a temporary physical difficulty that might 
 prevent him. He never came again. Within 
 a month an operation showed that he had a 
 disease from which there could not be any re- 
 covery. It is perhaps a sad satisfaction to feel 
 that it did not come from overwork, in spite 
 of his wonderful activity. He lingered until 
 the New Year. On Christmas he sent a greet- 
 ing by telegram to the employees of the Long 
 Island Railroad, and on the morning of January 
 3, 1905, the world became the poorer by the loss 
 of a rare and forceful spirit. 
 
 Any one who knows the demands of the 
 modern life realizes at once the fulness of Bald- 
 win's life. It was not alone that he was a 
 great business administrator. The present age 
 has summoned other men as well to be great 
 administrators. It was not alone that he was 
 profoundly moved by an ethical impulse to help 
 his fellows. Other men have felt that impulse 
 as profoundly. But he united the two in so 
 remarkable a degree that it is difficult to name 
 another in this country in whom such a union 
 existed. He touched every type of man from 
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SONS OF THE PURITANS 
 
 the East Side to Wall Street, from the workshop 
 to the college, and each found him responsive. 
 Himself an optimist, he gives the best hope 
 for optimism, for if Harvard can temper such 
 steel as this, the battle must wage unceasingly. 
 Yet the doer was himself finer than any of 
 his deeds. One day in the Elevated train he 
 caught a glimpse of a little Jewish child in a 
 squalid tenement. Struck by the look of sick- 
 ness, he alighted at the next station, and the 
 child was taken to the hospital. After his death 
 a woman in a distant state wrote a letter of 
 sympathy. She had come across the ocean in 
 the same steamer with him, but in the second 
 cabin. Her child was ill and Baldwin insisted 
 on giving the use of his stateroom to her. With 
 him who died at Zutphen, following the great 
 original of them both, he could always say : 
 " Thy necessities are yet greater than mine." 
 It wns this that makes every one who knew him 
 in the wide gamut he touched forget that he 
 made a success, and remember only that a friend 
 has gone ; for " whoso touched his little finger, 
 drew after it his whole body." 
 
 [ 2U ] 
 
Cornell University Ubrary 
 F 63 S69 
 
 Sons of the Pur"«"8„,i,,l,lSlfflXiiMlMl^^ 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 028 814 196