ADDRESSES
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
IN THE
REPRESENTATIVES' HALL, MONTPELIER,
OCTOBER 16, 1866.
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
MONTPEJIER:
WALTON'S STEAM PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT.
1866.








IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, OCT. 18, 1866.
MR. Ross, of St. Johnsbuj'y, offered the following
resolution, which was read and adopted on the part of
the House:
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representaatives, That the Secretary of the Senate and Clerk
of the House be directed to procure to be printed for
the use of the General Assembly, one thousand copies
of the addresses by Senator Edmunds, and others,
before the Termont Historical Society, on Tuesday
evening the 16th inst.
JOHN H. FLAGG, Clerk.
IN SENATE, OCT. 18, 1866.
Adopted in concurrence.
HENRY CLARK, Secretary of Senate.








THE LIFE, CHARACTER AND SERVICES
OF SOLOMON FOOT.
BY HON. GEO. F. EDMIUNDS, U. S. SENATOR.
Air. President and Gentlemen of the Society;
THE quality of mind which we call curiosity, is one
-whence springs many of our greatest achievements.
It is the search on which the visible and apparent
present sends the mind back over the mighty past for
the causes and antecedents that have, through channels and by processes more or less direct, but always
logical, produced the results, which engage our wonder,
our admiration, or our dislike, as the case may be.
The fuel it has furnished has kindled the fires of all
invention, and has brought to their present wonderful
and almost miraculous state of advancement, many of
those sciences and arts most useful, practically, to
men. And it has no less operated beneficially in
presenting to each succeeding age and generation, the
lives and peculiarities of notable men of times past,
whose characters have in greater or less degree
impressed themselves upon the growth of society, and
so transfused them into the very life of after times,




4         Life, Character and Services
From fountains thus unsealed, the historian deduces
the principles of moral and political economies; and
the just ambition of those who aspire to greatness,
beholds the processes and the causes-always in the
main constant —which have led men to success, or
driven them to failure.
Not only, then, as a sweet tribute of respect to
those who have worthily filled exalted stations among
us, but as a means of positive good to society in the
respects I have mentioned, do we turn on fit occasions,
to gratify our curiosity in respect to their lineage and
lives, and to trace their acted and completed parts on
that great stage of the world, where " all the men
and women are players."
In this spirit, therefore, I lay before the society
some of the facts, incidents, and characteristics relating
to the late Hon. SOLOMON FOOT, with such brief notice
of current events as elucidates them.
The subject of this paper was descended from
English ancestors who emigrated to this country, and
settled in Weathersfield, Conn., early in the seventeenth century.
From this stock has sprung a most numerous
posterity, numbering, as appears from the book of the
Foote Genealogy, in 1849, more than three thousand
persons.
An amusing record respecting one of his ancestors
exists in the early archives of New Haven. It states
that
" At a County Court holden at New Haven, Aug.
"'4, 1702, Sergeant Nathaniel Foote, of Brandford




of Solomon Foot.              5
"appearing by summons to this court, to answer the
" presentment and complaint of the grand jury against
" him for hiring his negro servant Cush to set in Mr.
"Malthie's pew on the first Sabbath, which they judge
"to be contrary to religion and profanation of the
" Sabbath."
Sergeant Foote pleaded not guilty, and it was
postponed for trial. No further entry appears.
Thus, at that early day, the status of the negro was
an " apple of discord," as it is now; and it was " contrary to religion" that he should sit in Mr. Malthie's
pew, at least on the "first Sabbath."
That grand jury, no doubt, got their law from a
very early English case, in which it was decided that
the action of trover would lie for the conversion of a
number of negroes, the court saying that had they
been christians no action could be maintained for them;
but inasmuch as they appeared to be infidels, and the
subjects of an infidel prince, the court gave judgment
for the plaintiff.
The family spread over Connecticut and Massachusetts, and Dr. Solomon Foot, the father, removed to
Cornwall in this State in 1792, where the subject of
this notice was born on the 15th day of November,
A. D. 1802. His parents were persons of staid and
highly respectable character, fair examples of the
Vermont citizen. From them Mr. Foot received those
earliest impressions, which generally, or frequently,
become the basis of the traits of character which we
often class as in the nature of instincts.
The father died in 1811, leaving the young boy to
the sole charge of his mother, who is said to have been




6         Life, Character and Services
a woman of great kindness of.heart and of highly
prudent judgment. Under her care and instruction
he passed several of those forming years-if I may
so call them,-in that life which almost every one of
those here present knows so well-and which we all
look back upon, through whatever lights or glooms
surround our lives, with fondest recollections —the
sweet, hopeful, visionary life of a country boy. Then
the bountiful face of nature smiled upon us like a
rnother and a playmate; then the opening studies and
reflections of our young lives wore, all of' them, the
white robes of truth and beauty; then the present was
one round joy, and the future was seen only through
gateways of gold.
From that distant point the lad saw, in his young
ambition, over a space of' thirty years, his own place
in the National Congress, and accounted for his
temporary neglect of work upon a farm where he was
employed, by replying, when asked what he was
thinking about, that he was thinking what he should
do when he should come to be a Member of Congress.
At the early age of fifteen he began his regular studies preparatory to a college course, under the instruction of Dr. Carpenter of -Whiting, looking with that
intuitive judgment in this respect so common to all
boys-and which sometimes outruns their fathersupon learning and education as the only sure means
to power and usefulness in -whatever sphere of life he
might be placed.
The following winter (1.818,) he taught a common
school in one of the back districts of Crown Point,
N. Y. Here, amid embarrassments encountered




of Solomon Foot.              7
among people in humble circumstances, he prosecuted
the study of Latin and Greek, aided only by his
grammars and lexicons and his own perseverance. I
am informed on the best authority, that the good
people among whom he "boarded round" were much
exercised at these studies, and not knowing the
character or the sounds thereof, thought he was
certainly reviving the black art, or some other fearful
evil.
The following year he entered Newton Academy,
and continued his studies under Dr. Dewey, (now of
Moriah, N. Y.,) who says that he remembers him as a
young man of fine abilities, very studious, and one
that seldom laughed or indulged in merriment.
He entered Middlebury College at the age of
nineteen, the intervening time having been spent in
studying, teaching, and preparing himself for the
manly struggles of life.
He graduated with honor in 1826, and immediately
became Preceptor of Castleton Academy. After a
year spent in this labor, he received the high compliment —not being an alumnus of that institution-of
being appointed a tutor in the University of Vermont.
After a year spent there, preferring a more active life,
he returned to the Castleton Academy, where he
continued its Principal until 1831, — meanwhile studying law, and devoting hilnself, with his characteristic
earnestness and energy, to the strengthening of the
school, and the erection of a spacious and handIsome
Academy building in that charming village.
He was admitted to the bar in Rutland County in
1831, and established himself in practice at Rutland.




5s       Life, Character and Services
Hle was now to begin the chosen business of his
life. All that had gone before was only preliminary
and incidental, bridging over the period that many
who now hear me know well must be so passed, when
there is no hereditary patrimony wherewith to meet
the expenses of education and preparation for a start
at the bar.
His characteristics, thus far in his course, had been
those which more generally produce success and
usefulness, than the greatest genius, the finest wit, or
the profoundest learning. They had been an unvarying gentleness of disposition and demeanor, an
untarnished private life and character-tainted by no
vice or suspicion,-and a steadfast persistence in the
course of life he had adopted.
The Supreme Court at that period was composed
of Chief Justice Hutchinson, and Justices Williams,
Royce, Baylies and Phelps-names, most of them,
redolent of fame, and which have shed a lustre of
renown, unexcelled in any State, upon the Bench of
Vermont, and have given law not only to Vermont,
but have contributed largely to the jurisprudence of
the whole nation.
The Bar, which had produced such Judges, was
unexhausted of its strength. There were Fletcher
and Mattocks, Aldis and Adams, Allen and Marsh,
Bates and Chipman, Clark and Royce, Bennett and
Aiken, Bradley and Kellogg, Collamer and Cushman,
Hebard and Buck, Redfield and Upham, Tracy, Peck
and Dillingham, and numerous other strong men, who
had either achieved a reputation, or were fighting
their way to it.




of Solomon Foot.               9
Into this arena Mr. Foot entered and soon attained
a position, and reaped the harvest of success.
Without full means of forming an accurate judgment, I think I may say, that he was more distinguished
as a jury advocate than in the trial of cases reserved.
In the former, his fine personal presence, his universal popularity, and his simple earnestnesess and truth,
could not fail to impress a jury most favorably.
And ill the latter, his cases were always well and
industriously prepared, and his arguments forcible.
But I do not think he possessed, in the highest degree,
that aggressive intellectual combativeness, and analytical subtlety of mind, which, fortified by learning, has
produced the greatest lawyers.
But this is not, perhaps, the place to discuss at
large the philosophy or the romance of the law.
Suffice it to say that success in it is, in general, as ill
all other pursuits, attained only by devotion to its
studies and attention to its duties in the outset, and
so thenceforward.  Mr. Foot so attained it.  The
great Mr. Justice Buller, when in mature life he
cautioned a youth of sixteen against being led astray
by the example of others, said, looking back with
pardonable complacency to his own fortitude:  ~ If I
" had listened to the advice of some of those who
"called themselves my friends when I was young,
"instead of being a Judge of the King's Bench, I
"should have died long ago a prisoner in the King's
" Bench Prison."
In 1832, the rising young lawyer espoused with
great enthusiasm the cause of Henry Clay as- a
candidate for the Presidency, and prepared the able
2




10        Life, Character and Services
address issued by a Convention held at Montpelier, to
the freemen of Vermont upon that subject.  He thus
entered upon political life with that party which has,
with most rare intervals, been composed of the large
majority of the citizens of Vermont, and the legitimate
progress and growth of whose principles has ever
since opposed a bulwark against interference with the
largest personal liberty and equality, as well as against
the latitudinary and separative doctrines of what was
called democracy.
In those days a hollow truce had been concluded by
the Missouri Compromise, between Liberty  and
Slavery, and the "irrepressible conflict of opposing
civilizations" had been thus postponed until a later
day.
But the theories of government, identical with the
one side or the other of that great question, thus left
to smother for a mighty conflagration, were in active
contest.
On one side, based upon the grand idea that the
people were, under the Constitution, nationalized, and
that the interest of the whole was the interest of
every part, were the doctrines of a protective tariff,
whence only could come the largest development of
our resources, a national currency regulated by the
national law and the national necessities, and a system
of internal improvements whereby easy and constant
intercommunication between remote parts of the
country, should make the people homogeneous, and
identify their interests and feelings.
On the other side were the opposite doctrines of
free trade,-the selfish scheme of that class whose




of Solomon _Foot.             11
occupation it was to import foreign merchandise to
sell, and of that other class which enjoyed, it is
thought, the kingly monopoly of producing cotton
and tobacco for sale in foreign markets, —and the high
State rights' doctrine of local currency, and commercial regulations and means of transit. The basis of
these latter doctrines was a professed jealousy of
centralized power.  But the real controversy was
logically the same as that which culminated in a
rebellion, and a national victory; the fair fruits of
which, after a tMArty years' struggle, some people, it is
said, are seriously disposed toturn over to the enemy.
As a member, then, of the'whig party, Mr. Foot
accepted its principles with real faith, and defended
and propogated them with all his power,-standing by
them and their legitimate outgrowth, with an unswerving fidelity to the end of his life.
In 1833, he was elected to the legislature, by the
people of Rutland. He was again elected in 1836.
In that same year, also, he was a member of the
constitutional convention which abolished the governor's council and established the Senate, a change now
generally conceded to have been an eminently wise
one, but which met with great opposition, and was
entered upon with much misgiving. Mr. Foot was
among the foremost advocates of the measure, and
contributed as largely, perhaps, as any one man to its
success.
In 1837 and 1838, he was again a member of the
House, and its Speaker.
The duties of this office he discharged with
admirable ease, dignity and correctness, so that he




12        Life, Character and Services
became, in the minds of the members, the model of a
good Speaker.
In 1839 he married Miss Emily Fay, daughter of
the late William  Fay, of Rutland. This estimable
lady, however, soon died, and he afterwards married
Mirs. Anna Dana, daughter of the late Henry Hodges,
of Clarendon, in whose congenial society, surrounded
by all that could make life happy, he passed the
remainder of his days.
In the great political revolution of 1840, Mr. Foot,
in common with his party, supported Harrison and
Tyler, who were elected.
The whig party, then long in an apparently hopeless
minority, had seen the government so conducted as to
bring distress upon all the producing interests of the
country, and ruin upon its citizens engaged in
manufacturing. The public finances were in a state
of utter derangement, and political corruption was
coming to be looked upon by many as an amiable
weakness rather than crime.
From its chronic weakness in the Southern States,
the leaders of the whig party should have known that
there was a fixed logical cause for its unpopularity
there, in the fact, as the highly cultivated and farseeing southern statesmen saw, that its legitimate
tendencies were hostile to the institution of slavery;
and they, in selecting candidates for the chief offices
in the nation, should have been sure that their leading
and controlling political principles were sound, and
were not a mere temporary spasm of sense and virtue,
produced by current events.




of Solomon Foot.              13
But blind to those considerations and seduced by
the cry of expediency, the party nominated Mr. Tyler
on the ticket with Gen. Harrison, and the whigs went
"for Tyler, therefore, without a why or wherefore."
But General Harrison had scarcely assumed the reins
of government ere he died, and Mr. Tyler came to the
office of President, and the party that had elected him
found itself betrayed and rendered perfectly powerless
to put in operation the principles upon which it had
carried the elections.
In this state of parties and politics, Mr. Foot entered
Congress, taking his seat with his eminent colleagues,
Collamer, Dillingham and Marsh, on the fourth day
of December, 1843.
His first act (aside from voting) was to present a
petition from his constituents, praying for a practical
recognition of the Vermont doctrine of protection of
American producers against the unfriendly and
ruinous competition of foreign nations.
He served through both the sessions of that Congress
on the then important committee on Indian Affairs.
His first speech was delivered on the fourth day of
June, 1844, on the political principles of the whig
party, defending them as essential to the welfare of
the country, and prophesying their ultimate adoption,
although then thwarted by the adverse circumstances
I have named.
In the twenty-ninth Congress he again served on
the committee on Indian Affairs.
In this Congress he gave active support to the whig
side of the great questions then pending, namely, the




14        Life, Character und Services
admission of Texas, the Mexican war and the Oregon
boundary question.
On the sixth of February, 1846, he made an elaborate speech on the latter topic, characterized by logical
clearness of statement and conclusion, and by high
rhetorical taste. In the course of it he eloquently
vindicated the people of Vermont from the aspersions
of Mr. Chipman, of Michigan, who was himself a
Vermonter by birth, and administered the following
castigation to his opponent:
"I trust, Mr. Chairman, that I have an ample
"apology for this digression, in alluding to my na"tive State, and briefly vindicating the character'of her people, in the attempt which was made'some days ago to cast a sneer, an aspersion, upon
"her, by one of her own sons upon this floor.I have only to say, in reply to that attempt, that he
" who has the taste and the heart to illegitimize his'own birth, so far as to repudiate his parentage,
commends himself less to the rebuke than to the
"commiseration of his friends; and, while I trust that
"Vermont has but one son who would make it a
virtue publicly to avow it a misfortune to him, that
he was born upon her soil, I am quite sure she has
"but one son who could utter the unnatural sentiment,
" without mortification or reproach to her."
On the sixteenth of July, 1846, in addressing the
House on the Mexican war, replying to the arguments
of the friends of the president, that Congress ought
not to bring into judgment the acts of the Executive,
he defended the constitutional rights of the representatives of the people in this fine specimen of genuine,
earnest American eloquence:




of Solomon Foot.              15
" I have," he said, " no sympathy with the sentiment
" which has been uttered on this floor, that we ought
" not to condemn the acts of the administration' relative to the war, for the reason assigned by its
" defenders, that its tendency will be to paralyze the
"arm of the executive government. Sir, I repudiate
"and reject this vile and infamous sentiment as an
" attempt to revive here the anti-republican and odious
"doctrine of monarchists, that'the king can do no
"wrong.' If the President of the United States shall
" transcend his constitutional authority, and causelessly
" involve his country in the calamity of war, are we to
" be told that no voice of warning or rebuke is to be
" heard? When the great high priest of our political
" church shall be rushing to the temple of liberty with
" blazing torch in hand to fire its sacred altars, are we'to be told that no arm must be raised to stay the'impending desecration? Go, with such doctrines as
"these, to the crawling and cringing serfs of the
c' rotten and crumbling despotisms of the Old World.
" They are unfit to be uttered in the legislative halls
" of a free Republic. They are unfit to be addressed
to an American citizen, claiming the right and
exercising the privileges, and standing up in the
"bearing and dignity of an American freeman."
And again, on the 10th of February, 1847, speaking
of an intimation in a message of a former Tennessee
President, Mr. Polk, that those members of Congress,
who censured the conduct of the Executive in carrying
on the war, were guilty of constructive treason, he
said:
" Where does he find authority or precedent for
" sending into these legislative halls a bulletin of de"nunciation against any portion of the American peo"tple, or their representatives, who may have formed
" and expressed opinions not in conformity with such
as he professes to entertain?"




16        Life, Character and Services
" When the chief magistrate of this Republic shall
" become so far unmindful of the dignity and proprie"ties of his station as to assume the character of a
"volunteer accuser of his fellow citizens * * *
"for no other cause than that they have the intelli"gence to form, and the independence to speak their
"opinions, * * * how shall the audacious insult
"be met?  Shall it be received with silent, trembling
"submission? Shall it be received with acquiescence,
"or even with gracious words of remonstrance'? Or
" shall it not rather be met with that prompt and bold
"rebuke, with that scornful defiance which alone be-'comes the action and the character of free born men!"
These sentiments are not without their application
to affairs at the present day, when the constitutional
rights, and even the regular existence of Congress, are
assailed and questioned by the same party who then, as
now, upheld executive usurpation, and whose present
head and leader was then a Member of Congress from
Tennessee, and voting in opposition to Mr. Foot.
Thus history renews itself, " swinging round the
circle" of events, but leaving still, we are sure, the
spirit of the constitution, the spirit of universal justice,
security, and civil and political equality, with the
people.
Time does not permit me here to review the history
of those momentous events. The disorders of the
present period are their logical consequents, and teach
us how to go to the bottom of the evil before we fancy
that a cure is effected.
In these Congresses the contemporaries of Mr. Foot
were Hamlin, Winthrop, Adams, Hale, King, Wise,
Rhett, Stephens, Garrett Davis, Vinton, Giddings




of Solomon Foot.             17
Douglas, Jacob Thompson, Toombs, and Andrew
Johnson of Tennessee.
Among such associates and rivals, he acted with
honor to himself and to his State, and although not
endowed with all the qualities of a great leader, he
had none of the vices which too often disfigure the
characters of such men. Always courteous, patient
and industrious, he far excelled, in usefulness and solid
merit, many who bore parts more conspicuous and
commanding.
He declined an election to the 30th Congress, and
resumed the practice of his profession at Rutland. In
the same year he was again a member of the Legislature, and was again the Speaker of the Iouse, bringing to the discharge of the delicate and onerous duties
of that important station, the same pre-eminent qualities that afterwards distinguished him as President
2ro tempore of the Senate of the United States.
From that time until he was elected a Senator in
Congress in the fall of 1850, he successfully pursued
the practice of the law, strengthening his hold upon.
the good will of the people by the diligence and integrity of his professional career, and by the purity of
his private life.
HIe took his seat as Senator firom Vermont, in the
thirty-second Congress, in December, 1351, his colleague being, then, the late Hon. Mr. Upham; while,
on the roll of the Senate, were the now famous names
of Clay, Douglas, Cass, Houston, Sumner, Wade, and
Seward, and another name, not famous, J. Davis of
Mississippi. During this session of Congress I find
no record of his entering into debate, but he appears
3




18         Life, Character and Services
to have served industriously on the Committee on
Pensions; and with his constant fidelity to principle,
and faithfulness to the sentiments of his constituents,
on the 29th of March, 1852, he voted with the small
band of disciples of liberty and progress, Dodge of
Wisconsin, Hale, Seward, Sumner, and WVade, against
the intolerant and tyrannical democratic majority, which
determined to lay upon the table, without reference or
debate, a respectful petition of American citizens,
praying that some measure might be inaugurated looking to the extinction of slavery.
During the second session of that Congress he
served on the Committee on Post Offices and Post
Roads, and also on that on Revolutionary Claims.
His first speech in the Senate was during that session, (Jan. 15, 1853,) on the death of Senator Upham.
I have only space to quote one passage, which illustrates as well the simplicity and good taste that almost
always characterized his rhetoric, as his discriminative
judgment upon the true republican grounds of individual success. Ile said:
~"M1r1. [Trphain was emphatically the artificer of his
Mown foltu-iets.  lle owed nothing to the factitious
"'circumlsta-nces of wealth sr patronage. He rose to
"his high- position 1)y his own energies, his own unaided'effoirts; thtOs f'Lnishing another and beautiful illus"~tration of' the operation of the genius of our institu"tions, in that they open the pathway to station and
"honor alike to all; and no favorites are recognized,'other than the votaries at the shrine of justice, of
" honor, and of patriotism."




of Solomon Foot.              19
From this time forward he began to engage more
prominently in the affairs of the Senate, carrying, in
1851, bills for the erection of the Custom-House at
Burlington, and the Court-Houses at Windsor and
Rutland, as well as for the most useful and philanthropic object of providing a grant of ten million acres
of the public lands for asylums for the indigent insane.
This last measure met the fate, which in late years too
often overtakes acts in aid of the suffering and downtrodden. It was vetoed by President Pierce.
Reviewing the veto message, in a speech on the
third of May, 1854, he said, with a most just appreciation of the true constitutional office,,f the executive
veto:
"So far as the simple question of the policy or
~expediency of a measure is concerned, it belongs
"properly-I will not say exclusively-to the legisla"tive department; that, except in rare and peculiar
" cases, it furnishes no justifiable consideration for the
" interposition of the negative power of the executive.
" The exercise of this remnant of despotic power
"ought rarely to be resorted to, and then only in cases
"of hasty and inconsiderate legislation, and in cases
"of flagrant and palpable injustice, and in cases of
" manifest infraction of the constitution."
During the second session of the thirty-third
Congress he served on the committee on Public
Lands, Pensions, and Contingent Expenses; and he
exerted himself with his usual vigor to procure
legislation needful for his constituents.
On the bill, providing for an improvement of the
breakwater at Burlington, his speech had more than a




20         Life, Character and Services
local bearing, as it rested upon those broad and
benificent principles of political economy relating to
internal improvements, out of which, in one form or
another, although always, until lately, opposed by the
democratic party, has grown much of the material
prosperity, and consolidated unity of the people of
the free states.
In the same session, he urged upon Congress the
justice and propriety of providing a bounty to the
volunteers in the war of 1812, basing his argument
upon the same principles which have given to the
heroic citizen soldiery, who; in the late war of the
rebellion, gave up, with enthusiastic patriotism  and
alacrity, the occupations of peace, and the endearments of home and family, to assert, with their
manhood and their lives, the indivisible nationality of
the government, some slight tokens of the gratitude
of that government which they have saved and
redeemed to its original theory of justice, liberty and
equal rights. In the course of his remarks, on moving
an amendment to the regular bounty bill, providing
for the Plattsburgh volunteers, he said:'It (the original bill) excludes those volunteers'twho have rushed to the rescue of the country at the' time of pressing emergency and impending danger,
as did the volunteers at the battle of Plattsburgh.' The farmers left their harvest in the field; all classes
" of people left their employment and their homes, and' went to the scene of danger and of conflict, *  *  *
" and the victory was won, and the fortunes of that' day were saved to the country by those very volun" teers. These volunteers rendered quite as signal and
" important service to the country, as many a regular,
" who has been paid by the United States."




of Solomon Foot.               21
In the thirty-fourth Congress, he again pressed the
claims of the volunteers in the war of 1812; and,
with signal ability, he maintained the right of a gallant
officer, a son of Vermont, (Gen. B. S. Roberts,) to the
honor of first planting the American flag upon the
batteries of the Garita, and  upon  the citadel of
Mexico. HIe said, what is as true now of the soldier
who made sacrifices and gained glory in recent battlefields, as it was then:
" But, siri, his profhBssional reputation belongs not to
~himself alone; it belongs not to his family alone; it
"gbelongs' to the countrly, and emphatically to the
"State which gave him his birth and his education,
"alnd is, in a measure, committed to the keeping of
"the representatives fi'om  that State. Vermont, sir,
i shed too much blood upon the battle-fields of Mexico;' too many of her youthful sons were left upon its'' plains, and among its mountain passes, to allow her
"to be unmindful, of the reputation of those who
i survive. She made a costly sacrifice to the spirit of
" that war, when her gallant and accomplished Ransom' fell before the walls of Chepultepec. It shall not be' laid to my charge if she makes a greater sacrifice by
neglecting to vindicate the well-earned reputation of
ae any of her surviving sons."
In the spring of 1856 came on the Kansas question,
which marked another era in the swift progress of
events towards the great maelstromn of rebellion. I
am informed by Senator Pomeroy, of that State, that
Mr. Foot engaged actively in that contest on the side
of freedom, and that he rendered most efficient aid in
the admission of the young State, with a free constitution, but I do not find in the Congressional debates
any speeches of his on that subject reported.




22        Life, Character and Services
In the same Congress he participated effectively in
the debates on the Central American question, opposing the claims of Great Britain to the Mosquito
Territory, and insisted upon her leaving that country
and giving up her protectorate over it, with a vigor
and pertinacity that the present administration, it is
to be hoped, will imitate in respect to the French in
Mexico.
In the thirty-fifth  Congress he served on the
Committee on Foreign Relations. He advocated the.
construction, by government aid, of a railroad to the
Pacific coast, on the route of Gov. Stevens' survey,
now known as the northern route; and he opposed
the project then advanced for the acquisition of Cuba;
and in a speech equal, I think, to any of his efforts,
defended the conduct of Commodore Paulding in the
arrest of the fillibuster, William Walker.
In the thirty-sixth Congress he was a member of
the Committee on Claims, and his name is connected
with much routine legislation.
In the thirty-seventh Congress, which assembled
July 4th, 1861, in special session, on account of the
rebellion, he served on the very important Committee
on Naval Affairs, with Hale, Grimes and Sherman,
and was also Chairman of the Committee on Public
Buildings, but having on the nineteenth of July been
unanimously elected President of the Senate, pro
tempore, his labors were necessarily devoted to the
highly responsible duties of that office, although he
devoted much time to the business of the Committee
on Public Buildings, of which he continued to be
Chairman until his death.




of Solomon Foot.             23
At the third session of the thirty-seventh Congress,
he was again unanimously elected to preside in the
Senate. And in the discharge of the duties of the
Chair, he displayed a dignity, promptness, urbanity
and ability, which have seldom been equalled, and never
excelled.
In this and the succeeding Congresses until he died,
although he did not enter much into debate, his name
is connected in the proceedings with many of the
leading measures made necessary by the rebellion,
and almost always on the side of the majority, although,
with the true spirit of a Vermonter and an honest
man, he did not fear or hesitate, when he thought an
administration measure to be clearly wrong, to oppose
it, and vote against it, as in the case of the legal
tender act, and some others.
Among his last speeches in the Senate was one
delivered on the 12th day of January, 1865, in favor
of terminating the Reciprocity Treaty with Great
Britain. It was brief, but cogent and forcible, and
had, as I am told, much effect in the abrogation of the
Treaty.
Aside from his senatorial duties he was a prominent
delegate to the Union Republican Convention of 1864,
which re-nominated Mr. Lincoln, and nominated Mr.
Johnson forl the Vice Presidency, and he was an
ardent advocate of the latter to succeed Mr. Hamlin.
It was one of the few serious mistakes of his lifetime,
but he lived long enough to regret it. Early in
March, 1866, when confined to his house by the illness
which resulted in his death, and when many still hoped
that the President would yet prove his fidelity to the




24        Life, Character and Services
principles upon which he was elected, as declared and
expounded by his own lips, Mr. Foot said to a fiiend
who had called to see him:
" There is nothing to be hoped for from the President; he has deserted his principles, and turned his' back upon the only men to whom  he owed any
" gratitude, and has relapsed into the arms of the
party which has opposed the Government throughout
the war. The only safety of the nation is in the
" Senate and HIouse of Representatives. Even out of
this gloomy period of discouragement, as great as
" any since the war began, if they stand firm, we shall
"come purified and victorious. But I am depressed' by it more than I can tell you.'"
He never again entered the Senate Chamber, where
he had so long and well labored and presided, until
his body was borne thither by his associates, to receive
the last sad honors due to his pure alnd useful life, an(l
his exalted station.
On the 28th day of March, 1866, after a service of
fifteen years in the Senate, he died, surrounded by his
relatives and friends, and sustained and soothed by
all the consolations of religion.
There are many passages of his life worthy of
commemoration, which the time properly devoted to
notices of this character does not allow me to refer to.
It has been my purpose rather to bring to your
attention the leading events of his life, and of the
times in which he bore a part, so that " the hour and
the man" might, as they fitly should, reciprocally
illustrate each other.




of Solomon Foot.               25
A  living French writer, profoundly versed in the
philosophy of politics, and remarkable (when it so
pleases him,) for the clearness of his ideas, says:
"Historic truth ought to be no less sacred than
" religion. If the precepts of faith raise our souls above
" the interests of this world, the lessons of history in
" their turn inspire us with the love of the beautiful and
"the just, and the hatred of whatever presents an
" obstacle to the progress of humanity. These lessons,'to be profitable, require certain conditions. It is
"necessary that the facts be produced with rigorous
"exactness, that the changes, political or social, be
"analyzed philosophically, that the exciting interest of
" the details of the lives of public men should not divert
" attention from the political part they played, or cause
" us to forget their providential mission."
Guided by these evident truths, it remains to estimate
with critical justness, no less than with affectionate
remembrance, the character and career of Mr. Foot.
For our duties now are historic purely. The solemn
and imposing pageant of the burial is past. The
voices of Divines, and Senators, and Representatives,
have been heard in eulogies such as can be bestowed
only upon few men. He now takes his place in
history, among the heroes and worthies who have
been the creators of history, and surrounded with an
array of great events, profoundly significant of the
progress of the human race.
"In the birth of societies," says Montesquieu, " it is
" the chiefs of the republics who form the institutions,
" and in the sequel it is the institutions which form the' chiefs of the republic."
4




26         Life, Character and Services
Mr. Foot, I think, occupied a middle place among
such chiefs. He was not in the high, grand sense, a
leader or chief, nor was he on the other hand (as many
men in high stations are,) the mere creature of circumstance, floating upon the tide of public affairs.
He had not those indescribable resources of character
to which we give the name of genius. But he was
free, too, friom those impracticable fancies which
frequently deprive genius of all its utility. He had
none of that truckling subserviency which will sometimes barter a permanent good for a temporary
triumph. He never sold the truth to save the hour.
But, to a plain, strong intellect, he added the
improvements of considerable learning, of cultivation,
of discipline, and a constant and industrious aim at
excellence in all his acts. With a purity of heart and
sweetness and generosity of disposition, as charming
as it is rare, he entered upon the performance of all
his duties, whether of friendship, in his profession, or
of State, with a vigorous and hearty good will that
was a sure and just guaranty of success and popularity.
He did not initiate revolutions or reforms, but in the
shuffling scenes of the drama of life he was always in
his proper place, and he always performed his part,
and never overacted.
" When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness."
This he did not do, but he did not fail in all his life
of varied employment, school-boy, student, teacher,
lawyer, legislator, to reach and maintain a high




of Solomon Foot.               27
standard of excellence; and he justly excited, by these
qualities of mind and heart, and by his unblemished
private life, the affectionate admiration and esteem of
all classes of people. And thus he passes into history
with the loving remembrance of his friends, of his
State, and of his country, who will associate his
worthy name with all the amenities of intercourse, and
with the onward progress of the great events of his
time.
In his allotted place, he makes up one of the great
company of men, whose lives have been bright
examples for our admiration and imitation. We trace
the history of the farmer's boy, or the mechanic's son,
up the rugged steep of fortune, and rejoice over the
course (our country's republican glory,) of the poor
doctor's self-reliant son, working his way alone to the
height of civil greatness,-teaching the valuable
lesson, fraught with courage and constancy to every
calling, that neither humbleness of birth, nor absence
of fortune, nor distance of opportunity, is sufficient to
curb the expanding force of talent and persisting
industry, armed and purified by virtue. But, as the
high counsel
" Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito,"
could be addressed to the true mariner only, it is the
brave and patient alone who can profit by such
examples.




28 Life, Character & Services of Solomon Foot.
NOTE
To the statement on page twenty-three, as to the nomination of Vice President Johnson.
This statement, the writer has since learned, is not
perfectly correct. Mr. Foot, in a conversation with
the writer, prior to the convention, was understood to
state that he was in favor of the nomination of Mr.
Johnson. But it appears from the statements of
Hons. E. P. Walton and A. B. Gardner, who were
members of the convention, that Mr. Foot voted first
for Mr. Hamlin, and would have voted next for Mr.
Dickinson, had not the general current so set towards
Mr. Johnson as to make it useless.




JONAS GALUSHA: THE FIFTH GOVERNOR
OF VERMONT.
BY REV. PLINY TI. WHITE.
THE GALUSHA FAMILY is one of the oldest in New
England. Early in the seventeenth century, Jacob
Galusha, when about eight years old, -was abducted
from Wales by persons interested in an estate to
which he was likely to become an heir. He was sent
to New England, settled near Plymouth, Mass., and
became the ancestor of a numerous family. He had
two sons, Jacob and Daniel. Daniel, the younger of
them, had three sons, Jacob, Daniel and Jonas.
Jacob married Lydia Huntington, daughter of Matthew
Huntington of Preston, Ct., and a relative of Gov.
Samuel Huntington. He was a farmer and blacksmith, in moderate circumstances, but of unblemished
character, sound judgment, and much native shrewdness. They had five sons, the third of whom, Jonas,
afterwards governor of Vermont, was born in N orwich,
Ct. 11 February 1753.*  When he was less than three
* Jacob Galusha had four wives. By the first, Lydia Huntington, he had five sons, David,
Jacob, Jonas, Amos, and Elijah; and four daughters, Mary, Olive, Lydia, and Anne. By the
second, Thankful King, he had one daughter, Lucy. By the third, Desire (Andrus) Metcall; he
had four sons, Daniel, Benjamin, Ezra, and Elias; and two daughters, Desire and Sally. By his
fourth wife, Abigail Foster, he had no children. She was a woman of great strength and
longevity. In her 80th year she was baptized by immersion and joined the Baptist Church in
Shaftsbury, Vt., and when ninety years old, she rode in a wagon fifty miles in a day with no
serious inconvenience. With reference to the temper and disposition of his four wives, Mr.
Galusha remarked, in his shrewd way:-" I have been twice in heaven, once on earthl, and once
in hell."
5




30                Jonas Galusha:
years old, he fell into a small pond of water, near
which he, with his brothers and sisters, had been
playing, and remained in the water till his sister Mary
ran a quarter of a mile and called the father, who
came, rescued him from the water, and succeeded in
restoring him.
In 1769, Jacob Galusha and his family removed to
Salisbury, Ct., and thence in the spring of 1775, to
Shaftsbury, Vt. *   None of his sons had received
any education, except the very limited one that was
afforded by the common schools of that period; but
their strength of mind and energy of character soon
made them leading men in the town, and to some
extent in the State. David, the eldest of the brothers,
was the representative of Shaftsbury in 1779. Jacob,
the second, was elected town clerk in 1784, and held
the office forty-one years.  He was also justice of
the peace for a long term, and the representative of
Shaftsbury, for ten consecutive years, 1801-1811. t
Amos, the fourth, served in the revolutionary army,
and, during the administrations of Jefferson and
Madison, rendered them very efficient support by his
contributions to the periodical press. a
Soon after his removal to Shaftsbury, Jonas Galusha
set up a shop for making nails, and also carried on a
farm for his brother David. He became at length a
farmer on his own account, and pursued that employment through life, except as he was withdrawn from
it by official engagements.  Possessing  a  strong
* It is worthy of remark, that several of the most distinguished early families of Vermont,
including, besides the Galushas, the Aliens, Chipmans, and Chittendens, were emigrants from
Salisbury.
t He was born 8 January 1751, and died 25 July 1834.: He died about 1840. Elijah, the youngest brother, married Beulah, daughter of Governor
Thomas Chittenden, but lost his life within a year or two by an accidental injury in a sawmill at
Arlington. He left one son. His widow married Col. Matthew Lyon.




Fifth Governor of Vermont.       31
constitution and vigorous physical powers, he was
able, even to advanced age, to do the full work of a
man, with hoe, scythe, sickle, or axe, and never
required any of his laborers to go beyond what he
himself did. Notwithstanding his constant employment on the farm, he found opportunity to add to his
stock of knowledge by reading, and to cultivate
practical wisdom by observation and reflection.
When the revolutionary struggle commenced, he
took an active pait in favor of the independence of
the colonies. He was a member of a company, commanded by his brother David, in Col. Seth Warner's
regiment of Green Mountain Boys, and did service in
Canada in the fall of 1775.. Prior to the battle of'
Bennington, 16 August 1777, two companies of militia
had been organized in Shaftsbury, one of them under
his captaincy, the other under that of Amos Huntington; but Captain Huntington being taken prisoner at
Ticonderoga, the two companies were consolidated
under Capt. Galusha. When he received orders from
Col. Moses Robinson to march his company to Bennington, he was sick in bed, recovering from a fever,
but he promptly called out his men and led them to
the scene of action.
On the day of the battle, his company had occasion,
on account of a bend in the Walloomsac River, to
ford the river twice, on their way to attack Baum's
rear. He was so weak that, at the first crossing, a
soldier insisted upon carrying him over, but excitement gave him such strength that he crossed the
second ford without assistance, and was in the hottest
of the battle during the rest of the day. After Baum




32                           Jonas Galusha:
was defeated, and the victors were resting from their
fatigue, or were scattered about the field, gathering
up the spoils, Burgoyne came up with reinforcements,
and the Green Mountain Boys were compelled to fight
and win the battle a second time. During this second
struggle, he was brought within easy range of one of
Burgoyne's pieces of artillery, from which two heavy
charges of grape-shot were sent all around him, furrowing the ground at his feet, and cutting the bushes
at each side of him and over his head, but leaving him
unscathed. * He continued in active military service
till the surrender of Burgoyne, on which occasion he
was present at the head of his company; and at
several other times he, with his company, was under
arms for a few days or weeks, as approaching danger
might require.
In October 1778, when not quite twenty-six years
old, he married Mary Chittenden, daughter of Gov.
Thomas Chittenden, by whom he had five sons and
four daughters. t
In March 1781 he was elected Sheriff of the County
of Bennington. The duties of the office at that early
period of the history of Vermont were onerous and
perplexing to the very last degree. The great mass
of the people were extremely poor and deeply in debt,
*In this battle, the life of one of Galusha's men was preserved in a somewhat remarkable
manner. He camne in contact with a tory, with whom he had previously been acquainted, and a
hand-to-hand conflict ensued, in which the tory succeeded in throwing him to the earth, and was
junst about to inflict a fatal wound. Just at that moment a Hessian soldier came running towards
them, and, in his haste, mistaking the character of the combatants, run the tory through with
hlis bayonet and released the whig. Much to the Hessian's surprise, he soon found himself a
prisoner to the man whose life he had preserved.
t She was born in 1758 and died 20 April 1794. Their children were, 1. Clarissa, b. 9 Sept
1779, um. Dr. Daniel Huntington, d. May 1823. -2. Mary, b. 23 May 1782, m. Norman
lliusdili, d. 31 May 1827- 3. Jonas, b. 17 July 1783, m. Electa Hinsdill, d. 2 June 1861.4. Nancy, b. 28 December 1784, m. Asa Billings of Royalton, d. 16 October 1848.- 5. Truman,
b. 30 September 1786, m. 1st, 17 Sept. 1809, Lydia Loomis, (d. 27 June 1818,) and 2d., 23 Dec. 1819,
Hannah Chittenden, a daughter of Noah Chittenden and grand-daughter of Gov. Thomas Chittenden. She died 29 May 1828. By the first wife he had two sons and one daughter, and by the
second, one son and three daughters. In 1823 he removed to Jericho, and became and continned to be a leading man in the town and county. He was the representative of Jericho in the
General Assembly in 1827,1828, and 1830, a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1836 and
1843, and a Judge of Chittenden County Court in 1849 and 1850. He was once a candidate for Con



Fifth Governor of Vermont.                                    33
and their unfortunate condition was greatly aggravated
by the want of a cash market for their produce, and
by the depreciation of the currency which took place
at the close of the Revolutionary War. The laws, too,
for the collection of debts were very severe, not only
subjecting all the debtor's property, except the barest
necessaries, to attachment and execution, but making
his person liable to imprisonment, with no possibility
of release but by paying the debt. *  The criminal laws
were also cruel and inhuman. Among the punishments which they authorized were, whipping, setting
in the stocks, cutting off the ears, and branding with
a red-hot iron. t  There is still extant in the Secretary
of State's office, an account of Jonas Galusha against
the State, to the amount of ~10, 4s. 6d. for executing
the sentence of the Supreme Court upon Abel Geer,
by cutting off his right ear and branding him upon the
forehead with the letter C.
Besides these things, of themselves sufficient to
make the office of sheriff disagreeable to a man of
ordinary sensibilities, there were at that time political disturbances which greatly increased the labors and
responsibilities of the office, and made it still more
irksome. The State had been organized only a short
time, and opposition to its authority was still made in
gress, but just before the election he declined in favor of another candidate. He died 12 June 1859.
6. Elon, b. 18 June 1790, m. Betsey Bottum. In 1811 and 1812 he studied law with Hon. Richard
Skinner, but, becoming a Christian, he turned his attention to the study of Theology, became a
Baptist minister, and was soon known as an eloquent and effective preacher. His first settlelient was in Whitesboro. N. Y., in 1816, and he continued there sixteen years. During a part
of that time he was agent for Columbia College, D. C., and had great success in raising funds for
it. He was among the most active of the founders of Hamilton Theological Seminary, and spent
about a year in its service at the time of its greatest embarrassment. In 1832 he became pastor
of the Broad Street Baptist Church in Utica, went thence to Rochestei-, and at a later period
was for several years pastor in Perry. In 1840 he visited England in behalf of a philanthropic
tenterprise in which he was interested. In 1841 he became pastor in Lockport, and continued
there till his death, 6 January 1856. He was a man of fine pulpit talents, of gentlemanly manners, of an eminently benevolent spirit, and of distinguished usefulness in his denomination.
His remarkable success in procuring donations for religious and charitable purposes gained
for him the sobriquet -" King of Beggars."- 7. Martin, b. 18 January 1792, m. 20 September
1815, Almira Cobb, removed to the State of New York in 1818, and is still living in IRochester —
8. Sophia, b. January 1794, d. 16 April 1794.- 9. Jonas, who died in infancy,
* Slade's State Papers, p. 320, 362, 458.
t        lb,         p. 333.




34              Jonas Galusha:
some places, particularly in the South part of Windham County, where an active and stubborn, if not
numerous party upheld the jurisdiction of New York.
Conciliatory measures having failed to bring these
men to submission, a coercive policy was adopted.
Several of the leaders were arrested, tried by the
Supreme Court, and banished from the State, under
penalty of death if they returned. One of these had
accepted from Gov. Clinton of New York a commission as Sheriff of Cumberland County, and two others
had accepted commissions as Colonel and Lt. Colonel
of an imaginary regiment of militia in the same County.
After their banishment, they were encouraged by Gov.
Clinton, with promises of support and military protection, to return to Vermont, defy its authority, and
attempt to overthrow its government. From time to
time, as they made themselves obnoxious, they were
arrested, and committed to jail in Bennington; and
during most of the year 1783 and a part of 1784, one
or more of them was almost continually in jail. They
were allowed the free use of their pens, and used them
freely in letters and newspaper articles defaming the
sheriff, jailer, and all other Vermont officials, and
laboring to excite popular sympathy in their own
favor.
It was not a little to Mr. Galusha's credit that, in
the midst of peculiar trials and responsibilities, he so
acquitted himself in the Sheriff's office as to command
the confidence of the government and people, and to
retain the office till he parted with it by voluntary
resignation. There was in his character a blending of
the energetic with the urbane, by which he commended




Fifth Governor of Vermont.        35
himself to all with whom he had official intercourse.
He had an instinctive knowledge of human nature, and
so great skill in managing men that he rarely failed
of bringing the most refractory to his own terms. On
one occasion when he went to serve a process,
the respondent seized an axe, and swore he would
take the sheriff's life sooner than be arrested. Mr.
Galusha was unarmed, except with a slender stick, but
assured the man that he would teach him better than
to threaten his life, and would have him in irons in
less than an hour. Partly by reasoning and partly by
jesting, he talked the axe out of the man's hand, and
accomplished the arrest within the time limited. On
another occasion, the respondent armed himself with
a walnut club, and backed into a corner of the room,
declaring that he would not be taken. "Yes, you
will," replied Galusha, "but I'm in no hurry."  "No,"
was the quick response, "I will not be taken alive."'Then," said Galusha, "you need to be better armed
than with a club. I will give you a chance to get your
gun and bayonet, and then I'll take you; but I'm sorry
to say that I've nothing but a summons to take you
with." The man, ashamed of having made such a
demonstration against a harmless writ of summons,
speedily threw down his weapon and submitted to the
process. One of the last of his official acts was the
dispersal of a party of "Shay's men," who, upon the
suppression of Shay's rebellion in Massachussets, fled
to Vermont early in 1787, and called a meeting at
Shaftsbury, for the purpose of setting on foot a similar
movement in this State. Mr. Galusha, in company
with Gideon Olin, and other prominent citizens, attend



36                Jonas Galusha:
ed the meeting, warned them of the danger to which
they were exposing themselves by their illegal proceedings, and notified them to quit the town forthwith.
In the spring of 1787, he resigned the office, having
held it six years.
He was not again in public life till 1792, when he was
elected a member of the second Council of Censors, the
first that met after the admission of Vermont into the
Union. This body proposed several material changes
in the Constitution, among which were the establishment of a Senate, and of an advisory Council of four,
and the limitation of the right of representation to
towns having not less than forty families. He used
all his influence in favor of these propositions, both in
the Council and with the people, but none of them
secured the popular assent. In 1793 he was elected
a member of the Governor's Council, a body of twelve
men, clothed with powers which rendered it nearly
equivalent to a co-ordinate branch of the legislature.
By successive elections, he held this office six years,
1793-98. In the mean time, his wife had died, and he
had married, as his second wife, Patty Sammons,
daughter of Timothy Sammons of Huntington, L. I. *
In 1795 he was elected an assistant Judge of Bennington County Court, and held the office three years.
The legislature of 1798, which met at Vergennes, was
strongly federal in politics, and as that party had not
been in power for many years, its appetite for office
had become ravenous in the extreme. Democratic officeholders were removed and their places supplied with
* She was born in 1764, and died, childless, 10 November 1797. Her death was thus noticed in a
cotemporary newspaper,-" In Shaftsbury, Nov. 10, 1797, Mrs. Patty Galusha, the amiable consort of Jonas Galusha."




Fifth Governor of Vermont.         37
federalists, with such an unsparing hand, that the
place, where the sessions of this body were held, was
long known by the name of " the Vergennes slaughterhouse."  Mr. Galusha was one of the victims, but
when his party regained the ascendency in 1800, he
was restored to the judgeship, and remained in the
office seven years, 1800-06. Having been a frequent
attendant upon the sessions of the legislature, he was
asked why he never came as representative. " Because
the freemen do not advise me to," was his reply. In
1800, however, the freemen of Shaftsbury gave him
that advice, and he took his seat in the House of
Representatives, but on the morning of the second
day he resigned his seat, informing the House that he
had been elected a Councillor, and had accepted the
office. He remained a member of the Council seven
successive years, 1800-06.
He was elected a Judge of the Supreme Court in
1807 and again in 1808.  This was perhaps the
highest tribute that could have been paid to his sound
judgment and incorruptible integrity, for he had none
of the legal learning usually regarded as an indispensable qualification for that office. His associates on
the bench were Judges Tyler and Harrington, both of
them remarkable men; the former for his classical
learning, high literary culture, ready wit, and prolific
authorship; the latter for his prodigious native
powers of mind and his entire lack of cultivation.
Judge Galusha occupied a position between the two,
having neither the polish of Tyler, nor the strength
of Harrington, but a practical common sense which
made him as useful and acceptable a judge as either
6




38              Jonas Galusha:
of them. He was on the bench during the celebrated
trial of the crew of the " Black Snake," a smuggling
vessel on Lake Champlain, whose crew had an affray
with a party of revenue officers, and killed two of
them; and he charged the jury in that case. In 1807,
he was elected, on the part of the Council, United
States Senator for the unexpired term of Israel Smith,
but he failed to receive the concurrent vote of the
House of Representatives.
His third wife, whom he married in June 1808, died
in 1809.* The same year he was chosen an Elector
of President and Vice President, and with his colleagues, gave the vote of Vermont to James Madison.
He was chosen an Elector in 1821, and voted for
James Monroe; and in 1825 and 1829, when he voted
for John Quincy Adams. The popularity of Isaac
Tichenor, who had been governor for eleven years,
made it expedient for the republicans to nominate as
his opposing candidate in 1809 the man who enjoyed
the largest measure of confidence, and could command
the greatest number of votes. That man was Jonas
Galusha, and with him as their leader the republican
party was successful in that campaign. He was reelected in 1810, 1811, and 1812. In his speech to the
legislature in 1812, he urged the adoption of measures
co-operating with the general government in carrying
on the war with Great Britain, as well as providing for
the defence of Vermont against possible invasion
from Canada. His recommendations were adopted,
* Her name was Abigail Ward, b. 1770, d. 6 May 1809. She had one child, Abigail, b. 15 Aprll
1809.




Fifth Governor of Vermont.        39
and the requisite laws were enacted, but they were so
oppressive in their practical operation, that many of
the people went over to the federal party. At the
election in 1813, he had a large plurality of the votes,
but not a majority.  The majority of the returned
members of the legislature, upon which the election
was thus devolved, were republicans, there being four
federal majority in the House, and ten republican
majority in the Council. But the federal leaders were
shrewd and not over-scrupulous, and, finding that by
rejecting the entire vote of Colchester for councillors,
upon the pretence that a large number of votes had
been polled illegally by United States soldiers stationed there, three more federal councillors would be
elected and the Joint Assemby brought to a tie, they
decided to do so, and the federal majority in the
House carried out their purposes in that regard. The
Joint Assembly balloted a number of times every day
for more than a week without effecting a choice, till
at length, on the 21st day of October, the votes were
declared to be one hundred and twelve for Martin
Chittenden, and one hundred and eleven for Jonas
Galusha. The one hundred and twelve republican
members immediately signed a certificate that they
did, each of them, on that bollot, vote for Jonas
Galusha, and claimed that the apparent result should
be set aside and another ballot be taken. But the
federal majority in the House refused to take any
further action, and Martin Chittenden was declared
Governor. There is good reason to believe that the
result of the ballot was correctly declared, only
one hundred and eleven persons in fact voting for




40              Jonas Galusha
Galusha, and Oliver Ingham of Canaan having withheld his vote. By what means he was induced to do
so it is impossible now to ascertain.
In 1814 Mr. Galusha was the delegate from Shaftsbury to the Constitutional Convention. After the
restoration of peace with Great Britain, many of the
causes which had agitated the people of Vermont
ceased to exist, and the republican party regained their
ascendency.  Mr. Galusha continued to be their
candidate for governor, and in 1815 he was elected by
a handsome majority. His speech to the legislature
judiciously avoided all topics that could rekindle the
expiring embers of party spirit. He alluded in suitable
terms to the close of war and the grateful return of
peace, but employed himself mainly with the business
of the State. He was re-elected, year by year, by
constantly increasing majorities, till 1819, when his
competing candidate had only a few more than a
thousand votes. He then announced his determination to remain no longer in public life, and in this he
persisted, though urged to the contrary, not only by
his political friends, but by many of the adverse party.
The legislature adopted and presented an address, in
which they said —"In discharging the duties of
councillor, judge, and governor, you have ever
merited and received the approbation of your fellow
citizens."  He was earnestly requested to be a candidate for the United States Senate, which had he been,
his election was morally certain, but he rejected the
honor, nor did he again ever hold office, except that in
1822, he was again a member of the Constitutional
Convention, and the President of that body. A few




Fifth Governor of Vermont.             41
years before, he had married his fourth wife, Mrs.
Nabby (Atwater) Beach, * and he now  retired to
private life, in which he enjoyed a serene and honored
old age, till having nearly attained his eighty-second
year, he died, 25 September 1834. t
In person, Gov. Galusha was rather stoutly built,
about five feet and nine inches in height, and at the
same time of a very active temperament, as was
indicated by his light complexion, blue eyes, and light
hair inclining to be sandy. His dress was the plain
but neat dress of a respectable farmer, who had
mingled much with his fellow men, and was neither
ignorant nor unmindful of the requirements of society.
In conversation he was ready, though not copious,
and he had a vein of humor which rendered him very
agreeable socially. He was fond of domestic life, and
singularly fortunate in his domestic relations. The
four wives whom he successively married were cheerful, amiable, and pious women, and he lived with them
in harmony and happiness.  His children were well
trained, and all of them who survived childhood
became professors of religion, one of them an. eminent
minister in the Baptist denomination.
Though not himself a member of any church, he
was, in the estimation of those best competent to judge,
a true Christian. He maintained family worship in
all its forms, was known to observe private devotions,
was an habitual attendant upon public worship and at
social meetings, and frequently took an active part in
* His marriage was thus announced in one of the papers of that day:- "In Cavendish, Feb.
24, 1818, Jonas G;alusha, and Mrs. Nabby Beach, a lady of unblemished reputation, and possessing in an eminent degree, those amiable female virtues, whose price is far above rubies."  She
was born 2 April 1764, and died 30 July 1831.
t His funeral sermon, which is still extant in manuscript, was preached by the Rev. Warham
Walker, from 2 Sam. 3: 38. "Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day
in Israel?"




42              Jonas Galusha:
the latter.  In his daily life he was also such as a
Christian should be, modest, gentle, amiable, upright,
faithful to every obligation. He was the first Governor of Vermont, who introduced the word CHRIST
into the date of his proclamations.  When nearly
seventy-nine years of age, he attended a "protracted
meeting" at Manchester, and took an active part in its
exercises; as the result of which, he was aroused to a
sense of the duty of making a public profession of
religion, and announced his intention to do so, but was
prevented from accomplishing his purpose by a stroke
of paralysis which he experienced soon after, and from
which he never recovered. During the protracted
sickness which ensued, his cheerfulness, patience,
resignation; and Christian conversation bore witness
to the genuine piety that was in his soul.
Integrity and impartiality were such marked traits
in his character that he was not seldom chosen as an
arbitrator even by his enemies. His forbearance was
such that he never resented an injury, but endeavored
by his words and actions to make his enemies his
friends. ZBenevolence to the poor was another of his
distinguishing characteristics. He made their wants
his own, and relieved them accordingly. It was no
unusual thing for him, when, in the discharge of his
official duties as sheriff, he had been made the instrument of reducing a poor man to still deeper poverty,
to furnish the unfortunate debtor the means of
extricating himself from embarrassment. He also gave
freely to various benevolent societies, and took an
active part in their affairs. He was President of the
Bennington County Colonization Society, and Bible




Fifth Governor of Vermont.        43
Society, and one of the Vice-Presidents of the
Vermont Bible Society.  When  the temperance
reformation had proceeded as far as the total-abstinence movement, he gave his influence and example
in its favor, and though he was far advanced in years,
and had, all his life-time, been accustomed to the
moderate use of alcoholic liquors, he at once abandoned the habit, though not without fear that the
sudden change might affect him injuriously.
He was painfully conscious of the deficiencies of
his early education, and feelingly alluded to them in
his first executive address. But his quick perception,
his retentive memory, his sound judgment, his ready
wit, and his prompt command of all his intellectual
powers and resources, were qualities which stood him
in better stead, and more amply fitted him for his
various duties, than the best scholastic education could
have done without them. He had a rich fund of
anecdote, upon which he drew frequently and with
great effect. He was not addicted to public speaking,
but could, when occasion required, express himself
clearly and forcibly. His executive addresses were
short, rarely exceeding in length four printed octavo
pages, and frequently not more than half or two thirds
as long. In style they were quite unadorned, but
concise and perspicuous. To the contrary, his proclamations for Fasts and Thanksgivings were of unusual
length; sometimes, indeed, nearly as long as his
messages, indicating that he was more-accustomed to
thinking and writing upon religious subjects than
upon political affairs.




44              Jonas Galusha.
Politically he was a democrat of the Jeffersonian
school, and it may shed some light upon the pedigree
of modern parties, to notice, that, without any change
of his political views, he voted successively for
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams. Though in
office nearly all the time for forty years, he was not an
office-seeker. Rather did office seek him, on account
of his eminent fitness for it. He accepted it from a
sense of duty rather than from choice, and while in it
sought to secure the public good rather than his own.
Perhaps Vermont has never had a governor more
worthy of the eulogy which Fulke Greville pronounced upon Sir Henry Sidney: —" He was such a
" governor as sought not to make an end of the State
"for himself, but to plant his own ends in the pros"perity of his country."




THE SOURCES OF NEW-ENGLAND  CIVILIZATION.
BY REV. J. E. RANKIN, CHARLESTOWN, MASS.
COUNTRIES may be sliced up into distinct territories
by the conqueror's sword, as is the fashion in Europe;
but, they cannot be thus constituted into nationalities.
Like the pine or the oak, a true nationalty is a growth;
a thing not to be made by the re-adjustment of the
political balances, or the change of territorial landmarks, but by a slow process of development, to make
itself. Plant the pine-cone and the acorn upon the
sunny slope of some of your own green hills, now so
gorgeous in their glory, can you make the cone
produce the oak, or the acorn the pine? Can you
substitute the murmuring needles of the one, for the
shapely and classic foliage of the other?  No more
can you change one nation into another; no more can
you, out of given materials, manufacture a homogeneous nation;-a nation, with a history, with institutions,
with an ideal consistent with itself, and reproducing
the same national characteristics, generation after
generation. No less than the oak and the pine, such
a product, such an intellectual, social and political
8




50               The Sources of
power is a growth. And it is a growth, not merely
fioml the germ of the original seed; it is a growth
which has drawn to itself, and fed upon, the elements
of the soil in which it has been imbedded; a growth,
which has topped itself out into a thousand lungs, to
breathe in the atmosphere of heaven around it, which
has lifted up a thousand open hands, to catch the
sunlight and the rain from heaven above it, and
which, shooting downward, has hardened, and strengthened and entrenched itself against a thousand beating
tempests in the earth beneath it.
Humboldt says, that the current produced by the
passage of the waters of the Orinoco, between the
South American continent and the island of Trinidad,
is so powerful, that ships with all their canvas
spread, and with a westerly breeze in their favor, can
scarcely make their way against it; and that the
presence of this mighty movement of waters convinced
Columbus that he approached a continent, since only
a continent could be the nurse of such a river. Widespread over this country, as are American institutions,
no thoughtful mind can doubt the shaping and controlling influence in them, of NEW ENGLAND CIVLIZATION, wherever, and just in proportion as this civilization has been permitted to make itself felt. It is my
present purpose, to indicate some of the sources of
this civilization; for, if only the mountain-ranges and
table-lands and plains of a continent are sufficient to
produce the Orinoco, back of this all-pervading,
ubiquitous New England Civilization, there must be
something worthy of our study.




.New Englnund Civilization.        51
The first source of New England Civilization, is
manifestly 2New England history.  There are those
who regard historical studies and pursuits with contempt. With them, a thing that is past, is done with.
What care they, when or by whom  a country was
discovered, settled, cleared and civilized, provided
these things have been accomplished sometime, and by
some one?  But, the truth is, the history of a nation
must always exert a sovereign influence over its
destiny.  A name, a locality, an event of the past,
may do more toward determining the character and
tendency of the present, than all the most ambitious
and princely spirits of a generation. Says Vinet,
" Eminent men do one work, and their memory does
" another; often, indeed, the work of their memory is
f the most durable and best." It is the province of
history to embalm and transmit this memory, that it
may have an opportunity to do its legitimate work.
It is true, that the very deeds of the founders of
States are, in themselves, immortal; have a direct
work to do, even to the end of time.  But, the influence of many a public act is, in itself, temporary,
while the influence of its memory never can be
estimated. The discovery of America, by Columbus,
was an event, the influence of which never will cease
to be felt. That single resolute man, whose faith was
the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence
of things not seen, so put his hand to the helm of the
world's progress, thatit will never lose the impulse
imparted. But, full of sublimity and tender interest,
as is the history of this event, it does not live as a
vital force in the memory of men, as many a lesser




52               The Sources of
one. A few discoverers, a few scientific men, may be
inspired by it; a few more may be comforted in their
discouragements.  The deed, and not the memory,
does the greater work. The achievement, the opening
of this vast continent to the enterprise and civilization
of the old world, the linking of the old world and
the new, in intercourse, in commerce, in nationalities,
in history, and lately, almost in space, obliterating the
very ocean that he crossed: this is what Columbus
accomplished. He found a place, too, for the Great
Republic of the future. This was his work.
There were others who came to this continent a
century and a half later, exiles for conscience' sake,
from their native land, who founded this Republic, for
which he had provided a place. I shall not be understood as speaking  disparagingly of the work  of
Columbus, when I say, that in grandeur of moral
results, this work was greater than his. The little
ship from Delft-Haven, outweighed the Spanish fleet
from Palos. It was given to him to open a new world,
of whose vastness, whose beauty, whose richness of
structure and imperial future, even he had little
conception. It was permitted to them, to determine
the institutions, social, civil and political, which should
preponderate in this new world, to establish that type
of civilization, which should impress itself upon all
future generations.  If Columbus discovered a new
world, if he opened up a pathway through the waters
to its unknown shores, if ha drew towards it the
thoughts and the enterprise of the older nations of
the earth; it was theirs, to enter into a successful
competition with the various types of civilization that




New England Civilization.         53
appeared here, and to triumph over them all; it was
theirs, so far as institutions are concerned, to create
a new world, the model of which they brought over in
the cabin of the Mayflower; as adventurers now carry
ready-made dwellings to California.
They live in their deed: but they live also in their
memory. The wake of their little vessel, winged by
faith, will always be a pathway of light to the eyes of
the future. It still stands anchored, no spectral ship,
in Plymouth harbor.  The pen of the historian and
the poet, and the tongue of the eloquent, have never
ceased, and will never cease, to do them honor, and to
perpetuate their memory. That memory will live and
do its work to the end of time. A moral atmosphere
goes forth from it, that every man born in New
England must breathe. He may not like the Pilgrims;
he may invidiously intimate, that they had an eye to
the cod-fisheries of the new world, as well as to its
natural temples; a conclusion which might possibly be
drawn a posteriori from the characteristics of some
of their children. But, still, he will see that in their
character'and work which he will be compelled to
honor, which will impress itself upon his own spirit
and inspire his life. He cannot stand upon that Rock,
once trodden by Carver and Brewster and Standish,
fresh from the baptism of a winter sea, without
thanking God for such ancestors, and praying that he
may not prove unworthy of them, or unfaithful to
what they committed to the keeping of their children.
And so of the events of the revolution. Can a
citizen of New England escape the influence of such
names and places as Lexington and Concord, as




54               The Sources of
Bennington and Saratoga? Can he walk among the
ruins of Ticonderoga, which, for her unnatural sister,
the heroism of Vermonters wrested from the grasp
of the foe, without recalling that stalwart figure, now
immortalized in stone at the entrance of your own
Capitol, of him, who once stood with uplifted sword,
at the gate of that fortress, and demanded its
surrender in the name of the Great Jehovah and the
Continental Congress; two powers then joined together, not now to be put asunder!  Can he stand
upon the remnants of the old entrenchment where
WTarren fell, and not see his noble daring, his longing,
lingering look, at the field that was lost?  Ah! these
memories are the most precious heir-looms that New
Englanders have!  Let suitable monuments mark
such hallowed spots! Let the sculptor and the painter
reproduce these historic personages, these attitudes,
these deeds that can never die. Let the annals of the
past be gathered up and treasured for our children,
as the best security of the future.  New England
civilization will thus continue to be the outgrowth of
New England history. And, as we see -the same
features and characteristics repeating themselves
here and there, in the development of individual
families, so our Warrens and our Allens will re-appear
in our Winthrops and our Stannards to the end of
time.
The second source of New England Civilization
is New England climate and soil. Notwithstanding
the rare original elements in it, New England Civilization would have been possible, only upon New, Eng



New England Civilization.          55
land soil; only in New England latitude. If the seeds
of this civilization had been planted in the rich loam
of Virginia, instead of the barren sands of Plymouth;
if they had found a more genial latitude and a more
generous nurture; escaping the long winters and easterly storms, the sterile and rocky hills of New England,
the result would have been far different. We talk
about overcoming the infelicities of climate, of subduing nature to productiveness, as though the direct victory were the great achievement; as though to make
two blades of grass grow where one' grew before, to
double the bushels of wheat or corn or potatoes that
an acre produces, to invent a mower or a reaper which
shall do the work of a half-dozen men, to convert a
neglected waterfall into a mill-site, or to make it give
impulse to a thousand dashing shuttles or ten thoussand whirring spindles, were the grand result of our
efforts. There is a moral victory grander than this.
The noblest result is the development of certain qualities in the victor. We triumph over the soil, the climate, the natural disadvantages which we encounter.
But, these infelicities as we call them, put us to tuition
also.  We develop the possibilities of Nature. We
none the less develop the possibilities of our own nature. The valleys bearded with wheat, or bristling
with corn, the hills covered with flocks and herds, the
streamlets and rivers vocal with the hum of industry
and thrift: these constitute one result of our encounter
with nature. But there is an intellectual and moral
result, which is far more valuable. Habits of thought,
of industry, of self-reliance, of persistent endeavor are
acquired in this school. I hesitate not to determine,




56              7The Sources of
which is the most beautiful object of contemplation, the
broad meadows or graceful hill-sides, with clustered
maples, which, in your own Vermont, one man has
spent a lifetime in reducing to beauty and fertility,
or the character, which this constant struggle with Nature and the elements has developed in himself; the
calm and comprehensive judgment, the serene trust,
the healthful sense of self-approval, and those other
sturdy qualities so characteristic of the thorough yeomen of New England. There is no truer hero, there
is no truer sage, frequently there is no truer saint,
than such a man. If, therefore, it was a happy thing
for the destinies of this continent, that our ancestors
were such men as they were, so loyal to truth and to
God, so severe in the simplicity of their faith and their
manners, it was no less happy that they landed upon
the " stern and rock-bound coast" of New England; fit
school for fit pupils. The rough sea having for long
months rocked them upon her Spartan bosom, kindly
brought them to their no less Spartan nursery of a future empire.
This insensible, this reflex influence of climate, soil
and scenery upon national character, is almost wholly
ignored and neglected; in the choice of a residence, is
so frequently counted for nothing. It is frequently
said, in a half-sneering way, that New England is a
good place to emigrate from. And so a man tears up
from its native bed the roots of his household; leaves
upon the hill-side the graves of his ancestors; sunders
the tie that binds himself and his children to the cloudland, the sun-sets, the mountains and the lakes of his
native region, and seeks a new home in the the ever



New England Civilization.         57
receding land of the West. Ah! the prairies may
bloom ever so sweetly, their undulations may be ever
so liquid and ocean-like as the breath of the wind
sweeps across their yielding surface, the rivers may
move their vast volumes ever so grandly to the Gulf,
the cities and towns may spring up, as if by magic,
around him, but all their physical and material advantages shall be more than counterbalanced by what he
has lost, by what he has done violence to, in the change.
The sacrifice may be a matter of necessity or duty, but
it is none the less a sacrifice. New England is a good
place to emigrate from, for it is a good place to give
the founders of empires their preparatory training.
Its mountains are good places from which to quarry
out the corner or foundation-stones of States. But,
such changes involve the loss of what can never be estimated by money-standards, of what can never be replaced by wealth and social influence.
The language of natural scenery may not be easily
translatable into words; but it has a meaning. It
speaks directly to the soul. Says one of the most eminent naturalists that ever lived: "That which the
"painter designates by the expressions' Swiss scenery,'
"or'Italian sky,' is based on a vague feeling of the
"local natural character. The azure of the sky, the ef"fects of light and shade, the haze floating on the distant
"horizon, the forms of animals, the succulence of plants,
"the bright, glossy surface of the leaves, the outline of
"mountains, all combine to produce the elements on
"which depends the impression of any one region.?"
The emigrant from New England, Westward, goes
out from the influence of such a natural atmosphere, by
9




58               The Sources of
which he has been surrounded from infancy, by which
he has been taught new conceptions of beauty, by
which he has been inspired to perform many a forbidding duty, or braced up to many a difficult undertaking.
He cannot transfer to his new home these sterner aspects of nature, whose inarticulate language has been
to him like the voice of an unwearying and sleepless
monitor; nor can he transport the rugged soil that has
a thousand times broken or rejected his plowshare;
nor the short seasons, that have driven him to provident
and industrious husbandry; nor the small profits, that
have rendered him faithful to particulars and a snug
calculator. He cannot take with him, the mountain
range, that has cast its morning or evening shadow
of protection upon the little farm that nestled along
the water-brook beneath it, or crept up to its cold and
forbidding shoulder; where he has watched the tenderleaved Spring as she has put on her garments of green;
the Summer in her mature beauty; the Autumn in her
crimson richness; the Winter, as she walked in white.
He goes out from the influence of all these inanimate
faces of Nature and Nature's God. They have given
him their blessing from his earliest infancy. They
give him a reluctant, almost reproving, benediction
now. But they go not with him. He cannot import
them. When our young men are urged to follow the
star of empire across the Mississippi, to embark their
energies in the great enterprises of the West, even
though New England farms and hamlets become a
desolation, or go into the possession of the alien, shall
we not remind them, that when they have left behind
their backs the soil, the climate, the scenery of their




New England Civilization.          59
native region, they have forsaken the surroundings in
which New England characteristics have had their
natural development; which ale the natural conservators of these characteristics? The brilliancy of a gem
sometimes depends as much upon its setting as upon
itself. It is the setting and the stone combined, that
produce the effect sought. And New England
character has its true surroundings among its own
green and granite hills, its lakes that flash like a mirror
in the sunlight, and its rivers that go enriching its
intervales down to the gray old Ocean, that daily
baptizes anew its Eastern shores.
A third source of New England Civilization, are
New England Institutions. And these, of course, are
the family, the school, the church and the state. In
New England, each of these has a peculiar stamp and
type; and, therefore, exerts a peculiar influence. Men
talk about institutions, just as they talk about climate
and soil; as though the grand object in establishing
them, consisted in what we can make them to be, and
not in what they do for us. We talk about men's
making institutions. But institutions make men, as
well; just as, and even more than climate, scenery,
soil.
It is saying scarcely too much, to claim that a nation
is formed in the cradle of its infants. At any rate,
the true statesman must admit, that the family is the
moral nursery of the state; that before leaving the care
of its mother, the little child already has, in embryo,
the qualities that will distinguish him as a citizen. If
he is to prove true to his obligations to his fellow citi



60               The Sources of
zens, he has already shown it in the miniature commonwealth of which he is a member; if he is to be a lawbreaker, he has already deserved and had foretastes of
the cell and the dungeon. I am not speaking here of
tendencies, but of determined character. The mother
sometimes trembles at the exhibition of passion, of
which some of her little brood are capable.  She
trembles, not so much for the present as the future.
Such outbreaks are comparatively safe, in this realm
of love over which she presides. She mingles pity
and the persuasive eloquence of her own tender eye,
with her efforts at restraint.  But, the tribunal of
society is not made up of such stuff as mothers are.
Society has little patience with offenders; while its
attempts to restrain criminals, are frequently so
administered as to confirm them in their downward
courses. The many recommitments for the same or
worse crimes, tell fearfully against the practicability
of really reforming men in prisons and houses of
correction. It is the good family that makes the child
the good citizen. And our schools of reform are
practically valuable, only in proportion as they can be
made to assume the character and impart the influences of the family.
New England families have been, and are still, in
some good measure, peculiar for the exercise of
parental authority and restraint over the tastes and
tendencies, the character and habits of children. Law
is the same in the domestic circle, as in the government of man, as in the government of God. Of these
two governments, our childreni and youth are prospective citizens and subjects. I enter upon no defence of




-New Englnnd Civilization.        61
parental severity, or arbitrariness. Let there be as
much of reason and love in parental government, as
is possible. But, I insist that there must be government; that the sovereignty of law must be recognized
and inculcated, or the family is untrue alike to the
government of man and to the government of God.
And to my mind, one of the most discouraging aspects
of our own time is the ridicule and decline of parental
government on the part of so many of our native-born,
and the almost total abuse and perversion of it, on the
part of nearly all our foreign-born citizens. If obedience to law be not taught at home, it is almost never
taught. And if obedience to law be not taught, liberty
is a curse, and the larger it is, the greater the curse.
I repeat it: The individual family is the first type
of civil government, the first school of the future
citizen. And were our families what they should be,
did they furnish the proper preliminary training, every
child born in an American household, whether in
mansion or hut, in city or hamlet, on hill-top or prairie,
would ordinarily grow up to become a useful, industrious and loyal member of the body politic. Let us
suppose, now, that it is well enough with the children
of New England parentage; that they are brought up
in the good old style of the fathers, or even a better
one, if you prefer. How is it with those children of
foreigners, those children who have no New England
home; who have no persons that can be properly called
either parents or guardians; who never knew the language of parental love or parental reproof, except that
of objurgation and reproach; and who are never taught
childhood prayers or childhood hymns of praise; who




62               The Sources of
have neither table, hearth nor altar, around which they
ever gather in the capacity of a family; who have
examples of intemperance, Sabbath-breaking and other
vices, set them by those who are their divinely-appointed instructors; among whom theft and lying and
profanity are commonplace occurrences: how is it,
with this not inconsiderable, and rapidly increasing
element in New England Civilization?  These boys
and girls, standing upon the street-corners of our
cities; appearing in all our larger towns and villages;
these boys and girls, whose tongues are ready with
the keenest slang or repartee for the luckless pedestrian, who ventures to remonstrate upon an obstructed
sidewalk, or a poor forlorn cat with a tin pail at her
tail, fleeing away from a shower of paving-stones:
how shall they be saved to themselves and to the
State? According to our theory of government, we
cannot dispose of the morally deformed, as the Spartans
did of the physically deformed. We are compelled to
take them into our Civilization. Every citizen, be he
blessed or cursed by his parentage, is a living stone,
that must go up into our civil structure. And I confess,
that I fear less the domination and intrigues of
ecclesiastics; I fear less the influence of a religious
system, whose very theory and structure are antidemocratic, are anti-republican, than the fact that the
children of our foreign-born citizens have not the
blessed influences of a New England home; are not
taught reverence for truth and reverence for God, as
it is customary for the children of New  England
parentage to be taught.




_New England Civilization.       63
There were grand elements, doubtless, the grandest
possibilities, in the boy Daniel Webster. But, who
shall say, how much his greatness of character, how
much his peerless achievement, was owing to those
Psalms of David which he so wonderfully recited to
the passing traveler, in that humble cottage of his
father, amid New Hampshire forests, on the banks of
the Merrimack; was owing to the serious views of life
taught him by a father, whom he so deeply revered;
by a mother, whom he loved with all the strength of
his magnificent nature?  New England homes lie at
the basis of New England Civilization. There may
be homely fare, there may be ingenious devices to
make " auld claes look amaist as weel's the newv;" to
make the two ends of the year meet, with a little to
lay by for that rainy day which, in fancy, always hangs
over the New England future: but you will usually
find there, thoughtful views of life and of life's work;
young minds and young hearts full of noble aspirations,
and a resolute determination to live to some purpose,
in one's day and generation.
Next removed from the New England family stands
the New England school. I speak here of the common,
the public school; my limits forbid any allusion to
higher institutions. The New England school is
almost as peculiar as the New England family; an
institution as influential, not merely or mainly because
of the amount of instruction imparted, though in it,
enough of this may be accomplished to make almost
any position of future eminence attainable; an institution, whose general diffusion and annual expendi



64               The Sources of
tures teach the estimate which the State puts upon
intelligence; an institution, where children are early
brought into those relations of comparison and competition, which so largely determine the future of
American men and women; an institution, in which
self-denying laborers secretly and wisely and painfully build up those structures of human character,
upon which the society of the next generation is to
rest: like the coral-insects, themselves contented
never to appear above the surface, except in the islands
of tropical greenness which finally round out and
embellish their patient endeavor. I think the eminent
statesman, above alluded to, never wrote a more
touching, or eloquent letter, than that penned from
the chair of State in Washington, to his old master
Tappan, thus closing:
"I thank you again, my good old schoolmaster, for
"your kind letter, which has awakened many sleepless
"recollections; and with all good wishes, I remain
" your friend and pupil,
DANIEL WEBSTER."
It is said that before the advent of the Messiah,
every Jewish mother hailed the birth of a son, as the
possible Desire of all nations. Oh! ye toilers, day
after day, and week after week, and month after
month, and year after year, in the school-rooms of
New England, be not discouraged; despise not your
work. Doubtless there are those, under your selfdenying tuition, whose future eminence, intellectual
and moral, shall gild your old age with a glory like
that which the fame of New England's greatest




New.England Civilization.        65
statesman shed upon the gray locks of old Master
Tappan. Toil on, amid the petty peevishness of parents, seeking to undo their errors, and to retrieve their
mistakes; toil on, through wet and dry, through heat
and cold: there is no nobler work on earth tha.n'yours.
And precisely here is New England's hope respecting the children of her foreign-born citizens. Here,
in our schools, may be in some measure accomplished,
what has been neglected in many of our families.
Our children -nay be taught the significance and
sacredness of law. True, the most summary method
of dealing with children that have been brow-beaten
and scolded all their days, is to continue and intensify
the same process; is to arm yourself with strap and
rattan, to add to your vocabulary all the epithets of
sarcasm and abuse in your power, and still persist in
the attempt to exorcise poor human nature on the
same line adopted by disciplinarians at home. Horace
says that " nature will come back, though expelled
with a fork:" he might have said, all the more because
expelled with a fork. For, this is the kind- of exorcism,
which nature does the most resist. You cannot cast
out Beelzebub by Beelzebub.  You cannot reach
moral results, by purely physical means. The regimen
of treatment you adopt, will only intensify the warfare which there is in the child's bosom, against law as
a merely outward restraint. You bring yourself down
to the lower platform of the criminal code. In such
a government as our own, what we most need among
the people, is the sense and appreciation of law, as an
invisible power and influence. As with the Divine
government, so with the most perfect of human. It
10




66               The Sources oj
is not constantly asserting itself. It is not constantly
assuming terrible aspects, and thundering with its
dark enginery of penalties. There is this dark background to all law, whether human or Divine; but,
for the'truest and highest style of obedience it is not
adequate; it is not conducive to it. Children that
have been kept from disobedience at home and at
school, merely from the fear of physical punishment,
may be kept from  breaking laws by  holding up
before them the prospect of a term at the reformschool or in the state-prison. But, you thus institute
a warfare between the child and law. lIe never
learns to love law as a rule of right. In the ideal sense,
he never becomes fit for citizenship. These future
citizens must have moral education, or they never can
be qualified for their duties to the State. And failing
in this, at hoime, it must be furnished them  in the
public school. And infinitely above all acquisitions
in Arithmetic, Geography or Grammar, is the coming
to feel that law is a holy thing; and that to wage
w arfare with it, or with its ministers, is not only
unsafe, but is a dishonor to themselves and an injury
to the public weal, of which they themselves are soon
to become a part.
The next institution indicated as a source of New
England Civilization, is the Church. And, of coaurse,
this term is employed here in the most general
manner. It means, that aggregate association, which
represents, if it does not always include, the spiritual
Kingdom of God among men; which accepts His law,
as of present abiding force, and His ordinances as the




New England Civilization.         67
true instrumentality for making man what he should
be, whether in his relations to his Maker or to his
brother man. Of this association, of this kingdom,
the Bible is the hand-book and exposition. Say what
men will, think what they dare not say, in the last
analysis, the Bible, and the influences which have
proceeded from it, have shaped New England Civilization. That single day of rest in each week, a green
island amid a melancholy waste of waters; that respite
from the toils of this world, the sound of Sabbath
bells, the proclamation of the truth; ah! no man can
calculate what stability and serenity these influences
have given to New England life. France tried a
Republic, not only without the Bible and without a
Sabbath, but trampling the Bible and the Sabbath
and the immortality of the soul under foot; denying
and repudiating them, and substituting an artificial
and infidel division of time, for that which had been
established by Jehovah. What was the result? I need
not remind you. But you say, "France was not prepared for a Republic." With a Bible and a Sabbath,
a Republic would have been far more feasible for
France, than without them. With a New England
Sabbath, a republic might have been possible, even in
France.
God has never been without a witness in the institutions of New England; and amid all its variety, this
is the basis of that seriousness in New England
character, which has given it such a power over the
destinies of the nation. This is the basis, too, of that
love for human equality, which has now become and
must always remain the predominant idea of this great




68               The Sources of
people. Says an acute French philosopher and divine:
"The sentiment of human equality is always in exact
"proportion with the sentiment of God's presence;' because we want a basis for man's respect for man,
"and this basis can be no other than God." Every
sanctuary, therefore, in these New England valleys,
or standing like a sentinel upon her hill-tops, has been
a protest against the rights of man in human flesh and
blood. And if those, who have frequented these
sanctuaries, have sometimes been slower to discover
this than your Garrison and your Wendell Phillips,
still let the credit be given where it belongs. For, I
believe, it was the religious sentiment of New
England that originated and found expression in
President Lincoln's Proclamation. It was the religious sentiment of the country, derived not from
cLiberators' and'Independents,' though conveyed
through them, and quickened by them, that carried us
safely through the recent war; and which has lately
given itself expression in such swollen tides of majority,
against the policy of the man, whom the bullet of an
assassin and not the ballots of the people put into the
Presidential chair at Washington.
It has been said by Count Gasparin, and with great
justice and force, that the Christian virtues that appear
in the families of infidels, are to be ascribed, not to
infidelity, but to the influence of that ChristiaA civilization, in which these families had their growth;
whose life-giving atmosphere they have breathed. If
a man denies the truth of t4  Christian religion, and
is yet evidently moulded by its spirit, Christianity and
not infidelity deserves the credit, And so in the




N7Yew England Civilization.       69
advance of Christian civilization, men may be put
forward as standard-bearers, may become the representatives of a Christian idea, who in other respects,
think the thoughts and talk the dialect of pagans.
Which shall have the credit of their Christian ideas,
Paganism or Christianity? iA few years ago, some of
these very men, whom we now canonize, in political
saintship, went about the  country  unchurching
churches, pronouncing maledictions upon ministers
and church-members, and execrating the Bible
and the sanctuary.  And, yet, all their boasted
humanity, and more, was embraced in these words of
the Author of Christianity: " All things whatsoever
" ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
" to them." And that their views have triumphed, is
owing to that life and power, which they received
from God and not from man.
The only remaining institution mentioned above, as
the source of New England Civilization, is the State;
a word intended to comprehend that system by which
our rulers are elected, and our laws made and
enforced.
Such a political system as that which prevails in
this country, is a powerful educator of the people.
Here, of course, comes in the mighty enginery of the
press; discussing all topics that relate to the public
welfare, recording criminal acts, the decisions of
judges, the opinions of eminent men; in a word,
causing the whole civil and political life of the people
to become one moving panorama, upon which each
citizen may look as often as he takes up the daily




70               The Sources of
news. The State, of course, is the resultant of the
civilization of the people. The primary electors, the
men who make, and the men who execute the laws,
the men who determine judicial questions, are the
offspring and the representatives of this civilization.
And these embodiments of our civilization re-act upon
that civilization itself. When Governor Andrew of
Massachusetts delayed the execution of the Malden
murderer, he confronted the civilization of the State,
of which he was the chief Executive. Every man,
woman and child, who knew of the crime, discussed
his reasons for thus stepping in between the criminal
and the penalty of the law, the sentence of the judge;
aye, discussed anew, the whole theory of capital punishment.
All the great questions of public policy, which have
been before the nation, during the last four or five
years, have put the people to school; have taught
them to scrutinize men and measures, to analyze the
first principles of government. The re-organization
of that portion of the nation lately in rebellion, will
have cost the people and their rulers as much thought,
will have educated them as much, as its original
formation. We are coming to have clearer ideas of
the genius of our institutions; of the meaning of the
word citizen, and of the prerogatives of citizenship.
The grand first principles of the Declaration of
Independence, which' unfortunately for his memory,
otherwise so resplendent, one of our gifted public
men once stigmatized as a "glittering generality,"
after these long years, begins to take its place in the
firmament of the nation's thought; begins to shine out




New England Civilization.          71
from the smoke of the battle-field with a heavenly
lustre; just as there are stars of the first magnitude,
which are thousands of years bringing their serene
rays to bear upon the eyes of men. And what the
nation does in general, each State does in particular.
There are local interests constantly demanding examination; there are local questions constantly demanding
discussion, which keep the public mind always upon
the alert; which sharpen the perceptions, and modify
or confirm the moral bias of the people.
Thus imperfectly have I attempted to pass under
notice, some of the sources of New England civilization; some of the historical, the physical and moral
forces that have thus far determined the distinctive
character of New Englanders; a nationality no less
real, because it has only imaginary national limits. It
is a civilization of which New Englanders may well
be proud. It is intelligent, it is moral, it is religious,
it is heroic. And, surely, it is one of the offices of such
an organization as that which I have the honor, this
evening, to address, so to hold up before the eyes of
the living, the civilization of the past-so to analyze
its sources and to record its results,-as to awaken
sufficient enthusiasm to transmit it unimpaired and
improved, so far as it may be improved, to the generations that are to come.
No man can predict the future of this great nation.
That its future will be grandly noble, or grandly
disastrous, the events of the past render very apparent;
and that New England will have her full share in
determining this future, we cannot for one moment




72 The Sources of Nfew England Civilization.
doubt. I began this discussion with an allusion to
one of the great South American rivers; let me close
it with an allusion to another, just visited and explored
by the eminent naturalist, whose love for science has
led him to expatriate himself from his native land, and
who this evening stands in our modern Athens, in his
somewhat broken, but most forcible and beautiful
language, giving his report of that wonderful region.
It is said of the Amazon, that for fifty miles seaward,
she bears down and annihilates the tides of Old
Ocean itself; giving her own color and fireshness to
the waters which she meets from another continent.
So mighty, so diffusive, so decided, so individual, let
the civilization of New England be in the future, and
the civilization of the country is safe; there will be no
lapsing back into barbarism; there will be onward
progress, till His coming, whose kingdom knows not
the metes and bounds of countries and times, but will
be universal, and will endure forever!