Part 13

There were no other guests, and Lady Walpole, Sir Spencer, and I had all of the conversation at luncheon and dinner and during the evening. We talked about history and literature, English and American politics, and public men. He was singularly well informed about our country, although he had only made one brief visit and then in an official capacity. English expressions of friendship are now so common that I will not quote even one of the many scattered through his volumes, but he displayed everywhere a candid appreciation of our good traits and creditable doings. I was struck with his knowledge and love of lyric poetry. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Lowell were thoroughly familiar to him. He would repeat some favorite passage of Keats, and at once turn to a discussion of the administrative details of his work in the post-office. Of course the day and evening passed very quickly,—it was one of the days to be marked with a white stone,—and when I bade Walpole good-by on the Monday morning I felt as if I were parting from a warm friend. I found him broad-minded, intelligent, sympathetic, affable, and he seemed as strong physically as he was sound intellectually. His death on Sunday, July 7, of cerebral hemorrhage was alike a shock and a grief.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Address at a gathering of historians on June 5, 1909, to mark the placing of a tablet in the inner quadrangle of Jesus College, Oxford, to the memory of John Richard Green.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

I wish indeed that I had the tongues of men and of angels to express the admiration of the reading public of America for the History of John Richard Green. I suppose that he has had more readers in our country than any other historian except Macaulay, and he has shaped the opinions of men who read, more than any writers of history except those whom John Morley called the great born men of letters,—Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle.

I think it is the earlier volumes rather than the last volume of his more extended work which have taken hold of us. Of course we thrill at his tribute to Washington, where he has summed up our reverence, trust, and faith in him in one single sentence which shows true appreciation and deep feeling; and it flatters our national vanity, of which we have a goodly stock, to read in his fourth volume that the creation of the United States was one of the turning points in the history of the world.

No saying is more trite, at any rate to an educated American audience, than that the development of the English nation is one of the most wonderful things, if not the most wonderful thing, which history records. That history before James I is our own, and, to our general readers, it has never been so well presented as in Green's first two volumes. The victories of war are our own. It was our ancestors who preserved liberty, maintained order, set the train moving toward religious toleration, and wrought out that language and literature which we are proud of, as well as you.

For my own part, I should not have liked to miss reading and re-reading the five chapters on Elizabeth in the second volume. What eloquence in simply the title of the last,—The England of Shakespeare! And in fact my conception of Elizabeth, derived from Shakespeare, is confirmed by Green. As I think how much was at stake in the last half of the sixteenth century, and how well the troubles were met by that great monarch and the wise statesman whom she called to her aid, I feel that we could not be what we are, had a weak, irresolute sovereign been at the head of the state.

With the power of a master Green manifests what was accomplished. At the accession of Elizabeth—"Never" so he wrote—"had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower ebb. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery of the Channel. The French King in fact 'bestrode the realm, having one foot in Calais, and the other in Scotland.'"

And at the death of Elizabeth, thus Green tells the story: "The danger which had hitherto threatened our national existence and our national unity had disappeared: France clung to the friendship of England, Spain trembled beneath its blows."

With the wide range of years of his subject, with a grasp of an extended period akin to Gibbon's, complete accuracy was, of course, not attainable, but Samuel R. Gardiner once told me that Green, although sometimes inaccurate in details, gave a general impression that was justifiable and correct; and that is in substance the published opinion of Stubbs.

Goethe said that in reading Moliere you perceive that he possessed the charm of an amiable nature in habitual contact with good society. So we, who had not the advantage of personal intercourse, divined was the case of Green; and when the volume of Letters appeared, we saw that we had guessed correctly. But not until then did we know of his devotion to his work, and his heroic struggle, which renders the story of his short and brilliant career a touching and fascinating biography of a historian who made his mark upon his time.

EDWARD L. PIERCE

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the October meeting of 1897.

EDWARD L. PIERCE

I shall first speak of Mr. Pierce as an author. His Life of Sumner it seems to me is an excellent biography, and the third and fourth volumes of it are an important contribution to the history of our country. Any one who has gone through the original material of the period he embraces must be struck not only with the picture of Sumner, but with the skill of the biographer in the use of his data to present a general historical view. The injunction of Cicero, "Choose with discretion out of the plenty that lies before you," Mr. Pierce observed. To those who know how extensive was his reading of books, letters, newspaper files, how much he had conversed with the actors in those stirring scenes—and who will take into account the mass of memories that crowd upon the mind of one who has lived through such an era—this biography will seem not too long but rather admirable in its relative brevity. In a talk that I had with Mr. Pierce I referred to the notice in an English literary weekly of his third and fourth volumes which maintained that the biography was twice too long, and I took occasion to say that in comparison with other American works of the kind the criticism seemed unjust. "Moreover," I went on, "I think you showed restraint in not making use of much of your valuable material,—of the interesting and even important unprinted letters of Cobden, the Duke of Argyll, and of John Bright." "Yes," replied Mr. Pierce, with a twinkle in his eye, "I can say with Lord Clive, 'Great Heavens, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.'"

Any one who has studied public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the truth. If a student should ask me in what one book he would find the best statement of popular opinion at the North during the Civil War, I should say, Read Sumner's letters as cited in Mr. Pierce's biography with the author's comments. The speeches of Sumner may smell too much of the lamp to be admirable, but the off-hand letters written to his English and to a few American friends during our great struggle are worthy of the highest esteem. From his conversations with the President, the Cabinet ministers, his fellow-senators and congressmen, his newspaper reading,—in short, from the many impressions that go to make up the daily life of an influential public man,—there has resulted an accurate statement of the popular feeling from day to day. In spite of his intense desire to have Englishmen of power and position espouse the right side, he would not misrepresent anything by the suppression of facts, any more than he would make a misleading statement. In the selection of these letters Mr. Pierce has shown a nice discrimination.

Sumner, whom I take to have been one of the most truthful of men, was fortunate in having one of the most honest of biographers. Mr. Pierce would not, I think, have wittingly suppressed anything that told against him. I love to think of one citation which would never have been made by an idolizing biographer, so sharply did it bring out the folly of the opinion expressed. Sumner wrote, May 3, 1863: "There is no doubt here about Hooker. He told Judge Bates ... that he 'did not mean to drive the enemy but to bag him.' It is thought he is now doing it." The biographer's comment is brief, "The letter was written on the day of Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville."

It seems to me that Mr. Pierce was as impartial in his writing as is possible for a man who has taken an active part in political affairs, who is thoroughly in earnest, and who has a positive manner of expression. It is not so difficult as some imagine for a student of history whose work is done in the library to be impartial, provided he has inherited or acquired the desire to be fair and honest, and provided he has the diligence and patience to go through the mass of evidence. His historical material will show him that to every question there are two sides. But what of the man who has been in the heat of the conflict, and who, when the fight was on, believed with Sumner that there was no other side? If such a man displays candor, how much greater his merit than the impartiality of the scholar who shuns political activity and has given himself up to a life of speculation!

I had the good fortune to have three long conversations with the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the last of which occurred shortly after the publication of the third and fourth volumes of the Life of Sumner. "What," said Mr. Winthrop to me, "do you think of the chapter on the Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War?" "I think," was my reply, "that Mr. Pierce has treated a delicate subject like a gentleman." "From what I have heard of it," responded Mr. Winthrop, earnestly, "and from so much as I have read of it, that is also my own opinion." Such a private conversation I could, of course, repeat, and, somewhat later the occasion presenting itself, I did so to Mr. Pierce. "That is more grateful to me," he said, almost with tears in his eyes, "than all the praise I have received for these volumes."

Mr. Pierce had, I think, the historic sense. I consulted him several times on the treatment of historical matters, taking care not to trench on questions where, so different was our point of view, we could not possibly agree, and I always received from him advice that was suggestive, even if I did not always follow it to the letter. I sent to him, while he was in London, my account of Secretary Cameron's report proposing to arm the slaves and of his removal from office by President Lincoln. Mr. Pierce thought my inferences were far-fetched, and wrote: "I prefer the natural explanation. Horace says we must not introduce a god into a play unless it is necessary."

As a friend, he was warm-hearted and true. He brought cheer and animation into your house. His talk was fresh; his zeal for whatever was uppermost in his mind was contagious, and he inspired you with enthusiasm. He was not good at conversation, in the French sense of the term, for he was given to monologue; but he was never dull. His artlessness was charming. He gave you confidences that you would have shrunk from hearing out of the mouth of any other man, in the fear that you intruded on a privacy where you had no right; but this openness of mind was so natural in Mr. Pierce that you listened with concern and sympathized warmly. He took interest in everything; he had infinite resources, and until his health began to fail, enjoyed life thoroughly. He loved society, conversation, travel; and while he had no passion for books, he listened to you attentively while you gave an abstract or criticism of some book that was attracting attention. In all intercourse with him you felt that you were in a healthy moral atmosphere. I never knew a man who went out of his way oftener to do good works in which there was absolutely no reward, and at a great sacrifice of his time—to him a most precious commodity. He was in the true sense of the word a philanthropist, and yet no one would have approved more heartily than he this remark of Emerson: "The professed philanthropists are an altogether odious set of people, whom one would shun as the worst of bores and canters."

His interest in this Society the published Proceedings will show in some measure, but they cannot reflect the tone of devotion in which he spoke of it in conversation, or exhibit his loyalty to it as set forth in the personal letter. It was a real privation that his legislative duties prevented his attending these meetings last winter.

Of Mr. Pierce as a citizen most of you, gentlemen, can speak better than I, but it does appear to me an instance of rare civic virtue that a man of his age, political experience, ability, and mental resources could take pride and pleasure in his service in the House of Representatives of his Commonwealth. He was sixty-eight years old, suffering from disease, yet in his service last winter he did not miss one legislative session nor a day meeting of his committee. His love for his town was a mark of local attachment both praiseworthy and useful. "I would rather be moderator of the Milton town-meeting," he said, "than hold any other office in the United States."

JACOB D. COX

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the October meeting of 1900.

JACOB D. COX

A useful member of the legislature of his state, a general in the army during the Civil War, governor of his state, Secretary of the Interior in President Grant's Cabinet, a member of Congress, the president of a large railroad, a writer of books, dean and teacher in a law school, and a reviewer of books in the Nation,—such were the varied activities of General Cox. All this work was done with credit. He bore a prominent part in the battle of Antietam, where Ropes speaks of his "brilliant success"; he was the second in command at the battle of Franklin, and bore the brunt of the battle. "Brigadier-General J. D. Cox," wrote Schofield, the commanding general, in his report, "deserves a very large share of credit for the brilliant victory at Franklin."

The governor of the state of Ohio did not then have a great opportunity of impressing himself upon the minds of the people of his state, but Cox made his mark in the canvass for that office. We must call to mind that in the year 1865, when he was the Republican candidate for governor, President Johnson had initiated his policy of reconstruction, but had not yet made a formal break with his party. Negro suffrage, which only a few had favored during the last year of the war, was now advocated by the radical Republicans, and the popular sentiment of the party was tending in that direction. Cox had been a strong antislavery man before the war, a supporter of President Lincoln in his emancipation measures, but soon after his nomination for governor he wrote a letter to his radical friends at Oberlin in opposition to negro suffrage. "You assume," he said, "that the extension of the right of suffrage to the blacks, leaving them intermixed with the whites, will cure all the trouble. I believe it would rather be like the decision in that outer darkness of which Milton speaks where

"'chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray.'"

While governor, he said in a private conversation that he had come to the conclusion "that so large bodies of black men and white as were in presence in the Southern States never could share political power, and that the insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would lead to their ruin."

President Grant appointed General Cox Secretary of the Interior, and he remained for nearly two years in the Cabinet. James Russell Lowell, on a visit to Washington in 1870, gave expression to the feeling among independent Republicans. "Judge Hoar," he wrote, "and Mr. Cox struck me as the only really strong men in the Cabinet." This was long before the Civil Service Reform Act had passed Congress, but Secretary Cox put the Interior Department on a merit basis, and he was ever afterwards an advocate of civil service reform by word of mouth and with his pen. Differences with the President, in which I feel pretty sure that the Secretary was in the right, caused him to resign the office.

Elected to Congress in 1876, he was a useful member for one term. He has always been known to men in public life, and when President McKinley offered him the position of Minister to Spain something over three years ago, it was felt that a well-known and capable man had been selected. For various reasons he did not accept the appointment, but if he had done so, no one could doubt that he would have shown tact and judgment in the difficult position.

As president of the Wabash Railroad, one of the large railroads in the West, he gained a name among business men, and five or six years ago was offered the place of Railroad Commissioner in New York City. This was practically the position of arbitrator between the trunk lines, but he was then Dean of the Cincinnati Law School and interested in a work which he did not care to relinquish.

Besides a controversial monograph, he wrote three books on military campaigns: "Atlanta"; "The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville"; "The Battle of Franklin"; and he wrote four excellent chapters for Force's "Life of General Sherman." In these he showed qualities of a military historian of a high order. Before his death he had finished his Reminiscences, which will be brought out by the Scribners this autumn.

His differences with President Grant while in his Cabinet left a wound, and in private conversation he was quite severe in his strictures of many of the President's acts, but he never let this feeling influence him in the slightest degree in the consideration of Grant the General. He had a very high idea of Grant's military talents, which he has in many ways emphatically stated.

Since 1874 he had been a constant contributor to the literary department of the Nation. In his book reviews he showed a fine critical faculty and large general information, and some of his obituary notices—especially those of Generals Buell, Grant, Sherman, Joseph E. Johnston, and Jefferson Davis—showed that power of impartial characterization which is so great a merit in a historian. He was an omnivorous reader of serious books. It was difficult to name any noteworthy work of history or biography or any popular book on natural science with which he was not acquainted.

As I saw him two years ago, when he was seventy years old, he was in the best of health and vigor, which seemed to promise many years of life. He was tall, erect, with a frame denoting great physical strength, and he had distinctively a military bearing. He was an agreeable companion, an excellent talker, a scrupulously honest and truthful man, and a gentleman.

EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the March meeting of 1908.

EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE

When an associate dies who was not yet forty-eight years old, whom most of us knew as a strong enduring man, who was capable of an immense amount of intellectual work, it is a real calamity,—a calamity which in this case History mourns, as Edward Gaylord Bourne was an excellent teacher and a thorough historical scholar. The physical details of any illness are apt to be repulsive, but the malady in Bourne's case was somehow so bound up in his life that an inquiry into it comes from no morbid curiosity. When ten years old he was attacked with tubercular disease of the hip, and for some weeks his life was despaired of; but he was saved by the loving care of his parents, receiving particular devotion from his father, who was a Congregational minister in charge of a parish in Connecticut. As the left leg had out-grown the other, Bourne was obliged to use crutches for three years, when his father took him to a specialist in Boston, and the result was that he was able to abandon crutches and in the end to get about by an appliance to adjust the lengths of the different legs, such as his friends were familiar with. Despite this disability he developed great physical strength, especially in the chest and arms, but his lameness prevented his accompanying his college companions on long tramps, so that the bicycle was for him a most welcome invention. He became expert in the use of it, riding on it down Pike's Peak at the time of his visit to Colorado; and he performed a similar feat of endurance on another occasion when stopping with me at Jefferson in the White Mountains. Starting early in the morning, he traveled by rail to the terminus of the mountain railroad, went up Mount Washington on the railroad, and rode down the carriage road on his wheel to the Glen House, which ought to have been enough of fatigue and exertion for one day, but he then had about ten miles to make on his bicycle over a somewhat rough mountain road to reach Jefferson. Jefferson he did make, but not until after midnight.