As I Remember
regretted by a large circle of official and personal friends. Mrs.
Crowninshield is so well and favorably known to the public as an
authoress that it would be impossible for me to add any leaves to the
laurels she now wears; but I cannot refrain from paying a tribute to her
remarkable loyalty as a friend and expressing my admiration for those
uncommon traits of character which, with her commanding presence, have
made her so deeply respected and so greatly admired.
The first loan-exhibition given in Washington that I now recall was near
the close of Grant's administration, and was for the benefit of the
Church of the Incarnation. It was in an old house on the corner of
Fifteenth and H Streets, since torn down to make way for the George
Washington University. As much interest was shown in the enterprise and
many of the old Washington families sent valuable relics, a large sum of
money was realized. Among the contributors were William W. Corcoran,
Miss Olive Risley Seward, Senator John P. Jones of Nevada, and Seth
Ledyard Phelps, the latter of whom was at the time one of the District
Commissioners and owned a large number of Chinese curios gathered by him
during his life in the East. I, too, was glad to aid so worthy a cause
and sent some of my most cherished possessions. Before the exhibition
was formally opened, I attended a private view of the collection given
in honor of William W. Corcoran and Horatio King. Of Mr. Corcoran I have
elsewhere spoken; with Mr. King I was also well acquainted. In 1839,
while a young man, he was appointed to a position in the Post Office
Department and eleven years later was connected with its foreign service
in which he originated and perfected postal arrangements of great
importance to the country. His promotion was rapid and he finally became
Postmaster General under President Buchanan, a position which he held
with credit both to the administration and himself. About 1873, when I
first knew Mr. and Mrs. King, they lived in a modest home at 707 H
Street where, every Saturday evening, many _litterateurs_ and prominent
men of state were accustomed to gather and discuss the important
literary and political problems of the day. John Pierpont read a poem at
the first of these receptions and Grace Greenwood rendered some choice
selections, while George William Curtis and other men of note
contributed their share to the success of other similar occasions. These
literary reunions are said to have been the first of their kind ever
held in Washington.
I was invited one evening in 1877 by Mrs. Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren,
widow of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, U.S.N., who was then living at
the corner of L and Fourteenth Streets, to attend a meeting of the
Washington Historical Society held in her drawing-rooms. It was
Washington's birthday and James A. Garfield, then Senator from Ohio, was
the orator of the evening. In one portion of his remarks he seemed to go
out of his way to emphasize the statement that Mary Ball, Washington's
mother, was a very plain old woman. Why he considered that her lack of
prominent lineage necessarily added greater luster to the Father of His
Country, was not apparent to quite a number of his audience, for even
the numerous votaries of the Patron Saint of Erin, "the beautiful isle
of the sea," took honest pride in according him a gentle descent:--
St. Patrick was a gintleman,
He came from dacent people.
Mrs. Dahlgren was a woman of unusual intellectual ability. She was the
daughter of Samuel Finley Vinton of Ohio, who for many years represented
his district in Congress and was chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee. In 1879 she published a small volume entitled "Etiquette of
Social Life in Washington." She followed this book with another, whose
title I do not recall, in which she dwelt at length upon society in
Washington. It was not well received as her criticisms upon the wives of
Cabinet Officers and others were such as to invoke general disfavor and
arouse bitter resentment. Mrs. Dahlgren's ablest work, however, was the
life of her husband, which was published in 1882 in a volume of over six
hundred and fifty pages. She had a fine command of the English language
and excellent literary discrimination in the use of its words, as
appears everywhere in her writings and especially in the following
tribute to her husband in the preface of his Life:--
"Admiral Dahlgren was a man of science, of inventive genius, of
professional skill; but beyond all these, he was a _patriot_. While
climbing, at first with slow and toilsome but reliant steps, and, later
on, with swifter, surer progress, that summit to which his genius urged
him, he was often and again confronted by the clamor of discontent, the
jealousies of his profession, and the various forms of opposition his
rapid, upward course evoked; and until the present generation of actors
in the great drama in which he played so conspicuous part shall have
passed away, it will be difficult to gain an impartial opinion. Yet
Death having arrested his ultimate conceptions while yet midway in his
career, and set the final seal upon his actions, we are content to leave
the verdict of a 'last appeal' to his beloved country and the hearts of
a grateful people."
Two years later I attended another meeting of this Historical Society at
the residence of Henry Strong, who built and owned the house on K Street
now occupied by Mrs. Stephen B. Elkins, and for a time resided there. It
was a brilliant assemblage and it deemed itself fortunate in having
Moncure D. Conway, the distinguished historical writer and essayist, as
the orator of the evening. He spoke upon the leaders of the Federal
party during the formative period of our national government, and soon
made it apparent that his sympathies were not with them. He was strongly
denunciatory of the Federalists, going so far even as to brand some of
them as traitors, and especially criticized Jay's Treaty with England in
1794 which was their pet creation. He spoke at some length of Oliver
Wolcott, one of the most prominent Federalists of that day, entirely
ignorant meanwhile of the fact that some members of the Tuckerman
family, his descendants, were in the audience. At this time Mr. Conway
was writing the life of Thomas Paine, which has since been published,
and the morning after his lecture on the Federal party he called upon me
to ascertain whether any unpublished information relating to Paine,
which might aid him in his projected biography of the latter, was to be
found in the private papers of James Monroe which were in my possession.
During our conversation I ventured to remark to Mr. Conway that possibly
he was not aware that the previous evening certain descendants of Oliver
Wolcott were in his audience. He responded that he had no desire to give
offense but that unfortunately he could not adapt history to suit the
views of the descendants of early statesmen.
To use a terse expression of Hamlet, I have often heard that Paine was
one of the unfortunates who were not treated by our government
"according to their deserts." It is now conceded by students of our
national history that no man rendered more effective service to the
American Revolution than "Tom" Paine. His devotion to the cause and his
conspicuous sacrifices in its behalf were repeatedly acknowledged by
Washington, Franklin and all the lesser lights of the day. After
independence had been secured, still imbued with the spirit of liberty,
his pen and his presence were not wanting when required in behalf of
the liberties of the French people. He was imprisoned with hundreds of
others in the Luxembourg, where he languished for nearly eleven months
in daily expectation of being hurried to the guillotine. Following the
fall of Robespierre he was liberated through the kindly offices of James
Monroe, who had succeeded Gouverneur Morris as our Minister to France,
and was at once crowned with honors by the government in whose behalf he
had suffered. During the term of his imprisonment, it was his belief
that a single word from Washington would effect his release, and he had
a right to expect it, but he waited in vain. He was wholly unconscious,
meanwhile, that the mind of Washington had been poisoned against him by
one high in public counsels, and while still in ignorance of this fact
addressed him the well-known denunciatory letter which evoked such
wide-spread criticism. Washington, however, was not to blame, for he had
been deceived in the house of his friends; but of this Paine was
entirely ignorant. Delaware Davis, a son of Colonel Samuel B. Davis of
Delaware who rendered such distinguished service during the War of 1812,
told me a few years ago that his father was present at a dinner where
Paine was asked what he thought of Washington. Doubtless in a spirit of
acrimony he uttered the following lines:
Take from the rock the rough and rudest stone,
It needs no sculptor, it is Washington;
But if you chisel, let the strokes be rude,
And on his bosom write ingratitude.
There is probably no period of our national history when party rivalries
were so intense and the expression of political animosities were more
bitter than they were a century ago between the disciples of Jefferson
and Hamilton. Epithets in popular discourse were openly hurled at
political antagonists that decent men would not tolerate to-day, and the
public press gave expression to charges and insinuations against
honorable partisans such as none but the very yellowest and most
debauched journals would now deem it expedient to print. As a single
illustration, I have in my possession what is called "An infallible
remedy to make a true Federalist." It is without date and was given to
me by a descendant of Thomas Jefferson who knew nothing of its origin
except that it was a Boston production. It speaks for itself, and is as
follows:--
Take the head of an old hypocrite, one ounce of Nero's
conspiracy, two ounces of the hatred of truth, five scruples
of liars' tongues, twenty-five drops of the spirit of Oliver
Cromwell, fifteen drops of the spirit of contentment. Put
them in the mortar of self-righteousness and pound them with
the pestle of malice and sift them through the skin of a
Doctor of Divinity and put the compound into the vessel of
rebellion and steep it over the fire of Sedition twenty-four
hours, and then strain it in the rag of high treason. After
which put it in the bottle of British influence and cork it
with the disposition of Toryism, and let it settle until the
general court rises, and it will then be fit for use. This
composition has never been known to fail, but if by reason
of robust constitution it should fail, add the anxiety of
the stamp act, and sweeten with a Provisional Army.
The above articles may be had of the following gentlemen who
are appointed wholesale venders of British Agents in
America.
F. TARGET.
The last days of the Grant administration were filled with forebodings
and excitement. I shall always remember, when the news reached
Washington that Rutherford B. Hayes had been nominated by the Republican
party, the eager inquiries: "Who is Hayes?" It was then I heard for the
first time an expression which constantly occurs nowadays--"A dark
horse." Samuel J. Tilden, as is well known, was the standard bearer of
the Democracy. The fight was long and bitter, as almost up to the day of
the inauguration the question as to which candidate was successful was a
matter of doubt. The Electoral Commission, the compromise agreed upon by
both parties, was composed of the same number of Republicans and
Democrats with Justice Joseph P. Bradley of the Supreme Court as the