Chapter II: Part 2

The Annual Reports of the Regents, which are voluminous documents, give much the same view of the arrangements for public education in the State as is obtained of a country by looking down upon it from an observatory. Every college, every academy, every school, not merely a private enterprise, and above the degree of common schools, makes its yearly report to the Regents, and these are embodied in the general report which they make to the Legislature, so that the whole great system, with all its appendages, its libraries, its revenues, its expenditures, the number of its teachers and its pupils, and the opportunities of instruction which it gives, lies before the eye of the reader. It now comprehends twenty Colleges of Literature and Science, three Law Departments, two Medical Colleges, two hundred or more Academies, or Schools of that class, besides the Normal School at Albany.

In his discourse delivered before this Society in 1818, Mr. Verplanck had apostrophized his native country as the Land of Refuge. He could not then have foreseen how well in after times it would deserve this name, nor what labors and responsibilities the care of that mighty throng who resort to our shores for work and bread would cast upon him. Shortly before the year 1847 the number of emigrants from Europe arriving in our country had rapidly and surprisingly increased. The famine in Ireland had caused the people of that island to migrate to ours in swarms like those which the populous North poured from her frozen loins to overwhelm the Roman Empire. In the ten years from 1845 to 1854 inclusive, more than a million and a half of Irish emigrants left the United Kingdom. The emigration from Germany had also prodigiously increased and promised to become still larger. All these were exposed, and the Germans in a particular manner, on account of their ignorance of our language, to the extortions of a knavish class, called runners, and of the keepers of boarding-houses, who often defrauded them of all that they possessed, and left them to charity. Most of those who, after these extortions, had the means, made their way into the interior and settled upon farms, but a large number remained to become inmates of the almshouse, or to starve and sicken in crowded and unwholesome rooms. Mr. Kapp, for some time a Commissioner of Emigration, relates, in his interesting work on Emigration, an example of the manner in which these poor creatures were cheated. An emigrant came to a boarding-house keeper to pay his bill: "It is eighteen dollars," said the landlord. "Why," said the emigrant, "did you not agree to board me for sixpence a meal and threepence for a bed?" "Yes," was the answer, "and that is just seventy-five cents a day; you have been here eight days, and that makes just eighteen dollars."

These things had become a grievous scandal, and it was clear that something must be done to protect the emigrant from pillage, and the country from the burden of his support. The Act of May, 1847, was therefore passed by the New York Legislature. It named six gentlemen of the very highest character, Gulian C. Verplanck, James Boorman, Jacob Harvey, Robert B. Minturn, William F. Havemeyer, and David C. Colden, who were to form a Board of Commissioners of Emigration, charged with the oversight and care of this vast influx of strangers from the Old World. To these were added the Mayors of New York and Brooklyn, and the Presidents of the German Society and the Irish Emigrant Society. Every master of a vessel was, within twenty-four hours of his arrival, to give this Board a list of his passengers, with a report of their origin, age, occupation, condition, health and other particulars, and either give bonds to save the community from the cost of maintaining them in case they became paupers, or pay for each of them the sum of two dollars and a half. The payment of money has been preferred, and this has put into the hands of the Commissioners a liberal revenue, faithfully applied to the advantage of the emigrants.

Mr. Havemeyer was chosen President of the Board, but resigned the office after a few months, and was succeeded in it by Mr. Verplanck, who held it till the day of his death. Under the management of the Commissioners, the Bureau of Emigration, becoming with almost every year more perfectly adapted to its purpose, has grown to vast dimensions, till it is now like one of the departments of government in a great empire. Whoever passes by Ward's Island, where the tides of the East River and the Sound meet and rush swiftly to and fro through their narrow channels, will have some idea of what the Board has done as he sees the domes and spires of that great cluster of buildings, forming a vast caravanserai in which the poorer class of emigrants are temporarily lodged, before they can be sent into the interior or find employment here. Here are barracks for the men, a spacious building for the women and children, a nursery for children of a tender age, Catholic and Protestant chapels, a dispensary, workshops, a lunatic asylum, fever wards, surgical wards, storehouses, residences of the physicians and other persons employed in the care of the place, and out-houses and offices of various kinds. Here, too, rise the stately turrets of the spacious new hospital styled the Verplanck Emigrant Hospital, in honor of the great philanthropist, for such his constant and noiseless labors in this department of charity entitle him to be called.

The Commissioners found that they could not protect the emigrants from imposition without a special landing place from which they could wholly exclude the rascal crew who cheated them. It took eight years to obtain this from the New York Legislature, but at last, in 1855, it was granted, and the old fort at the foot of Manhattan Island, called Castle Garden, was leased for this purpose. This is now the Emigrants' Landing, the gate of the New World for those who, pressing westward, throng into it from the Old. Night and day it is open, and through this passage the vast tide of stranger population, which is to mingle with and swell our own, rushes like the current of the Bosphorus from the Black Sea towards the Propontis and the Hellespont, to help fill the great basin of the Mediterranean. What will be the condition of mankind when the populations of the two hemispheres, the East and the West, shall have found, as they must, a common level, and when the human race, now struggling for room in its ancient abodes, shall look in vain for some unoccupied region where a virgin soil is waiting to reward the laborer with bread?

As he enters Castle Garden the emigrant undergoes inspection by a competent physician, and if he be aged, sick, or in any way disabled, the master of the vessel must give a special bond for his maintenance. He is introduced into the building--here he finds one department in which he is duly registered, another from which he receives such information as a stranger requires, another from which his luggage is dispatched to its destination, another at which attend clerks, skilled in the languages of continental Europe, to write his letters, another at which railway tickets are procured without danger of extortion, another at which fair arrangements are made with boarding houses, another from which, if sick or destitute, he is sent to Ward's Island, and half a dozen others, important as helps to one who has no knowledge of the usages of the country to which he has come. I refer to these arrangements, among a multitude of others, in order to show what administrative talent and what constant attention were necessary to ensure the regular and punctual working of so vast a system. To this duty Mr. Verplanck, aided by able and disinterested associates like himself, gave the labors of a third of a century, uncompensated save by the consciousness of doing good. The composition of this Board has just been changed by the Legislature of the State, in such a manner as unfortunately to introduce party influences, from which, during all the time of Mr. Verplanck's connection with it, it had been kept wholly free.

Yet Mr. Verplanck had his party attachments, though he never suffered them to lead him out of the way he had marked for himself. He would accompany a party, but never follow it. His party record is singular enough. He was educated a federalist, but early in life found himself acting against the federal party. He was with the whigs in supporting General Harrison for the Presidency, and claimed the credit of suggesting his nomination. Mr. Clay he would never support on account of his protectionist principles, and when that gentleman was nominated by the whigs he left them and voted for Mr. Polk, though he was disgusted by the trick which obtained the vote of Pennsylvania for Mr. Polk under the pretence of his being a protectionist. Subsequently he supported General Taylor, the whig candidate for the Presidency, but the nomination of Mr. Buchanan, in 1857, saw him once more with the democrats, from whom he did not again separate. When the proposal to make government paper a legal tender for debts was before Congress, he opposed it with great zeal, writing against it in the democratic journals. I agreed with him that the measure was an act of folly, for which I could find no excuse, but he almost regarded it as a public crime. He vehemently disapproved, also, of the arbitrary arrests made by our government during the war, some of which, without question, were exceedingly ill advised. His zeal on these points, I think, made him blind to the great issues involved in our late civil war, and led his usually clear and liberal judgment astray.

I have not yet mentioned various capacities in which he served the public without any motive but to minister to the public welfare. He was from a very early period a Trustee of the Society Library, in which he took great interest, delighting to make additions to its stock of books, and passing much time in its alcoves and its reading rooms. He was one of the wardens of Trinity Church, that mistress of mighty revenues. He was for some years one of the governors of the New York Hospital, and I remember when he made periodical visits to the Insane Asylum at Bloomingdale, as one invested with authority there. During the existence of the Public School Society he was one of its Trustees from 1834 to 1841, and rendered essential service to the cause of public education.

His useful life closed on the 18th of March last. For some months before this date his strength had declined, and when I met him from time to time it seemed to me that his features had become sharper and his frame more attenuated, yet I perceived no diminution of mental vigor. He took the same interest in the events and questions of the day as he had done years before, his apprehension seemed as quick, and all the powers of his mind as active.

On the Wednesday before his death he attended one of those weekly meetings which he took care never to miss, that of the Commissioners of Emigration, But in one of his walks on a rainy day he had taken a cold which resulted in a congestion of the lungs. On Thursday evening he lay upon a sofa, conversing from time to time, after his usual manner, until near midnight. On Friday morning, when his body servant entered the room and looked at him he perceived a change and called his grandson, who, with a grand-daughter, had constantly attended him during the past winter. The grandson immediately went for his physician, Dr. Carnochan, who, however, was not to be found, and whose assistant, a young man, came in his stead. Mr. Verplanck, in a way which was characteristic of him, studied the young man's face for a moment and then asked: "From what college were you graduated?" The reply was--"Paris;" on which Mr. Verplanck turned away as if it did not much please him, and in a moment afterward expired. He was spared the previous suffering which so many are called to endure. His son had visited him from time to time, and was with him the day before his death, yet this event was unexpected to all the family. His father, in his old age, had as suddenly passed away, having fallen dead by the wayside.

The private life of our friend was as beautiful as his public life was useful and beneficent. He took great interest in the education of his grandchildren; inquired into their studies, talked with them of the books they read, and sought with great success to make them fond of all good learning, directing their attention to all that was noble in literature and in art. His mind was a storehouse of facts in history and biography on which he drew for their entertainment, and upon occasion diversified the graver narratives with fairy tales and stories of wonder from the Arabian Nights. He made learning pleasant to them by taking them on Saturdays to places of amusement from which he contrived that they should return not only amused but instructed. In short, it seemed as if, in his solicitude for the education of his descendants, he sought to repay the cares bestowed upon his early youth by his grandfather of Stratford, of whom he said in his discourse delivered at Amherst College, that his best education was bestowed by the more than paternal care of one of the wisest and most excellent sons of New England. Long after he was an old man he would make pleasant summer journeys with these young people and look to their comfort and safety with the tenderest solicitude.

Christmas was merry Christmas at the old family mansion in Fishkill. He caused the day to be kept with many of the ancient usages, to the great satisfaction of the younger members of the household. He was fond of observing particular days and seasons, and marking them by some pleasant custom of historical significance--for with all the ancient customs and rites and pastimes pertaining to them he was as familiar as if they were matters of to-day. It distressed him even to tears when, last Christmas, he found that his health did not allow him to make the journey to Fishkill as usual. He made much of the birthdays of his grandchildren, and taught them to observe that of Shakespeare by adorning the dwelling with the flowers mentioned in those aerial verses of the Winters Tale--

"daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried," &c., &c.

For many years past he had divided his time pretty equally between Fishkill and New York, visiting the homestead in the latter part of the week and returning in time to attend the weekly meetings of the Commissioners of Emigration. While in the country he was a great deal in the open air, superintending the patrimonial estate, which he managed with ability as a man of business, giving a careful attention, even to the minutest details. But he was most agreeably employed in his large and well stored library. Here were different editions of the Greek and Latin classics, some of them rare and enriched with sumptuous illustrations--thirty different ones of Horace and nearly as many of Virgil. With the Greek tragedians he was as familiar as with our own Shakespeare. In this library he wrote for the Crayon his entertaining paper on Garrick and his portrait, and his charming little volume entitled "Twelfth Night at the Century Club." Here also he wrote several papers respecting the true interpretation of certain passages in Virgil, which were published in the 'Evening Post.' It is to be regretted that he did not collect and publish his literary papers, which would form a very agreeable miscellany. He seemed, however, almost indifferent to literary fame, and when he had once sent forth into the world an essay or a treatise, left it to its fate as an affair which was now off his hands. On Sunday morning he was alway at the old church in the village of Fishkill, one of the most attentive and devout worshippers there. It is an ancient building of homely architecture, looking now just as it did a century ago, with a big old pulpit and sounding board in the midst of the church, which the people would have been glad to remove, but refrained, because Mr. Verplanck, whom they so venerated, preferred that it should remain.

The patrimonial mansion at Fishkill had historical associations which must have added to the interest with which our friend regarded it. Mr. Tuckerman relates, in the "North American Review," though without naming the place or the persons, a story in which they were brought out in a singular manner. He was there fifteen or twenty years since, a guest at Verplanck's table. He describes the June sunshine which played through the shifting branches of tall elms on the smooth oaken floor of the old dining room, the plate of antique pattern on the sideboard and the portraits of revolutionary heroes on the walls. As they sat down to dinner, an old lady, bowed with years and with a restless, yet serene look, entered and took a seat beside Mr. Verplanck. A servant adjusted a napkin under her chin and the dinner proceeded. A steamer was passing up the river and a band on board struck up a martial air. The old lady trembled, clasped her hands, and, raising her eyes, exclaimed, "Ah! all intercession is vain. Andre must die." Mr. Verplanck made a sign to the company to listen, and calling the lady Aunt, addressed her with some kind inquiry, on which she went on to speak of the events and personages of the Revolution as matters of the present day. She repeated rapidly the names of the English officers whom she had known, "described her lofty head-dress of ostrich feathers, which caught fire at the theatre, and repeated the verses of her admirer who was so fortunate as to extinguish it." She dwelt upon the majestic bearing of Washington, the elegance of the French, the dogmatism of the British officers; the by-words, the names of gallants, belles and heroes; the incidents, the questions, the etiquette of those times seemed to live again in her tremulous accents, which gradually became feeble, until she fell asleep! "It was," continued the narrator, "like a voice from the grave." This old lady was a Miss Walton, a sister of Judge Verplanck's second wife.

When he found time for the studies by which his mind was kept so full of useful and curious knowledge, I cannot well conceive. He loved to protract an interesting conversation into the small hours of the night, and he was by no means, as it is said most long-lived men are, an early riser. An anecdote related by a gentleman of the New York bar will serve to illustrate, in some degree, his desultory habits during that part of his time which was passed in New York. This gentleman gave a dinner at Delmonico's, then in William Street, to a professional brother from another city, who was in town only for the day. Mr. Verplanck, Judge William Kent, and one or two other clever lawyers, were of the party. I will allow him to tell the story in his own words.

"We of course," he says, "had a delightful evening, for our stranger guest was a diamond; Kent was never more charming and witty; Mr.---- never more stately and brilliant, and Verplanck was in his most genial mood, full of his peculiarly interesting, graceful and instructive conversations. The spirit of the hour was unrestrained and cordial. We had a good time, and it was not early when the dispersion began. Verplanck and Kent remained with us after the others withdrew, and as midnight approached Kent also departed. After a while Verplanck and I went forth and sauntered along in the darkness through the deserted streets, among the tenantless and gloomy houses, till we reached the point where his path would diverge for Broadway and up-town, and mine for Fulton Ferry and Brooklyn Heights. Instead of leaving me the good philosopher volunteered to keep on with me to the river, and when we reached the river, proposed to remain with me until the boat arrived, and then proposed to cross the river with me. We were, I think, the only passengers, and his conversation continued to flow as fresh and interesting as at the dinner table until we reached the Brooklyn shore. He declined to pass the rest of the night at my house, and while I waited with him till the boat should leave the wharf to take him back, the night editor of the Courier and Enquirer, a clever and accomplished gentleman, came on board on the way to his nocturnal labors. I introduced them to each other; they were at once in good accord; I saw them off and went homeward. A day or two after I learned that when they reached the New York shore, Verplanck volunteered to stroll down to the Courier office with the editor, accepted his invitation to walk in, ascending with him to his room in the attic, and, to the editor's great delight and edification, remained with him, conversing, reading and ruminating until broad daylight. There was a charm in Mr. Verplanck's conversation that was distinctive and peculiar. It was 'green pastures and still waters.'"

Our friend had, it is true, a memory which faithfully retained the acquisitions made in early life, but, in some way or other, was continually enlarging them. I think I have never known one whose thoughts were so much with the past, whose memory was so familiar with the words and actions of those who inhabited the earth before us, and who so loved and reverenced the worthy examples they have given us, yet who so much interested himself in the present and was so hopeful of the future. There was no tendency of this shifting and changeful age which he did not observe, no new discovery made, no new theory started, no untrodden path of speculation opened to human thought, which did not immediately engage his attention, and of which he had not something instructive to say. He was as familiar with the literature of the day as are the crowd of common readers who know no other, yet he suffered not the brilliant novelties of the hour to wean his admiration from the authors whose reputation has stood the test of time. He was generous, however, to rising merit, and took pleasure in commending it to the attention of others.

His learning was not secular merely; his library was well stocked with works on theology; he was familiar with the questions discussed in them; the New Testament, in the original, was a part of his daily reading; he had examined the dark or doubtful passages of Scripture, and they who were much in his society needed no more satisfactory commentator. Not long since he sent to the Society Library for a theological work rather out of date. "It is the first time that work was ever called for," said the librarian, smiling as he took it from the shelf, and aired the leaves a little.

His kindness to his fellow men was shown more in deeds than in words--for of words of compliment he was particularly sparing; and he loved to do good by stealth. A letter from his pastor, the Rev. Dr. Shelton, says: "He was very kind and affectionate when he thought he discovered merit in any body however humble, and though he dropped never so much as a hint to the individual himself, he was pretty sure to speak a good word for him in quarters where it would have an influence. A great many never knew whom they had to thank for this. Here he recommended some one for a place, there he picked up a book or a set of books for some distant library. In this way he went about doing good, and, not given to impulse, was systematically benevolent." A letter from another hand speaks of the clergymen whom he had put in the way of getting a parish, the youths for whom he had procured employment--favors quietly conferred, when perhaps the person benefited had forgotten the application or given up the pursuit. He preserved carefully all that related to those persons in whom he took a kindly interest. "Never," says Dr. Shelton, "did a juvenile letter come to him that he did not carefully put away. Whole packages of them are found among his papers; if they had been State documents they could not have been more important in his eyes."

I have spoken of the hopefulness of his temper. This was doubtless in a great degree constitutional, for he is said to have been an utter stranger to physical fear, preserving his calmness on occasions when others would be in a fever of alarm. He loved our free institutions, he had a serene and steady confidence in their duration and his published writings are for the most part eloquent pleas for freedom, political equality and toleration. Even the shameless corruption which has seized on the local government of this city, did not dismay or discourage him. He maintained, in a manner which it was not easy to controvert, that the great cities of Europe are quite as grossly misgoverned, and that every overgrown community like ours must find it a difficult task to rid itself of the official leeches that seek to fatten on its blood.

In looking back upon the public services of our friend it occurs to me that his life is the more to be held up as an example, inasmuch as, though possessed of an ample fortune, he occupied himself as diligently in gratuitous labors for the general good as other men do in the labors of their profession. In the dispensation of his income he leaned, perhaps, to the side of frugality, but his daily thought and employment were to make his fellow men happier and better; yet I never knew a man who made less parade of his philanthropy. He rarely, and never, save when the occasion required it, spoke of what he had done for others. I never heard, I think no man ever heard, anything like a boast proceed from his lips, nor did he practice any, even the most innocent expedients, to attract attention to his public services. Not that I suppose him insensible to the good will and good word of his fellow men. He valued them, doubtless, as every wise man must, but sought them not, except as they might be earned by the unostentatious performance of his duty. If they came they were welcome, if not, he was content with the testimony of his own conscience and the approval of Him who seeth in secret.

It may be said that in almost every instance the place of those who pass from the stage of life is readily supplied from among the multitude of those who are entering upon it; the well-graced actor who makes his exit is succeeded by another, who soon shows that he is as fully competent to perform the part as his predecessor. But when I look for one to supply the place of our friend who has departed, I confess I look in vain. I ask, but vainly, where we shall find one with such capacities for earning a great name, such large endowments of mind and acquisitions of study united with such modesty, disinterestedness and sincerity, and such steady and various labors for the good of our race conjoined with so little desire for the rewards which the world has to bestow on those who render it the highest services. But though we sorrow for his departure and see not how his honored place is to be filled, let us congratulate ourselves, and the community in which we live, that he was spared to us so many years. His day was like one of the finest days in the season of the summer solstice, bright, unclouded, and long.

Farewell--thou who hast already entered upon thy reward! happy in this, that thou wert not called from thy beneficent labors before the night. Thou hadst already garnered an ample harvest; the sickle was yet in thy hand; the newly reaped sheaves lay on the field at thy side, when, as the beams of the setting sun trembled on the horizon, the voice of the Master summoned thee to thine appointed rest. May all those who are as nobly endowed as thou, and who as willingly devote themselves to the service of God and mankind be spared to the world as long as thou hast been.

EVENING POST, 41 Nassau St., corner Liberty.