Chapter XLVIII (1)

Currency.--Lincoln.--Forms of Government.--The
Draft.--Slavery.--Human Progress.--Independence.--
Republicanism and Democracy.--The Rebellion.--Protection
and Free Trade.--Radicalism.--Education.--Reconstruction.--
William H. Seward.--Fourteenth Amendment.--Classical
Studies.--History.--Law.--Liberty.--Statistical
Science.--Poverty.--Growth.--Ethics.--The Salary
Clause.--The Railway Problem.--Church and State.--
Courage.--Art.--Literature.--Character.--Public
Opinion.--The Revenue.--Statesmanship.--Science.--
Truth.--Elements of Success.--Suffrage.--Gustave
Schleicher.--Appeal to Young Men.--The Union.--Inaugural.

[Speech on the Currency.--46th Congress.]

No man can doubt that within recent years, and notably within recent months, the leading thinkers of the civilized world have become alarmed at the attitude of the two precious metals in relation to each other; and many leading thinkers are becoming clearly of the opinion that, by some wise, judicious arrangement, both the precious metals must be kept in service for the currency of the world. And this opinion has been very rapidly gaining ground within the past six months to such an extent, that England, which for more than half a century has stoutly adhered to the single gold standard, is now seriously meditating how she may harness both these metals to the monetary car of the world. And yet outside of this capital, I do not this day know of a single great and recognized advocate of bi-metallic money who regards it prudent or safe for any nation largely to increase the coinage standard of silver at the present time beyond the limits fixed by existing laws.... Yet we, who during the past two years have coined far more silver dollars than we ever before coined since the foundation of the Government; ten times as many as we coined during half a century of our national life; are to-day ignoring and defying the enlightened universal opinion of bi-metallism, and saying that the United States, single-handed and alone, can enter the field and settle the mighty issue. We are justifying the old proverb that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread." It is sheer madness, Mr. Speaker. I once saw a dog on a great stack of hay that had been floated out into the wild overflowed stream of a river, with its stack-pen and foundation still holding together, but ready to be wrecked. For a little while the animal appeared to be perfectly happy. His hay-stack was there, and the pen around it, and he seemed to think the world bright and his happiness secure, while the sunshine fell softly on his head and hay. But by and by he began to discover that the house and the barn, and their surroundings were not all there, as they were when he went to sleep the night before; and he began to see that he could not command all the prospect, and peacefully dominate the scene as he had done before.

So with this House. We assume to manage this mighty question which has been launched on the wild current that sweeps over the whole world, and we bark from our legislative hay-stacks as though we commanded the whole world. In the name of common sense and sanity, let us take some account of the flood; let us understand that a deluge means something, and try if we can to get our bearings before we undertake to settle the affairs of all mankind by a vote of this House. To-day we are coining one-third of all the silver that is being coined in the round world. China is coining another third; and all other nations are using the remaining one-third for subsidiary coin. And if we want to take rank with China, and part company with all of the civilized nations of the Western world, let us pass this bill, and then "bay the moon" as we float down the whirling channel to take our place among the silver mono-metallists of Asia.

[Letter to B. A. Kimball.]

COLUMBUS, OHIO, February 16, 1861.

Mr. Lincoln has come and gone. The rush of people to see him at every point on the route is astonishing. The reception here was plain and republican, but very impressive. He has been raising a respectable pair of dark-brown whiskers, which decidedly improve his looks, but no appendage can ever render him remarkable for beauty. On the whole, I am greatly pleased with him. He clearly shows his want of culture, and the marks of western life; but there is no touch of affectation in him, and he has a peculiar power of impressing you that he is frank, direct, and thoroughly honest. His remarkable good sense, simple and condensed style of expression, and evident marks of indomitable will, give me great hopes for the country. And, after the long, dreary period of Buchanan's weakness and cowardly imbecility, the people will hail a strong and vigorous leader.

[To the Same.]

A monarchy is more easily overthrown than a republic, because its sovereignty is concentrated, and a single blow, if it be powerful enough, will crush it.

As an abstract theory, the doctrine of Free Trade seems to be universally true, but as a question of practicability, under a government like ours, the protective system seems to be indispensable.

[Speech on a Draft Bill, June 21, 1864.]

It has never been my policy to conceal a truth _merely_ because it is unpleasant. It may be well to smile in the face of danger, but it is neither well nor wise to let danger approach unchallenged and unannounced. A brave nation, like a brave man, desires to see and measure the perils which threaten it. It is the right of the American people to know the necessities of the Republic when they are called upon to make sacrifices for it. It is this lack of confidence in ourselves and the people, this timid waiting for events to control us when they should obey us, that makes men oscillate between hope and fear; now in the sunshine of the hill-tops, and now in the gloom and shadows of the valley. To such men the bulletin which heralds success in the army gives exultation and high hope; the evening dispatch, announcing some slight disaster to our advancing columns, brings gloom and depression. Hope rises and falls by the accidents of war, as the mercury of the thermometer changes by the accidents of heat and cold. Let us rather take for our symbol the sailor's barometer, which faithfully forewarns him of the tempest, and gives him unerring promise of serene skies and peaceful seas.

[Speech in New York City, 1865, on the Assassination of President Lincoln.]

By this last act of madness, it seems as though the Rebellion had determined that the President of the soldiers should go with the soldiers who have laid down their lives on the battle-field. They slew the noblest and gentlest heart that ever put down a rebellion upon this earth. In taking that life they have left "the iron" hand of the people to fall upon them. Love is on the front of the throne of God, but justice and judgment, with inexorable dread, follow behind; and where law is slighted and mercy despised, when they have rejected those who would be their best friends, then comes justice with her hoodwinked eye, and with the sword and scales. From every gaping wound of your dead chief, let the voice go up for the people to see to it that our house is swept and garnished. I hasten to say one thing more. For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for security of the future I would do everything.

[Speech in Congress on the Constitutional Amendment to abolish slavery, January 13, 1865]

On the 21st day of June, 1788, our national sovereignty was lodged, by the people, in the Constitution of the United States, where it still resides, and for its preservation our armies are to-day in the field. In all these stages of development, from colonial dependence to full-orbed nationality, the people, not the States, have been omnipotent. _They_ have abolished, established, altered, and amended, as suited their sovereign pleasure. _They_ made the Constitution. That great charter tells its own story best:

"We, _the people_ of the United States, in order to form a
more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America."

* * * * *

That Constitution, with its amendments, is the latest and the greatest utterance of American sovereignty. The hour is now at hand when that majestic sovereign, for the benignant purpose of securing still farther the 'blessings of liberty,' is about to put forth another oracle; is about to declare that universal freedom shall be the supreme law of the land. Show me the power that is authorized to forbid it.... They made the Constitution what it is. They could have made it otherwise then: they can make it otherwise now.

* * * * *

In the very crisis of our fate, God brought us face to face with the alarming truth, that we must lose our own freedom, or grant it to the slave. In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic, and amidst the very thunder of battle we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us the glories and blessings of freedom. In the solemn words of the great proclamation of emancipation, we not only declared the slaves forever free, but we pledged the faith of the nation "to maintain their freedom"--mark the words, "_to maintain their freedom_." The Omniscient witness will appear in judgment against us if we do not fulfil that covenant. Have we done it? Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom? Is it a mere negation? the bare privilege of not being chained, bought, and sold, branded, and scourged? If this be all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion, and it may well be questioned whether slavery were not better.

But liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration, "that all men are created equal," that the sanction of all just government is "the consent of the governed." Can these truths be realized until each man has a right to be heard on all matters relating to himself?

Mr. Speaker, we did more than merely to break off the chains of the slaves. The abolition of slavery added four million citizens to the Republic. By the decision of the Supreme Court, by the decision of the attorney-general, by the decision of all the departments of our government, those men made free are, by the act of freedom, made citizens.

* * * * *

If they are to be disfranchised, if they are to have no voice in determining the conditions under which they are to live and labor, what hope have they for the future? It will rest with their late masters, whose treason they aided to thwart, to determine whether negroes shall be permitted to hold property, to enjoy the benefits of education, to enforce contracts, to have access to the courts of justice--in short, to enjoy any of those rights which give vitality and value to freedom. Who can fail to foresee the ruin and misery that await this race to whom the vision of freedom has been presented only to be withdrawn, leaving them without even the aid which the master's selfish, commercial interest in their life and service formerly afforded them? Will these negroes, remembering the battle-fields on which nearly two hundred thousand of their number have so bravely fought, and many thousands have heroically died, submit to oppression as tamely and peaceably as in the days of slavery? Under such conditions there could be no peace, no security, no prosperity. The spirit of slavery is still among us; it must be utterly destroyed before we shall be safe.

* * * * *

Mr. Speaker, I know of nothing more dangerous to a Republic than to put into its very midst four million people, stripped of every attribute of citizenship, robbed of the right of representation, but bound to pay taxes to the government. If they can endure it, we can not. The murderer is to be pitied more than the murdered man; the robber more than the robbed. And we who defraud four million citizens of their rights are injuring ourselves vastly more than we are injuring the black man whom we rob.

* * * * *

Throughout the whole web of national existence we trace the golden thread of human progress toward a higher and better estate.

* * * * *

The life and light of a nation are inseparable.

* * * * *

We confront the dangers of suffrage by the blessings of universal education.

* * * * *

We should do nothing inconsistent with the spirit and genius of our institutions. We should do nothing for revenge, but everything for security: nothing for the past; everything for the present and future.

* * * * *

There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation--the forces of Repression and Expression. The one acts from without; limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within; expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs, belong to the first. The free play of individual life, opinion, and action, belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.

* * * * *

It matters little what may be the forms of National institutions, if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured.

* * * * *

There is no horizontal stratification of society in this country like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below forevermore, and let another come to the surface to stay there forever. Our stratification is like the ocean, where every individual drop is free to move, and where from the sternest depths of the mighty deep any drop may come up to glitter on the highest wave that rolls.

* * * * *

The Union and the Congress must share the same fate. They must rise or fall together.

* * * * *

Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of political parties, and real ones cannot be evaded by political parties. The real political issues of the day declare themselves and come out of the depth of that deep which we call public opinion. The nation has a life of its own as distinctly defined as the life of an individual. The signs of its growth and the periods of its development make issues declare themselves; and the man or the political party that does not discover this, has not learned the character of the nation's life.

[Reply to Mr. Lamar, in a Committee of the Whole.]

Mr. Chairman, great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods, whose feet were shod with wool. Our war of independence was a war of ideas, of ideas evolved out of two hundred years of slow and silent growth. When, one hundred years ago, our fathers announced as self-evident truths the declaration that all men are created equal, and the only just power of governments is derived from the consent of the governed, they uttered a doctrine that no nation had ever adopted, that not one kingdom on the earth then believed. Yet to our fathers it was so plain that they would not debate it. They announced it as a truth "self-evident."

Whence came the immortal truths of the Declaration? To me this was for years the riddle of our history. I have searched long and patiently through the books of the _doctrinaires_ to find the germs from which the Declaration of Independence sprang. I find hints in Locke, in Hobbes, in Rousseau, and Fenelon; but they were only the hints of dreamers and philosophers. The great doctrines of the Declaration germinated in the hearts of our fathers, and were developed under the new influences of this wilderness world, by the same subtile mystery which brings forth the rose from the germ of the rose-tree. Unconsciously to themselves, the great truths were growing under the new conditions, until, like the century-plant, they blossomed into the matchless beauty of the Declaration of Independence, whose fruitage, increased and increasing, we enjoy to-day.

* * * * *

It will not do, Mr. Chairman, to speak of the gigantic revolution through which we have lately passed as a thing to be adjusted and settled by a change of administration. It was cyclical, epochal, century-wide, and to be studied in its broad and grand perspective--a revolution of even wider scope, so far as time is concerned, than the Revolution of 1776. We have been dealing with elements and forces which have been at work on this continent more than two hundred and fifty years. I trust I shall be excused if I take a few moments to trace some of the leading phases of the great struggle. And in doing so, I beg gentlemen to see that the subject itself lifts us into a region where the individual sinks out of sight and is absorbed in the mighty current of great events. It is not the occasion to award praise or pronounce condemnation. In such a revolution men are like insects that fret and toss in the storm, but are swept onward by the resistless movements of elements beyond their control. I speak of this revolution not to praise the men who aided it, or to censure the men who resisted it, but as a force to be studied, as a mandate to be obeyed.

In the year 1620 there were planted upon this continent two ideas irreconcilably hostile to each other. Ideas are the great warriors of the world; and a war that has no ideas behind it is simply brutality. The two ideas were landed, one at Plymouth Rock, from the _Mayflower_, and the other from a Dutch brig at Jamestown, Virginia. One was the old doctrine of Luther, that private judgment, in politics as well as religion, is the right and duty of every man; and the other, that capital should own labor, that the negro had no rights of manhood, and the white man might justly buy, own, and sell him and his offspring forever. Thus freedom and equality on the one hand, and on the other the slavery of one race and the domination of another, were the two germs planted on this continent. In our vast expanse of wilderness, for a long time, there was room for both; and their advocates began the race across the continent, each developing the social and political institutions of their choice. Both had vast interests in common; and for a long time neither was conscious of the fatal antagonisms that were developing.

For nearly two centuries there was no serious collision; but when the continent began to fill up, and the people began to jostle against each other; when the Roundhead and the Cavalier came near enough to measure opinions, the irreconcilable character of the two doctrines began to appear. Many conscientious men studied the subject, and came to the belief that slavery was a crime, a sin, or, as Wesley said, 'the sum of all villanies.' This belief dwelt in small minorities for a long time. It lived in the churches and vestries, but later found its way into the civil and political organizations of the country, and finally found its way into this chamber. A few brave, clear-sighted, far-seeing men announced it here, a little more than a generation ago. A predecessor of mine, Joshua R. Giddings, following the lead of John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, almost alone held up the banner on this floor, and from year to year comrades came to his side. Through evil and through good report he pressed the question upon the conscience of the nation, and bravely stood in his place in this House, until his white locks, like the plume of Henry of Navarre, showed where the battle of freedom raged most fiercely.

And so the contest continued; the supporters of slavery believing honestly and sincerely that slavery was a divine institution; that it found its high sanctions in the living oracles of God and in a wise political philosophy; that it was justified by the necessities of their situation; and that slave-holders were missionaries to the dark sons of Africa, to elevate and bless them. We are so far past the passions of that early time that we can now study the progress of the struggle as a great and inevitable development, without sharing in the crimination and recrimination that attended it. If both sides could have seen that it was a contest beyond their control; if both parties could have realized the truth that "unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations," much less for the fate of political parties, the bitterness, the sorrow, the tears, and the blood might have been avoided. But we walked in the darkness, our paths obscured by the smoke of the conflict, each following his own convictions through ever-increasing fierceness, until the debate culminated in "the last argument to which kings resort."

This conflict of opinion was not merely one of sentimental feeling; it involved our whole political system; it gave rise to two radically different theories of the nature of our government; the North believing and holding that we were a nation, the South insisting that we were only a confederation of sovereign States, and insisting that each State had the right, at its own discretion, to break the Union, and constantly threatening secession where the full rights of slavery were not acknowledged.

Thus the defence and aggrandizement of slavery, and the hatred of abolitionism, became not only the central idea of the Democratic party, but its master passion,--a passion intensified and inflamed by twenty-five years of fierce political contest, which had not only driven from its ranks all those who preferred freedom to slavery, but had absorbed all the extreme pro-slavery elements of the fallen Whig party. Over against this was arrayed the Republican party, asserting the broad doctrines of nationality and loyalty, insisting that no State had a right to secede, that secession was treason, and demanding that the institution of slavery should be restricted to the limits of the States where it already existed. But here and there many bolder and more radical thinkers declared, with Wendell Phillips, that there never could be union and peace, freedom and prosperity, until we were willing to see John Hancock under a black skin.

* * * * *

Mr. Chairman, ought the Republican party to surrender its truncheon of command to the Democracy? The gentleman from Mississippi says, if this were England, the ministry would go out in twenty-four hours with such a state of things as we have here. Ah, yes! that is an ordinary case of change of administration. But if this were England, what would she have done at the end of the war? England made one such mistake as the gentleman asks this country to make, when she threw away the achievements of the grandest man that ever trod her highway of power. Oliver Cromwell had overturned the throne of despotic power, and had lifted his country to a place of masterful greatness among the nations of the earth; and when, after his death, his great sceptre was transferred to a weak though not unlineal hand, his country, in a moment of reactionary blindness, brought back the Stuarts. England did not recover from that folly until, in 1689, the Prince of Orange drove from her island the last of that weak and wicked line. Did she afterward repeat the blunder?

* * * * *

I am aware that there is a general disposition "to let by-gones be by-gones," and to judge of parties and of men, not by what they have been, but by what they are and what they propose.

That view is partly just and partly erroneous. It is just and wise to bury resentments and animosities. It is erroneous in this, that parties have an organic life and spirit of their own--an individuality and character which outlive the men who compose them; and the spirit and traditions of a party should be considered in determining their fitness for managing the affairs of a nation.

* * * * *

I will close by calling your attention again to the great problem before us. Over this vast horizon of interests North and South, above all party prejudices and personal wrong-doing, above our battle hosts and our victorious cause, above all that we hoped for and won, or you hoped for and lost, is the grand, onward movement of the Republic to perpetuate its glory, to save liberty alive, to preserve exact and equal justice to all, to protect and foster all these priceless principles, until they shall have crystalized into the form of enduring law, and become inwrought into the life and the habits of our people.

And, until these great results are accomplished, it is not safe to take one step backward. It is still more unsafe to trust interests of such measureless value in the hands of an organization whose members have never comprehended their epoch, have never been in sympathy with its great movements, who have resisted every step of its progress, and whose principal function has been

"'To lie in cold obstruction'

across the pathway of the nation.

"No, no, gentlemen, our enlightened and patriotic people will not follow such leaders in the rearward march. Their myriad faces are turned the other way; and along their serried lines still rings the cheering cry, 'Forward! till our great work is fully and worthily accomplished.'"

[From a Speech in Congress, 1866.]

Duties should be so high that our manufacturers can fairly compete with the foreign product, but not so high as to enable them to drive out the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of the trade, and regulate the price as they please. This is my doctrine of protection.... I am for a protection that leads to ultimate free trade. I am for that free trade which can only be achieved through a reasonable protection.

[Letter to A. B. Hinsdale.]

WASHINGTON, January 1, 1867.

I am less satisfied with the present aspect of public affairs than I have been for a long time.... Really there seems to be a fear on the part of many of our friends that they may do some absurdly extravagant thing to prove their radicalism. I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not be a fool, which, if I may judge by the exhibitions around me, is a matter of no small difficulty.... My own course is chosen, and it is quite probable it will throw me out of public life.

We provide for the common defence by a system which promotes the general welfare.

[From an Address at Hiram College, June 14, 1867.]

It is to me a perpetual wonder how any child's love of knowledge survives the outrages of the school-house. I, for one, declare that no child of mine shall ever be _compelled_ to study one hour, or to learn even the English alphabet, before he has deposited under his skin at least seven years of muscle and bone.

[From the Same.]

The student should study himself, his relations to society, to nature, and to art, and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of himself, society, nature, and art, to God, the Author of them all.

[From the Same]

It is well to know the history of those magnificent nations whose origin is lost in fable, and whose epitaphs were written a thousand years ago--but if we cannot know both, it is far better to study the history of our own nation, whose origin we can trace to the freest and noblest aspirations of the human heart--a nation that was formed from the hardiest, purest, and most enduring elements of European civilization--a nation that, by its faith and courage, has dared and accomplished more for the human race in a single century than Europe accomplished in the first thousand years of the Christian era. The New England township was the type after which our Federal Government was modelled, yet it would be rare to find a college student who can make a comprehensive and intelligible statement of the municipal organization of the township in which he was born, and tell you by what officers its legislative, judicial, and executive functions were administered. One half of the time which is now almost wasted, in district schools, on English Grammar, attempted at too early an age, would be sufficient to teach our children to love the Republic, and to become its loyal and life-long supporters. After the bloody baptism from which the nation has arisen to a higher and nobler life, of this shameful defect in our system of education be not speedily remedied, we shall deserve the infinite contempt of future generations. I insist that it should be made an indispensable condition of graduation in every American college, that the student must understand the history of this continent since its discovery by Europeans, the origin and history of the United States, its constitution of government, the struggles through which it has passed, and the rights and duties of citizens who are to determine its destiny and share its glory.

Having thus gained the knowledge which is necessary to life, health, industry, and citizenship, the student is prepared to enter a wider and grander field of thought. If he desires that large and liberal culture, which will call into activity all his powers, and make the most of the material God has given him, he must study deeply and earnestly the intellectual, the moral, the religious, and the aesthetic nature of man; his relations to nature, to civilization, past and present, and above all, his relations to God. These should occupy nearly, if not fully, half the time of his college course. In connection with the philosophy of the mind, he should study logic, the pure mathematics, and the general laws of thought. In connection with moral philosophy, he should study political and social ethics--a science so little known either in colleges or congresses. Prominent among all the rest should be his study of the wonderful history of the human race, in its slow and toilsome march across the centuries--now buried in ignorance, superstition and crime; now rising to the sublimity of heroism and catching a glimpse of a better destiny; now turning remorselessly away from, and leaving to perish, empires and civilizations in which it had invested its faith, and courage, and boundless energy for a thousand years, and plunging into the forests of Germany, Gaul, and Britain, to build for itself new empires, better fitted for its new aspirations; and, at last, crossing three thousand miles of unknown sea, and building in the wilderness of a new hemisphere its latest and proudest monuments.

[Speech in the House of Representatives, February 12, 1867.]

I cannot forget that we have learned slowly.... I cannot forget that less than five years ago I received an order from my superior officer commanding me to search my camp for a fugitive slave, and if found, to deliver him up to a Kentucky captain who claimed him as his property; and _I had the honor to be perhaps the first officer in the army who peremptorily refused to obey such an order_. We were then trying to save the Union without hurting slavery.... It took us two years to reach a point where we were willing to do the most meagre justice to the black man, and to recognize the truth that

"A man's a man for a' that!"

Sir, the hand of God has been visible in this work, leading us by degrees out of the blindness of our prejudices, to see that the fortunes of the Republic and the safety of the party of liberty are inseparably bound up with the rights of the black man. At last our party must see that if it would preserve its political life, or maintain the safety of the Republic, we must do justice to the humblest man in the Nation, whether black or white. I thank God that to-day we have struck the rock; we have planted our feet upon solid earth. Streams of light will gleam out from the luminous truth embodied in the legislation of this day. This is the _ne plus ultra_ of reconstruction, and I hope we shall have the courage to go before our people everywhere with "This or nothing" for our motto.

Now, sir, as a temporary measure, I give my support to this military bill properly restricted. It is severe. It was written with a steel pen made out of a bayonet; and bayonets have done us good service hitherto. All I ask is that Congress shall place civil governments before these people of the rebel States, and a cordon of bayonets behind them.

* * * * *

Now, what does this bill propose? It lays the hands of the Nation upon the rebel State governments, and takes the breath of life out of them. It puts the bayonet at the breast of every rebel murderer in the South to bring him to justice. It commands the army to protect the life and property of citizens whether black or white. It places in the hands of Congress absolutely and irrevocably the whole work of reconstruction.

With this thunderbolt in our hands shall we stagger like idiots under its weight? Have we grasped a weapon which we have neither the courage nor the wisdom to wield?

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.[D]

When in Europe in 1867, my attention was particularly drawn to the significant fact that the pictures of Lincoln and Seward were the only portraits of American statesmen that were notably prominent, and that these were everywhere seen together. I asked a Frenchman of distinction why Seward was held in such high estimation; and his answer most seriously impressed me with the thought that perhaps, after all the slanders of his detractors, Mr. Seward had builded for the future more wisely than we knew. This gentleman said: "Mr. Seward is the American statesman who looms up the most prominently from over the water. His diplomacy in Mexico has placed the imprint of greatness upon his name. Halting for a moment in the midst of the turmoil of the civil war, with his pen he dismembered the coalition organized to place Maximilian upon the Mexican throne, and thus placed the first mine under the throne of the Third Bonaparte. He has undertaken what the combined powers of Europe have not ventured to essay--to break the sceptre of the Second Empire." The views entertained by this distinguished Frenchman seem also to have been held in Mexico, for upon the occasion of the death of Mr. Seward, the press of that country all made the most grateful mention of his services in that regard.

The enthusiasm of this Frenchman, continued General Garfield, had not perished from my memory later when public duties called me to the State Department. The Alaska treaty had just been signed. I found the Sage of Auburn alone, in the thoughtful mood so common to him when meditating upon great subjects. Our conversation fell upon himself, and I found that he had been meditating upon his withdrawal from public life. He had been eight years in the second highest place in this Nation. He had almost had the Presidency within his grasp; but the displeasure of his party had fallen upon him, and he was about to retire from the political arena. He told me that power was sweet to him; that he clung even then fondly to its shadow; and that he relinquished his sceptre with regret. His exact language, in speaking of his past career was: "It is unpleasant to yield up power." The conversation turned upon Alaska. The Secretary fell into the dream-like attitude that was never seen except by those who were familiar with him, and commenced to explain his theory of the Alaska purchase in forcible, prophetic, almost pathetic words which I never shall forget. I left the room then with grander ideas of the man than I had ever entertained before. His conversation indicated that he had been following a particular course of study, for he remarked that, to his notion, the two greatest books of the century were Marsh's "Man in Nature," and the Duke of Argyll's "Reign of Law." The application of Argyll's theory of law as applied to political development, Mr. Seward had evidently studied with much care. He had been reasoning upon natural laws as they affect a nation. He had been speculating upon the elementary forces of a nation's grandeur, and upon the contrivance in combining them to make them operate in a direction desired. This theory was founded upon the possibility of tracing these forces in history, and of discovering the operation of these laws under conditions which had actually determined the course of mankind and nations in definite directions. The text of his theory was the history of the world's seas. History had taught him that the grandest achievements of man had been associated with the shores of the world's seas. To go back no further than the beginning of the Christian era, the most sacred, solemn story of the hopes of man had been written in wanderings on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. With the progress of Christian civilization, thus sea-born, the advancing tide of human progress was staid by the banks of the Mediterranean. It was along the borders of this sea that the Byzantine Empire flourished and was destroyed; that Rome attained her supremacy, and fell. With the progress of time, and the advance of civilization westward, the Atlantic took the place of the Galilean Sea and of the Mediterranean. It is the sea of the present. But unless the laws of political geography are false, the contests of the future are to be around the shores of the "still sea," now our own Pacific. The nation of the future is the nation that holds the key of those waters. The purchase of Alaska has given our Republic a foothold on both sides of that sea. It is a geographical impossibility that any other nation can occupy a position in its own territory upon both sides of the Pacific. This is the theory of the purchase. It secures the control of the Pacific to the young Republic. It assures the future of the world's dominion to Yankee civilization. This was the theory.

And his outlook, said General Garfield, with enthusiasm, was grand. In his political horoscope, he saw the Republic enjoying a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; he saw our country rising to the place of umpire among the world's powers; he saw how, by wise statesmanship, our material prosperity and peaceful conquests grew together; how our increasing commerce made us mistress of the seas; how Western civilization and Oriental decrepitude were staid upon the borders of that Pacific sea, and compelled to render homage to Young America, who had become the keeper of the world's keys.

These were the grand thoughts of Mr. Seward as he was about to relinquish the mantle of his power, and, continued General Garfield, his views have left a lasting impression upon me. Mr. Seward could not have died more successfully than he did. He passed away in the lull between two elections, and received the merited eulogiums of both parties. He bore success followed by failure better than any American I know. He was for nearly a decade next to the source of power, and missed the place which was the goal of his later years, retiring from public life suffering the displeasure of his party. But he quietly retired to private life, and never lost his genial spirit or his noble ways.

[This report of the conversation is indorsed by General Garfield as "in the main correct."

J. C]

[Speech on the Currency Question, 1868.]

As a medium of exchange, money is to all business transactions what ships are to the transportation of merchandise. If a hundred vessels, of a given tonnage, are just sufficient to carry all the commodities between two ports, any increase of the number of vessels will correspondingly decrease the value of each as an instrument of commerce; any decrease below one hundred will correspondingly increase the value of each. If the number be doubled, each will carry but half its usual freight, will be worth but half its former value for that trade. There is so much work to be done, and no more. A hundred vessels can do it all. A thousand can do no more than all.

* * * * *

When the money of the country is gold and silver, it adapts itself to the fluctuations of business without the aid of legislation. If at any time we have more than is needed, the surplus flows off to other countries through the channels of international commerce. If less, the deficiency is supplied through the same channels. Thus the monetary equilibrium is maintained. So immense is the trade of the world, that the golden streams pouring from California and Australia into the specie circulation are soon absorbed in the great mass, and equalized throughout the world, as the waters of all the rivers are spread upon the surface of all the seas.

Not so, however, with an inconvertible paper currency. Excepting the specie used in payment of customs and the interest on our public debt, we are cut off from the money currents of the world. Our currency resembles rather the waters of an artificial lake, which lie in stagnation or rise to full banks at the caprice of the gate-keeper.

[A Speech on Currency and the Banks, 1870.]

The business of the country is like the level of the ocean, from which all measurements are made of heights and depths. Though tides and currents may for a time disturb, and tempests vex and toss its surface, still through calm and storm the grand level rules all its waves and lays its measuring-lines on every shore. So the business of the country, which, in the aggregated demands of the people for the exchange of values, marks the ebb and flow, the rise and fall of the currents of trade, and forms the base-line from which to measure all our financial legislation, and is the only safe rule by which the volume of our currency can be determined.

* * * * *

The State bank system was a chaos of ruin, in which the business of the country was again and again ingulfed. The people rejoice that it has been swept away, and they will not consent to its re-establishment. In its place we have the National-bank system, based on the bonds of the United States, and sharing the safety and credit of the government. Their notes are made secure, first, by a deposit of government bonds, worth at least ten per cent. more than the whole value of the notes; second, by a paramount lien on all the assets of the banks; third, the personal liability of all the shareholders to an amount equal to the capital they hold; and, fourth, the absolute guarantee by the government to redeem them at the National Treasury if the banks fail to do so. Instead of seven thousand different varieties of notes, as in the State system, we have now but ten varieties, each uniform in character and appearance. Like our flag, they bear the stamp of nationality, and are honored in every part of the Union.

[From a Speech in the House, April 1, 1870.]

As an abstract theory of political economy free-trade has many advocates, and much can be said in its favor; nor will it be denied that the scholarship of modern times is largely on that side; that a large majority of the great thinkers of the present day are leading in the direction of what is called free-trade.

While this is true, it is equally undeniable that the principle of protection has always been recognized and adopted in some form or another by all nations, and is to-day, to a greater or less extent, the policy of every civilized government....

Protection, in its practical meaning, is that provident care for the industry and development of our own country which will give our own people an equal chance in the pursuit of wealth, and save us from the calamity of being dependent upon other nations with whom we may any day be at war.

In so far as the doctrine of free-trade is a protest against the old system of oppression and prohibition, it is a healthy and worthy sentiment. But underlying all theories, there is a strong and deep conviction in the minds of a great majority of our people in favor of protecting American industry....

[Speech on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, April 4, 1871.]

... Nothing more aptly describes the character of our Republic than the solar system, launched into space by the hand of the Creator, where the central sun is the great power around which revolve all the planets in their appointed orbits. But while the sun holds in the grasp of its attractive power the whole system, and imparts its light and heat to all, yet each individual planet is under the sway of laws peculiar to itself.

Under the sway of terrestrial laws, winds blow, waters flow, and all the tenantries of the planet live and move. So, sir, the States move on in their orbits of duty and obedience, bound to the central government by this Constitution, which is their supreme law; while each State is making laws and regulations of its own, developing its own energies, maintaining its own industries, managing its local affairs in its own way, subject only to the supreme but beneficent control of the Union. When State-rights ran mad, put on the form of secession, and attempted to drag the States out of the Union, we saw the grand lesson, taught in all the battles of the late war, that a State could no more be hurled from the Union, without ruin to the nation, than could a planet be thrown from its orbit without dragging after it, to chaos and ruin, the whole solar universe.

In 1865 we had a debt of two billions seven hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars upon our hands, the debt accumulated from the great results of the war; we were compelled to pay from that debt one hundred and fifty-one millions of dollars in coin a year as interest, and that was a dreadful annual burden. In the year after the war ended, we paid five hundred and ninety millions of dollars over our counter in settling the business of the war and maintaining the ordinary expenses of the government. These tremendous burdens it seemed for a time we could not carry, and there were wicked men, and despairing men, and men who said we ought not to try to carry the burdens; but the brave nation said, This burden is the price of our country's life, all through it there is the price of blood and the price of liberty, and, therefore, we will bow our knees to the burden, we will carry it upon the stalwart shoulders of the nation.

[Letter to Professor Demmon December 16, 1871.]

... Since I entered public life, I have constantly aimed to find a little time to keep alive the spirit of my classical studies, and to resist that constant tendency, which all public men feel, to grow rusty in literary studies, and particularly in the classical studies. I have thought it better to select some one line of classical reading, and, if possible, do a little work on it each day. For this winter I am determined to review such parts of the Odes of Horace as I may be able to reach. And, as preliminary to that work, I have begun by reading up the bibliography of Horace.

The Congressional Library is very rich in materials for this study, and I am amazed to find how deep and universal has been the impress left on the cultivated mind of the world by Horace's writings.

* * * * *

The Student should study himself his relation to Society, to Nature and to Art--and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of Himself, Society, Nature, and Art to God the Author of them all.

* * * * *

Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of Thought ever invented by Man, and its Literature has never been equalled in purity of style and boldness of expression.

* * * * *

History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. The world's history is a divine Poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, Philosopher, and Historian--the humble listener--there has been a divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.

* * * * *

The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

* * * * *

Theologians in all ages have looked out admiringly upon the material universe, and from its inanimate existences demonstrated the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God; but we know of no one who has demonstrated the same attributes from the History of the human race.

* * * * *

Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe, that the world is a Cosmos, not a chaos.

The assertion of the reign of Law has been stubbornly resisted at every step. The divinities of Heathen superstition still linger in one form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even many intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one Supreme Will acting regularly, not fatuitously, through laws beautiful and simple, rather than through a fitful and capricious Providence.

* * * * *

English liberty to-day rests not so much on the government as on those rights which the people have wrested from the government. The rights of the Englishman outnumber the rights of the Englishman's king.

* * * * *

Poetry is the language of Freedom.

* * * * *

Liberty can be safe only when Suffrage is illuminated by education.

[Speech on the last Census.]

The developments of statistics are causing history to be re-written. Till recently the historian studied nature in the aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges, and battles. Of the people themselves--the great social body, with life, growth, forces, elements, etc.--he told us nothing. Now, statistical inquiry leads us into the hovels, houses, workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all places where human nature displays its weakness and strength. In these explorations he discovers the seeds of national growth and decay, and thus becomes the prophet of his generation.

Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation, as in physical science, it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statistics not only the national will but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics. He must study society rather than black-letter learning. He must learn the truth that "society usually prepares the crime, and the criminal is only the instrument that completes it," that statesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in punishing, or evading results.

[Speech on National Aid to Education, February 6, 1872.]

We look sometimes with great admiration at a government like Germany, that can command the light of its education to shine everywhere, that can enforce its school laws everywhere throughout the Empire. Under our system we do not rejoice in that, but we rather rejoice that here two forces play with all their vast power upon our system of education. The first is that of the local municipal power under our State government. There is the centre of responsibility. There is the chief educational power....

But there is another force even greater than that of the State and the local governments. It is the force of private voluntary enterprise, that force which has built up the multitude of private schools, academies, and colleges throughout the United States, not always wisely, but always with enthusiasm and wonderful energy.

* * * * *

I am considering what is the best system of organizing the educational work of a nation, not from the political stand-point alone, but from the stand-point of the school-house itself. This work of public education partakes in a peculiar way of the spirit of the human mind in its efforts for culture. The mind must be as free from extraneous control as possible; must work under the inspiration of its own desires for knowledge; and while instructors and books are necessary helps, the fullest and highest success must spring from the power of self-help.