Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

CHAPTER I. Introductory

INTRODUCTORY

Everybody who reads this book through will wonder that a man who ought to be able to tell so much has really told so little.

I have known personally and quite intimately, or have known intelligent and trustworthy persons who have known personally and quite intimately, many men who have had a great share in the history of this country and in its literature for a hundred and thirty years.

In my younger days there were among my kindred and near friends persons who knew the great actors of the Revolutionary time and the time which followed till I came to manhood myself. But I did not know enough to ask questions. If I had, and had recorded the answers, I could write a very large part of the political and literary history of the United States. I never kept a diary, except for a few and brief periods. So for what I have to say, I must trust to my memory. I have no doubt that after these volumes are published, there will come up in my mind matter enough to make a dozen better ones.

I invoke for this book that kindly judgment of my countrymen which has attended everything I have done in my life so far. I have tried to guard against the dangers and the besetting infirmities of men who write their own biography. An autobiography, as the word implies, will be egotistical. An old man's autobiography is pretty certain to be garrulous. If the writer set forth therein his own ideals, he is likely to be judged by them, even when he may fall far short of them. Men are likely to think that he claims or pretends to have lived up to them, however painfully conscious he may be that they are only dreams which even if he have done his best have had little reality for him.

There is another danger for a man who tells the story of great transactions, in which he has taken part, whether legislative, executive, military, or political, or any other, in which the combined action of many persons was required for the result. He is apt to claim, consciously or unconsciously, that he himself brought the whole thing about.

"Papa," said the little boy to the veteran of the Civil War, "Did anybody help you to put down the Rebellion?"

This peril specially besets narrators in their old age. I am afraid I can hardly escape it.

I once heard General George H. Thomas relate to a brilliant company at a supper party, among whom were Chief Justice Chase, General Eaton, Commissary General in two wars, Senator Trumbull, William M. Evarts, Joseph Henry, John Sherman, his brother the General, and several other gentlemen of equal distinction, the story of the battles of Nashville and Franklin. The story was full of dramatic interest. Yet no one who heard it would have known that the speaker himself had taken part in the great achievement, until, just at the end, he said of the Battle of Nashville that he thought of sending a detachment to cut off Hood's army at a ford by which he escaped after they were defeated, but he concluded that it was not safe to spare that force from immediate use in the battle. "If I had done it," he added, with great simplicity, "I should have captured his whole army. There is where I made my mistake."

The recollections of the actors in important political transactions are doubtless of great historic value. But I ought to say frankly that my experience has taught me that the memory of men, even of good and true men, as to matters in which they have been personal actors, is frequently most dangerous and misleading. I could recount many curious stories which have been told me by friends who have been writers of history and biography, of the contradictory statements they have received from the best men in regard to scenes in which they have been present.

If any critic think this book lacking in dignity, or wisdom, or modesty, it is hoped that it may, by way of offset, make up for it in sincerity. I have so far lived in the world without secrets. If my countrymen, or the people of Massachusetts, have trusted me, they have fully known what they were doing. "They had eyes and chose me."

I have never lifted any finger or spoken a word to any man to secure or to promote my own election to any office. I do not mean to criticise other men who advance their honorable ambition for public service or exert themselves to get office for which they think themselves fit. It was the "high Roman fashion." It has been the fashion in England always. English gentlemen do not disdain a personal solicitation for political support, and think no harm in it, to which no American gentleman would for a moment stoop.

It has been the custom in other parts of the country almost from the beginning of the Government. But what I think a better custom has prevailed in Massachusetts. I arrogate to myself no virtue in this respect. I only say that it has been my supreme good fortune to be the son of a Commonwealth among whose noble and high-minded people a better and more fastidious habit has prevailed.

The lesson which I have learned in life, which is impressed on me daily, and more deeply as I grow old, is the lesson of Good Will and Good Hope. I believe that to-day is better than yesterday, and that to-morrow will be better than to- day. I believe that in spite of so many errors and wrongs and even crimes, my countrymen of all classes desire what is good, and not what is evil. I repeat what I said to the State Convention of Massachusetts after the death of President McKinley:

"When I first came to manhood and began to take part in public affairs, that greatest of crimes, human slavery, was entrenched everywhere in power in this Republic. Congress and Supreme Court, Commerce and Trade and Social Life alike submitted to its imperious and arrogant sway. Mr. Webster declared that there was no North, and that the South went clear up to the Canada line. The hope of many wise and conservative and, as I now believe, patriotic men, of saving this country from being rent into fragments was in leaving to slavery forever the great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific, in the Fugitive Slave Law, a law under which freemen were taken from the soil of Massachusetts to be delivered into perpetual bondage, and in the judgment of the Supreme Court which declared it as the lesson of our history that the Negro had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.

"Last week at Dartmouth, at the great celebration in honor of Daniel Webster, that famous college gave the highest honor in its power to a Negro, amid the applause of the brilliant assembly. And there was no applause more earnest or hearty than that of the successor of Taney, the Democratic Chief Justice of the United States. I know that the people of that race are still the victims of outrages which all good men deplore. But I also believe that the rising sense of justice and of manhood in the South is already finding expression in indignant remonstrance from the lips of governors and preachers, and that the justice and manhood of the South will surely make their way.

"Ah, Fellow Citizens, amid the sorrow and the mourning and the tears, amid the horror and the disappointment and the baffled hope, there comes to us from the open grave of William McKinley a voice of good omen! What pride and love must we feel for the republic that calls such men to her high places? What hope and confidence in the future of a people, where all men and all women of all parties and sections, of all faiths and creeds, of all classes and conditions, are ready to respond as ours have responded to the emotion of a mighty love.

"You and I are Republicans. You and I are men of the North. Most of us are Protestants in religion. We are men of native birth. Yet if every Republican were to-day to fall in his place, as William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen of the other party, in spite of what we deem their errors, would take the Republic and bear on the flag to liberty and glory. I believe if every Protestant were to be stricken down by a lightning-stroke, that our brethren of the Catholic faith would still carry on the Republic in the spirit of a true and liberal freedom. I believe if every man of native birth within our borders were to die this day, the men of foreign birth, who have come here to seek homes and liberty under the shadow of the Republic, would carry it on in God's appointed way. I believe if every man of the North were to die, the new and chastened South, with the virtues it has cherished from the beginning, with its courage and its constancy, would take the country and bear it on to the achievement of its lofty destiny. The Anarchist must slay 75,000,000 Americans before he can slay the Republic.

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