Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/596

Nathan Dane.

555

enough, of forty-three years again, — President Joseph F. Tuttle, of Wabash College, made the suggestion, in certain historical papers of his, that the credit given to Dane should be shared by Cutler. This suggestion was based on a tradition in the Cutler family that the provisions for maintaining religion and learning and forbidding slavery were mainly due to their ancestor's influence.

In 1876 Mr. William F. Poole had an elab oration of this theory in the April number of the " North Ameri can Review," but car "When I drew the Or ried it to the radical dinance (which passed, extent of giving all a few words excepted, as the credit to Dr. Cut I originally formed it), I ler. His paper seems had no idea the States to have misled almost would agree to the sixth every writer on the article, — prohibiting subject since, includ slavery, — as only Massa ing Mr. Bancroft and chusetts, of the Eastern John Fiske; but there States, was present, and therefore omitted it in is really no evidence the draft; but finding to sustain it. the House favorably dis Apparently the last posed on this subject, thing that Dane ever after we had completed thought about was the the other parts, I moved preservation of any the article, which was record of his own acts. agreed to without op Fitful glimpses may position." now and then be had JOHN KEAN. of him from other These were plain sources, and they dis enough statements; and they leave no room for historic specula close a man always busy, but always ready tions. But after another interval, — oddly to lend a hand. He was one of the founders,

of Massachusetts, " as any one may see who knows what American law was in '87." These " other portions " included the rules of descent and " all the fundamental perpetual articles of compact, except as to slavery, In dian titles', and contracts." As to the article on slavery, he said, in his letter to Webster, that he had ever been careful to give Jeffer son and King their full credit in regard to it; and he had said forty-three years be fore in the long-for gotten letter to King himself, —

John Kean of South Carolina, like his colleague Carrington, had seen service in the Revolution; Kcan had also been in the prison ship. It is an odd thing that these two members of this little committee, neither of whom was known as a lawyer, were both matrimonially connected with the very head of the judiciary; for Carrington married Miss Ambler, a sister of Mrs. Marshall, and Kean's wife was Susan Livingstone, a cousin of Mrs. Jay. Mrs. Kcan's father was Peter Van Brugh Livingstone, a rich merchant of New York, and a brother of Gov. William Livingstone, whose famous mansion, " Liberty Hall," was bought by Mrs. Kean, and descended to her son, John Kean, the father of the late Mrs. Hamilton Fish. This handsome portrait was etched from a miniature that Mrs. Fish used to wear, set in a bracelet. Kean never went back to South Carolina; after his term in Congress he was one of three commis sioners to settle the accounts between the general government and the individual States; the other two were General Irvine, of Pennsylvania, and Woodbury Langdon, who was one of the early New Hampshire judges. When Kean died, in 1795, ne was cashier of the United States Kank at Philadelphia. His widow, who used to be known as Mrs. Livingstone Kean, married in 1800 the celebrated Count Niemccwicz, who came to this country with Kosciusko and some years later returned to Poland, where he took part in the revolution of 1831.