The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 04/Discourse 07
VII.
Last Sunday, on a day near the national anniversary, something was said of the relation which the American citizen bears to the State, and of the duties and rights which belong to that relation. Since then an event has occurred which suggests another topic of a public nature, and so I invite your attention to a discourse of the general position and duties of an American ruler, and in special of the late President Taylor. It is no pleasant task to rise to speak so often on such themes as this; but let us see what warning or guidance we can gather from this occasion.
In order that a man should be competent to become a complete political ruler and head of the American people, he ought to be distinguished above other men in three particulars.
First, he ought to have just political ideas in advance of the people, ideas not yet organized into institutions in the State. Then he will be a leader in ideas.
Next, he ought to have a superior power of organizing those ideas, of putting them into institutions in the State. Then he will be a leader in the matter of organizing ideas.
Then he ought to have a superior power of administering the institutions after they are made. Then he will be a leader in the matter of administering institutions.
An eminent degree of these three qualities constitutes genius for statesmanship, genius, too, of a very high order. A man who really and efficiently leads in politics must possess some or all of these qualities; without them, or any of them, he can only seem to lead. He and the people both may think lie is the leader, and call him so; but he that shall lead others aright must himself be on the right road and in advance of them. To perform the functions of a leader of men, the man must be eminently just, also, true to the Everlasting Right, the Law of God; otherwise he can never possess in the highest degree, or in a competent degree, the power of ideas, of organization, of administration. A man eminently just, and possessing these three qualities, is a leader by nature; if he is also put into the conventional position of leader, then he bears the same relation to the people, which the captain of a ship, skilful and competent, would bear to the ship's company who were joint owners with him, and had elected him to his office, expecting that he would serve them as captain while he held the office of captain.
The complete and perfect leader must be able to originate just political ideas, to organize them justly, to administer the organization with justice. But these three powers are seldom united in the same man; so, practically, the business of leading, and therefore of ruling, is commonly distributed amongst many persons ; not concentrated in one man's hands. I think we have as yet had no statesman in America who has enjoyed each and all of these three talents in an eminent degree. No man is so rich as mankind. Any one of them is a great gift, entitling the man to distinction ; but the talent for administration is not very rare. It is not difficult to find a man of good administrative ability with no power to invent, none to organize the inventions of other men. How many men can work all day with oxen yoked to a plough; how few could invent a plough or tame wild cattle. It is not hard to find men capable of managing political machinery, of holding the national plough and conducting the national team, when both are in the field, and there is the old furrow to serve as guide. That is all we commonly look for in an American politician. He is to follow the old constitutional furrow, and hold the old plough, and scatter a little democratic or whig seed, furnished by his party, not forgetting to give them the handsel of the crop. That is all we commonly look for in an American politician, leaving it for some bright but obscure man in the mass of the people to discover a new idea, and to devise the mode of its organization. Then the politician, perched aloft on his high place and conspicuous, holds the string of the kite which some unknown men have thought out, made up, and hoisted with great labour; he appears to be the great man, because he sits and holds the string, administering the kite, and men look up and say, "See there, what a great man he is! Is not this the foremost man of the age?"
In this way the business of ruling the nation is made a matter of mere routine, not of invention or construction. The ruler is to tend the public mill ; not to make it, or to mend it; not to devise new and better mills, not even to improve the old one. We may be thankful if he does not abuse and leave it worse than he found it. He is not to gather the dam, only to shut the gate at the right time, and at the right time open it ; to take sufficient toll of all comers, and now and then make a report of the grinding, or of what he sees fit to communicate to the owners of the mill. As it is a part of the written Constitution of the land that all money bills shall originate with the House of Representatives, so it is a part of the unwritten custom that political ideas in advance of the people shall not originate with the nominal rulers of the nation, but elsewhere. One good thing results from this: we are not much governed, but much let alone. The American form of government has some great merits; this I esteem the greatest; that it lets the people alone so much. In forming ourselves into a State, we agreed with one another not to meddle and make politically with individuals so much as other nations had done.
It is a long time since we have had a man of large genius for politics at the head of affairs in America. I think we could not mention more than one who had any genius for just political ideas in advance of the people. Skilful administrators we have had in great abundance in politics as in other matters. Nature herself seems democratic in her action here, and all our great movements appear to be brought about by natural power diffused amongst many men of talent, not by natural power condensed into a single man of genius. So long as this is the case, the present method of letting alone is the best one. The American nation has marched on without much pio neering on the part of its official rulers, no one of them for a long time being much in advance of the million; and, while it is so, it is certainly best that the million are very-much left to themselves. But if we could have a man as much in advance of the people in all these three qualities, and especially in the chief quality—as the skilful projector of a cotton mill is in advance of the girls who tend the looms, in all that relates to the projection of a cotton mill,—then we should know what it was to have a r^al leader, a ruler who could be the school-master of the nation, not ruling over our bodies by fear, but in the spirit of love, setting us lessons which we could not have devised, nor even understand without his help ; one who preserves all the good of the old, and adds thereto much new good not seen before, and so instructs and helps forward the people. But, as the good God has not sent such a man, and he is not to be made by men, only found, nor in the least helped in any of those three qualities by all the praise we can pour on him; so it comes to pass that an ordinary ruler is a person of no very great consequence. His importance is official and not personal, and as only the person dies, not the office, the death of such an one is not commonly an affair of much significance. Suppose after Mr. Tyler or Mr. Polk had taken the oath of office, he had appointed a common clerk, a man of routine and experience, as his factotum, with power to affix the presidential name to necessary documents, and then had quietly and in silence departed from this Kfe, how much would the nation have lost? A new and just political idea; an organization thereof? No such thing. If the public press had kept the secret, we should not have found out their death till this time. The obscure clerk could tend the mill as well as his famous master, who would not be missed.
Louis XIY. said, "The State! That is I." He was the State. So when the ruler dies, the State is in peril. If the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Russia or Austria, or the Pope of Rome were to die, there would be a revolution, and nobody knows what would come of it; for there the ruler is master of the people, who are subjects, not citizens, and the old master dying, it is not easy to yoke the people to the chariot of a new one. Here the people are the State; and though the power of General Taylor was practically greater than that of any monarch in Europe, save Nicholas, William, and Ferdinand, yet at his death all the power passes into the hands of his successor, with no noise, no tumult, not even the appearance of a street constable. I think that was a sublime sight—the rule over twenty millions of people, jealous of their rights, silently, by due course of law, passes into the hands of another man at dead of night, and the next morning the nation is just as safe, just as quiet and secure as before, no fear of change perplexing them. That was a sublime sight—one of the fair things which comes of a democracy. Here the ruler is servant, and the people master; so the death of a President like Mr. Van Buren, or any of his successors, Harrison or Tyler or Polk, would really have been a very unimportant event; not so momentous as the death of one of the ablest doctors in Boston, for should the physician die, your chance of life is diminished by that fact. If Dr. Channing had died at the age of forty, before he wrote his best works, his death would have been a greater calamity than that of any or all of the four Presidents just named, as soon as their inaugural address was delivered; for Dr. Channing had some truths to tell, which there was nobody else to deliver at that time. No President since Jefferson, I think, has done the nation so much good as the opening of the Erie Canal in New York, or the chief railroads in Massachusetts, or the building up of any one of the half dozen large manufacturing towns in New England. Mr. Cunard, in establishing his line of Atlantic steamers, did more for America than any President for five-and-twenty years. The discovery of the properties of sulphuric ether, the devising of the magnetic telegraph, was of more advantage to this nation, than the service of any President for a long time. I think I could mention a few men in Boston, any one of whom has been of more service than four or five Presidents ; and, accordingly, the death of any one of those would be a greater calamity than the demise of all those Presidents the day after election. With us the President is only one spoke in the wheel, and, if that is broken, we always have a spare spoke on hand, and the wheel is so made that, without stopping the mill, the new spoke drops into the place of the old one and no one knows the change till told thereof. If Mr. Polk had really been the ablest man in the land, a creator and an organizer, his death would have been a public calamity, and the whole nation would have felt it, as Boston or New York would feel the loss of one of its ablest manufacturers or merchants, lawyers or doctors. That would deprive us of the services of a man which could not be supplied. We have always spare men of routine, but not spare men of genius. Dr. Channing has been missed ever since his death, and the churches of Boston, poor enough before, are the poorer for his absence. So has John Quincy Adams, old as he was, been missed in the House of Representatives. The enemy of freedom may well rejoice that his voice is still. But who misses General Harrison or Mr. Polk ? What interest languishes in consequence of their departure ? What idea, what right, lost thereby a defender ? If Sir Robert Peel were to die, the British nation would feel the loss.
We attach a false importance to the death of a President. Great calamities were apprehended at the death of General Harrison. But what came? Whigs went out of office and democrats went into office. Had Jefferson died before the Declaration of Independence, or Washington any time after it, or before the termination of his official service, or John Adams before the end of the war, that would have been a great calamity; for I know not where we should have found another Jefferson, to see so distinctly, and write down so plain the great American idea, or another Washington to command an army without money, without provisions, without hats and shoes, as that man did. The death of Samuel Adams, in 1760, would have been a terrible misfortune to America. But the death of General Harrison only made a change in the Cabinet, not in the country; it affected the politicians more than the people.
We are surrounded in the world with nations ruled by kings, who are the masters of the people ; hard masters too! When they die the people mourn, not always very wisely, not always sincerely, but always with ceremony. The mourning for George IV. and WiUiam IV. in England, I doubt not, was more splendid and imposing than that for Edward the Confessor and Oliver Cromwell; and that for Louis XV. outdid that for Henry IV. In a monarchy, men always officially mourn their king, whether it be King Log, or King Snake, or King Christian; we follow the example of those States. If some of the men, whose death would be the greatest calamity, should die, the newspapers would not go into mourning; we should not have a day of fasting set apart; no minister would think it "An inscrutable providence;" only a few plain country people would come together and take up the dust, disenchanted of the genius which gave it power over other and animated clay, to lay it down in the ground. There would be no Catafalques in the street ; but the upper mountain-tops would miss that early sun which kissed their foreheads, while all below the world was wrapped in drowsy mist, and the whole race of man would be losers by the fading out of so much poetry, or truth, or justice, love and faith.
The office of President of the United States is undeniably one of great importance. If you put in it a great man, one with ability to invent, to organize and to administer, he has a better opportunity to serve mankind than most kings of Europe. I know of no position in the world more desirable for a really great man, a man with a genius for statesmanship, a million-minded man, than to take this young, daring, hopeful nation, so full of promise, so ready for work, and lead them forward in the way of political righteousness, giving us ideas, persuading us to build institutions thereof, and make the high thought of a man of genius the common life of a mighty nation, young as yet and capable of taking any lesson of national nobility which the most gifted man can devise; to be the ruler, not over Russian serfs, but American freemen, citizens, not subjects; to be the schoolmaster for twenty millions, and they such promising pupUs, loving hard lessons; and the men that set them, the most enterprising race of per- sons in the world, who have already learned something of Christianity and the idea of personal freedom, — ^why that is a noble ambition. I do not wonder that a man of great powers should covet this great position, and feel a noble dissatisfaction and unrest until he found himself there, gravitating towards it as naturally as the Mississippi to the ocean. Put in it such men as I point to, one with the intellect of a Webster, the conscience of a Channing, the philanthropy of much, humbler men; let him aim at the welfare of the nation and mankind; let him have just political ideas in advance of the nation, and, in virtue thereof, ability to solve the terrible social and political questions of this age; careless of his popularity and reputation, but careful of his conscience and his character, let him devote himself to the work of leading this people, and what an office is that of President of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century ! He would make this nation a society for mutual improvement twenty millions strong ; not King Log, not King Stork, but King Good-man, King Christian if you will, he would do us a service, dignifying an office which was itself a dignity.
But if it be so noble for such a man, working with such an aim, for such an end ; when a little man is in that office, with no ideas in advance of the people, and incapable of understanding such as have them ; with no ability to organize the political ideas not yet organized, and applied to life; a man of routine; not ruling for the nation, but the ruler of a party and for a party, his ambition only to serve the party; an ordinary man, surrounding himself with other ordinary men; with ordinary habits, ordinary aims, ordinary means, and aiming at the ordinary ends of an adventurer; careless of his conscience and character, but careful of his party-popularity and temporary reputation,—why the office becomes painful to think of; and the officer, his state is not kingly, it is vulgar, and mean, and low! So the lighthouse on the rocks of Boston harbour is a pleasant thing to see and to imagine, with its great lamp looking far out to sea, and shining all night long, a star of special providence; seen afar oft; when stormy skies shut other stars from sight, it assures the mariner of his whereabouts, guides the whaler and the Indiaman safe into port and peace, bringing wealth to the merchant, and a husband to the lingering wife, almost a widow in the cheating sea's delay and her own heart-sickness from hope so long deferred. But take away the great lamp, leaving all else; put in its place a little tallow candle of twenty to the pound, whose thin glitter could not be seen a mile oft", spite of the burnished reflectors at its side, and which requires constant picking and trimming to keep the flame alive, and at its best estate flickers with every flutter of the summer wind,—what would the lighthouse be to look upon or to imagine? What a candlestick for what a candle! Praise it as much as you will; flatter it in the newspapers; vote it "adequate" and the "tallest beacon in the world;" call it the "Pharos of America;" it is all in vain; at the best, it can only attract moths and mosquitoes on a serene night; and, when the storm thunders on that sepulchral rock, it is no light at all; and the whaler may be split asunder, and the Indiaman go to the grave, and the wealth of the merchant be scattered as playthings for the sea, and the bones of the mariner may blanch the bottom of the deep, for all the aid which that thin dazzle can furnish, spite of its lofty tower and loftier praise!
To rule a bank, a factory, or a railroad, when the officer is chosen for business and not charity, to command a packet-ship or a steamboat, you will get a man of real talent in his line of work ; one that has some history, who has made his proof-shot, and shown that he has some mettle in him. But to such a pass has the business of ruling a nation arrived, that, of all the sovereigns of Christian Europe, it is said not more than two, Nicholas of Russia, and Oscar of Sweden, would have been distinguished if born in private stations. The most practical and commercial nation in the world, possessing at this moment a power more eminently great than that of the Roman empire in its palmy time, has for a ruler a quite ordinary woman, who contributes neither ideas nor organizations, and probably could not administer wisely the affairs of a single shire in the island. In this respect, the highest stations of political life seem to have become as barren as the Dead Sea. In selecting our rulers in America, it is long since we have had a man of large powers, even of the sort which the majority of men appreciate in a contemporary, I have sometimes thought men were selected who were thought not strong enough to hurt us much, forgetting that a weak man may sometimes hurt us as much more than a strong one would.
After all this preliminary, let me now say something of the late President Taylor, only further premising that I am here to tell the truth about him, so far as I know it. and nothing more or less. I am not responsible for the facts of the case, only for the correct statement thereof. There have been men who were not disposed to do him justice; there were men enough to flatter and overpraise him while alive, and there will probably be enough of such now that he is dead. Much official panegyric has there been already, and much more is in prospect. I think I need not be called on for any contribution of that sort. I wish to weigh him in an even balance, neither praising nor blaming without cause. To eulogize is one thing; to deal justly, another and quite different.
Zachary Taylor was born on the 24th of November, 1784, in Orange county, Virginia. His father, Richard Taylor, was a soldier during a part of the Revolutionary War, had a colonel’s commission in 1779, and appears to have been a valuable officer and a worthy man. In 1785 he removed to Kentucky, where he resided until his death. He was a farmer, a man of property and influence in Ken- tucky, then a new country. He was one of the framers of the Constitution of that State ; several times in the Legislature, and the first collector of the port of Louisville, then a port of entry.
Zachary, the third son, followed the business of farming until he was more than twenty- three years of age. During his childhood he received such an education as you can imagine in a new and wild country like Kentucky sixty years ago. However, it is said his father took great pains with his education, and he enjoyed the instruction of a schoolmaster from Connecticut, who is still living. Hence it is plain the best part of his education must have come, not from the schoolmaster, but from the farm, the woods, and the connection with his parents and their associates. What a man learns at school, even in Boston, is but a small part of his education. In General Taylor's case, it is probable that things had much more to do with his culture than words. Men nursed on Greek and Latin would probably have called him an uneducated man ; with equal justice he might call many a scholar an uneducated man. To speak and write with grammatical accuracy is by no means the best test of education.
Fondness for a military life is natural in a man born and bred as he was, living in a country where the vicinity of the Indians made every man a Quaker or a soldier.
About 1808, volunteers were raised in the West to op- pose the expected movements of Aaron Burr, a traitor to his country, a bold, bad man, who had been the candidate of the federalists for the Presidency ; perhaps the worst man we had had in politics up to that time. Mr. Taylor joined one of the companies of volunteers. In 1808 he was appointed Lieutenant in the army of the United States, joined the forces, was soon sent to New Orleans, was seized with the yellow fever, and returned home.
In 1810 he was married to Miss Margaret Smith, of Maryland.
In 1811 he was employed in expeditions against the Indians in the North-west of the United States. Here he was under the command of General Harrison.
In 1812 he was made Captain, and had the command of a block-house and stockade called Fort Harrison, on the Wabash river, soon after the declaration of war against England. This place was attacked by a strong body of Indians. Captain Taylor, with less than fifty men, defended it with vigour and success. In consequence of his services on that occasion, he was promoted to the rank of Brevet Major. During the rest of the war, he continued in service on the frontiers, and seems to have done his duty faithfully as a soldier.
After the war was over, in 1815, the army was diminished to a peace establishment, and Major Taylor reduced to the rank of Captain. In consequence of this, he withdrew from the army; but, after a few months, returned, and was then, or subsequently, restored to his former rank as Major. For several years he was employed in such various military services, in the west and south-west, as must be performed in a time of peace. In 1819 he was made Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1832 he became Colonel, and in that year, with a command of four hundred men, he served under General Atkinson, in the expedition against the Sacs and other Indians led by the celebrated Black Hawk. Afterwards he was intrusted with the command of Fort Crawford, where he remained till 1836, when he was ordered to Florida, to fight against the Seminole Indians.
It was here that he made use of the bloodhounds to hunt the poor savages from their hiding-places in the woods. You know what Mr. Pitt once said of the Spanish use of this weapon in the sixteenth century; but the animals imported from Cuba, where they had been trained to hunt runaway slaves, were of no value when put upon the track of red men. I do not know who originated the scheme of employing the bloodhounds. It has often been ascribed to General Taylor; and with good reason, I believe, has it been denied that he was the author of that plan. It was of no great honour to the nation, let who would invent it; and few men will be sorry that it did not turn out well.
It was thought Colonel Taylor displayed a good deal of skill in contending with the Indians in Florida, and, accordingly, he was made Brevet Brigadier- General, in 1838. After finishing the conquest of the Indians, he left Florida, in 1840. It is said that fighting against the Indians is a good school for a soldier. General Taylor served long at this work, and served faithfully. In the Florida war, his conduct as General is said to have been noble.
In 1840 he was made Commander of that portion of the American army in the south-west of the United States, and in 1841 removed his family from Kentucky to Baton Rouge, in Louisiana, which has since been his home. In 1845 he was ordered to Texas, and had command of the "Army of Occupation,'* and subsequently of the "Army of Invasion." In the war against Mexico, it is thought by competent judges that he displayed a good deal of military skill. He was beloved by his soldiers, and seems to have won their confidence, partly by success, partly by military talent, but also in part by his character, which was frank, honest, just and unpretending. I have heard of no instance in the whole war in which cruelty is chargeable upon him. Several anecdotes are related of his kindness, generosity, and openness of heart. No doubt they are true. War is a bloody trade ; it makes one shudder to think of it in its terrible details ; but the soldier is not necessarily a malignant or a cruel man; that bloody and profane command, so well known, uttered in the heat of conflict, when the battle seemed to waver, does not imply any peculiar cruelty or ill-will. It is only one of the accidents of war, which shows more clearly what its substance is. I am no judge of warlike operations and of military skill, and therefore shall not pretend to pass judgment on matters which I know I do not understand; I shall not inquire as to the military value of the laurels he won at Resaca de la Palma, at Monterey, and at Buena Vista. But, in our judgment, we ought to remember one circumstance: that is, the inferiority of the Mexicans. They were beaten, I think, in every considerable battle throughout the whole war; no matter who commanded. General Scott landed at Vera Cruz, captured the city, and the far-famed Castle of St. Juan d'Ulloa, garrisoned by four thousand three hundred and ninety soldiers; and the American loss amounted to thirteen men killed, and sixty-three hurt! General Scott took possession of the great port of the nation, with less than twenty thousand soldiers, with only about fifteen thousand troops; marched nearly two hundred miles into the interior, fighting his way, and garrisoning the road behind him, sometimes even subsisting his army in the country which he conquered as he went on; and finally took the capital, a city with nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants, with less than six thousand soldiers. Suppose an army of that size were to land at Newburyport, with the intention of marching to Worcester, not two hundred miles, but only fifty or sixty, how many do you think would ever reach the spot? Why, suppose the American men did nothing, there are women enough in Massachusetts to throw every soldier into the Merrimac!
I do not believe that this inferiority of the Mexican arises so much from the superior bravery of the Americans; almost any male animal will fight on small provocation; your Mexican male, as well as your American, on as small provocation, and as desperately. But the American soldier was always well armed, furnished with everything that modern science makes terrible in war; well clad, well fed, well paid, he went voluntarily to the work. The Mexicans were ill armed, ill clad, ill fed, often not paid at all, and sometimes brought to fight against their will.
The difference does not end here: the main reliance of the Mexican government, the regular soldiers, the Presidiales, were men who seemed to have most of the vices of old garrison soldiers, with most of the faults of new recruits; or, as another has said, himself a soldier in the war, "All the vices engendered in a garrison life; all the cowardice which their constant defeats by the Indians had created; all the laziness contracted in an idle monotonous existence, and very little military skill." The new levies came unwillingly, and were often only "food for powder." On the American side was a small body of veteran soldiers, low and coarse men—it is the policy of America to have the rank and file of our army in peace composed usually of such—but full of brute courage; accustomed to all sorts of hardships and exposure; under a discipline rigorous and almost perfect; wonted to danger, and weaned from fear; careless of life almost to desperation; full of confidence in their commander, and of contempt for their foe. The volunteers brought with them the characteristic ardour of Americans, their confidence of success, their contempt of toil and of danger; familiar with fire-arms from their youth, they soon learned the discipline of the camp.
You see what a difference this makes between the two armies; but the chief superiority of the American soldiers was this—they came from a country where there is a complete national unity of action. So the government could trust the army, and the army the government; the soldiers had confidence in their commander, confidence in their country, confidence in their cause; while the Mexicans had no national unity of action, the people little confidence in the government, the government as little in the people; the nation but little trust in the army, and the army little in the nation; the soldiers had great fear of the enemy, little faith in their officers, and the officers little in their men. Did you ever see a swarm of bees when the queen bee was dead, and moths had invaded the hive? The Mexicans were much in the same state. The result was what had readily been foreseen: at the battle of Buena Vista, on the one side, there were twenty-one thousand five hundred and fifty-three Mexicans; on the other, four thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine American soldiers, of which only four hundred and seventy-six were regulars. Yet the American loss, in killed, wounded and missing, was but seven hundred and forty-six, while that of the Mexican army was nearly two thousand men lost. If the Mexicans had done the same proportionate execution, every American would have been killed long before night. All these things ought to be taken into account, in making up our mind about the difficulty of the enterprise. Still, after this allowance is made, it must be confessed the American invasion of Mexico was a remarkable undertaking, distinguished for its boldness, not to say its rashness, and almost unparalleled in the history of modern wars. It certainly did require great coolness, courage, and prudence, on the part of General Taylor, to conduct his part of the expedition. He had those qualities; but it has not yet been proved, or shown to be probable, that he had the nobler qualities which make a great General. The kind of warfare he was engaged in does not bring to light the high qualities of a man like Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great, or Napoleon. Perhaps General Taylor had them, but they did not appear.
The Mexican war was unfortunate for the administration which carried it on, for the political party which caused the war. The success of General Taylor attracted the attention of the people, and the obscure soldier took popular rank before the President of the United States. Unconsciously the vicarious suitor, courting public favour for his master, won good graces for himself. The political party which began the war was eclipsed by the triumph of its own soldier; and the slave-power which projected the war seems likely to be ruined by the success of the enterprise.
It has been said, that he was averse to the Mexican war which he fought in; I know not whether this be true or false. But, if true, it deserves to be remembered in his defence, that the soldier is only an active tool, as much the instrument of his employer as the spade of the workman whose foot crowds it into the ground. The soldier, high or low, must obey the men who have the official right to command him, his free-will merging in that of his superior. If General Taylor had thought the Mexican war unjust and wicked, and in consequence had resigned his commission, he would have been covered with obloquy and contempt in the eyes of military men, and the officials of government. Most of the newspapers of the land would have attacked him, called him a coward, a traitor and a fanatic; their condemnation would have been worth as much as their praise is now. In estimating his character we ought to remember this fact, for few men do more than their office demands of them, or more than public opinion can approve.
Such was the success of General Taylor in war, at the head of a few thousand men, that public attention was turned towards him, and in a few months the obscure frontier soldier was the most prominent man in the nation. In 1848 he received the nomination of the Whig Convention at Philadelphia for President, and in due time was elected.
His election was certainly one of the most remarkable that ever took place in America. It is worth while to look at it for a moment. There was nothing very remarkable in the man to entitle him to that eminent distinction; if there were, the nation was very slow in finding it out. He was a farmer till about twenty-four years old; then a common Lieutenant four years more. In the next twenty years he got no higher than to the rank of a "Frontier Colonel;" he attained that dignity, in fact, at the age of forty-eight. He was not made General till the fifty-fifth year of his age. But for the Mexican war, I suppose he would, at this day, be as obscure as any other General in the United States' army; nobody would think he was the "Second Washington," "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," as his creatures have declared. Other military men have been chosen to the presidency. But Washington was much more than a soldier; in "a time that tried men's souls" to the utmost, he had carried the nation through eight years of most perilous warfare, more by his character than any eminent military skill, and so had become endeared to the hearts of the people as no American had ever been before. General Jackson, at first educated as a lawyer, was a man of large talents, distinguished as a Governor, as a Senator, and as a Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, before he was elected President, or nominated for that office. General Harrison, a man of small abilities, surely not more than a third-rate politician in Ohio, was yet familiar with the routine of political affairs. He had been a member of the Legislature of Ohio, of both branches of the Congress of the United States, and Minister to Colombia. General Taylor, with an education very imperfect, had passed his life, from twenty-four to sixty-four, on the frontiers and in the army; had never held any civil office ; had seldom voted, and, though an excellent officer in the sphere of duty he had occupied, did not appear to be the most promising man in the nation to select for its highest and most difficult office. The defence of a log house in 1812 against a troop of Indians, the conquest of Black Hawk, the rout of the Seminoles, the gaining of half-a-dozen battles in Mexico, at the head of a few thousand soldiers, does not seem exactly an adequate schooling to prepare a common man to lead and rule twenty million Americans with the most complicated government in the world. It certainly was surprising that he should be nominated for that office; and more so, that the nomination should be confirmed by the people. It is not surprising that the distinguished Senator of Massachusetts should call this "A nomination not fit to be made;" the wonder is, he deemed it fit to be confirmed. In selecting him for our chief, the nation went hap-hazard, and made a leap in the dark. No prudent man in Boston would hire a cook or a coachman with such inadequate recommendations as General Taylor had to prove his fitness for his place. Had a sensible man on election day asked the nation, "What do you know about the man you vote for?" the people would have been sadly puzzled to seek for an answer. The reasons which led to his election were partly special, and partly of a general and popular character. It is instructive for us to look at them, now that we can do it coolly.
I suppose this was the special cause of his nomination : The leaders of the whig party thought they could not elect either of their most prominent men. If they went before the people with nothing but their idea,—The protection of property by a tariff, and a Representative of that idea, however able and well trained, they feared defeat ; such as they had met with in the last campaign, when the democratic party, with a man almost unknown to the people, a tricky lawyer from Tennessee, had yet carried the day against one of the oldest and ablest politicians in the country. So the whig leaders availed themselves of the temporary popularity of a successful General to give an accidental triumph to their party, and apparently to their idea. That I think was the specific reason which led the politicians to nominate him. Doubtless there were other private reasons, weighty to certain individuals, that need not be touched upon.
But the general reasons, which gave him weight with the mass of the people and secured his election, ought to be stated for our serious reflection.
1. There was no one of the great leaders of either party whom the people had much confidence in. I am sorry to say so, but I do not think there is much in any of them to command the respect of a nation, and make us swear fealty to those men. There were two candidates of the whig party; from one of them you might expect a compromise; from the other you were not certain even of that. The democratic candidate had not a name to conjure with. The free soil candidate — was he a man to trust in such times as these? Did you see your king and chief in any one of those four men ? Was any one of them fit to be the political schoolmaster of this nation ? What " ground and lofty tumbling" have we had from all four of them ?
2. General Taylor was not mixed up with the grand or petty, intrigues of the parties, their quarrels and struggles for office. Men knew little about him; if little good, certainly little not good; little evil in comparison with any of the others. Sometimes you take a man whom you do not know, in preference to an old acquaintance whom you have known too long and too well to trust.
3. Then General Taylor had shown himself a rough, honest, plain, straightforward man, and withal mild and good-natured. Apparently, there was much in him to attract and deserve the good-will of the nation. His likeness went abroad through the country like a proclamation; it was the rude, manly, firm, honest, good-natured, homely face of a backwoodsman. His plain habits, plain talk, and modest demeanour reminded men of the old English ballad of "The King and the Miller," and the like, and won the affections of honest men. I doubt not the fact that General Harrison had once lived in a log-cabin, and, other things failing, did drink "hard cider," gave him thousands of votes. The candidate was called "Old Rough and Ready," and there was not a clown in field or city but could understand all that was meant by those terms. Even his celebrated horse contributed to his master's election, and drew votes for the President by the thousand.
4. Then he was a successful soldier. The dullest man in the Alleghany mountains, or in the low lanes of New York and Boston, or the silliest behind the counters of a city shop, can understand fighting, and remember who won a battle. It is wholly needless for such to inquire what the battle was fought for. Hence military success is always popular with the multitude, and will be, I suppose, for some ages in America as everywhere else. Our churches know no God but the "Lord of hosts," "A man of war!"
5. Then he was a southern man, and all our masters must be from the South, or of it, devoted to its peculiar institution. If he had been born in Barnstable county, and owned a little patch of yellow sand at Cape Cod, and had the freeman's hatred of slavery, even Churubusco and Buena Yista would not have given him the votes of the Convention, and his war-horse might have lived till this day, he would not have carried his master to the presidency. He was a slaveholder, as seven Presidents had been before him, holding office for eight-and-forty-years. There are some men at the North, chiefly in the country towns, who think it is not altogether right for a man to steal his brother; such men were to be propitiated. So it was diligently rumoured abroad in the North, that the candidate was "opposed to slavery," that he would " probably emancipate his slaves as soon as he was elected." I am told that some persons who heard such a story actually believed it; I think nobody who told it believed any such thing. The fact that he was a slaveholder, that he had lately purchased one hundred and fourteen men, women, and children, and kept them at hard work for his advantage, showed the value of such a story; and the opposite statement, publicly and industriously circulated at the South, that he loved slavery, desired its extension, and hated the Wilmot Proviso, shows the honesty of some of the men at the North, who, knowing these facts, sought to keep them secret.
These seem to have been the chief reasons which procured his nomination and election. It is easy to see that such a man, though as honest as Washington, must be eminently unfit for the high office of President of the United States. He knew little or nothing of the political history of the country, or of the political questions then up for solution; little or nothing of the political men. He had the honesty to confess it. He declared that he was not fit for the office, not acquainted with the political measures of the day, and only consented to be brought from his obscurity when great men told him he was the only man that could " save the Union." He was no statesman, and knew nothing of politics, less than the majority of the more cultivated mechanics, merchants and farmers. He was a soldier, and knew something of fighting, at least of fighting Indians and Mexicans. If you should take a man of the common abilities, intellectual and moral, the common education, a farmer from Northfield, a skipper from Provincetown, a jobber from Boston, a bucket-maker from Hingham, and appoint him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, with the duty of selecting all his associate Judges, I think he would be about as competent for the office as General Taylor for the post he was elected to. *In such a case as I have supposed, the new "Judge" must depend on other men, who will tell him what to do ; his only safety would be in relying on their advice. Then they would be the Chief Justice, not he.
Under such circumstances, the leaders of one party nominated him. I must confess such an act, committed by such men, seems exceedingly rash. It was done by the very men who ought, above all others, to have known better. This is one of the many things we have had, which show thinking men how little we can rely on our political chiefs. The nomination once made, the election followed. The wise men told the multitude: "You must vote for him," and the multitude voted. You know how angry men were if you did not believe in his fitness for the office; how it became a test of "patriotism" to believe in him. Now the good man is cold in death, how base all that seems!
When such a man, under such circumstances, comes into such an office, you do not know whether the deeds which receive his official sanction, the papers published under his name, the speeches he delivers, and the messages he sends. are his or not his. It is probable that lie has little to do with them; they are his officially, not personally ; he writes State papers by their signature. Some of his speeches were undoubtedly made for him. You know it once happened that a speech, alleged to have been made by him at a public meeting, was sent on by telegraph, and published by the party organ, in one of our great cities, and he was taken sick before the meeting was held, and could not speak at all. That speech betrayed the trick of the administration: it was a speech he had never heard of. From this one act judge of many more. In his arduous office, he must choose advisers; but he wants advisers to advise him to choose advisers. Much will depend on his first step; that must needs be in the dark.
Since this is so, I shall pass over his brief administration with very few words. I do not know how much it was the administration of Greneral Taylor, or how far it was that of his Cabinet. I do not know who made the Cabinet. The messages, in his official term, were as good as usual; but who made the messages? One thing is clear: he promised to be the President of the country, not of a party; to remove no man from office except for reasons not political. Neither promise was kept. It was plain that other elements interfered and counteracted the honest intentions of that honest man. General Jackson rewarded his "friends" and punished his "enemies," men who voted against him. Mr. Jefferson had done the same. But I doubt if the administration of either of these men was so completely a party administration as that of General Taylor. Men were continually removed from office purely for political reasons. The general character of his appointments to office you can judge of better than I. It seems to me the removal of subordinate officers from their station on account of their vote is one great evil in the management of our institutions. Of what consequence is it whether the postmaster at Eastham or West-Newton, the keeper of the lighthouse at Cape Anne, or the Clay Pounds of Truro, or the district attorney in Boston, or the tide-waiters at Nantucket are "good whigs," or not good whigs?
What shall I say of the character of the man who has left this high office; of him on the whole ? Some men can be as eloquent on a ribbon as on a Raphael. They find no difficulty in calling General Taylor "the Second Washington." I like the first Washington too much to call any one by that name lightly. General Harrison was the "Second Washington" ten years ago. General Jackson ten years before that. I think there is another "Second Washington" getting ready; and before the century ends we shall perhaps have five or six of this family. But the world does not breed great men every day. I must confess it, I have not seen anything very great in General Taylor, though I have diligently put my eye to the magnifying glasses of his political partisans; neither have I seen anything uncommonly mean and little in him, though I have also looked through the minifying glasses of his foes. To be a frontier soldier for forty years, to attain the rank of Colonel at the age of forty- eight, after twenty-four years of service, to become a Brigadier-General at fifty-four, is no great thing. To defend a log-house, to capture Black Hawk, to use bloodhounds in war, and to extirpate the Seminole Indians from the ever- glades of Florida, to conquer the Mexicans at Churubusco and Monterey, does not require very high qualities of mind and heart. But in all the offices he ever held, he appears to have done his official duty openly and honestly. He was a good officer, a plain, blunt, frank, open, modest man. No doubt he was "rough and ready;" his courage was never questioned. His integrity is above suspicion. All this is well known. But is all this enough to make a great man in the middle of this century; a great man in America, and for such an office? Judge for yourselves.
I sincerely believe that he was more of a man than his political supporters thought him; that he had more natural sagacity, more common sense, more firmness of purpose, and very much more honesty than they expected or desired. E-umours reach me that he was not found quite so manageable as his "friends" and admirers had hoped; that he had some conscience and a will of his own. It seems to me that he honestly intended to be an honest and impartial ruler, the President of his country; that he took Washington for his general model; that he never sought the office, and at first did not desire it; but when he came to it endeavoured to deserve well of his country and do well by mankind. But, with the best intentions, what could such a man do, especially with such foes, and more especially with such friends.
It is said he was a religious man: sometimes that means that a man loves God and loves men; sometimes that he is superstitious, formal, hypocritical, that he does not love men, and is afraid of God, or of a devil. I do not know in which sense the word is used in reference to him. But it appears to me that he was a man of veracity, honest, upright, and downright too; a good father, a good husband, a good friend, faithful to his idea of duty; very plain, very unpretending, mild and yet firm, good-natured, free, and easy. There were many that loved him; a rare circumstance among politicians. He was a temperate man, also, remarkably temperate; and such temperance as his is not a very common virtue in high political and social stations in America, as we all knew too well.
These are all the good qualities I can make out his title to. I suppose there are some ten thousand men in Massachusetts that are his equals in all these qualities, as honest, as able, and as patriotic as he. It is hardly worth while to worship those qualities in a President which are not rare in farmers, and traders, and butchers, and mechanics.
There are two things which seem to me decidedly wrong in his public career. His partisans at the North claimed that he was hostile to slavery. I never could find any reason for that opinion: at the South his friends insisted that he was the decided friend of slavery. When his opinion was asked on this matter, he remained steadily and pertinaciously silent. To me this does not seem honest or manly.
Then he was a slaveholder, not by compulsion, as some pretend they hold men in bondage, not by inheritance. He was a slaveholder from choice, and only three years ago bought one hundred and fourteen human beings and kept them as his slaves. This fact must be considered in estimating the character and value of the man. I know that Money is the popular god of America; that slaveholding is one of the canonical forms of worshipping that god, sanctioned by the Constitution and the laws and the legislature of the land, by its literature and by its churches. I know men in Boston who would have no more scruple in buying and selling a black man as a slave, or a white man if they could catch and keep him, than they would have of bupng a cow at Brighton. There are men in Massachusetts that have grown rich by the slave-trade. It does not hurt their reputation; it is no impeachment of their religious character. Now I do not expect a frontier colonel, busy in fighting Indians half his life, dogging them with Cuban bloodhounds, to be more enlightened on such a matter than merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, ministers and professors of theology in New England. It may be that he had the same opinion as Professor Stuart, that slavery was allowed in the New Testament and sanctioned in the Old Testament ; such a good thing that Paul and James said never a word against it. We should not judge such a man as you would judge a Unitarian Minister in Boston or Doctors of Divinity at Andover. Born as he was, bred as he had been, living in a camp, sustained by the public opinion of the Press, the State and the Church, it would not be surprising if it had never occurred to him that it was wrong to steal men. But the fact is to be taken into the account in determining the elevation of his character.
It is now plain that he found the office of President a heavy burden; that it cost him his life. It seems to me the conduct of some of our public men towards him was ungenerous, not to say unjust and shameful. An honest man, he looked for honest foes and honest friends ; but his hardest battles were fought after he had ceased to be a soldier.
Well, he has gone to his rest and his recompense. To his family the affliction is sudden, painful and terrible. What vicissitudes in their life — from the obscurity of their former home to the glaring publicity of that high station; then, in so brief a time, the honoured and well-beloved head is silent and cold for ever! The nation may well drop its tears of sympathy for those whom its election has robbed of a father and a husband; the ghastly honours of the office are poor recompense for the desolation it has brought into a quiet and once happy home.
He has gone to his reward. He leaves the government in the hands of an obscure man, whom the nation knows very little of, whom no one would ever have thought of making President; a man selected certainly for no eminence of faculty, intellectual or moral. There is some cause to fear, perhaps some little for hope.[1] Two very important questions are now before the nation: Shall we extend over the territory conquered from Mexico the awful blight which now mildews the material welfare of the South, and curses with a threefold ban the intellect, the conscience and the religion of the land? Shall Congress pass that infamous fugitive slave measure, known as Mr. Mason's bill, with Mr. Webster's indorsement on it? I know not how his death will affect these things. Who knows the intentions of the late President ? or those of his successor? He has power to bless, he may use it only to curse the land. Let us wait and see. The fact that the "Great Compromiser" now represents the Administration in the Senate, the rumour of the appointment of the Senator of Boston to the highest place in the Cabinet, are things of ill omen for freedom, and bid us fear the worst. However, it may be that this event will affect the politicians more than the people.
Last Tuesday night General Taylor ceased to be mortal. His soul went home to God. He that fought against the Mexican and the Indian has gone to meet the God of the red man as well as the white. He who claimed to own the body and the soul of more than a hundred of his fellow-creatures, enriched by the unrequited toil, which they unwillingly gave him when stung by the lash of his hireling overseers, has gone home to the Father of negro slaves, who is no respecter of persons ; gone where the servant is free from his master. Black and white, conqueror and vanquished, the bond and the free, alike come up before the Infinite Father, whose perfect justice is perfect love; and there the question is, "What hast thou done with the talent committed unto thee?" The same question is asked of the President; the same of the slave; yea, it will one day be asked of you and me !
"An old man, wearied with the storms of State," now only asks a little earth for charity. Costly heathen pageants there will be in these streets to his memory, and politicians will, I suppose, hold their drunken and profane debauch over his grave, as over the tomb of that far-famed friend of freedom who died two years ago. But he has ceased to be mortal. The memory of his battle-fields faded from before his dying sight. Power rests no longer in his hands; victory perches on another banner. His ear is still, and his heart is cold. How hollow sounds the voice of former flattery! His riches go to other men; his slaves will be called by his name no more; the scourge that goads them to unpaid toil is now owned by another man. His fame goes back to such as gave; the accident of an accident succeeds him in the presidential chair : only the man, not the officer, goes home to God, with what of goodness and piety he had won. His manhood is all that he can carry out of the world; elected or rejected, a conqueror or conquered, it is now the same to him ; and it may be the humblest female slave who only earned the bread which her master only ate, and got an enforced concubinage for pay, takes rank in heaven far before the man whom the nation honoured with its highest trust, and for whom the official Senate and low-browed Church send out their hollow groans.
" The glories of our birth and State
Are shadows, not substantial things.
There is no armour against fate :
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made,
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
"Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill ;
But their strong arms at last must yield,
They tame but one another still.
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
"The garlands wither on his brow :
Then boast no more his mighty deeds,
Upon death's purple altar now,
See where the victor victim bleeds.
All heads must come
To the cold tomb,
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
If he could speak to us from his present position, methinks he would say: Countrymen and friends! You see how little it availed you to agitate the land and put a little man in a great place. It is not the hurrah of parties that will "save the Union," it is not "great men." It is only Justice. Remember that Atheism is not the first principle of a Republic; remember there is a law of God, the higher law of the universe, the Everlasting Right; I thought so once, and now I know it. Remember that you are accountable to God for all things ; that you owe justice to all men, the black not less than the white; that God will demand it of you, proud, wicked nation, careful only of your gold, forgetful of God's high law! Before long each of you shall also come up before the Eternal. Then and there it will not avail you to have compromised truth, justice, love, but to have kept them. Righteousness only is the salvation of a State; that only of a man.
- ↑ The above was written in July, 1851. Since then the ground of hope has wholly vanished; the ground for fear remains alone. The following statement may suggest a thought the other side of the ocean, if no shame on this side among politicians and their priests:
Elisha Brazealle, a planter of Jefferson county in the State of Mississippi, was taken sick, and as he lay oppressed with a loathsome disease, a slave of his, a bright mulatto or quadroon, nursed him, and, as was believed, through her nursing, saved him from death. He was a man of feeling and did not forget her kindness, but took her to Ohio and there educated her. She made rapid progress, and soon became his wife. He made, or caused to be made, a legal and sound deed of emancipation, and had it legally and formally recorded in Ohio and Mississippi. Lawyers, in both States, said she was free, safe, and that no power in the South or elsewhere, could legally deprive her or her children of freedom.
Mr. Brazealle returned to Mississippi with his wife; they had a son, and named him John Munroe Brazealle. After some years, Mr. Brazealle sickened and died, leaving a will, in which he recited the deed of emancipation, declared his intention to ratify it, and devised all his property to his son, acknowledging him in the will to be such.
Some poor and distant relations of his in North Carolina, whom he did not know, and for whom he did not care, hearing of his death, went on to Mississippi and claimed the property devised by Mr. Brazealle to his son. They instituted a suit for the recovery of the property. The case came before William L. Sharkey, "Chief Justice of the High Court of Errors and Appeals" for that State. It is reported in Howard's Mississippi Reports, Vol. XL, p. 837, et seq. Judge Sharkey declared the act of emancipation "An offence against morality, pernicious and detestable as an example," set aside the will, gave to those distant relations the property which Mr. Brazealle had devised to his son, and, in addition, declared that son and his mother to be slaves. Here is his own language:—
"The state of the case shows conclusively that the contract had its origin in an offence against morality, pernicious and detestable as an example."… " The consequence [of the decision] is, that the negroes John Munroe and his mother are still slaves, and a part of the estate of Elisha Brazealle." "John Munroe, being a slave, cannot take the property as devised; and I apprehend it is equally clear that it cannot be held in trust for him,"
While these volumes are in the press, I learn that Mr. Fillmore has appointed Judge Sharkey to the honourable and lucrative post of Consul to Havana.