Richard Henry Dana

THE life of Mr. Dana falls naturally into two divisions, to which a nearly equal importance is given in his biography.¹ He was a traveler and a lawyer ; and, although the years spent in seeing the world were few in comparison with those of his professional career, the large extracts from his journal with which these volumes are filled bring the former into the foreground. The early success of his only well-known book, the account of his two years’ voyage before the mast, won for him a reputation as an observer and describer which seems to have misled his biographer. Mr. Adams indeed refers more than once to Mr. Dana’s natural gifts as a writer with an enthusiasm which it is impossible for every one at least to sympathize with; he speaks of them as in their sphere well-nigh unrivaled ; and because he thinks these entries in a traveler’s diary show the same spirit, interest, and vivacity as does the young sailor’s log he has been profuse in publishing descriptions of places and scenes so well known that only the most masterly and fresh delineation of them can longer hold our attention. The accounts of the

English visit and of the journey round the world, though not without some striking passages, are the feeblest portion of the work, and less attractive, to our mind, than the shorter chapters of travel in this country, — the vacation rambles at the Isles of Shoals, in the Maine woods, and in the Middle States. In particular, whenever Mr. Dana approaches the sea, he gathers vigor, and shows his own great delight in its company. It is not a poet’s or a painter’s delight, not one of sentiment, or of beauty, or of sensibility to grand effects of nature ; it is a physical delight, — a pleasure in inhaling salt air, in handling an oar, in sailing a boat under stress of weather, in adventure and the sense of life and health ; but on this ground he is at his best, and writes with an effect of “ out-of-doors ” which is wholly charming. Occasionally, too, as in his chance meeting with John Brown in the Adirondacks, there is an adventitious interest which helps the narrative. In his foreign journeys, on the contrary, he sees old things without freshness, and feels the emotions natural to an educated American, and long familiar to us ; and besides, in England he exhibits too much of a sort of liking for things aristocratic, which is not creditable to an American, and is repugnant to the reader. Of Japan and China he had only a glimpse, of Egypt and Italy even less ; and from so rapid a journey nothing valuable was to be expected. The only excuse for these long passages of traveler’s notes, beyond the fact that they serve to relieve the annals of the bar, is that they show the vitality of Mr. Dana’s personal feeling, and bring him before us more in the life than does any other part of the biography. A certain robustness is discernible here, an activity and at times an eagerness, which help to fill out the personal impression; but in themselves these descriptions of places are unimportant, and do not increase the author’s reputation in the department of literature. As a writer he never went beyond his first youthful work, by which he is still known, and for which he has received such ample credit that the subject may be dismissed.

The really noteworthy half of his career was passed at the bar. He began life, in Mr. Adams’s judgment, somewhat handicapped by being a member of a family which had distinguished itself. Family pride stood in the way of his success, and although its influence upon his character was at first partially neutralized by his taste of real life in the forecastle, it finally reasserted itself, and, as the biographer again says, unfortunately. At the beginning of his practice he had some business with poor sailors, but it was rather his political affiliations that made him the defender of fugitive slaves in Boston. Naturally he belonged with the conservative and aristocratic class which was opposed to the cause of the slave ; and he always kept, in one way or another, some community with this section, although practically alienated from it in political feeling and action. He was by no means an abolitionist, or a friend to the group of antislavery agitators. He detested Garrison, and the methods and principles on which the reform was conducted. He stood between the two extreme sections, and such a position exposes one to injustice from both, as it also limits one’s opportunity to make his convictions and life effective in great events. He was himself saved from the usual fate of the half-hearted by becoming the protagonist of the defense in the Fugitive Slave trials. That incident is the centre of this biography. Mr. Adams exhausts his eulogy in praising Mr. Dana’s conduct on this occasion, and, fortunately, he is assisted by the admirable account of the circumstances surrounding the court-house at a memorable time. The narrative is at this point most picturesque and living. Merely as an episode of the work, it is to be regarded as a capital success. Here only, in the entire book, does Mr. Dana stand forth in the leading place, and he holds it and acts in it, wholly adequate to all demands. In the Constitutional Convention, to which much space is given, he was but one of several men, and did not so far surpass them as to convince the reader of his superiority either in mind or policy; in the later Prize cases, which are also described at length, he conducted what was an important matter, no doubt, but was also merely one incident of the great struggle, and without any marked distinction in history; in the Fugitive Slave cases his rôle fell in with a moment which will always be remembered in the history of the commonwealth itself, and in that of the cause of abolition. This was, consequently, his most distinguished service to his time. It is true that he afterward opposed the petition for the removal of Judge Loring, and that, with others of undoubted patriotism and political sense, he was willing to grant a fugitive slave law to the South on the eve of the civil war ; but, without mentioning other matters that would show the incompleteness of his convictions upon the main issue, it is enough here to agree with Mr. Adams in his strong commendation of Mr. Dana for his course at this critical and only memorable moment of his career.

Except in this instance, and in one or two others which have been alluded to above, Mr. Dana was not in public life ; and in these there was rather a union of his professional with a semi-political life than anything of the statesman’s or even the politician’s true career. Mr. Adams says that Mr. Dana could never have succeeded in politics, though he also asserts that he was fitted to do well in the Senate if he could have reached the chamber. His attempt to enter the House in opposition to General Butler was a fiasco, and his nomination to be minister to England exposed him, when his own hands were tied, to the malignity of his political enemies. In what he did undertake of political work, whether in the Free Soil or the Reconstruction period, he showed no true capacity for affairs. It remains to characterize him in the limited sphere of a lawyer in ordinary practice, and here we will let Mr. Adams speak for himself : —

“ No one who knew him would ever have sought him out as an adviser because of his skill or judgment in dealing with intricate business affairs. He was, above all else, a barrister, a lawyer of the forum ; and he had small business capacity. He would fight a case for all there was in it before a jury or the bench ; he had a fair knowledge of the books, and a strong grasp on legal principles ; he was absolutely fearless, never hesitating to measure himself against any one ; he did not know when he was beaten. His proper place, therefore, was at the bar. Up to 1848 he was exactly on the right path, — the path to distinctive professional eminence. Had he adhered to it, he not improbably would at last have attained, had he so desired, that foremost place in the judiciary of Massachusetts once held by his grandfather. Most assuredly he would have risen to the first rank of his profession as a jurist of national fame.

. . . He was not what is known as a ‘ case-lawyer.’ He had a clear head, a retentive memory, and a fair knowledge of the textbooks and reports; but his strength did not lie in that direction. It did lie in the activity and alertness of his mind, and especially in his imaginative faculties and power of copious illustration. The same faculty of seeing and describing which caused him to make his mark at the age of twentytwo enabled him to produce the effects on bench and jury which he indisputably did produce at forty. It was not his grasp of legal principles, though in this regard he was not wanting ; it was not his command of authorities, for that he did not have ; it was his combined courage and tenacity, and his faculty of seeing things clearly himself, and then making others see them as he saw them.”

Mr. Adams also praises him for his hard application to his routine work, and ascribes to this cause, together with a certain disregard of a proper care of his health, the break-down of his constitution in 1859, from which he does not seem to have recovered. In whatever Mr. Adams has to say of the character of Mr. Dana, — and first and last he has a great deal to say about it, — one cannot fail to observe the mingling, as in the extracts given, of a cool and not too favorable judgment of what he was with an enthusiastic prophecy of what he might have been. It is plain, from more than one expression of opinion, that Mr. Adams regards Mr. Dana’s life as largely a waste, a frittering away of real ability in the daily labor of a practicing lawyer.

Of Mr. Dana’s more intimate life with those nearly related to him, of the side of his nature which was not turned to the world, we learn very little. There are few private letters, and those which are given are not of a personal kind. His home is described only as a part of that monotonous repetition of hard work and hasty meals which, Mr. Adams says, made up a singularly barren daily life. One charming incident there is of his returning from a journey he had begun, in order to please his daughter, but this stands alone. If he had a friend, with the exception of his partner. Mr, Parker, the fact does not appear in these volumes, which are lacking to a remarkable degree in all the graces of private life. This absence of personality, of open and natural expression of human feeling, is the defect of the biography, from whatever cause it may spring. It is not compensated for by any large intellectual interests or liberal tastes. What is said of Mr. Dana’s acquaintance with literature is really surprising. He read somewhat, principally on Sundays ; and he read the most respectable books, such as Bacon in prose, and Spenser or Wordsworth in poetry. To his contemporaries, if we are to trust Mr. Adams, he was simply blind. He does not seem, his biographer says, to have had any acquaintance with Carlyle, for example ; he did not give the compliment of a hearing even to Emerson or Hawthorne. Yet he had a familiar acquaintance with the literary men of Boston, being a member of the Saturday Club, and he apparently enjoyed their society. In England he saw many men of mark, among them Grote and Macaulay, but Mr. Adams calls attention to the absence, in his journal, of nearly all the literary and scientific names of the age. It is not surprising, in view of these restrictions on his intellectual range, that in his connection with Harvard College he opposed vehemently not only the election of President Eliot, but the introduction of the teaching of modern science and thought at every stage. His journals show attachment to the older school of religious thought, and here and there one comes upon a strain of pious feeling which exhibits the depths of his convictions. From a mind so constituted in itself, and so limited in its converse with the intellectual world, one does not expect any of those judgments by the way upon books and men, any of those insights into life and thought, which often make the private journals and letters of a cultivated man most charming.

After all, this work is a study of public and professional life, a memoir of the times and those who played their part in them. A large portion of it is occupied with characterizations of the leaders of the bar or of opinion whose names have only a local fame ; and here Mr. Adams’s command of the subject has stood him in good stead. The notices of the Boston bar and of its more eminent members add much to the value of the volumes, and in them many readers may find the more interesting share of the narrative. Mr. Adams has the habit of using decisive words, and of stating opinions with great clearness. His own view is never doubtful. This gives a finish to his work as a biographer which is very effective. Justice could be done to the admirable nature of this workmanship only by extracts, for which there is here no place; but readers will find out for themselves the importance of these characterizations, and the clearness of his interpretation of events. The utility of the biography as a memorial of the times cannot be too highly regarded, and in our opinion the author has shown no small skill in managing his materials in order to give the greatest interest to the subject-matter. There is some overweight of the traveler’s journals, but, except for this fault, the work can be unreservedly commended ; and it is indispensable in the records, which already are many, of a generation which made Boston in many respects the leading city of the country during its time.