John Murray Forbes

IN the following pages the story of the remarkable life of the late John Murray Forbes is told in brief, at the request of the editor of The Atlantic, by one who had the privilege of knowing him as a friend for forty years. Its moral is, what power and help may be in a good private citizen in a republic. How great a force, and always for good, this man has been in his state and in his country few have known. For, with regard to his own work, at least, it was an axiom with him, “ So the thing is done, it is no matter who does it.”

He came of a clan long notable in Scotland. Though not in the direct line of Forbes of Culloden, “ the Lord President,” whose name shines conspicuous with the clear light of sense and virtue out of the cruel history of his time, they might have been brothers, so great is the likeness of their public services and correspondence. The letters of the American Forbes show an equally ardent, wise, and unselfish servant of his country with the author of the Culloden Papers, in an even greater national crisis. Though he wrote or inspired many an editorial, or even bill in the state or national legislature, his own name appeared only at the end of private letters. Fortunately, he lived long enough to have leisure at last to have written down for his grandchildren his memories of an active life, including many letters. He had no plan of publishing these recollections ; but their range is so wide, the events of which they treat are so varied and important, and the correspondents so interesting that a selection from them, with many of the letters, will soon be given to the public, edited by his daughter. From these I have been kindly allowed to quote.

Mr. Forbes’s active life — a ten-manpower activity — lasted through the latter two thirds of the nineteenth century, and was concerned in large issues of foreign and domestic trade, transportation by land and sea, the development of the great West, the anti-slavery question, the civil war and all its problems, with finance and tariff and good government. Thus he was brought into relations with leading men in commerce and with the statesmen and the reformers of the age, and socially with great numbers of people. So manifold and so varied were the tasks to which, especially in the years of the civil war, he set his mind and his helpful shoulder that they can be hardly more than catalogued in the short space of a magazine article.

In the last century Reverend John Forbes came from Scotland to Florida, and married Dorothea Murray. Their son, Ralph Bennet Forbes, settled near Boston, and married Margaret, the sister of Colonel Thomas H. and James Perkins, leading citizens and merchants of Boston in the beginning of this century.

Mr. Ralph Forbes’s business called him to France, and thither his spirited wife followed him with her two boys ¹ during the war of 1812, in a little schooner which had the misfortune to be captured by an English warship. Mrs. Forbes was courteously treated by her captors, and at last safely reached her husband in Bordeaux. In that city, on the 23d of February, 1813, John Murray Forbes was born. He used to say, " I am assured my title to citizenship is as good as anybody’s,” in spite of his foreign birth. It turned out well for his country that he had, and improved, this right to serve her. The voyage of this young citizen to America with his family on their return, when he was three months old, was more long, hazardous, and uncomfortable than their outward passage, lasting many weeks, during which time they were in action with British vessels, and later were captured by one.

Mr. Ralph Forbes then settled in Milton. He is said to have been a man of energy and courage, generous and kind, but not successful in business. When he died, after a long sickness, his brave wife found herself with a family of seven children, only three of them boys, in narrow circumstances. Self-denial, mutual help, and the necessity of early and vigorously taking up the burden of life proved the best of tutors to her sons. Their uncles, James and Thomas H. Perkins, gave the boys in succession places in their countingroom on Commercial Wharf, and young Thomas was soon sent to their branch house in China, while Bennet went to sea before the mast, and showed ability which gave him command of a ship before he was of age.

John was sent to school first at Andover, but later to the excellent Round Hill School at Northampton. Mr. Cogswell, the master, had seen the world, and seems to have been a man of large pattern, and withal sympathetic with boys. George Bancroft was the assistant master. The boys’ physical development was considered to an unusual degree for that day. They took walking journeys in the vacations, and wrestling was encouraged, and young Forbes was taught to ride, an accomplishment that he was to use almost daily for the next seventy years. The boy’s letters to his mother, while simple and affectionate, seem mature, and show his sense of the responsibilities that awaited him. At fifteen he left the school to begin his life’s work. Mr. Cogswell had found out in the three years the quality of metal that was in John Forbes and the use he had made of his opportunities. He wrote thus to his mother: “ It is not mere length of time in which he has been my pupil that attaches me strongly to him ; a stronger tie is the uncommon worth and irreproachable character he has maintained in this relation.”

The boy went straight from school to begin at the foot of the mercantile ladder in the countingroom of his uncles. He stayed with them nearly two years, making long days in office, warehouse, and on the wharves, seldom having a chance for the long walk to his Milton home. He was in correspondence with his brother Tom in China, who shared with John his right to make small ventures in their uncles’ ships ; so that when, after two years, John himself sailed for China in the Lintin, of which his brother Robert Bennet was master, he had a little capital of one thousand dollars nursed up from the result of these ventures.

Meantime, Tom, the gallant and promising head of the family, had been lost in a typhoon while on a trip from Macao to Canton. John arrived in Hong Kong in November, 1830, and was taken as a clerk into the house of Russell and Company, into which the business of the Perkinses was now merged. Mr. Augustine Heard, of Boston, was an active manager. But an interesting experience was in store for the young clerk. He was introduced and recommended by Mr. Cushing, of Boston, to Hou-qua, the chief of the company which then conducted all the foreign trade in China. Hou - qua, who had loved Tom Forbes, at once took his young brother into his full confidence, had him read and write his letters, charter and load ships, and handle for him vast amounts of property. For this man, whose portrait hung for years in his Boston office, Mr. Forbes had great regard.

Two years of active work in an enervating climate told on young Forbes, and he returned to recruit his health. The voyages in those days, by slow-sailing vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, made long and dull chapters in eager and busy lives. Danger had its turn, but unless severe disaster required manning the pumps, there were often continuous weeks of quiet sailing in those four months’ voyages. Mr. Forbes, happily, had other than the business side to his mind. He rejoiced in the sea in its active moods, but in the calms or the trade-wind sailing he betook himself to books ; his taste for literature was good, and withal, like old Duncan of Culloden, he had a spice of romance in his character, and he loved poetry, ballads and song. Copying these into his commonplace book was a resource to him on his voyages, and in the drive of his busy later life he often quoted fragments of them.

Mr. Forbes remained only a year at home, during which time he was married to Miss Hathaway, of New Bedford, and he sailed for China in March, 1834, meaning so to arrange his affairs that he could live at home. But on his arrival, in August, in Hong Kong he was confronted by a most embarrassing problem. He found that, by an arrangement made without his knowledge some time before by his cousin, Mr. Cushing, he had already been a partner in the house of Russell and Company since the first of January, and was from that time entitled to his share of the profits, if he would ratify the agreement and consent to stay. It was a brilliant offer to a youth of twenty-one, yet it seemed almost impossible for him to accept. Hong Kong was no place for his wife ; the long rough voyage and the climate were forbidding. On the other hand, the interests of the Boston allies of the house seemed imperatively to demand his remaining ; for Mr. Augustine Heard, though ill, said that, unless young Forbes did so, he would stay until he died. Houqua too would put in his business with the firm, on the condition that Mr. Forbes would give it his personal attention. So he reluctantly agreed to remain three years. The work, though interesting, was severe, and the life a making-thebest-of-it. In the selections from his Old Scrap Book that Mr. Forbes amused himself with printing in his later years occurs a picture of the life, modeled on Byron’s

beginning,

and ending,

Mr. Forbes’s three years of service to win his freedom to return were a good training school. The relations of mutual respect and regard between him and Hou-qua continued. In his notes he speaks of the strict honor and fair dealing of the Chinese merchants. He sailed for home in March, 1837, having arranged to attend to Russell and Company’s business in the United States for three years. His home-coming was not to be restful. He landed in the midst of the consternation occasioned by the great panic of 1837. The three great London houses through which most of the Chinese-American business was done had failed. Russell and Company had drawn large bills on them, and the goods represented by these sums, on their arrival, had depreciated because of the panic. Mr. Forbes had to strain every resource to raise money to keep the firm’s credit good. He succeeded, and the house rode out the storm.

He began his family life in Milton, building a house on the hill above the Neponset, where, a broad tidal river, it winds through the marshes to join the harbor, while the Blue Hill range made a noble horizon to the south and west. For the remaining sixty years of his life Milton Hill was his home, He soon built a comfortable brick house farther from the road. The bare pasture hillside he sheltered on the north and beautified with trees, and so wisely that, by his middle life, it seemed in winter as if his house were in a favored climate, yet in summer the sea breeze cooled it. He could see his ships come up the harbor, and Boston was within seven miles, which, from youth to age, rain or shine, he usually covered on horseback. The house of J. M. Forbes and Company was principally occupied with the China trade in the succeeding years, when the American clipper ships on racing models distanced all competition, often bringing back the first news of their own arrival at Hong Kong. They had the cream even of the English carrying business, and no passenger willingly took an English ship. As a merchant he was unusually successful, and the judgment and, more than that, the character of this young man had so impressed themselves on Russell and Company that he was constantly consulted by them, and often asked to arbitrate points in dispute.

But Mr. Forbes was not born to confine himself to matters of private business, however large. His knowledge, interests, and sympathies were wide, and the citizen soon began to be as apparent as the man of affairs. In 1843 he was appointed by the Boston merchants to draw up their answer to a circular sent them by Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, asking suggestions for the mission about to be sent out to cultivate friendly relations with the empire of China. Such matters lie looked at largely and humanely. His letter, written a few years later to a member of Congress, against any naval coercion of the Japanese into commercial intercourse, is important reading at the present crisis of our country, and makes one mourn the more the loss of this good man.

“ A smaller force,” he wrote, “ may butcher thousands of men in petticoats and sink their arks, and the officers may call their Chinese junks ‘ men-of-war ’ and sing paeans over their glorious victory ; but the glory will be all the navy will ever get, . . . and the conservative Whig government will have the discredit of an unsuccessful intervention in the affairs of a people whom even John Bull has been ashamed to attack.”

In 1846 the failure of the potato crop caused the terrible famine in Ireland, and American sympathies were aroused. Mr. Forbes obtained from the government the use of the Jamestown, and, with his brother, Robert Bennet Forbes, as captain, she carried Boston’s generous and abundant relief.

When, in 1836, he had received in China a suggestion from his brother Bennet to put some money into railroads, he wrote with speed, saying, " By no means invest any funds of mine in railway stocks, and I advise you to keep clear of them.” In his notes written in his later years he says, “ My judgment was sound in 1836 when I kept out of railroads,” and proceeds to tell how ten years later he took hold of them, little dreaming of the load he was assuming when he became president of one. He met James F. Joy and John W. Brooks, the one a bright lawyer, and the other a very able engineer ; they induced him to take an interest with a few merchants of New York and Boston in buying from the state of Michigan forty miles of primitive strap-iron railroad at seventy cents on a dollar. Until the close of his life, fifty-two years thereafter, he never was out of the railroad harness ; but then the directors of the great Chicago, Burlington and Quincy system said that to his far-seeing energy, his courage and sagacity, it owed a large measure of its success. The Michigan Central, his first railroad venture, was taken, poor, ill built, running a short way in thinly settled country, and opposed by many of the inhabitants. The “ C. B. & Q.,” its humble extension, is now a valued property, with seven thousand miles of well-laid road, a perfect equipment and organization, connecting the great Indian-corn country with the markets of the world. It was Mr. Forbes’s nature, like a good draught horse, when he felt resistance, to put his shoulders to the collar to pull, and pull through. The words of one of the old partners of Russell and Company with regard to Mr. Forbes’s relation to business may well be quoted : “ He never seemed to me a man of acquisitiveness, but very distinctly one of constructiveness. His wealth was only an incident. I have seen many occasions when much more money might have been made by him in some business transaction but for this dominant passion for building up things. The good, also, which he anticipated for business and settlers through opening up the country always weighed much with him.”

Mr. Forbes kept things in their proper relations ; remembered that he was a man, and business his horse, — kept it under the saddle. Thus mounted, be looked at things from an advantageous point of view and largely. Therefore, in the long struggle between two different civilizations, political and ethical codes, that was steadily going on to its crisis in civil war, he heeded more and more, year by year, the call of the country to the good citizen. The brave defense of free speech in Faneuil Hall by young Wendell Phillips, till then unknown, after the murder of Lovejoy in 1837, won Mr. Forbes’s admiration. He left the Whig party when, on the 7th of March, 1850, Daniel Webster deserted the cause of freedom, and in his letters he steadily strove to present the urgent issues of the time plainly and soberly to his friends and business correspondents, North and South, and in the other hemisphere. When one recalls the timid and respectful attitude toward the slaveholders of the Boston Wings of culture and wealth, who had applauded the mobbing of Garrison, it is pleasant to read Mr. Forbes’s letter, written just after Buchanan’s election to the presidency in 1856, to a gentleman in Darien, Georgia. In this he clearly shows, and in a most friendly way, how the course of the South in trying to increase the area of slavery, not only within the Union, but by plans of seizing the continent and islands between the United States and Panama, is arousing, surely and rapidly, the instincts of the American people against this aristocratic and oligarchical scheme, and warns him that unless the South is content with her great present power she will surely be defeated in 1860. Mr. Forbes himself considered the wrong and mischief of slavery, but could show to one who did not, in the most good-natured and firm manner, the practical situation. At least he won his correspondent’s respect as no “dough-faced ” Northerner.

In these days, the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad had been built by Eastern capital to supersede the “ prairie Schooner ” in carrying the swarming emigration across northern Missouri. Its stock stood in the name of three trustees, of whom Mr. Forbes was chairman ; as his daughter rightly says, he was responsible for the wise business conduct of the road, and, however indignant he might be at border ruffianism, he could not, in justice to the stockholders, proclaim his distaste for pro-slavery methods in the market place. Nevertheless, he was a good Free-Soiler, and was one of those who supplied money and Sharp’s rifles to the brave young New Englanders who, sent by the Kansas Aid Society, were thronging over this very road to the territory to keep its fertile soil free from the noxious plant of slavery. Thus it happened strangely, in May, 1859, that John Brown, fresh from his victories over the invading ruffians of Missouri, spent the night under Mr. Forbes’s roof, and told of the border strife to his neighbors, who were invited in to see the old Covenanter; and the next night the proslavery governor of Missouri occupied unwittingly the same bed that, the night before, had held the man for whose head he and the President had offered a great sum.

Mr. Forbes’s wide business connection, his wider interests, and his social habit brought him into relations with the best minds of the country, and this helped him to appreciate the trend of events. It is interesting to learn that he was a correspondent of de Tocqueville, managed his business affairs in this country, and later those of his widow. Mr. Forbes was on good terms with Sumner; he knew but distrusted Seward. With Agassiz, Dr. Howe, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, and Whittier he was in friendly relation. Fanny Kemble was a lifelong friend. For years he went to hear the preaching of his friend Dr. Putnam, of Roxbury. Mr. Emerson, on coming home from his Boston lectures, would often tell how “ that good creature John Forbes was there, with his brother Bennet, and wanted to take me out to Milton with him.” Dr. Holmes, in his younger days, was a frequent and cheery guest at the island which must now be mentioned.

At the shoulder of Cape Cod, like beads on the sleeve of Massachusetts, stretch to the southwest the Elizabeth Islands. Naushon, the largest of these, was bought in 1837 by Mr. Swain, of New Bedford, and Mr. Forbes. Its position between the mild waters of the Bay and the Sound, its two sheltered harbors, the noble beech woods at each end, and broad breezy sheep downs between make it a perfect summer home. After Mr. Swain’s death Mr. and Mrs. Forbes spent long summers at the Mansion House, gathering many friends under its roof for forty-one years. But from this Hesperis, just won, he was urgently called. The financial panic of 1857 sent him to England to borrow two millions of the Barings for the Michigan Central Railroad. His name and character won on “ onerous terms,” indeed, what was hard for most Americans to obtain then on any terms.

Mr. Forbes, sent by Massachusetts to the electoral college, voted for Lincoln in 1860. At the beginning of the next stormy year, Virginia asked her sister states to send delegates to a “ Peace Congress ” at Washington to devise means to avert a civil war. Mr. Forbes went as a Massachusetts delegate, but tells in his journal that he found the Southerners in the convention were ready to receive any concessions from us, “ in the hope that it might do some good,” but to promise nothing ; “ were asking the majority to yield to the minority all the great principles for which we were contending.” Our delegates saw that nothing was to be gained except, by spinning out the debate, time for the North to make some little preparation for the sure outbreak on the part of the better prepared South. Mr. Forbes therefore left the debate to others, and turned his mind to the threatening emergencies. Even on his way down he had talked with S. M. Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and found that he was ready to get President Lincoln safely to Washington, skillfully evading the rebel plots, and also planning the Annapolis route to Washington which was used for our troops when the railroad bridges were burned. With Mr. William Aspinwall and Lieutenant Fox, afterward Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Forbes concerted a plan to reinforce and supply Fort Sumter, which delighted General Scott, but unhappily leaked out and was marred because there were still some officials in the Navy Department in sympathy with the Rebellion.

Two years before Mr. Forbes had made the acquaintance of John A. Andrew, and had been greatly pleased with him. From the moment of the outbreak of the war, Mr. Forbes, without any official position, strengthened the governor’s hands with service, counsel, money, and moral support. He was well seconded by his friend Colonel Henry Lee, of Governor Andrew’s staff. The call for troops came April 14 ; next day four regiments were nearly ready. General Scott wished the two for Baltimore to come through by rail. Mr. Forbes remembered Mr. Felton’s warnings about the Baltimore route, and knew the urgent need of their speedily reaching Fortress Monroe, the key to the campaign, then held by only two companies of regulars. He and his brother, the captain, bought a chart, hurried to the State House, and pointed out the situation and the need. Governor Andrew took the responsibility of sending the troops by water. Mr. Forbes telegraphed to Scott’s chief of staff, and instantly set to work to find vessels and captains. The work was well and quickly done. His telegram to Mr. Borden, at Fall River, I borrow, as illustrating the energy of his work and the tact which insured cooperation: “ We send the four hundred men at two. Count upon your hurrying up. Must go right on board and start to-night, even at some extra cost. Massachusetts must keep up her end, and you are the man to do it.” Seeing the need of immediate preparation of much hard-tack, he respectfully brought it to the governor’s attention. The concluding sentence of his letter shows a wisdom that would have been useful in last year’s campaign in Cuba : “ You cannot be too careful in getting a working business man for the commissariat. It will save the state thousands of dollars and save us our credit when accounts come to be settled after enthusiasm boils past.” The governor promptly acted on his advice.

Now followed a time of anxiety. What might not the South attempt against Massachusetts, their leading adversary ? What more natural than that privateers should strike at the commerce of New England and New York, or capture the troopships ? Southern pirates were rumored to be off our coast. The governor bought the Pembroke and Cambridge, Mr. Forbes and the merchants of Boston furnishing one half of the money, the banks the other, and guns were borrowed from the Navy Yard. These steamers were to be armed transports. Mr. Forbes was practically, for the time, a Secretary of the Navy for Massachusetts, and on at least one occasion actually was empowered by Secretary Welles to send out a vessel to try to capture the old slaver Echo, now rebel privateer off our coast. Foreseeing trouble with England antd France unless an effective blockade should be kept up around the Confederacy, Mr. Forbes addressed to the Naval Committee of Congress a memorial on the subject of the necessity of a volunteer navy as early as July, 1861. He draughted the bill to establish this, which was passed, and he, Commodore Hudson of the navy, and Mr. Delano of New Bedford were appointed a commission to buy and fit for the sea vessels for this purpose. The commissioners rendered without pay services invaluable in their results, and withal unearthed many abuses and frauds practiced against the government by citizens more grasping than patriotic.

In 1812 our privateers had saved us. Mr. Forbes remembered this, but strove in a volunteer navy to keep the good element, — the utilizing the hardy courage and unsurpassed seamanship of our mariners, — and leave out the irresponsible and barbarous element; yet he thought it unwise in our government, with Englaud and France unfriendly, to abandon the right of privateering, unless we at the same time could secure international agreement to the humane principle, not yet established, that all private property should be exempt from capture on sea. The gigantic war on our hands furnished questions enough, but it was all important not to have a foreign war added. Mr. Forbes wrote constantly admirable letters to strong and well-disposed Englishmen, in perfect temper, but manly and plain, to make them see the issues rightly. Commodore Wilkes’s seizure of Mason and Slidell, the Confederate agents, had made the situation very dangerous then, as the building in England of ironclads for the Confederacy did later.

At home, emergencies, new but instant, came daily. The Southern prisons were filled with Northern men, among them Mr. Forbes’s friends and relations. His skill managed to get funds even into Libby Prison to relieve their wants. The medical service of the army was swamped by the demands resulting from the heavy fighting, and more from exposure and climate. Mr. Forbes was active among the original promoters of the Sanitary Commission, which came to the help of the government in its pressing need. He also did an excellent deed in organizing an attack on the mere seniority system in the medical departments in the army. The ways and means question was urgent before the first year was out, and became increasingly so, and his influence was felt and his help sought in dealing with it. In all these matters Mr. Forbes kept his eye on the remote results, not allowing himself to be blinded by the momentary. One question — puzzling and distasteful to politicians, yet by no means to be avoided, and growing with each month — was the attitude of the government toward slavery in the concrete. Mr. Forbes early urged the registration of the escaped blacks within our lines, and that the fact that they had been employed by the government in defensive works should give them freedom, and did all that he could to stir up members of Congress to stop that body from timid legislation in the interests of slavery.

Early in 1862, Mr. Forbes, overworked and suffering from a heavy cold, went to the sea islands of South Carolina, then newly occupied by our troops, among them the First Massachusetts Cavalry, in which his oldest son, the late Colonel William H. Forbes, was a lieutenant. The Freedmen’s Commission, a body of devoted young men and women, under the guidance of Mr. Edward L. Pierce, were just establishing themselves there,in the face of ridicule and disfavor of many officers, to begin their work of caring for the helpless negroes and preparing them to do for themselves. Mr. Forbes personally looked into the work of the commission, and defended them there and at Washington.

That summer the New England Loyal Publication Society was established, with Mr. Forbes as its president. A weekly paper was sent out by this company of patriotic and eminent Boston men, edited by Professor Charles Eliot Norton, for the sake of educating and stirring public opinion. Akin to this was the work of the Committee of Correspondence for the Vigorous Prosecution of the War, — the sending good newspaper clippings to local journals, irrespective of party, all over the land. Mr. Forbes was ever striving to show, to men at Washington, in the country at large, and abroad, the real issue, in which patriots of all stripes were vitally interested, namely, that the Rebellion was a struggle of a Class against the People.

But each month brought new and important tasks. Public opinion against slavery was making astonishing growth. The soldier sons of conservative Whigs of Beacon Street had grown in manhood and knowledge in one term of the school of war, and saw slavery in its true light. The time seemed ripe, and Mr. Forbes formed a Committee of One Hundred for Promoting the Use of Negroes as Soldiers, which raised one hundred thousand dollars. With a view of weakening and alarming the enemy by the very raising of these troops, recruiting offices were opened near the border to attract slaves and new-freed men. Major George L. Stearns, of Medford, did a noble and remarkable work in the recruiting of the now celebrated FiftyFourth and Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts regiments and the Fifth Cavalry. The keeping the regiments in the field full became harder as the war wore on ; the drafts became necessary to eke out volunteering to till tlie quotas of the towns, and bounties rose high. A Massachusetts Recruiting Board was formed, of which Mr. Amos Lawrence was an active member. Of this Mr. Forbes became president, bringing bis sound business methods to bear on the matter for the benefit of the state.

The Emancipation Proclamation, eagerly hoped for from the President at this time, as the weight of wisdom and right which would turn the doubtful scales of war, was opposed by some of the President’s advisers. Mr. Forbes drew up a manly and earnest address to him on the greatness of the crisis and the act which he might do, commending and encouraging him, and begging him not only to issue it, but to see to its being carried out by all branches of the service. This was signed by the presidential electors of 1860, and sent to him.

Perhaps the most signal of the services of this good citizen to his hardpressed country was his mission to England in the darkest time of the war. The high tide of rebellion had not yet been checked at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the wholesale sacrifice of our troops at Fredericksburg was recent, and the great failure of Chancellorsville was just coming on. Our finances were embarrassed. In the shipyards of Liverpool ironclad rams, against which our ports were defenseless, were being built, unchecked, for our foe. This unfriendly act Mr. Forbes had been anxiously watching. He knew that the rams could break the blockade, and that then England and France would probably interfere to close the war. In March, 1863, lie was abruptly summoned by telegram from Secretary Chase to come to New York. Next day he met there the Secretaries of the Treasury and the Navy. They asked him to sail for England on the third day thereafter ; to act there in company with Mr. William Aspinwall for the best interests of the United States, especially in the matter of stopping the ironclads and in placing ten million dollars of the new 5-20 bonds. The commissioners were asked to write their own instructions. Mr. Forbes accordingly wrote them, and they were signed by the Secretary of the Navy. He sailed promptly, Mr. Aspinwall following with the bonds a week later. Our minister, Mr. Adams, and our consuls were doing all they could, but had limited means, and the former was hampered by the duties and necessities of his position. He gave cordial aid as far as he could. The episode is long and most interesting, and can best be read in Mr. Forbes’s own straightforward and unassuming words, in his forthcoming reminiscences. Suffice it to say here that the commissioners failed to sell bonds abroad at that unpromising time, but that Mr. Forbes obtained a very large loan on the security of a portion of the bonds from his friends the Barings ; that he watched the vessels being built for the South closely, and acquired through our efficient consuls much information that might be important in influencing the British government, or in case the matter should come into the courts; that the commissioners even tried to buy the vessels, but in vain. Mr. Forbes was in constant correspondence with the Secretaries of the Treasury and the Navy, and with Governor Andrew. He bought some cannon for Massachusetts’ defense. Through all that dark spring, with no good news from home, he did everything that was possible to enlighten the opinion of the English governing and influential classes, first, on the real character of the struggle, and second, on the short-sightedness and danger to themselves thereafter (as they were belligerent ten times to where we were once) of establishing the principle that vessels of war may be built for one belligerent in a neutral port, receive their armament and crews just outside the three-mile limit, and go on to destroy the commerce of the other. His clear showing of this matter, in a letter, after his return, and how, if England broke the blockade, we could work havoc on her commerce, was thought by a member of Parliament, who went with it to Lord Palmerston, to have caused the seizure by the government of the rams just before they sailed, possibly to bombard Boston. Mr. Forbes, however, always spoke of his work in England very modestly, and claimed no great success. He had with tact explained to the government, through friendly members of Parliament, what Lowell had said in Hosea Biglow’s lay : —

Mr. Forbes returned home to work with even increased energy for the country. We find him in constant correspondence with the Cabinet members. The death of his brave young friend Colonel Robert Shaw only increased his interest in the negro regiments. Years later, he was chairman of the committee that put up the splendid memorial to Shaw and his soldiers in Boston. He was the friend of the freedmen, too, during and after the war ; helped generously in all efforts toward making them able to help themselves.

The President, at this time, appears to have been troubled by misgivings as to embarrassments and disaffection tluit might result from his great word of emancipation that had gone forth at the beginning of the year. Surrounded by politicians, be was in need of confirming and strengthening words from the people. Mr. Forbes saw this, and loyally strove to bring support to the chief. He wrote directly to him, begging him in this pass to use his great power and eloquence in putting before the people, North and South, and the world, a statement of “the true issue of the existing struggle : that we are fighting for democracy, or — to get rid of technical names — for liberal institutions.” In his letter, and later through an English friend of our cause, who was going to Washington, he strove to show Mr. Lincoln that the antislavery policy had just saved us from the recognition of the Confederacy by England and other European powers.

In the autumn of 1864 a general election was to occur. In it the question of carrying through to the end a war for principle that had proved long and terrible was to be referred to the people. Greater issues than merely saving the Union and putting down rebellion had shown themselves, and, while many were discouraged, the blood of their martyrs had but hallowed the cause to the best people of the North. At this time, Mr. Forbes, though believing in the honesty of purpose of Lincoln and his strength with the people, felt great doubts as to putting at the helm of state again “ a pilot who takes his orders from the crew, instead of a leader who directs its course.” But when the nomination was once made he worked as the greatness of the issue demanded. A peace party was being formed. Horace Greeley, Secretary Seward, and Vallandigbam (from the border) were planning a compromise with the South which might speedily end the war, with its real issues unsettled. In fear lest the President might be shaken from his faith in a firm and bold war policy by these signs of weakness at the North, Mr. Forbes wT\rote to Secretary Fox, begging him, if he shared his own feeling, to show his letter to the President, as coming from one who had no political aspirations, “ no isms, and who only wants safety for free institutions and a true peace.” The letter has the real eloquence of a patriot who had given, or was ready to give, everything to his country. "4 Peace negotiation is the Copperheads’ thunder ; let us not try to steal it, but with all firmness and moderation insist upon war until the rights of the People, North and South, are safe from subversion. I have everything at stake in the army : my son and son-in-law are there ; my younger son training to go. All the young men that I love and value are there, or incapacitated. I want peace for their sakes. I hate war for its own sake ; but I solemnly protest against crying ‘Peace ’ when there is no peace. It only means a short truce, defeat at the election, and then prolonged war with an invigorated enemy, perhaps strengthened with foreign alliances.” Secretary Fox later wrote that he had shown the letter to Lincoln, who, he said, read few newspapers, but gathered the feeling of the people from letters, and was thankful for expressions of opinion from earnest men who were not self-seekers.

Among Mr. Forbes’s reminiscences is an interesting account of his seeking out Peter Cooper in this dangerous crisis, and of their riding about together in the latter’s buggy, making arrangements for the “ great meeting of the period,” in New York, the credit of which he gives to Cooper, from which went forth the word “ No compromise ” that decided the issue of the election and the war. During this stress of public as well as private work, Mr. Forbes and his wife had to bear the distress of knowing that their son, Major William H. Forbes, who had been taken fighting gallantly against Mosby in the previous May, was enduring the privations of the prison at Columbia.

Mr. Forbes was a valued and frequent counselor of three successive Secretaries of the Treasury, and now, as the war drew to an end, on the question of government bonds of small enough amount to be within reach of common people, of contraction of the currency, and of work in the direction of a return to specie payment. Many a matter that there is not space to touch on claimed his attention and efficient service. Meantime he was in correspondence with officers in the service, especially Colonel Charles Russell Lowell, of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, for whom Mr. Forbes had an almost romantic regard. The older and the younger man were very near to each other in their wisdom and bravery, one in the council and one in the field, and the death, in the moment of victory, of Lowell at the battle of Cedar Creek was a heavy blow to his friend. The end of 1864 brought the relief of Major Forbes’s release from the South on parole, and his exchange was arranged in time to let him be present with his regiment at the great closing scene of the war at Appomattox.

The ending of the war, in which Mr. Forbes had willingly and silently borne so large a part, brought respite from the excessive work and strain, but in peace times the activity of several men was his. The great railroad system in which he was interested had required care and thought in the financial depression of the war ; now its rapid growth required daring and foresight. But this and his manifold business claims did not justify him to himself in ceasing to watch and work for the country’s welfare. The problems involved in reconstruction, especially the financial ones, claimed attention. The abuses that ever attend the arbitrary war power and the long supremacy of one party now began to breed corruption. Mr. Forbes had been a Massachusetts elector at large in 1872, and was an active member of the executive committee of the Republican party during the administrations of Hayes and Garfield. The long strife for honest money and honest public service began in those days, and for both of these causes he was a champion steady and strong. Almost the only speech in public of his life was his strong plea in Faneuil Hall for civil service reform in 1876. Mr. Forbes was a delegate to the national convention in 1880, and it has been said that President Garfield owed his election to him more than to any other man. Again in 1884 he was sent to the Chicago convention. The nomination there, against which he strove strongly, of a man with such a record as Blaine convinced Mr. Forbes that the time was come for independent action, to rebuke the demoralization spreading in the party whose course had been so noble through the great crisis of the country. As he left the Whigs in 1850 for conscience, so he left the Republicans. He saw with regret, and opposed, the increasing and improper use of money in political campaigns, and also of abusive personalities. As an independent thereafter he used his strong and wholesome influence, feeling, as long as his powers remained, the duty to work and never despair for the country. He did much toward the support of honest newspapers, and spoke anonymously through many an editorial.

During the war Mr. Forbes was chosen into the Saturday Club of Boston. Surprise having been expressed that a man supposed to be purely devoted to business should be proposed for membership in that company of men eminent in letters and statesmanship, the friend who nominated him said he would soon show what he was. Mr. Forbes was for thirty years one of the leaders of the club. Later, the officers of the army that had fought for freedom chose him a member of their Loyal Legion, and he enjoyed their meetings. I have known him leave the heated hall at the end of a Reform Club banquet to mount his horse and ride alone, in darkness and arctic cold, the seven miles of icy road to Milton, when past threescore and ten. His ready and good-natured wit, and especially his tact, doubled his power to serve a cause. This appears conspicuously through his correspondence. Good instances are his letter to Sumner, when the latter was joining the movement to make Greeley President, and his friendly letter to Wendell Phillips, showing him that real democracy was broader than mere anti-slavery, and that by striving for the first he could best help the negro too.

Trade and travel by sea appealed in youth and age to this man, who, like his ancestors of northeastern Scotland, probably with Viking blood in their veins, always lived within sight of a blue horizon. He was much stirred up at seeing American ships excluded from the carrying trade, — “ protected to death.” On this subject he published two pamphlets. “ The laws of trade are immutable,” he said. “ So long as our people set them at defiance in this particular, the American shipowner and merchant must be content with a very insignificant portion. ... If left to free trade and competition, we shall revive.”

As a business man, Mr. Forbes claimed to be very conservative. It is certain that the standard of business honor in his house and that with which he had been connected in China was high. He was enterprising and open to new ideas, but yet wary. His axioms with regard to investments, especially of trust funds, with which he was much concerned, are valuable. Some letters on these subjects in his memoir will be found interesting. But his distinguishing characteristic in business was that he was master, not slave, of his work ; and while it brought success in full measure in its kind, it did not stand in the way of the real success. His wealth accumulated, but not because it was hoarded. It was used freely for patriotism, for kindness, for help, for comfort, and never for show. Mr. Forbes was glad of the right chance to serve and help, but he reserved the right of selection. He gave wisely, generously, and ingeniously all through life, whether in money or pleasure or service, or all. With all his great performance as man of affairs, private and public, he found time to be at his best in the family and as a host, for his hospitality was great and continued.

At his home were comfort and abundance, but always refinement and simplicity ; the hours were early, and amusement was also kept in its place, — a recreation, not a business. Whether in work or in play, the example of the master of the house was inspiring ; for after concentrated thought, rapid writing on matters of great moment, he would perhaps call “ to horse,” and for pace and distance put younger men to the blush. Weather he ignored ; rode in rain and sun, and at sea his spirits rose with the wind. His yachts were not for ornament or racing, but for use, often to speed the private or public business. Some of his most important letters on public or financial matters were written in his yacht’s cabin, in a gale. A calm was a sore trial to him, as “ loafing ” was impossible. Traits in Mr. Forbes’s character and habits remind one of Julius Caesar. Storm and obstacle existed to be overcome. His prudence lay, not in avoidance, but in good management, taking the essence out of dangers, But at home or afield Mr. Forbes reminded his guests of one of the best of the old cavaliers, or Highland chiefs in Scott’s novels, which he loved so well; yet to the high mind, courage, and generosity was added a democratic spirit. In the large hospitality that he exercised, beautifully seconded by his wife and family, the widest range of persons shared, — the man of letters, of science, the statesman, the poet, the artist, the reformer; in short, men and women of character and virtue, who were doing the work of the world in their various ways. The idle, the selfish, and the unsound were conspicuously absent. But the beginners were there, students and clerks, boys and girls, the children of his old friends ; for the loyalty of his unforgetting friendships extended over three generations.

It was at Naushon, stretching its seven miles of “ good greenwood ” and billowy sheep downs between the blue Bay and Sound, under the soft shimmering air of the South Shore, that the hospitality reached its perfection ; and the Island Book at the old Mansion House holds the record, in prose or verse or picture, of the scores of people who found it the Island of the Blest. It was, for the owners felt that they held its beauty and its healing airs in trust. Not only did Agassiz, Holmes, Grant and Sheridan and Cleveland, find refreshment there, but wounded officers, many a convalescent from severe illness, tired teachers and clerks and housekeepers, an endless train of young people, came, and went away the richer. None were abashed ; their self-respect was increased, and their modesty too. The life was simple and out of doors; the dress coat and butler were unknown. Young men, and girls too, were drawn out, to see what they could do ; it was assumed that they were efficient, so they learned to be. They were put on a horse for the first time, given an oar in a pull across Wood’s Hole, a billhook to clear a path with Mr. Forbes, who later might ask them to copy a letter or to do a commission for him in town on their return. He talked with them quietly ; saw if they had courage and common sense in such chances as occur on land or sea. and whether they could observe and report accurately, beginning with the direction of the wind when he first came down in the morning. This treatment and their observation of his own astonishing performance put every one on his mettle. The young man, questioned by Mr. Forbes, riding through the woods, felt as if he were in the ballad where the Earl before the charge did him the honor to ask,

and was ready to answer,

Thomas Carlyle held modern education lightly, saying that to see a real Master, whether of war or policy or a trade, was worth all the schools, and praised the mediaeval method which sent the youth from his home to serve a knight, first as page and then as squire, so that when he won his spurs he should know well how the first gentleman of the shire conducted himself in the castle, the field, the council, in every chance of peace or war. A week under Mr. Forbes’s roof was of more worth than a year of college to many a boy; moreover, if he stood the kindly tests well, the young man often found a gate to life unexpectedly opened to him thereafter. It is said that Secretary Stanton, who already knew the patriotism and astonishing resources of this good citizen, when he saw his tireless riding said to his daughter, “ What a major general that man would make! ” It certainly was not of his military carriage that the Secretary spoke, for Mr. Forbes, though a fearless rider, with a firm seat and delicate hand, was not an ornamental figure on horseback. He loved an intelligent, spirited horse, however, with good, if not pure blood. The names of his horses, taken from Scott or the ballads, showed the strain of romance that ran through his fabric. But neither his horses nor guns nor boats were too good to use. It often happened that an invalid, or a professional man, or an impecunious youth in his neighborhood was asked, as a favor, to keep one of his horses exercised or trained, if it was young; and if old, to see that it had a good home and regular use while it lived. His yachts, rather than that they should lie at the wharf, were often put at the use of others for an excursion, sometimes of railroad employees or of his servants. It was pleasant to see the willing and zealous, not obsequious, service that Mr. Forbes, by his manifest force, intelligence, and kindly tact, received wherever he went. It was not for fees, though these were generous. Al ways plainly clothed, and confident, and human in address, he did not disafl’ect workingmen in advance.

Mr. Forbes was a great traveler, yet business always accompanied pleasure. He was temperate, and not too curious in his meat and drink, and he defined intemperance as " eating or drinking what you did n’t want because it was there, or because you had paid for it.” He slept and worked well on cars and ships, and at a pinch any smack or wagon would serve to speed him on his way. But in travel it was noticeable that he usually took some one outside his family along, often an invalid, explaining how pleasant and serviceable the friend’s company would be. Also, — and his son, the colonel, inherited the trait, — he naturally looked out for lone women, sick or unprotected persons, in the same conveyances with him. On his voyage of life, his great ship took the small craft round him in tow as a matter of course.

Repose was left out of Mr. Forbes’s composition. Varied activity was a necessity. He worked to the end. In the last ten years, bodily infirmities that would have made another man bedridden closed in upon him. Yet he worked on, and until his death remained chairman of the directors of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, giving sound advice on matters connected with railways even when in other things his mind was growing dim. His eyes were darkened and his ears failed, but still his active mind made him strive to work. Even in the last year of his life, when he was almost blind and painfully infirm, he rode his fine horse out on the hills of Naushon, attended of course by one or more persons, and would lie and sleep for a time under the great beech trees. When the news of the war with Spain was read to him, he said, “ No, this is no war for humanity. It is a political game to keep a party in power,” and wished to hear no more of the sorry business.

In the late days of September last he sadly bade farewell to the Mansion House, and sailed out of the harbor of his loved island, knowing that he should not return. Years before, he had said that the thought of having his shell laid away in that bright forest, after the spirit had left it, would be pleasant to him, if he ever wasted a thought on its disposition, but added, “Yet I have no feeling on the subject, and would rather the poor mortal form should be forgotten, and only the picture of the inner man, lighted by such spirit and such affection as his friends could throw round it, remain for their memory.” He died on the 12th of October, 1898, at the age of eighty-five years. The words said of his kinsman in the eighteenth century may well be said of him : “ Our great pride and consolation is in the ever dear honor and open heart of Forbes. For him no descendant will ever have to blush or be ashamed. . . . His principles were as pure as his understanding was enlightened, and his concern for his country was not so much as suspected to be quickened by any regard to his own power or emolument.”

Edward Waldo Emerson.