Massachusetts and Washington

THE spirit of a country or a city is a thing about which it is easy to bandy words. It is, however, a thing which can be defined with clearness only in the terms of human lives. The student reads a treatise on national or local characteristics; but a race accepts John Bull and Brother Jonathan as personifications which answer essential questions of imagination and intelligence. The incessant demand of the mind is for the concrete. It is not upon deductions and theories that we insist, but upon examples, living figures which in themselves shall sum up the truth we are seeking. It is fortunate, therefore, that the American citizen who wishes to know more about Massachusetts, especially in her relation to the national government, may turn at this time to two full-length biographical portraits of the first consequence. In Andrew ¹ he will find the figure of the man who in his chief magistracy preeminently typified the spirit of Massachusetts throughout the heroic period of civil war. Senator Hoar,² who tells his own story, stands, on the other hand, as the typical representative of his state, through thirty-five continuous years of sendee at the national capital, where he has been concerned with the legislation and the policies which in many instances had their origin in the war that Andrew helped to fight. In the lives of these two men much of the national history of Massachusetts during the past half century may be found.

John Albion Andrew was one of the Americans characteristically raised up for a great emergency. It has become a commonplace of our history that new occasions not only teach new duties, but produce the men to perform them. No doubt a few village Hampdens and guiltless Cromwells have been overlooked; yet, thanks to the flexibility of our institutions, enough of them have always been found for the work in hand. If Andrew could have foreseen the task he had to do in the world, and had set about his preparation for it by the most elective course of training, he could hardly have been better equipped. The inheritance and cultivation of the ethical tendencies of his New England nature, the simplicity of his country boyhood and of his training at Bowdoin College, the native gift of persuasive public speech, the religious spirit, the belief in prayer, that love of poetry, which in his busiest days made the Golden Treasury his constant traveling companion, that practical philanthropy which turned so much of his law practice into the unremunerative service of the friendless, above all, that zeal for human freedom which placed him squarely in the ranks of anti-slavery reformers, — these, with a supreme gift of “getting on” with men and women, were eminent qualifications for his office. Not all of them, to be sure, were immediately counted in his favor by the conservative element; but in the full record of his life, their value stands clearly forth.

The governorship of any important state at any time is a sufficiently complicated task. Nothing less than a statesman was needed to rule and direct Massachusetts in a period when the chief command of her land and sea forces became a pressing military problem, when the relations between the state and the national officials were under constant strain, when public opinion itself was a thing of distracting uncertainty. The tests of Andrew’s statesmanship came thick and fast, and out of the abundance of his equipment he promptly met them. To enumerate either the tests or the successive actions by which he proved himself their equal would be to summarize the greater part of Mr. Pearson’s work. But there are certain points which separate themselves from the total story, and indicate that outline of Andrew’s personality and work which becomes the picture to be remembered. No one of these points is more striking than the utter independence of the man. It was an inherent part of his nature to see things in their moral bearing. The full development of such a nature involves the necessity of arriving at one’s own conclusions, and acting upon them in spite of opposition. At different periods Andrew was bound to displease the “hunker” portion of the community repeating its cry of peace, peace, when there was no peace, and — no less surely — to disappoint the radical friends of his unofficial days through what seemed to them a stultifying timidity and caution. The truth, in almost every instance, was that he knew the very heart of his people, and took the course which that heart finally approved. To this end — and here is another of the distinguishing points — he drew to himself, by his wisdom or rare good fortune, a group of friends and advisers who rendered him inestimable help. His very independence stood the stronger chance of bearing the genuine brand because at his side stood such men as John Murray Forbes, Henry Lee, Jr., and the members of that loyal staff which surrounds him in the photograph, doubly humanized by our knowledge that a chorus of Johnny Schmoker was needed to keep the exhausted governor awake through the taking of the piclure. Indeed, the human qualities of the man, in both his public and his private relations, shine through the print of many pages. The “crazy optimism” of which Henry Lee, Jr., signing himself “Your old blackguard,” accused him is not the least lovable of his attributes. Of course it led him into errors, one of the most disastrous of which was the original placing of power in the hands of “Ben” Butler. At the time of this mistake, however, there was some excuse for optimism regarding one whose shadow had not fallen in all its darkness on the pages of Massachusetts history; and there were considerations of expediency which must have made the appointment seem, at the time it was made, an entirely justifiable piece of “practical politics.” In view of Andrew’s impatience with red tape, his zeal for the abolition of slavery as the vital object of the war, his paternal — almost motherly — care and thought for the soldiers of Massachusetts, the wonder is that motives of expediency controlled him as often as they did. In his dealings with the War Department, perhaps more than in any other relation, his self-control was severely taxed, sometimes beyond the point prescribed by governmental etiquette. If he chafed inwardly against the deliberateness of some of Lincoln’s policies, and for a considerable time failed to see in the President the greatness which history has awarded him, he found himself often in good company. In the political campaign of 1864 he could even write to Horace Greeley: “Mr. Lincoln ought to lead the country. But he is essentially lacking in the quality of leadership, which is a gift of God and not a device of man. Without this, his other qualities, as an able and devoted magistrate and most estimable citizen, leave it necessary for us to make a certain allowance for a measure of success which, under the more magnetic influence of a positive man, of clear purpose and more prophetic instinct, would surely be ours.” Such words as these, from the most efficient of “war governors,” fling us with a certain rude emphasis into the position from which some shrewd eyes saw Lincoln forty years ago. Mr. Pearson makes a fair statement of the case when he says: “In order to understand Andrew’s position, it is necessary to attempt to gain the contemporary and transient view of the President that men had in 1864, — as if, for example, we should undertake to make an estimate of Thackeray when Esmond was yet to be written.” To the clearness of this contemporary view the present biography is a notable contribution.

Still another point which stands apart in the panorama of Andrew’s life is the untimeliness of its end, — when he had lived but forty-nine years. In five of those years, to be sure, he had done a work which few men surpass in twenty. Yet there was much remaining to be done, in solving some of the national problems which were the legacy of war. For the special problem of reconstruction he stood ready to plead for “the maintenance of equality between free citizens concerning civil rights, and the distribution of privileges according to capacity and desert, and not according to the accidents of birth.” It was his conviction, also, that the leaders of the conquered South should remain its leaders under the new dispensation. If these methods could have been attempted, — but ifs are fruitless. There were other words of Andrew, capable of the broadest application, written but a few weeks before his death, and worthy to be had in remembrance by every public servant: —

“In respect to principles, I am always radical. In respect to measures, I am always conservative. Principles are of God. They are founded in the Eternal fitness, harmony and reality of the Universe, over which he presides. Measures, on the other hand, are human devices by which men attempt to actualize in human affairs the principles they perceive and believe in. We can safely trust a principle, and go [to] its very roots, because it is — when true at all-radically true.

“ But we do well to be conservative in our measures; carefully bolding on to the best results of past experience, and seeking the combined wisdom both of ages and of many minds, instead of implicitly following the would-be leader of the hour.”

All that has been said has to do with the substance of Mr. Pearson’s work rather than with its spirit and manner. In them lay the difficulties; the very nature of the substance guaranteed the interest of most of the facts which cried for presentation. But the manner in which they are presented reveals an uncommon grasp of the big requisites for the task, and a commensurate discretion in handling its delicate phases. The spirit of Andrew and of the time in which he lived — a time in which it was possible for the mother of Colonel Shaw to write such a letter as that which the second volume contains — is a spirit with which one could hardly deal, and escape infection. Mr. Pearson has truly caught it and given it forth. Such chapters as “War,” “The Regiments of 1861,”and most of “The Negro Soldier” make the time and its qualities live again. In this achievement who shall say that the author has not had a positive advantage in writing of a generation before his own? Besides producing a memorable biography, Mr. Pearson has brought a new argument to the belief that the best records of the nineteenth century are to be produced in the twentieth, by men far enough removed from the scenes of which they write, and well enough endowed with a sense of proportion, to sift the essential from the unessential, and to preserve what future generations are likely to need.

In the nature of the case Senator Hoar’s two generous volumes belong to that other class of books, — the quorum pars magna fui variety. He frankly recognizes the dangers besetting elderly gentlemen who relate their own experiences, and tells the story of the boy who addressed his reminiscent parent, “ Papa, did anybody help you to put down the Rebellion?” Thus disarmed, one can venture little by way of adverse criticism in the one direction in which it might most fairly be indulged. That little shall be comprised in the inquiry whether Mr. Hoar has not employed perhaps too facile a method in reproducing so many of his speeches, letters, and the letters of thanks from those to whom the speeches were sent. All these documents have a contemporary value of their own; yet there is ground for an honest belief that the essence of them would have served the autobiographer’s purpose better than their entirety. The. portrait drawn with the smallest number of lines is generally the most effective. One must hasten to say, however, that in spite of the fact that a single volume might almost have been made to do the work of two, the picture of himself which Mr. Hoar has produced is vivid and impressive.

Against the background of his boyhood and formative years, any standards but those of idealism would have been out of place. In point of time it is worth noting that Andrew was only eight years his senior. In respect of surroundings, there was the town of Concord. Its familiar figures are the accepted types of New England idealism. It was no mean part of an education to share the influences which they partook and created. Mr. Hoar has shown what he derived from these influences, if only by recording his appreciation of such figures, not widely known, as Charles Emerson and the learned teacher, Sarah Ripley. From Concord he carried to Harvard College a capacity for benefiting from contact both with the really remarkable men who instructed the Harvard youth of his day, and with a band of undergraduates destined to achieve true distinction in their several callings. We all know what a traveler needs to carry with him in order to bring back anything worth preserving. Through the early excursions in study and companionship Mr. Hoar was a traveler of the fortunate class.

Devoting himself to the practice of law at Worcester, he soon found himself forced by circumstance rather than deliberate choice into the arena of politics. As a Free Soil member of the Massachusetts legislature, he naturally became an early and warm adherent of the Republican party, which to him was the embodiment of all the political ideals of his young manhood. For one endowed with just the nature which this autobiography reflects, allegiance to his chosen party through good and evil report has been precisely as natural as his first devotion to its cause. There is an expectation, expressed with frequency and a certain cynicism in Massachusetts, that Senator Hoar, after speaking against the policies of his party, will inevitably vote for them. For this expectation Senator Hoar’s apologia for his political course gives sufficient warrant. But he is, indeed, a cynical critic who can read these volumes and dismiss their plea for consistent party allegiance as a plea which springs from anything but a thoughtful sincerity. One may be sure that the two paragraphs about to be quoted were written after grave consideration. It is only fair to repeat and remember them generously. They are: —

“1. I have never in my life cast a vote or done an act in legislation that I did not at the time believe to be right, and that I am not now willing to avow and to defend and debate with any champion, of sufficient importance, who desires to attack it at any time and in any presence.

“2. Whether I am right or wrong in my opinion as to the duty of acting with and adherence to party, it is the result, not of emotion or attachment or excitement, but of as cool, calculating, sober and deliberate reflection as I am able to give to any question of conduct or duty. Many of the things I have done in this world which have been approved by other men, or have tended to give me any place in the respect of my countrymen, have been done in opposition, at the time, to the party to which I belonged. But I have made that opposition without leaving the party. In every single instance, unless the question of the Philippine Islands shall prove an exception, and that is not a settled question yet, the party has come round, in the end, to my way of thinking. I have been able by adhering to the Republican Party to accomplish, in my humble judgment, tenfold the good that has been accomplished by men who have ten times more ability and capacity for such service, who have left the party.”

To these deliberate statements Senator Hoar adds a brief and striking catalogue of powerful men, and of good measures passed without their aid. These men, if called to account, would doubtless give excellent reasons for the faith that was in them, and separated them from the Republican party. Now who shall arbitrate ? Perhaps, after all, the mere voter whose first concern is to “vote right” at successive elections is in the most enviable position. Certain it is that Senator Hoar, whose case deserves an unprejudiced hearing, is content with the argument his course has made for him at the bar of history. “ I have no regret,” he declares, “and no desire to blot out anything I have said or done, or to change any vote I have given.”

The important episodes of recent American history with which the future historian will deal more intelligently by reason of this book are far too many to enumerate. They cover a wide range, and involve writer and reader in a mass of significant reminiscence, of men quite as much as of events. There is much that is entertaining, and all of it is set down with great good nature. Seriousness has its due place in such discussions — to name but two — as those of the Philippine question and of the problems of reconstruction. What Senator Hoar has written of the attitude of his party toward the conquered South strangely supplements the passage in the Life of Andrew dealing with the same subject. Andrew, as we have seen, had his positive views of what should be done. Senator Hoar records the failure of one of the chief purposes of those whose plan did not coincide with Andrew’s. The complete system of education at national expense, an essential part of the reconstruction policy of Sumner and Grant, was never effected. To something which may take its place perhaps the South is working its own way at last. In another important episode it is the Life of Andrew which provides the supplement to the fuller record of Senator Hoar. This is the story of Butler’s career. In writing of it Mr. Hoar shows how easily his seriousness may pass into a righteous indignation which time does not cool. The political and the military records of Butler are handled with equal freedom. It is an unexpected achievement of these two biographical works, dealing with the best products of Massachusetts, that the figure of Butler is presented with such inexorable clearness.

But it is not in the power of one such figure to obscure the definite image of the holder of high official position in Massachusetts which these two works create. In Governor Andrew and Senator Hoar alike the reader recognizes a characteristic local product. If the reader be a Massachusetts man he looks with a satisfaction, somewhat irritating to the rest of the world, upon what his state has produced, and tells himself he has a dozen friends in whom the native spirit might, under favoring circumstances, have been brought to issues no less admirable. If the reader be not of Massachusetts he may hold any one of a dozen opinions. But he will be unique amongst Americans if he deny the privilege of the floor to the senior senator from Massachusetts when he rises to say on behalf of her public men through nearly three centuries of history: “They have never been afraid to trust the people and they have never been afraid to withstand the people. They knew well the great secret of all statesmanship, that he that withstands the people on fit occasions is commonly the man who trusts them most, and always in the end the man they trust most.”