Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

At the time of communicating this information to Congress, the President was far advanced in a treaty with Texas for her annexation to the United States – an event which would be war itself with Mexico, without any declaration on her part, or our part – she being then at war with Texas as a revolted province, and endeavoring to reclaim her to her former subjection. Still prepossessed with his idea of a national currency of paper money, in preference to gold and silver, the President recurs to his previous recommendation for an Exchequer bank – regrets its rejection by Congress, – vaunts its utility – and thinks that it would still aid, in a modified form, in restoring the currency to a sound and healthy state.

"In view of the disordered condition of the currency at the time, and the high rates of exchange between different parts of the country, I felt it to be incumbent on me to present to the consideration of your predecessors a proposition conflicting in no degree with the constitution or the rights of the States, and having the sanction – not in detail, but in principle – of some of the eminent men who had preceded me in the executive office. That proposition contemplated the issuing of treasury notes of denominations not less than five, nor more than one hundred dollars, to be employed in payment of the obligations of the government in lieu of gold and silver, at the option of the public creditor, and to an amount not exceeding $15,000,000. It was proposed to make them receivable every where, and to establish at various points depositories of gold and silver, to be held in trust for the redemption of such notes, so as to insure their convertibility into specie. No doubt was entertained that such notes would have maintained a par value with gold and silver – thus furnishing a paper currency of equal value over the Union, thereby meeting the just expectations of the people, and fulfilling the duties of a parental government. Whether the depositories should be permitted to sell or purchase bills under very limited restrictions, together with all its other details, was submitted to the wisdom of Congress, and was regarded as of secondary importance. I thought then, and think now, that such an arrangement would have been attended with the happiest results. The whole matter of the currency would have been placed where, by the constitution, it was designed to be placed – under the immediate supervision and control of Congress. The action of the government would have been independent of all corporations; and the same eye which rests unceasingly on the specie currency, and guards it against adulteration, would also have rested on the paper currency, to control and regulate its issues, and protect it against depreciation. Under all the responsibilities attached to the station which I occupy, and in redemption of a pledge given to the last Congress, at the close of its first session, I submitted the suggestion to its consideration at two consecutive sessions. The recommendation, however, met with no favor at its hands. While I am free to admit that the necessities of the times have since become greatly ameliorated, and that there is good reason to hope that the country is safely and rapidly emerging from the difficulties and embarrassments which every where surrounded it in 1841, yet I cannot but think that its restoration to a sound and healthy condition would be greatly expedited by a resort to the expedient in a modified form."

Such were still the sighings and longings of Mr. Tyler for a national currency of paper money. They were his valedictory to that delusive cheat. Before he had an opportunity to present another annual message, the Independent Treasury System, and the revived gold currency had done their office – had given ease and safety to the government finances, had restored prosperity and confidence to the community, and placed the country in a condition to dispense with all small money paper currency – all under twenty dollars – if it only had the wisdom to do so.

CHAPTER CXXVIII.

EXPLOSION OF THE GREAT GUN ON BOARD THE PRINCETON MAN-OF-WAR: THE KILLED AND WOUNDED

On the morning of the 28th of February, a company of some hundred guests, invited by Commodore Stockton, including the President of the United States, his cabinet, members of both Houses of Congress, citizens and strangers, with a great number of ladies, headed by Mrs. Madison, ex-presidentess, repaired on board the steamer man-of-war Princeton, then lying in the river below the city, to witness the working of her machinery (a screw propeller), and to observe the fire of her two great guns – throwing balls of 225 pounds each. The vessel was the pride and pet of the commodore, and having undergone all the trials necessary to prove her machinery and her guns, was brought round to Washington for exhibition to the public authorities. The day was pleasant – the company numerous and gay. On the way down to the vessel a person whispered in my ear that Nicholas Biddle was dead. It was my first information of that event, and heard not without reflections on the instability and shadowy fleetingness of the pursuits and contests of this life. Mr. Biddle had been a Power in the State, and for years had baffled or balanced the power of the government. He had now vanished, and the news of his death came in a whisper, not announced in a tumult of voices; and those who had contended with him might see their own sudden and silent evanescence in his. It was a lesson upon human instability, and felt as such; but without a thought or presentiment that, before the sun should go down, many of that high and gay company should vanish from earth – and the one so seriously impressed barely fail to be of the number.

The vessel had proceeded down the river below the grave of Washington – below Mount Vernon – and was on her return, the machinery working beautifully, the guns firing well, and the exhibition of the day happily over. It was four-o'clock in the evening, and a sumptuous collation had refreshed and enlivened the guests. They were still at the table, when word was brought down that one of the guns was to be fired again; and immediately the company rose to go on deck and observe the fire – the long and vacant stretch in the river giving full room for the utmost range of the ball. The President and his cabinet went foremost, this writer among them, conversing with Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy. The President was called back: the others went on, and took their places on the left of the gun – pointing down the river. The commodore was with this group, which made a cluster near the gun, with a crowd behind, and many all around. I had continued my place by the side of Mr. Gilmer, and of course was in the front of the mass which crowded up to the gun. The lieutenant of the vessel, Mr. Hunt, came and whispered in my ear that I would see the range of the ball better from the breech; and proposed to change my place. It was a tribute to my business habits, being indebted for this attention to the interest which I had taken all day in the working of the ship, and the firing of her great guns. The lieutenant placed me on a carronade carriage, some six feet in the rear of the gun, and in the line of her range. Senator Phelps had stopped on my left, with a young lady of Maryland (Miss Sommerville) on his arm. I asked them to get on the carriage to my right (not choosing to lose my point of observation): which they did – the young lady between us, and supported by us both, with the usual civil phrases, that we would take care of her. The lieutenant caused the gun to be worked, to show the ease and precision with which her direction could be changed and then pointed down the river to make the fire – himself and the gunners standing near the breech on the right. I opened my mouth wide to receive the concussion on the inside as well as on the outside of the head and ears, so as to lessen the force of the external shock. I saw the hammer pulled back – heard a tap – saw a flash – felt a blast in the face, and knew that my hat was gone: and that was the last that I knew of the world, or of myself, for a time, of which I can give no account. The first that I knew of myself, or of any thing afterwards, was rising up at the breech of the gun, seeing the gun itself split open – two seamen, the blood oozing from their ears and nostrils, rising and reeling near me – Commodore Stockton, hat gone, and face blackened, standing bolt upright, staring fixedly upon the shattered gun. I had heard no noise – no more than the dead. I only knew that the gun had bursted from seeing its fragments. I felt no injury, and put my arm under the head of a seaman, endeavoring to rise, and falling back. By that time friends had ran up, and led me to the bow – telling me afterwards that there was a supernatural whiteness in the face and hands – all the blood in fact having been driven from the surface. I saw none of the killed: they had been removed before consciousness returned. All that were on the left had been killed, the gun bursting on that side, and throwing a large fragment, some tons weight, on the cluster from which I had been removed, crushing the front rank with its force and weight. Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State; Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy; Commodore Kennon, of the navy; Mr. Virgil Maxey, late United States chargé at the Hague; Mr. Gardiner of New York, father-in-law that would have been to Mr. Tyler – were the dead. Eleven seamen were injured – two mortally. Commodore Stockton was scorched by the burning powder, and stunned by the concussion; but not further injured. I had the tympanum of the left ear bursted through, the warm air from the lungs issuing from it at every breathing. Senator Phelps and the young lady on my right, had fallen inwards towards the gun, but got up without injury. We all three had fallen inwards, as into a vacuum. The President's servant who was next me on the left was killed. Twenty feet of the vessels bulwark immediately behind me was blown away. Several of the killed had members of their family on board – to be deluded for a little while, by the care of friends, with the belief that those so dear to them were only hurt. Several were prevented from being in the crushed cluster by the merest accidents – Mr. Tyler being called back – Mr. Seaton not finding his hat in time – myself taken out of it the moment before the catastrophe. Fortunately there were physicians on board to do what was right for the injured, and to prevent blood-letting, so ready to be called for by the uninformed, and so fatal when the powers of life were all on the retreat. Gloomily and sad the gay company of the morning returned to the city, and the calamitous intelligence flew over the land. For myself, I had gone through the experience of a sudden death, as if from lightning, which extinguishes knowledge and sensation, and takes one out of the world without thought or feeling. I think I know what it is to die without knowing it – and that such a death is nothing to him that revives. The rapid and lucid working of the mind to the instant of extinction, is the marvel that still astonishes me. I heard the tap – saw the flash – felt the blast – and knew nothing of the explosion. I was cut off in that inappreciable point of time which intervened between the flash and the fire – between the burning of the powder in the touch-hole, and the burning of it in the barrel of the gun. No mind can seize that point of time – no thought can measure it; yet to me it was distinctly marked, divided life from death – the life that sees, and feels, and knows – from death (for such it was for the time), which annihilates self and the world. And now is credible to me, or rather comprehensible, what persons have told me of the rapid and clear working of the mind in sudden and dreadful catastrophes – as in steamboat explosions, and being blown into the air, and have the events of their lives pass in review before them, and even speculate upon the chances of falling on the deck, and being crushed, or falling on the water and swimming: and persons recovered from drowning, and running their whole lives over in the interval between losing hope and losing consciousness.

CHAPTER CXXIX.

RECONSTRUCTION OF MR. TYLER'S CABINET

This was the second event of the kind during the administration of Mr. Tyler – the first induced by the resignation of Messrs. Ewing, Crittenden, Bell, and Badger, in 1841; the second, by the deaths of Messrs. Upshur and Gilmer by the explosion of the Princeton gun. Mr. Calhoun was appointed Secretary of State; John C. Spencer of New York, Secretary of the Treasury; William Wilkins of Pennsylvania, Secretary at War; John Y. Mason, of Virginia, Secretary of the Navy; Charles A. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, Postmaster General; John Nelson, of Maryland, Attorney General. The resignation of Mr. Spencer in a short time made a vacancy in the Treasury, which was filled by the appointment of George M. Bibb, of Kentucky.

CHAPTER CXXX.

DEATH OF SENATOR PORTER, OF LOUISIANA: EULOGIUM OF MR. BENTON

Mr Benton. I rise to second the motion which has been made to render the last honors of this chamber to our deceased brother senator, whose death has been so feelingly announced; and in doing so, I comply with an obligation of friendship, as well as conform to the usage of the Senate. I am the oldest personal friend which the illustrious deceased could have upon this floor, and amongst the oldest which he could have in the United States. It is now, sir, more than the period of a generation – more than the third of a century – since the then emigrant Irish boy, Alexander Porter, and myself, met on the banks of the Cumberland River, at Nashville, in the State of Tennessee; when commenced a friendship which death only dissolved on his part. We belonged to a circle of young lawyers and students at law, who had the world before them, and nothing but their exertions to depend upon. First a clerk in his uncle's store, then a student at law, and always a lover of books, the young Porter was one of that circle, and it was the custom of all that belonged to it to spend their leisure hours in the delightful occupation of reading. History, poetry, elocution, biography, the ennobling speeches of the living and the dead, were our social recreation; and the youngest member of the circle was one of our favorite readers. He read well, because he comprehended clearly, felt strongly, remarked beautifully upon striking passages, and gave a new charm to the whole with his rich, mellifluous Irish accent. It was then that I became acquainted with Ireland and her children, read the ample story of her wrongs, learnt the long list of her martyred patriots' names, sympathized in their fate, and imbibed the feelings for a noble and oppressed people which the extinction of my own life can alone extinguish.

Time and events dispersed that circle. The young Porter, his law license signed, went to the Lower Mississippi; I to the Upper. And, years afterwards, we met on this floor, senators from different parts of that vast Louisiana which was not even a part of the American Union at the time that he and I were born. We met here in the session of 1833-'34 – high party times, and on opposite sides of the great party line; but we met as we had parted years before. We met as friends; and, though often our part to reply to each other in the ardent debate, yet never did we do it with other feelings than those with which we were wont to discuss our subjects of recreation on the banks of the Cumberland.

I mention these circumstances, Mr. President, because, while they are honorable to the deceased, they are also justificatory to myself for appearing as the second to the motion which has been made. A personal friendship of almost forty years gives me a right to appear as a friend to the deceased on this occasion, and to perform the office which the rules and the usage of the Senate permit, and which so many other senators would so cordially and so faithfully perform.

In performing this office, I have, literally, but little less to do but to second the motion of the senator from Louisiana (Mr. Barrow). The mover has done ample justice to his great subject. He also had the advantage of long acquaintance and intimate personal friendship with the deceased. He also knew him on the banks of the Cumberland, though too young to belong to the circle of young lawyers and law students, of which the junior member – the young Alexander Porter – was the chief ornament and delight. But he knew him – long and intimately – and has given evidence of that knowledge in the just, the feeling, the cordial, and impressive eulogium which he has just delivered on the life and character of his deceased friend and colleague. He has presented to you the matured man, as developed in his ripe and meridian age: he has presented to you the finished scholar – the eminent lawyer – the profound judge – the distinguished senator – the firm patriot – the constant friend – the honorable man – the brilliant converser – the social, cheerful, witty companion. He has presented to you the ripe fruit, of which I saw the early blossom, and of which I felt the assurance more than thirty years ago, that it would ripen into the golden fruit which we have all beheld.

Mr. President, this is no vain or empty ceremonial in which the Senate is now engaged. Honors to the illustrious dead go beyond the discharge of a debt of justice to them, and the rendition of consolation to their friends: they become lessons and examples for the living. The story of their humble beginning and noble conclusion, is an example to be followed, and an excitement to be felt. And where shall we find an example more worthy of imitation, or more full of encouragement, than in the life and character of Alexander Porter? – a lad of tender age – an orphan with a widowed mother and younger children – the father martyred in the cause of freedom – an exile before he was ten years old – an ocean to be crossed, and a strange land to be seen, and a wilderness of a thousand miles to be penetrated before he could find a resting-place for the sole of his foot: then education to be acquired, support to be earned, and even citizenship to be gained, before he could make his own talents available to his support: conquering all these difficulties by his own exertions, and the aid of an affectionate uncle – (I will name him, for the benefactor of youth deserves to be named, and named with honor in the highest places) – with no other aid but that of an uncle's kindness, Mr. Alexander Porter, sen., merchant of Nashville, also an emigrant from Ireland, and full of the generous qualities which belong to the children of that soil: this lad, an exile and an orphan from the Old World, thus starting in the New World, with every thing to gain before it could be enjoyed, soon attained every earthly object, either brilliant or substantial, for which we live and struggle in this life – honors, fortune, friends; the highest professional and political distinction; long a supreme judge in his adopted State; twice a senator in the Congress of the United States – wearing all his honors fresh and glowing to the last moment of his life – and the announcement of his death followed by the adjournment of the two Houses of the American Congress! What a noble and crowning conclusion to a beginning so humble, and so apparently hopeless! Honors to such a life – the honors which we now pay to the memory of Senator Porter – are not mere offerings to the dead, or mere consolations to the feelings of surviving friends and relations; they go further, and become incentives and inducements to the ingenuous youth of the present and succeeding generations, encouraging their hopes, and firing their spirits with a generous emulation.

Nor do the benefits of these honors stop with individuals, nor even with masses, or generations of men. They are not confined to persons, but rise to institutions – to the noble republican institutions under which such things can be! Republican government itself – that government which holds man together in the proud state of equality and liberty – this government is benefited by the exhibition of the examples such as we now celebrate, and by the rendition of the honors such as we now pay. Our deceased brother senator has honored and benefited our free republican institutions by the manner in which he has advanced himself under them; and we make manifest that benefit by the honors which we pay him. He has given a practical illustration of the working of our free, and equal, and elective form of government; and our honors proclaim the nature of that working. What is done in this chamber is not done in a corner, but on a lofty eminence, seen of all people. Europe, as well as America, will see how our form of government has worked in the person of an orphan exiled boy, seeking refuge in the land which gives to virtue and talent all that they will ever ask – the free use of their own exertions for their own advancement.

Our deceased brother was not an American citizen by accident of birth; he became so by the choice of his own will, and by the operation of our laws. The events of his life, and the business of this day, shows this title to citizenship to be as valid in our America as it was in the great republic of antiquity. I borrow the thought, not the language of Cicero, in his pleading for the poet Archias, when I place the citizen who becomes so by law and choice on an equal footing with the citizen who becomes so by chance. And, in the instance before us, we may say that our adopted citizen has repaid us for the liberality of our laws; that he has added to the stock of our national character by the contributions which he has brought to it in the purity of his private life, the eminence of his public services, the ardor of his patriotism, and the elegant productions of his mind.

And here let me say – and I say it with pride and satisfaction – our deceased brother senator loved and admired his adopted country, with a love and admiration increasing with his age, and with his better knowledge of the countries of the Old World. A few years ago, and after he had obtained great honor and fortune in this country, he returned on a visit to his native land, and to the continent of Europe. It was an occasion of honest exultation for the orphan emigrant boy to return to the land of his fathers, rich in the goods of this life, and clothed with the honors of the American Senate. But the visit was a melancholy one to him. His soul sickened at the state of his fellow man in the Old World (I had it from his own lips), and he returned from that visit with stronger feelings than ever in favor of his adopted country. New honor awaited him here – that of a second election to the American Senate. But of this he was not permitted to taste; and the proceedings of this day announce his second brief elevation to this body, and his departure from it through the gloomy portals of death, and the radiant temple of enduring fame.

CHAPTER CXXXI.

NAVAL ACADEMY, AND NAVAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES

By scraps of laws, regulations, and departmental instructions, a Naval Academy has grown up, and a naval policy become established for the United States, without the legislative wisdom of the country having passed upon that policy, and contrary to its previous policy, and against its interest and welfare. A Naval Academy, with 250 pupils, and annually coming off in scores, makes perpetual demand for ships and commissions; and these must be furnished, whether required by the public service or not; and thus the idea of a limited navy, or of a naval peace establishment, is extinguished; and a perpetual war establishment in time of peace is growing up upon our hands. Prone to imitate every thing that was English, there was a party among us from the beginning which wished to make the Union, like Great Britain, a great naval power, without considering that England was an island, with foreign possessions; which made a navy a necessity of her position and her policy, while we were a continent, without foreign possessions, to whom a navy would be an expensive and idle encumbrance; without considering that England is often by her policy required to be aggressive, the United States never; without considering that England is a part of the European system, and subject to wars (to her always maritime) in which she has no interest, while the United States, in the isolation of their geographical position, and the independence of their policy, can have no wars but her own; and those defensive. On the other hand, there was a large party, and dominant after the presidential election of 1800, which saw great evil in emulating Great Britain as a naval power, and made head against that emulation in all the modes of acting on the public mind: speeches and votes in Congress, essays, legislative declarations. The most authoritative, and best considered declaration of the principles of this party, was made some fifty years ago, in the General Assembly of Virginia, in the era of her greatest men; and when the minds of these men, themselves fathers of the State, was most profoundly turned to the nature, policy, and working of our government. All have heard of the Virginia resolutions of 1798-'99, to restrain the unconstitutional and unwise action of the federal government: there were certain other cotemporaneous resolutions from the same source in relation to a navy, of which but little has been known; and which, for forty years, and now, are of more practical importance than the former. In the session of her legislature, 1799-1800, in their "Instructions to Senators," that General Assembly said: