Mr. Webster was born in 1782, in New-Hampshire. His father was a farmer who had retreated into the wilderness, and, as his son says, "had lighted his fire nearer to the North Pole than any other citizen of the States." The good man had, however, come down into the meadows at the foot of the hills before his second son Daniel was born. By the means which are within reach of almost every child in his country--the schools and colleges of easy access--Daniel became qualified for an apprenticeship to law; and by industry, great intellectual power, and some few fortunate accidents, rose into notice, employment, and eminence. He has for some years been considered the head of the federal party, and he is therefore now on the losing side in politics. His last great triumph was his exposure of the nullification doctrine in 1833.
Since that time he has maintained his influence in Congress by virtue of his great talents and former services; but, his politics being in opposition to those of the great body of the people, he is unable to do more than head the opposition in the Senate. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the last presidential election; and there seems little probability of his attainment of office, unless by his taking the lead of the abolition movement. For this it is probably now too late. The abolitionists have done the most difficult part of the work in rousing the public mind; they are chiefly of the democratic side in politics; and they do not entertain, I believe, that faith in the great leader of the federalists which would induce them to support his claims as the anti-slavery candidate for the next presidentship.
Mr. Webster owes his rise to the inst.i.tutions under which he lives; inst.i.tutions which open the race to the swift and the battle to the strong; but there is little in him that is congenial with them. He is aristocratic in his tastes and habits, and but little republican simplicity is to be recognised in him. Neither his private conversation nor his public transactions usually convey an impression that he is in earnest. When he is so, his power is majestic, irresistible; but his ambition for office, and for the good opinion of those who surround him, is seen too often in alternation with his love of ease and luxury to allow of his being confided in as he is admired. If it had been otherwise, if his moral had equalled his intellectual supremacy, if his aims had been as single as his reason is unclouded, he would long ago have carried all before him, and been the virtual monarch of the United States. But to have expected this would have been unreasonable. The very best men of any society are rarely or never to be found among its eminent statesmen; and it is not fair to look for them in offices which, in the present condition of human affairs, would yield to such no other choice than of speedy failure or protracted martyrdom. Taking great politicians as they are, Mr. Webster"s general consistency may be found not to have fallen below the average, though it has not been so remarkable as to ensure on his behalf a confidence at all to be compared with the universal admiration of his talents.
Mr. Webster speaks seldom in the Senate. When he does, it is generally on some const.i.tutional question, where his reasoning powers and knowledge are brought into play, and where his authority is considered so high, that he has the glorious satisfaction of knowing that he is listened to as an oracle by an a.s.semblage of the first men in the country. Previous to such an exercise he may be seen leaning back in his chair, not, as usual, biting the top of his pen, or twirling his thumbs, or bursting into sudden and transient laughter at Colonel Benton"s oratorical absurdities, but absent and thoughtful, making notes, and seeing nothing that is before his eyes. When he rises, his voice is moderate and his manner quiet, with the slightest possible mixture of embarra.s.sment; his right hand rests upon his desk, and the left hangs by his side. Before his first head is finished, however, his voice has risen so as to fill the chamber and ring again, and he has fallen into his favourite att.i.tude, with his left hand under his coat-tail, and the right in full action. At this moment the eye rests upon him as upon one under the true inspiration of seeing the invisible and grasping the impalpable. When the vision has pa.s.sed away, the change is astonishing.
He sits at his desk, writing letters or dreaming, so that he does not always discover when the Senate is going to a division. Some one of his party has not seldom to jog his elbow, and tell him that his vote is wanted.
There can scarcely be a stronger contrast than between the eloquence of Webster and that of Clay. Mr. Clay is now my personal friend; but I have a distinct recollection of my impression of his speaking while he was yet merely an acquaintance. His appearance is plain in the extreme, being that of a mere west-country farmer. He is tall and thin, with a weather-beaten complexion, small gray eyes, which convey an idea of something more than his well-known sagacity, even of slyness. It is only after much intercourse that Mr. Clay"s personal appearance can be discovered to do him any justice at all. All attempts to take his likeness have been in vain, though upward of thirty portraits of him, by different artists, were in existence when I was in America. No one has succeeded in catching the subtile expression of placid kindness, mingled with astuteness, which becomes visible to the eyes of those who are in daily intercourse with him. His mode of talking, deliberate and somewhat formal, including sometimes a grave humour and sometimes a gentle sentiment, very touching from the lips of a sagacious man of ambition, has but one fault, its obvious adaptation to the supposed state of mind of the person to whom it is addressed. Mr. Clay is a man of an irritable and impetuous nature, over which he has obtained a truly n.o.ble mastery.
His moderation is now his most striking characteristic; obtained, no doubt, at the cost of prodigious self-denial on his own part, and on that of his friends of some of the ease, naturalness, and self-forgetfulness of his manners and discourse. But his conversation is rich in information, and full charged with the spirit of justice and kindliness, rising, on occasion, to a moving magnanimity. By chances, of some of which he was totally unaware, I became acquainted with several acts of his life, political and private, which prove that his moderation is not the mere diffusion of oil upon the waves, but the true stilling of the storm of pa.s.sion and selfishness. The time may come when these acts may be told; but it has not yet arrived.
Mr. Clay is sometimes spoken of as a "disappointed statesman," and he would probably not object to call himself so; for it makes no part of his idea of dignity to pretend to be satisfied when he is sorry, or delighted with what he would fain have prevented; but he suffers only the genuine force of disappointment, without the personal mortification and loss of dignity which are commonly supposed to be included in it. He once held the balance of the Union in his hand, and now belongs to the losing party; he more than once expected to be president, and has now no chance of ever being so. Thus far he is a disappointed statesman; but, at the same time, he is in possession of more than an equivalent for what he has lost, not only in the disciplined moderation of his temper, but in the imperishable reality of great deeds done. No possession of office could now add to his dignity any more than the total neglect of the present generation of the people could detract from it. The fact that Mr. Clay"s political opinions are not in accordance with those now held by the great body of the people is no disgrace to him or them, while the dignity of his former services, supported by his present patience and quietness, places him far above compa.s.sion, and every feeling but respect and admiration. This admiration is exalted to enthusiasm in those who know how difficult it is to a man of Mr. Clay"s nature, who has lived in public all his life, to fall back into obscurity; an obscurity not relieved, alas! by the solace of a cheerful home. Few spectacles can be more n.o.ble than he is in that obscurity, discoursing of public men and affairs with a justice which no rivalship can impair, and a hopefulness which no personal disappointment can relax.
Mr. Clay is the son of a respectable clergyman in Virginia, and was born in April, 1777. His father died when he was quite young; and he was, in consequence, left to the common educational chances which befriend all the young citizens of the United States. He studied law after leaving the common school at which his education began, and settled early at Lexington, in Kentucky, where his residence has ever since been fixed.
His first important act was labouring diligently in favour of a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery in Kentucky, which was proposed in 1798. His exertions were, however, in vain. In 1803 he entered the legislature of his state, and in 1806 was sent, with the dignity of senator, to Washington, having not quite attained the requisite age. In 1809 he found occasion to advocate the principle of protection to domestic manufactures, which he has since had the very questionable honour of imbodying in his famous American System. In 1811 he became Speaker of the House of Representatives, and for three years exercised in that situation a powerful influence over the affairs of the country.
In 1814 he was appointed one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Ghent; and when that business was concluded, he repaired to London with his colleagues, Messrs. Adams and Gallatin, and there concluded the commercial convention which was made the basis of all the subsequent commercial arrangements between the United States and Europe.
In 1825 Mr. Clay accepted the appointment of Secretary of State under Mr. Adams, an act for which he is still extensively and vehemently blamed, but with how much or how little reason I do not pretend, from want of knowledge of the party politics of the time, to understand.
While in this office he did a great deal in procuring, with much labour and difficulty, a recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies in South America; a recognition which had the all-important effect of deterring the great European powers from their contemplated intervention on behalf of Spain. Mr. Clay"s speeches were read at the head of the armies of the South American republics; and if his name were forgotten everywhere else, it would stand in the history of their independence. Mr. Clay has since been a powerful advocate of internal improvements, and the framer of "the American System;" the founder of the protective policy, which I believe he is more proud of than of any act of his public life, while many others are justly amazed that a man of his sagacity should not see the unsoundness of the principle on which the whole system is based. Much more honour is due to him for the Compromise Bill, by which he virtually surrendered his system, and immediately put an end to the nullification struggle. Mr. Webster victoriously exposed the badness of the nullification principle, and Mr.
Clay removed the present cause of its exercise. The one humbled South Carolina to the dust on her nullification ground, the other left her in triumphant possession of her principle of free trade, while disarming her by a wise and well-principled compromise.
The one act of Mr. Clay"s public life for which he must be held to require pardon from posterity, is that by which he secured the continuance of slavery in Missouri, and, in consequence, its establishment in Arkansas and Florida; the one an admitted state, the other a territory destined to be so. Mr. Clay is not an advocate of slavery, though, instead of being a friend to abolition, he is a dupe of colonization. When he held the destinies of American slavery in his hand, he had, unhappily, more regard for precedent in human arrangements than for the spirit of the divine laws in the light of which such arrangements should be ever regarded. He acted to avert the conflict which cannot be averted. It was still to take place; it is now taking place, under less favourable circ.u.mstances; and his measure of expediency is already meeting with the retribution which ever follows upon the subordination of a higher principle to a lower. For many of his public acts Mr. Clay will be permanently honoured; with regard to others, the honour will be mingled with allowance for error in philosophy; for this one he will have to be forgiven.
Mr. Clay married an excellent woman, who is still living, the surviver of six daughters, taken away, some of them in the bloom of promise, and one in the maturity of virtue. The great stateman"s house is very desolate. He must seek in his own strength of soul, and in the love and honour with which his friends regard him, that good which has been denied to him in the latter days of his political and domestic life.
His recollections of Europe are very vivid and pleasurable. We spent many an hour of my visit to him in Kentucky in talking over our mutual English friends, till we forgot the time and s.p.a.ce we had both traversed since we parted from them, and looked up surprised to find ourselves, not at a London dinner-table, but in the wild woods of the West. Mr.
Clay has not kept up his knowledge of British life and politics so accurately as some of his brother-statesmen; but he is still full of the sayings of Castlereagh and Canning, of Lords Eldon and Stowell, of Mackintosh and Sydney Smith.
The finest speech I heard from Mr. Clay in the Senate was on the sad subject of the injuries of the Indians. He exposed the facts of the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia. He told how the lands in Georgia, guaranteed by solemn treaties to the Cherokees, had been surveyed and part.i.tioned off to white citizens of the state; that, though there is a nominal right of appeal awarded to the complainants, this is a mere mockery, as an acknowledgment of the right of Georgia to divide the lands is made a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the right; in other words, the Indians must lay down their claims on the threshold of the courts which they enter for the purpose of enforcing these claims!
The object of Mr. Clay"s plea was to have the Supreme Court open to the Cherokees, their case being, he contended, contemplated by the Const.i.tution. A minor proposition was that Congress should a.s.sist, with territory and appliances, a body of Cherokees who desired to emigrate beyond the Mississippi.
It was known that Mr. Clay would probably bring forward his great topic that day. Some of the foreign amba.s.sadors might be seen leaning against the pillars behind the chair, and many members of the other house appeared behind and in the pa.s.sages; and one sat on the steps of the platform, his hands clasped, and his eyes fixed on Mr. Clay, as if life hung upon his words. As many as could crowd into the gallery leaned over the bal.u.s.trade; and the lower circle was thronged with ladies and gentlemen, in the centre of whom stood a group of Cherokee chiefs, listening immoveably. I never saw so deep a moral impression produced by a speech. The best testimony to this was the disgust excited by the empty and abusive reply of the senator from Georgia, who, by-the-way, might be judged from his accent to have been about three months from the Green Island. This gentleman"s speech, however, showed us one good thing, that Mr. Clay is as excellent in reply as in proposition; prompt, earnest, temperate, and graceful. The chief characteristic of his eloquence is its earnestness. Every tone of his voice, every fibre of his frame bears testimony to this. His att.i.tudes are, from the beginning to the close, very graceful. His first sentences are homely, and given with a little hesitation and repet.i.tion, and with an agitation shown by a frequent putting on and taking off of the spectacles, and a trembling of the hands among the doc.u.ments on the desk. Then, as the speaker becomes possessed with his subject, the agitation changes its character, but does not subside. His utterance is still deliberate, but his voice becomes deliciously winning. Its higher tones disappointed me at first; but the lower ones, trembling with emotion, swelling and falling with the earnestness of the speaker, are very moving, and his whole manner becomes irresistibly persuasive. I saw tears, of which I am sure he was wholly unconscious, falling on his papers as he vividly described the woes and injuries of the aborigines. I saw Webster draw his hand across his eyes; I saw every one deeply moved except two persons, the vice-president, who yawned somewhat ostentatiously, and the Georgian senator, who was busy brewing his storm. I was amazed at the daring of this gentleman; at the audacity which could break up such a moral impression as this Cherokee tale, so told, had produced, by accusing Mr.
Clay of securing an interest in opposition to Georgia "by stage starts and theatric gesticulations." The audience were visibly displeased at having their feelings thus treated, in the presence even of the Cherokee chiefs; but Mr. Clay"s replies both to argument and abuse were so happy, and the Georgian"s rejoinder was so outrageous, that the business ended with a general burst of laughter. The propositions were to lie over till the next day; and, as I soon after left Washington, I never learned their ultimate fate.
The American Senate is a most imposing a.s.semblage. When I first entered it I thought I never saw a finer set of heads than the forty-six before my eyes: two only being absent, and the Union then consisting of twenty-four states. Mr. Calhoun"s countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair; the stern brow; the inflexible mouth; it is one of the most remarkable heads in the country. Next him sat his colleague, Mr. Preston, in singular contrast; stout in person, with a round, ruddy, good-humoured face, large blue eyes, and a wig, orange to-day, brown yesterday, and golden to-morrow. Near them sat Colonel Benton, a temporary people"s man, remarkable chiefly for his pomposity. He sat swelling amid his piles of papers and books, looking like a being designed by nature to be a good-humoured barber or innkeeper, but forced by fate to make himself into a mock-heroic senator. Opposite sat the transcendant Webster, with his square forehead and cavernous eyes; and behind him the homely Clay, with the face and figure of a farmer, but something of the air of a divine, from his hair being combed straight back from his temples. Near them sat Southard and Porter; the former astute and rapid in countenance and gesture; the latter strangely mingling a boyish fun and lightness of manner and glance with the sobriety suitable to the judge and the senator. His keen eye takes in everything that pa.s.ses; his extraordinary mouth, with its overhanging upper lip, has but to unfold into a smile to win laughter from the sourest official or demagogue. Then there was the bright _bonhommie_ of Ewing of Ohio, the most primitive-looking of senators; and the benign, religious gravity of Frelinghuysen; the gentlemanly air of Buchanan; the shrewdness of Poindexter; the somewhat melancholy simplicity of Silsbee; all these and many others were striking, and for nothing more that for their total unlikeness to each other. No English person who has not travelled over half the world can form an idea of such differences among men forming one a.s.sembly for the same purposes, and speaking the same language. Some were descended from Dutch farmers, some from French Huguenots, some from Scotch Puritans, some from English cavaliers, some from Irish chieftains. They were brought together out of law-courts, sugar-fields, merchants" stores, mountain farms, forests, and prairies.
The stamp of originality was impressed upon every one, and inspired a deep, involuntary respect. I have seen no a.s.sembly of chosen men, and no company of the highborn, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled, full-grown, original men, brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse const.i.tuencies.
In this splendid chamber, thus splendidly inhabited, we spent many hours of many weeks. Here I was able to gain no little knowledge of the state, political and other, of various parts of the country, from my large acquaintance among the members of the Senate. When dull official reports were read, and uninteresting local matters were discussed, or when the one interminable speaker, Benton, was on his legs, one member or another of the body would come and talk with us. I have heard certain of the members, stalking from their seats towards those of the ladies, compared to cranes in search of fish. The comparison is not a bad one.
I wished every day that the ladies would conduct themselves in a more dignified manner than they did in the Senate. They came in with waving plumes, and glittering in all the colours of the rainbow, causing no little bustle in the place, no little annoyance to the gentlemen spectators, and rarely sat still for any length of time. I know that these ladies are no fair specimen of the women who would attend parliamentary proceedings in any other metropolis. I know that they were the wives, daughters, and sisters of legislators, women thronging to Washington for purposes of convenience or pleasure, leaving their usual employments behind them, and seeking to pa.s.s away the time. I knew this, and made allowance accordingly; but I still wished that they could understand the gravity of such an a.s.sembly, and show so much respect to it as to repay the privilege of admission by striving to excite as little attention as possible, and by having the patience to sit still when they happened not to be amused, till some interruption gave them opportunity to depart quietly. If they had done this, Judge Porter would not have moved that they should be appointed seats in the gallery instead of below; and they would have been guiltless of furnishing a plea for the exclusion of women, who would probably make a better use of the privilege, from the galleries of other houses of parliament.
I was glad of an opportunity of hearing both the South Carolina senators soon after my arrival in Washington. They are listened to with close attention, and every indication of their state of feeling is watched with the interest which has survived the nullification struggle. Mr.
Calhoun on this occasion let us a little into his mind; Mr. Preston kept more closely to the question before the body. The question was whether a vote of censure of the president, recorded in the minutes of the proceedings of the Senate the preceding session, should be expunged. The motion for the expunging was made by Colonel Benton, and rejected, as it had been before, and has been since; though it was finally carried, to the agony of the opposition, at the end of last session (February, 1837).
Mr. Preston was out of health, and unable to throw his accustomed force into his speaking; but his effort showed us how beautiful his eloquence is in its way. It is not solid. His speeches, if taken to pieces, will be found to consist of a.n.a.logies and declamation; but his figures are sometimes very striking, and his manner is as graceful as anything so artificial can be. I never before understood the eloquence of action.
The action of public speakers in England, as far as I have observed (and perhaps I may be allowed to hint that deaf persons are peculiarly qualified to judge of the nature of such action), is of two kinds; the involuntary gesture which is resorted to for the relief of the nerves, which may or may not be expressive of meaning, and the action which is wholly the result of study; arbitrary, and not the birth of the sentiment; and, therefore, though pleasing, perhaps, to the eye, perplexing to the mind of the listener. Mr. Preston"s manner unites the advantages of these two methods, and avoids most of their evils. It is easy to see that he could not speak without an abundant use of action, and that he has therefore done wisely in making it a study. To an unaccustomed eye it appears somewhat exuberant; but it is exquisitely graceful, and far more than commonly appropriate. His voice is not good, but his person is tall, stout, and commanding, and his countenance animated.
Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently modulated.
But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Benton"s, that he wanted to be president, the force of his speaking became painful. He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had better have been spared, that he would not turn on his heel to be president; and that he had given up all for his own brave, magnanimous little State of South Carolina. While thus protesting, his eyes flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the auditory that sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application of a very sudden mental force. I believe he knew little what a revelation he made in a few sentences. They were to us strangers the key, not only to all that was said and done by the South Carolina party during the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and Columbia which would otherwise have pa.s.sed un.o.bserved or unexplained.
I was less struck than some strangers appear to have been with the length and prosy character of the speeches in Congress. I do not remember hearing any senator (always excepting Colonel Benton) speak for more than an hour. I was seldom present in the other house, where probably the most diffuse oratory is heard; but I was daily informed of the proceedings there by the representative who was of our party, and I did not find that there was much annoyance or delay from this cause.
Perhaps the practice may be connected with the amount of business to be done. It is well known that the business of Congress is so moderate in quant.i.ty, from the functions of the general government being few and simple, that it would be considered a mere trifle by any parliament in the Old World; and long speeches, which would be a great annoyance elsewhere, may be an innocent pastime in an a.s.sembly which may have leisure upon its hands.
The gallery of the splendid Hall of Representatives is not well contrived for hearing, and I rarely went into it for more than a pa.s.sing view of what was going on; a view which might be taken without disturbance to anybody, as the gallery was generally empty, and too high raised above the area of the hall to fix the eye of the members. My chief interest was watching Mr. Adams, of whose speaking, however, I can give no account. The circ.u.mstance of this gentleman being now a member of the representative body after having been president, fixes the attention of all Europeans upon him with as much admiration as interest.
He is one of the most remarkable men in America. He is an imbodiment of the pure, simple morals which are a.s.sumed to prevail in the thriving young republic. His term of office was marked by nothing so much as by the subordination of glory to goodness, of showy objects to moral ones.
The eccentricity of thought and action in Mr. Adams, of which his admirers bitterly or sorrowfully complain, and which renders him an impracticable member of a party, arises from the same honest simplicity which crowns his virtues, mingled with a faulty taste and an imperfect temper. His hastiness of a.s.sertion has sometimes placed him in predicaments so undignified as almost to be a set-off against the honours he wins by pertinacious and bold adherence to a principle which he considers sound. His occasional starts out of the ranks of his party, without notice and without apparent cause, have been in vain attempted to be explained on suppositions of interest or vanity; they may be more easily accounted for in other ways. Between one day and another, some new idea of justice and impartiality may strike his brain, and send him to the house warm with invective against his party and sympathy with their foes. He rises, and speaks out all his new mind, to the perplexity of the whole a.s.sembly, every man of whom bends to hear every syllable he says; perplexity which gives way to dismay on the one hand and triumph on the other. The triumphant party begins to coax and honour him; but, before the process is well begun, he is off again, finding that he had gone too far; and the probability is, that he finishes by placing himself between two fires. I now describe what I actually saw of his conduct in one instance; conduct which left no more doubt of his integrity than of his eccentricity. He was well described to me before I saw him. "Study Mr. Adams," was the exhortation. "You will find him well worth it. He runs in veins; if you light upon one, you will find him marvellously rich; if not, you may chance to meet rubbish. In action he is very peculiar. He will do ninety-nine things n.o.bly, excellently; but the hundredth will be so bad in taste and temper, that it will drive all the rest out of your head, if you don"t take care." His countrymen will "take care." Whatever the heats of party may be, however the tone of disappointment against Mr. Adams may sometimes rise to something too like hatred, there is undoubtedly a deep reverence and affection for the man in the nation"s heart; and any one may safely prophesy that his reputation, half a century after his death, will be of a very honourable kind. He fought a stout and n.o.ble battle in Congress last session in favour of discussion of the slavery question, and in defence of the right of pet.i.tion upon it; on behalf of women as well as of men. While hunted, held at bay, almost torn to pieces by an outrageous majority--leaving him, I believe, in absolute unity--he preserved a boldness and coolness as amusing as they were admirable. Though he now and then vents his spleen with violence when disappointed in a favourite object, he seems able to bear perfectly well that which it is the great fault of Americans to shrink from, singularity and blame. He seems, at times, reckless of opinion; and this is the point of his character which his countrymen seem, naturally, least to comprehend.
Such is the result of the observations I was able to make on this gentleman when at Washington. I was prevented seeing so much of him as I earnestly desired by his family circ.u.mstances. He had just lost a son, and did not appear in society. It is well known in America that Mr.
Adams will leave behind him papers of inestimable value. For forty years (I was told) he has kept a diary, full and exact. In this diary he every morning sets down not only the events of the preceding day, but the conversations he has had with foreigners, and on all subjects of interest. This immense acc.u.mulation of papers will afford such materials for history as the country has never yet been blessed with. Perhaps no country has ever possessed a public man, of great powers, and involved in all the remarkable events of its most remarkable period, who has had industry enough to leave behind him a similar record of his times. This will probably turn out to be (whether he thinks so or not) the greatest and most useful of his deeds, and his most honourable monument.
Those whose taste is the contemplation of great and original men may always have it gratified by going to Washington. Whatever may be thought of the form and administration of government there; however certain it may be that the greatest men are not, in this age of the world, to be found in political life, it cannot be but that, among the real representatives of a composite and self-governing nation, there must be many men of power; power of intellect, of goodness, or, at least, of will.
MOUNT VERNON.
"He might have been a king But that he understood How much it was a meaner thing To be unjustly great than honourably good."
_Duke of Buckingham on Lord Fairfax._
On the 2d of February I visited Mount Vernon, in company with a large party of gentlemen and ladies. Of all places in America, the family seat and burial-place of Washington is that which strangers are most eager to visit. I was introduced by Judge Story to the resident family, and was received by them, with all my companions, with great civility and kindness.
The estate of Mount Vernon was inherited by General Washington from his brother. For fifteen years prior to the a.s.sembling of the first general Congress in Philadelphia, Washington spent his time chiefly on this property, repairing to the provincial legislature when duty called him there, but gladly returning to the improvement of his lands. The house was, in those days, a very modest building, consisting of only four rooms on a floor, which form the centre of the present mansion. Mrs.
Washington resided there during the ten years" absence of her husband in the wars of the Revolution; repairing to headquarters at the close of each campaign, and remaining there till the opening of the next. The departure of an aiddecamp from the camp to escort the general"s lady was watched for with much anxiety as the echoes of the last shot of the campaign died away; for the arrival of "Lady Washington" (as the soldiers called her) was the signal for the wives of all the general officers to repair to their husbands in camp. A sudden cheerfulness diffused itself through the army when the plain chariot, with the postillions in their scarlet and white liveries, was seen to stop before the general"s door. Mrs. Washington was wont to say, in her latter years, that she had heard the first cannon at the opening and the last at the close of every campaign of the revolutionary war. She was a strong-minded, even-tempered woman; and the cheerfulness of her demeanour, under the heavy and various anxieties of such a lot as hers, was no mean support to her husband"s spirits, and to the bravery and hopefulness of the whole army, whose eyes were fixed upon her. She retired from amid the homage of the camp with serene composure when the fatigues and perils of warfare had to be resumed, and hid her fears and cares in her retired home. There she occupied herself industriously in the superintendence of her slaves, and in striving to stop the ravages which her husband"s public service was making in his private fortunes.
After the peace of 1783 she was joined by her husband, who made a serious pursuit of laying out gardens and grounds round his dwelling, and building large additions to it. He then enjoyed only four years of quiet, being called in 1787 to preside in the convention which framed the Const.i.tution, and in 1789 to fill the presidential chair. Mrs.
Washington was now obliged to leave the estate with him, and it was eight years before they could take possession of it again. In 1797 Washington refused to be made president for a third term, and retired into as private a life as it was possible for him to secure. Trains of visiters sought him in his retreat, and Mrs. Washington"s accomplishments as a Virginia housewife were found useful every day; but Washington was at home, and he was happy. In a little while he was once more applied to to serve the state at the head of her armies. He did not refuse, but requested to be left in peace till there should be actual want of his presence. Before that time arrived he was no more. Two years after his retirement, while the sense of enjoyment of repose was still fresh, and his mind was full of such schemes as delight the imaginations of country gentlemen, death overtook him, and found him, though the call was somewhat sudden, ready and willing to go. In a little more than two years he was followed by his wife. From the appearance of the estate, it would seem to have been going to decay ever since.
Our party, in three carriages, and five or six on horseback, left Washington about nine o"clock, and reached Alexandria in about an hour and a half, though our pa.s.sage over the long bridge which crosses the Potomac was very slow, from its being in a sad state of dilapidation.
Having ordered a late dinner at Alexandria, we proceeded on our way, occasionally looking behind us at the great dome of the Capitol, still visible above the low hills which border the gray, still Potomac, now stretching cold amid the wintry landscape. It was one of the coldest days I ever felt, the bitter wind seeming to eat into one"s very life.
The last five miles of the eight which lie between Alexandria and Mount Vernon wound through the shelter of the woods, so that we recovered a little from the extreme cold before we reached the house. The land appears to be quite impoverished; the fences and gates are in bad order; much of the road was swampy, and the poor young lambs, shivering in the biting wind, seemed to look round in vain for shelter and care. The conservatories were almost in ruins, scarcely a single pane of gla.s.s being unbroken; and the house looked as if it had not been painted on the outside for years. Little negroes peeped at us from behind the pillars of the piazza as we drove up. We alighted in silence, most of us being probably occupied with the thought of who had been there before us; what crowds of the n.o.ble, the wise, the good, had come hither to hear the yet living voice of the most unimpeachable of patriots. As I looked up I almost expected to see him standing in the doorway. My eyes had rested on the image of his remarkable countenance in almost every house I had entered; and here, in his own dwelling, one could not but look for the living face with something more than the eye of the imagination. I cared far less for any of the things that were shown me within the house than to stay in the piazza next the garden, and fancy how he here walked in meditation, or stood looking abroad over the beautiful river, and pleasing his eye with a far different spectacle from that of camps and conventions.
Many prints of British landscapes, residences, and events are hung up in the apartments. The ponderous key of the Bastile still figures in the hall, in extraordinary contrast with everything else in this republican residence. The Bible in the library is the only book of Washington"s now left. The best likeness of the great man, known to all travellers from the oddness of the material on which it is preserved, is to be seen here, sanctioned thus by the testimony of the family. The best likeness of Washington happens to be on a common pitcher. As soon as this was discovered, the whole edition of pitchers was bought up. Once or twice I saw the entire vessel locked up in a cabinet, or in some such way secured from accident; but most of its possessors have, like the family, cut out the portrait and had it framed.
The walk, planned and partly finished during Washington"s life, the winding path on the verge of the green slope above the river, must be very sweet in summer. The beauty of the situation of the place surprised me. The river was n.o.bler, the terrace finer, and the swelling hills around more varied than I had imagined; but there is a painful air of desolation over the whole. I wonder how it struck the British officers in 1814, when, in pa.s.sing up the river on their bandit expedition to burn libraries and bridges, and raze senate chambers, they a.s.sembled on deck, and uncovered their heads as they pa.s.sed the silent dwelling of the great man who was not there to testify his disgust at the service they were upon. If they knew what it was that they were under orders to do, it would have been creditable to them as men to have mutinied in front of Mount Vernon.
The old tomb from which the body of Washington has been removed ought to be obliterated or restored. It is too painful to see it as it is now, the brickwork mouldering, and the paling broken and scattered. The red cedars still overshadow it, and it is a n.o.ble resting-place. Every one would mourn to see the low house destroyed, and the great man"s chamber of dreamless sleep made no longer sacred from the common tread; but anything is better than the air of neglect which now wounds the spirit of the pilgrim. The body lies, with that of Judge Washington, in a vault near, in a more secluded but far less beautiful situation than that on the verge of the Potomac. The river is not seen from the new vault, and the erection is very sordid. It is of red brick, with an iron door, and looks more like an oven than anything else, except for the stone slab, bearing a funeral text, which is inserted over the door. The bank which rises on one side is planted with cedars, pines, and a sprinkling of beech and birch, so that the vault is overshadowed in summer, as the places of the dead should be. The president told me that the desolation about the tomb was a cause of uneasiness to himself and many others; and that he had urged the family, as the body had been already removed from its original bed, to permit it to be interred in the centre of the Capitol. They very naturally clung to the precious possession; and there is certainly something much more accordant with the spirit of the man in a grave under the tiles of his own home than in a magnificent shrine; but, however modest the tomb may be--were it only such a green hillock as every rustic lies under--it should bear tokens of reverent care.
The gra.s.s and shade which he so much loved are the only ornaments needed; the absence of all that can offend the eye and hurt the spirit of reverence is all that the patriot and the pilgrim require.
Before we reached the crazy bridge, which it had been difficult enough to pa.s.s in the morning, the sweet Potomac lay in clear moonshine, and the lights round the Capitol twinkled from afar. On arriving at our fireside, we found how delightful a total change of mood sometimes is.
Tea, letters, and English newspapers awaited us; and they were a surprising solace, chilled or feverish as we were with the intense cold and strong mental excitement of the day.
MADISON.