years been meeting to settle formalities, and exchange boat-
loads of prisoners of war, until at length ā the power repre-
sented by one of them ha\dng been utterly vanquished and
broken down ā that one is arrested by the victors as a traitor,
and the other directed to prosecute him to conviction and
* In his first Bunker Hill Oration.
414 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
consign liim to execution, ā how would the case be regarded
by impartial observers in this later lialf of the Nineteentli
Century ? And suppose this trial to take place two years
after the discomfiture and break-down aforesaid, ā what then ?
Mr. Andrew Jolmson had seen fit to change his views and
his friends since his unexpected accession to the Presidency,
and had, from an intemperate denouncer of the beaten Rebels
as deserving severe punishment, become their protector and
patron. Jefferson Davis, in Fortress Monroe, under his proc-
lamation aforesaid, was an ugly elephant on Johnson's hands ;
and thousands were anxious that he should remain there.
Their view of the matter did not impress me as statesman-
like, nor even sagacious.
The Federal Constitution expressly provides * that,
*' In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed," &c.
In times of war and grave public peril. Constitutions cannot
always be strictly heeded ; but what national interest required
that this provision should be persistently, ostentatiously defied ?
An Irishman, swearing the peace against his three sons for
pertinaciously assaulting and abusing him, made this proper
reservation : " And your deponent would ask your honor to
deal tenderly with his youngest son, Larry, who never struck
him when he was down." I confess to some fellow-feeling
with Larry.
Mr. George Shea, the attorney of record for the defence in
the case of The United States versus Jefferson Davis, indicted
for treason, is the son of an old friend, and I have known and
liked him from infancy. After it had become evident that
his client had no immediate prospect of trial, if any prospect
at all, Mr. Shea became anxious that said client be liberated
on bail. Consulting me as to the feasibility of procuring
some names to be proffered as bondsmen of persons who had
* Amendments, Art. VI.
JEFFERSON DAVIS. 415
conspic^^ously opposed the Eebellion and all the grave errore
which incited it, I suggested two eminent Unionists, who, I
presumed, would cheerfully consent to stand as security that
the accused would not run away to avoid the trial he had
long but unsuccessfully invoked. I added, after reflection,
" If my name shoidd be found necessary, you may use that."
He thanked me, and said he should proffer it only in case the
others abundantly at his command would not answer without
it. Months passed before I was apprised, by a telegram from
Washington, that my name tvas needed ; when I went down
and proffered it. And when, at length, the prisoner was
brought before the United States District Court at Eichmond,*
I was there, by invitation, and signed the bond in due form.
I suppose this woidd have excited some hubbub at any
rate ; but the actual tumult was gravely aggravated by gross
misstatements. It was widely asserted that the object of
giving bail was to screen the accused from trial, ā in other
words, to enable him to run away, ā when nothing like this
was ever imagined by those concerned. The prisoner, through
his counsel, had assiduously sought a trial, while the pros-
ecution was not ready, because (as Judge Underwood was
obliged to testify before a Committee of Congress) no convic-
tion was possible, except by packing a jury. The words " straw
bail " were used in this connection ; when one of the sureties
is worth several millions of dollars, and the poorest of them
is abundantly good for the sum of $ 5,000, in which he is
"held and firmly bound" to produce the body of Jefferson
Davis whenever the plaintiff shall be ready to try him. If
he only looidd run away, I know that very many people would
be much obliged to him ; but he won't.
It was telegraphed all over the North that I had a very
affectionate meeting and greeting with the prisoner when he
had been bailed ; when in fact I had never before spoken nor
written to him any message whatever, and did not know him,
even by sight, when he entered the court-room. After the
bond was signed, one of his counsel asked me if I had any
* May 13, 1867.
416 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
objection to being introduced to Mr. Davis, and I replied that
I had none ; whereupon we were introduced, and simply
greeted each other. I made, at the request of a friend, a
brief call on his wife that evening, as they were leaving for
Canada ; and tliere our intercourse ended, probably forever.
Wlien the impeachment of President Johnson was fully
resolved on, and there was for some weeks a fair prospect
that Mr. Wade would soon be President, with a Cabinet of
like Eadical faith, I suggested to some of the prospective Pres-
ident's next friends that I had Jefferson Davis still on my
hands, and that, if he were considered a handy thing to have
in the house, I might turn him over to the new Administra-
tion for trial at an hour's notice. The suggestion evoked no
enthusiasm, and I was not encouraged to press it.
I trust no one will imagine that I have made this state-
ment with any purpose of self-vindication. To all who have
civilly accosted me on the subject, I trust I have given civil,
if not satisfactory, answers ; while most of those who have
seen fit to assail me respecting it, I have chosen to treat with
silent scorn. I believe no one has yet succeeded in inventing
an unworthy motive for my act that could impose on the
credulity of a child, or even of my bitterest enemy. I was
quite aware tliat what I did would be so represented as to
alienate for a season some valued friends, and set against me
the great mass of those who know little and think less ; thou-
sands even of those who rejoiced over Davis's release, never-
theless joining, full-voiced, in the howl against me. I kneAv
that I should outlive the hunt, and could afford to smile at
the pack, even when its cry was loudest. So I went quietly
on my way; and in due time the storm gave place to a calm.
And now, if there is a man on earth who wishes Jefferson
Da\as were back in his cell, awaiting, in- the fourth year of
his detention, the trial denied him in the three preceding, he
is at liberty to denounce me for my course, in the assurance
that he can by no means awake a regret or provoke a reply.
LIII.
AUTHORSHIP. ā WKITING HISTORY.
ALMOST every one who can write at all is apt, in the
course of his life, to write something which he fancies
others may read with pleasure or with profit. For my own
part, beyond a few boyish letters to relatives and intimate
friends, I began my efforts at composition as an apprentice in
a newspaper of&ce, by condensing the news, more especially
the foreign, which I was directed to put into type from the
city journals received at our office ; endeavoring to give in
fewer words the gist of the information, in so far, at least, as
it would be likely to interest our rural readers. Our Editor,
during the latter part of my stay in Poultney, was a Baptist
clergyman, whose pastoral charge was at some distance, and
who was therefore absent from us much of his time, and
allowed me a wide discretion in preparing matter for the
paper. This I improved, not only in the selection, but in
the condensation, of news. The rudimentary knowledge of
the art of composition thus acquired was gradually improved
during my brief experience as a journeyman in various news-
paper establishments, and afterward as a printer of sundry
experimental journals in this city ; so that I began my dis-
tinctive, avowed editorial career in The New-Yorker with a
considerable experience as a %\Titer of articles and paragraphs.
I had even written verses, ā ne-ver fluently nor happily, ā but
tolerably well measured, and faintly evincing an admiration
of Byron, Mrs. Hemaus, and other popular ^viiters, ā an
admiration which I, never mistook for inspiration or genius.
While true poets are few, those who imagine themselves
27
418 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
capable of becoming such are many ; but I never advanced
even to this grade. I knew that my power of expression in
verse was defective, as though I had an impediment in my
speech, or spoke with my mouth full of pebbles ; and I very-
soon renounced the fetters of verse, content to utter my
thoughts thenceforth in unmistakable prose. It is a comfort
to know that not many survive who remember having read
any of the few rhymed effusions of my incautious youth.
I had been nearly twenty years a constant writer for the
newspaper press ere I ventured (in 1850) to put forth a
volume. This was entitled " Hints toward Eeforms," and
consisted mainly of Lectures and Addresses prepared for
delivery before village lyceums and other literary associations
from time to time throughout the preceding six or eight
years. Most of them regarded Social questions ; but their
range was very wide, including Political Economy, the Eight
to Labor, Land for the Landless, Protection to Home In-
dustry, Popular Education, Capital Punishment, Abstinence
from Alcoholic potations, &c., &c. My volume was an
ordinary duodecimo of 425 pages, compactly filled with the
best thoughts I had to offer ; aU designed to strengthen and
diffuse sympathy with misfortune and suffering, and to pro-
mote the substantial, permanent well-being of mankind.
When I had fvLlly prepared it, I sent the copy to the Harpers ;
and they agreed to pul)lish it fairly, on condition that I paid
the cost of stereotyping (about $ 400), when they woidd give
me (as I recollect) ten cents per copy on all they sold. I
cheerfully accepted the terms, and the work was published
accordingly. I bebeve the sales nearly reimbursed my out-
lay for stereotyping ; so that I attained the dignity of author-
ship at a very moderate cost. Green authors are apt to
suffer from disappointment and chagrin at the failure of theu*
works to achieve them fame and fortune. I was fairly treated
by the press and the public, and had no more desire than
reason to complain.
AUTHORSHIP. ā WRITING HISTORY. 419
I have given these unflattering reminiscences so fully, be-
cause I would he useful to young aspirants to authorship,
even at the cost of losing tlieir good-will. I have been soli-
cited by many ā 0, so many ! ā of them to find publishers
for the poems or the novel of each, in the sanguine expecta-
tion that a publisher was the only requisite to his achieve-
ment of fortune and renown ; when, in fact, each had great
need of a public, none (as yet) of a pubhsher. You are sure,
gushing youth ! that your poems are such as no other
youth ever wrote, ā such as Pindar, or Dante, or IMilton
would read with delight, ā and I acquiesce in your judgment.
But the great mass of readers have not " the vision and the
faculty divine " ; they are prosaic, plodding, heavy- witted
persons, who read and admire what they are told others have
read and admired before them, ā if the discovery of new
Homers and Shakespeares were to rest with them, none would
henceforth be distinguished from the common herd. You,
we will ao-ree, are such a genius as Heaven vouchsafes us once
in two or three centuries ; but can you dream that such are
discerned and appreciated by the great mass of their cotem-
poraries ? How much, think you, did Homer, or Dante, or
Milton receive from the sale of his works to the general pub-
lic ? Nay : how much did Shakespeare's poetry, as poetry, con-
tribute to his sustenance ? Nay, more : do you, having ac-
quired the greenback-cost of adding a volume to your library,
buy the span-new verses of Stiggins Dobbs or C. Pugsley
Jagger ? You know that you do not, ā that you buy Shelley,
or Beranger, or Tennyson, instead. Then how can you expect
the great mass of us, who have not the faintest claim to genius
or special discernment, to recognize your untrumpeted merit
and buy your volume ? You ought to know that we shall
follow your example, and buy ā if we ever buy poems at all
ā those of some one whose fame has already reached even
our dull ears and fixed our heedless attention. Hence it is
that no judicious publisher will buy your manuscript, nor
print it, even if you were to make him a present of it. He
can't afford it. And your talk of the stupidity, the incom-
420 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
petency, the rapacity, or the cruelty of publishers is wholly
aside from the case. Not one first work in a hundred ever
pays the cost of its publication. True, yours may be the rare
exception ; but the publisher is hardly to blame that he does
not see it.
A year or two later, on my return from my first visit to
Europe, I was surprised by an offer to publish in a volume
the letters I had written thence to The Tribune, and pay me
copyright thereon. I knew, right well, that they did not de-
serve such distinction, ā that they were flimsy and super-
ficial, ā things of a day ; to be read in the morning and for-
gotten at night. But it seems that some who had read them
in The Tribune wished to have them in a more compact, port-
able shape ; while it was liighly improbable that any others
would be tempted to buy them : so I consented, and revised
them; and they duly appeared as "Glances at Europe" in
1851 ā 52. I recollect my share of the proceeds was about
$500; for which I had taken no pecuniary risk, and done
very little labor. Had the work been profounder, and more
deserving, I presume it would not have sold so well, ā at all
events, not so speedily.
Years passed ; I made my long-meditated overland journey
to California ; and the letters I wrote during that trip, printed
from week to week in The Tribune, were collected on my re-
turn, and printed in a volume nearly equal in size to either
of my former. As a photograph of scenes that were then
passing away, of a region on the point of rapid and striking
transformation, I judge that this " Overland Journey to Cali-
fornia in 1859" may be deemed worth looking into by a dozen
persons per annum for the next twenty years. Its publishers
failed, however, very soon after its appearance ; so that my
returns from it for copyright were inconsiderable.
And now came the Presidential contest of 1860, closely
followed by Secession and Civil War, whereof I had no
AUTHORSHIP. ā WRITING HISTORY. 421
thougnt of ever becoming the historian. In fact, not till that
War was placed on its true basis of a struggle for liberation,
and not conquestj by President Lincoln's successive Procla-
mations of Freedom, would I have consented to write its his-
tory. Not till I had confronted the Eebellion as a positive,
desolating force, right here in New York, at the doors of ear-
nest Eepublicans, m the hunting down and killing of defence-
less, fleeing Blacks, in the burning of the Colored Orphan
Asylum, and in the mobbing and firing of The Tribune office,
could I have been moved to delineate its impulses, aims, pro-
gress, and impending catastrophe.
A very few days after the national triumph at Gettysburg,
with the kindred and almost simultaneous successes of Gen-
eral Grant in the capture of A^icksburg, and General Banks
in that of Port Hudson, with the consequent suppression of
the (so called) " Pdots " in this city, I was visited by two
strangers, who introduced themselves as Messrs. Newton and
0. D. Case, publishers, from Hartford, and solicited me to
write the History of the Eebellion. I hesitated ; for my
labors and responsibilities were already most arduous and
exacting, yet could not, to any considerable extent, be trans-
ferred to others. The compensation offered would be liberal,
in case the work should attain a very large sale, but other-
wise quite moderate. I finally decided to undertake the task,
knowing well that it involved severe, protracted effort on my
part ; and I commenced upon it a few weeks later, after col-
lecting such materials as Avere then accessible. I hired for
my workshop a room on the third floor of the new Bible
House, on Eighth Street and Third and Fourth Avenues, pro-
cured the requisite furniture, hired a secretary, brouglit
thither my materials, and set to work. Hither I repaired,
directly after breakfast each week-day morning, and read and
compared the various documents, official reports, newspaper
letters, &c., &c., that served as materials for a chapter, while
my secretary visited libraries at my direction, and searched
out material among my documents and elsewhere. The great
public libraries of New York, ā Society, Historical, Astor,
422 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
and Mercantile ā all cluster around the Bible House ; the two
last-named being within a bowshot. I occasionally visited
either of them, in personal quest of material otherwise inac-
cessible. AVlien I had the substance of my next chapter
pretty fairly in mind, I began to compose that chapter ; hav-
ing often several authorities conveniently disposed around
me, -with that on which I principally relied lying open before
me. I oftener wrote out my first draft, merely indicating
extracts where such were to be quoted at some length ; leav-
ing these to be inserted by my secretary when he came to
transcribe my text ; but I sometimes dictated to my secre-
tary, who took short-hand notes of what I said, and \vrote
them out at his leisure. My first chapter was thus composed
at one sitting, after some days had been given to the arrange-
ment of materials ; but, usually, two days, or even three,
were given to the composition of each of the longer chapters,
after I had prepared and digested its material. Our rule was
to lock the door on resuming composition, and .decline all
solicitations to open it till the day's allotted task had been
finished ; and this was easy while my " den " was known to
very few ; but that knowledge was gradually diffused ; and more
and more persons found excuses for dropping in ; until I was
at length subject to daily, and even, more frequent, though sel-
dom to protracted, interruptions. I tliink, however, that if I
should ever again undertake such a labor, I would allow the
location of my " den " to be known to but one person at The
Tribune office, who should be privileged to knock at its door
in cases of extreme urgency, and I would have that door open
to no one beside but my secretary and myseK. Even my
proof-sheets should await me at The Tribune office, Avhitlier I
always repaired, to commence a day's work as Editor, after
finishing one as Author at the " den."
A chapter having been fairly written out or transcrilied by
my secretary, while T was " reading up " for another, I care-
fully revised and sent it to the stereotyper, who sent me his
second and third proofs, which were successively corrected
before the pages were ready to be cast. Sometimes, the dis-
AUTHORSHIP. ā WRITING HISTORY. 423
covery of new material compelled the revision and recast of
a chapter which had been passed as complete. And, though
the material was very copious, ā more so, I presume, than
that from which the history of any former war was written, ā
it was still exceedingly imperfect and contradictory. For in-
stance : when I came to the pioneer Secession of South Caro-
lina, I "washed to study it in the proceedings and debates of
her Legislature and Convention as reported in at least one of
her o\vn jom-nals ; and of these I found but a single tile pre-
served in our city (at the Society Library), though four years
had not yet expired since that Secession occurred. A year
later, I probably could not have found one at all. Of the score
or so of speeches made by Jefferson Davis, often from cars,
while on his way from jSIississippi to assume at jNIontgomery
the Presidency of the Confederacy, I found but two con-
densed reports ; and one of tliese, I apprehend, was apocry-
phal. In many cases, I found officers reported killed in bat-
tles whom I afterward found fighting in subsequent battles ;
whence I conclude that they had not been killed so dead as
they might have been. Some of the errors into which I was
thus led by my authorities were not corrected till after my
work was printed ; when the gentlemen thus conclusively
disposed of began to \vrite me, insisting that, though desper-
ately wounded at the battle in question, they had decided not
to give up the ghost, and so still remained in the land of em-
bodied rather than that of disembodied souls. Their testimony
was so direct and pointed that I was constrained to believe it,
and to correct page after page accordingly. I presume a few,
even yet, remain consigned to the shades in my book, who
nevertheless, to this day, consume rations of beef and pork
with most unspiritual regularity and self-satisfaction. There
doubtless remain some other errors, though I have corrected
many ; and, as I have stated many more particulars than my
rivals in the same field have usually done, it is probable that
my work originally embodied more errors of fact or incident
than almost any other.
Yet " The American Conflict " will be consulted, at least by
historians, and I shall be judged by it, after most of us now
424 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
living shall have mingled with the dust. An eminent an-
tagonist of my political views has pronounced it " the fairest
one-sided book ever written " ; but it is more than that. It
is one of the clearest statements yet made of the long train
of causes which led irresistibly to the war for the Union,
showing why that war was the natural and righteous conse-
quence of the American people's general and guilty compli-
city in the crime of upholding and diffusing Human Slavery.
I proffer it as my contribution toward Ā«, fuller and more vivid
realization of the truth that God governs this world by moral
laws as active, immutable, and all-pervading as can be opera-
tive in any other, and that every collusion or compromise
with evil must surely invoke a prompt and signal retribu-
tion.
The sale of my history was very large and steady down to
the date of the clamor raised touching the bailing of Jeffer-
son Davis, when it almost ceased for a season ; thousands who
had subscribed for it refusing to take their copies, to the sore
disappointment and loss of the agents, who had supplied them-
selves with fifty to a hundred copies each, in accordance with
their orders ; and who thus found themselves suddenly,
and most unexpectedly involved in serious embarrassments.
I grieved that they were thus afflicted for what, at the
worst, was no fault of theirs ; while their loss by every copy
thus refused was twenty times my own. I trust, however,
that their undeserved embarrassments were, for the most
part, temporary, ā that a juster sense of what was due to
them ultimately prevailed, ā that all of them who did not
mistake the cliaracter of a fitful gust of popular passion, and
thereupon sacrifice their hard earnings, have since been re-
lieved from their embarrassments ; and that the injury and
injustice they suffered without deserving have long since been
fuUy repaired. At all events, the public has learned that I act
upon my convictions without fear of personal consequences ;
hence, any future paroxysm of popular rage against me is
likely to be less violent, in view of the fact that this one
proved so plainly ineffectual.
LIV.
MY DEAD.
" T DO not wear my heart upon my sleeve," and shrink
A from the obtrusion of matters purely personal upon an
indifferent public. I have aimed, in the series herewith
closed, to narrate mainly such facts and incidents as seemed
likely to be of use, either in strengthening the young and
portionless for the battle of life, or in commending to their
acceptance convictions which I deem sound and important.
My life has been one of arduous, rarely intermitted, labor, ā
of efforts to achieve other than personal ends, ā of efforts
which have absorbed most of the time which others freely
devote to social intercourse and to fireside enjo}Tnents. Of
those I knew and loved in youth, a majority have already
crossed the dark river, and I will not impose even their names
on an unsjonpathizing world. Among them is my fellow-
apprentice and life-long friend, who, after long Olness, died in
this city in 1861 ; my first partner, already named^ who was