Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 13
XIII
LEGISLATIVE SESSION OF 1848—FUNERAL OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
THE chief incident of the Legislative session of 1848 was the funeral of John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams died in February, 1848. There were then twenty-four States in the Union and the House of Representatives selected one member from each State to accompany the remains of Mr. Adams to Massachusetts. Of these members I recall Talmadge of New York; Newell[1] of New Jersey; Kaufmann of Texas; Morse of Louisiana; Wentworth of Illinois; Bingham of Michigan; and Holmes of South Carolina. The Massachusetts Legislature appointed a committee of the same number to receive the Congressional Committee. Of that committee I was a member and George T. Bigelow was the chairman. Our first thought was of a hotel and the entertainment of the Committee.
The feeling in regard to temperance was active and we foresaw that the doings of the committee would be subject to criticism. Finally, Bigelow suggested that we should go to the Tremont House and say to the landlord that we wished him to provide suitable rooms and entertainment for the Congressional Committee. This we did, and nothing was said about wines. At the end we found that the bill was a large one, and that the item of wines was a very important item. It was paid by the Governor and Council, and as one member of the committee I was ignorant of the amount. The reporters made vain attempts to ascertain the facts. A portion of our committee met the Congressional Committee at Springfield. Many additions had then been made to the twenty-four. At Worcester, and perhaps at other places, speeches were made to the Committee by the local authorities and speeches in answer were delivered by members of the Committee. Mr. Holmes of South Carolina, was one of the speakers. He was an enthusiastic man, and he was endowed with a form of popular eloquence quite well adapted to the occasion.
I was assigned to the charge of Mr. Wentworth of Illinois. His height was such that he was already known as “Long John.” We sat together in the train for Quincy on the day of the funeral. He was a good natured man, whose greatness was not altogether in the size of his body. His talents were far above mediocrity, indeed, nature had endowed him with powers of a high order, as I had the opportunity to learn when we were associated in Congress.
Two banquets were given to the Committee, one by the State at the Tremont House, and one by the City of Boston at the Revere House. The notable event at the Revere House was the speech of Harrison Gray Otis. Mr. Otis was then about eighty years of age. He was a well preserved gentleman, and in his deportment, dress and speech he gave evidence of culture and refinement. He had been a Federalist and of course he had been a bitter opponent of Mr. Adams. He seized the occasion to make a defence of Federalism, and of the Hartford Convention. While Mr. Adams was President, he had written a pamphlet in vindication of a charge he had made, in conversation with Mr. Jefferson, that, during the War of 1812 the Federalists of New England, had contemplated a dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a northern confederacy. This charge Mr. Otis denied and he then proceeded at length to vindicate the character of the old Federal Party. He was a gentleman of refinement of manners, but as I sat near him at the Revere House dinner, I overheard enough of his private conversation with Holmes of South Carolina, to satisfy me that he had a relish for coarse remarks, if they had in them a flavor of wit or humor.
The old controversy between John Quincy Adams, and the Federalists of Boston, once saved me, and helped me to escape from a position in which I found myself by an indiscretion in debate. In 1843 the office of Attorney-General was abolished, by the active efforts of the Democrats aided by the passiveness of the Whigs. The Democrats thought the office unnecessary, the Whigs were content to have it abolished, that the party might get rid of the incumbent, James T. Austin. At a subsequent session of the Judiciary Committee, of which George Lunt was a member, he reported a bill for the establishment of the office. Mr. Lunt was a poet, a lawyer, and a politician, and without excellence in either walk. In public life he was destitute of the ability to adapt himself to his surroundings. In those days the farmers constituted a majority of the House. They were generally men of intelligence, and they held about the same relation to the business of the House, that juries hold to the business of the Courts. They listened to the arguments, reasoned upon the case, and not infrequently the decision was made by them. Occasionally they gave a verdict upon a party question, adverse to the arguments of the leaders of the party in power. In his opening argument, Mr. Lunt was unwise, to a degree unusual even for him.
The question he maintained was one which lawyers alone were competent to understand, and he also maintained that the majority of the House ought to accept their views. “The question” said he “is sui generis.”
I was opposed to the bill. At that time Richard Fletcher, then recently a member of Congress, had been engaged in a controversy with the Boston Atlas, a leading organ of the Whig Party. A question of veracity was raised and to the disadvantage of Fletcher. Thereupon he resigned his seat, in the House, and returned to Massachusetts.
Mr. Frank B. Crowninshield was opposed to the bill, and anxious to secure its defeat, but he was unwilling to take the responsibility of contributing openly to that result. Privately he informed me that the purpose was to make a place for Fletcher. In the course of my remarks, in reply to Lunt I said that if the object of the managers was to provide a place for a man who had fallen into discredit, in another branch of the public service, then as far as I knew, the bill was sui generis.
Several members, among them General William Schouler, disclaimed all knowledge of any arrangement such as I had referred to. These assertions of ignorance were not troublesome, but Otis P. Lord, of Salem, rose and after many personal compliments said “I call upon the member from Groton to give his authority for the suggestion he makes in regard to the purpose of this bill.” At that moment my mind reverted to the controversy between Adams and the Federalists.
In 1825 or 1826 Mr. Jefferson wrote a letter that was printed in the National Intelligencer, in which he gave his version of statements made by Mr. Adams. Among others he said that Mr. Adams had told him that he had evidence of the purpose of the Federalists during the War of 1812 to secure a dissolution of the Union, and the organization of an eastern confederacy.
Mr. Adams wrote a letter in which he explained some of Mr. Jefferson’s statements, but of this he took no notice. Its accuracy, therefore, was admitted. Thereupon the Federalists of Boston, wrote to President Adams, demanding his authority for the statement. That authority he refused to give. Alluding to the many names appended to the letter of the Federalists, he said: “No array of numbers or of talent shall induce me to make the disclosure sooner than my sense of duty requires, and when that time arrives, no array of numbers or talent shall deter me from it.” After some remarks intended to connect the Whig and Federal parties I repeated the conclusion of Mr. Adams’ pamphlet and made my escape in the smoke. Crowninshield sat upon the dais in front of the speaker during the debate. I made no allusion to him, for I commanded my faculties sufficiently to enable me to realize that if he denied my allegations the denial would be fatal to my standing, and that he would be seriously injured if he accepted my statement. The event taught me a lesson, and thenceforward I have avoided all reference in debate to private conversations.
- ↑ Mr Newell is the only member living, March, 1901.