way to education and to political and intellectual freedom, I hope something may be done for the middle class. The young nobles and the young workmen are alike improving and full of promise; I hope the light of education and the spirit of manhood may next illumine and animate the young philistines of the middle class.

The representative English artisan of to-day may then, I think, be described as a manly, active-minded, selfreliant person, accustomed to discipline and understanding its uses; democratic rather in what is called the "philosophical-radical" style than in the manner of Bright and Cobden;

fond of literature, and probably fonder still of science; calmly unorthodox, but assuredly not irreligious. Of course I have been describing the best of the class, but only, if I may use such a phrase, the "average best"; that is to say, I have not had in my mind a few striking and exceptional men; I have been thinking of a great many men, leaders in their own immediate groups, indeed, but who are to be found everywhere without search or trouble of any kind. I know of no class in the English commonwealth of whom better things can be said, no class who in the same time have made anything like the same progress.

Justin McCarthy.

A

FEW days after the death of Mr. Stanton, at the request of the publishers of "The Atlantic " I prepared an article on some of the characteristics of the great Secretary as they revealed themselves to me in the varying phases of the Rebellion. It was not history or biography, nor was it intended to be. It spoke of his tireless industry, indomitable courage, promptness of decision, readiness to assume responsibilities, intense patriotism, and a selfsacrificing devotion to his imperilled country. In illustration of these characteristics, I cited a few of the many facts that had come to my knowledge, either by personal observation or the authentic testimony of others.

Mr. Jeremiah S. Black does not like my portraiture of Mr. Stanton, or my statement of facts. He appears in the June number of "The Galaxy" in a communication addressed to myself, in which my statements are questioned and my conclusions are denied. The article is characteristic of the man; and I am not surprised at the manner or the matter of it. Mr. Black seems to belong to a class of public men who

are lingering behind their age, soured, disappointed, and vindictive. He seems specially conscious, and his consciousness is apparently strengthening with time, — that there are few lawyers, fewer statesmen, and no patriots, who this day approve the advice he gave the President, on the 20th of November, 1860, in the only act which will carry his name to posterity. Contemporaneous history has already pronounced that "his argument gave much aid and comfort to the conspirators," that he "virtually counselled the President to suffer this glorious concrete Republic to become disintegrated by the fires of faction or the blows of actual rebellion, rather than use the force legitimately at his service for the preservation of its integrity." Nor is posterity likely to reverse this judgment. Loyal men, whose words and acts are instinct with patriotism, may perhaps afford to pardon the utterance of one who is passing into history under the irreversible condemnation already pronounced of a people saved in spite of his imbecile counsels and perilous theories. As vulgar as vituperative, as ill-man

nered as ill-tempered, with an effrontery as strange and fatuous as it was brazen, his article falsifies history and defames the dead, though the writer must have known that both the living witnesses and the documentary evidence are at hand to rectify the one and vindicate the other. It is not now my purpose to reply to his laudation of President Buchanan; or to his denial that Howell Cobb, while Secretary of the Treasury, by his treasonable utterances at Washington and among the money-lenders of Wall Street, deranged the finances and sunk the national credit; or to his denial that John B. Floyd while Secretary of War, sent muskets where they could be "clutched" by the rising conspirators; or to his apology for Toucey; or to his canonization of Jacob Thompson, the smallest and basest of the Cabinet conspirators. I am mindful that Mr. Black was a mere lawyer when he entered the Cabinet, that he had little association or acquaintance with statesmen. Of course his associates in the Cabinet, who had some experience in public affairs, although they have left little evidence in the records of their country of learning, eloquence, or statesmanship, towered up before his inexperienced eyes. No wonder that to this political neophyte Jacob Thompson seemed a great and illustrious statesman, SO immeasurably far above" the range of ordinary mortals, that they "will never in this life be able to get a horizontal view of his character." My object now is to defend Mr. Stanton from his treacherous friendship and vindicate the truthfulness of my statements, so recklessly assailed, by testimonies which cannot be gainsaid, and which are beyond the reach of cavil and successful contradiction.

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In portraying the signal services rendered his country by Mr. Stanton, I referred to the fact that on entering Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet he put himself in communication with leading Republicans in Congress; that so anxious was he for the safety of the Republic, he visited by appointment Mr. Sumner at his lodgings after midnight, to im

press upon him the danger which menaced the nation. These facts were stated to illustrate Mr. Stanton's exalted patriotism, which prompted him to rise above the claims and clamors of mere partisanship, and to invoke the aid of loyal men beyond the lines of his own party and outside of the administration of which he was a member, to serve his imperilled country menaced by a foul and wicked revolt. Such patriotism, however, Mr. Jeremiah S. Black does not comprehend. Such action he cannot applaud. He sees in it nothing but "overt acts of treachery." He doubts, questions, denies, and exclaims with holy horror: "Into what unfathomed gulfs of moral degradation must the man have fallen who could have been guilty of this!"

Notwithstanding these doubts, denials, and exclamations, Mr. Stanton, nevertheless, did put himself in communication, while in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet, with leading Republicans. Of this fact there is no lack of competent testimony. Mr. Seward, — certainly not a biassed witness, under date of June 6th writes :

"You recall the memories of 1860 and 1861; our anxieties for the 4th of March then to come; the conferences we had, and the efforts we made. You ask me to give you my understanding of the position of the lamented Mr. Stanton at that time.

"When the election of 1860 closed, it left in the Executive Department President Buchanan, a Democrat, with an entire Democratic Cabinet, to remain in office until the 4th of March, when Abraham Lincoln was to be inaugurated President with a Republican Cabinet.

“Some of the then members of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet were known to be disloyal. General Cass, eminently loyal, was understood to be dissatisfied with the President.

"The Democratic party had a majority in Congress, and that majority, like the President's Cabinet, included a number of persons who avowed themselves disloyal, and who ultimately joined the seceders in rebellion.

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Many disloyal persons held executive and judicial offices throughout the country, and many of the ministers who represented the United States in foreign countries were disloyal. The Rebels speedily effected an organization, and the administration was known to be holding conferences with their agents with regard to measures bearing upon disaffected States.

"I was, with you, a member of the Senate, and it early became understood that I was to be appointed Secretary of State by Mr. Lincoln. In this manner it happened that I came to be regarded somewhat extensively as a person representing the incoming administration and the Republican party, upon which the preservation of the Union was so soon to be devolved. We apprehended the danger of a factious resistance by the Rebels at the seat of government, and an outbreak of the revolution in Congress; probably on the occasion of counting the electoral votes, or at the inauguration. were alarmed by plots for the assassination of the President on his way from Illinois.

We

"There were many suspected officers in the army and the navy; and both those arms of the executive power seemed inadequate to the crisis.

"I arrived in Washington and took up my residence there immediately after the election, and devoted myself thenceforth exclusively to the public service.

"If my memory serves me, I did not personally know Edwin M. Stanton until after he was appointed AttorneyGeneral, in place of Hon. Jeremiah S. Black, who became Secretary of State on the resignation of General Cass.

"Mr. Peter H. Watson, who during Mr. Lincoln's administration became a very devoted and efficient Assistant Secretary of War, was an intimate personal friend of Mr. Stanton as well as of myself. Immediately after Mr. Stanton took office, he put himself into indirect communication with me at my house, employing Mr. Watson for that purpose. Every day thereafter, until the inauguration had passed, I conVOL. XXVI. NO. 156.

ferred either in the morning or in the evening or both with Mr. Stanton through the same agency, and the question what either of us could or ought to do at the time for the public welfare was discussed and settled. Mr. Watson often brought with him suggestions in writing from Mr. Stanton and returned to Mr. Stanton with mine.

"During all that time I was not in social relations with President Buchanan, and I took care for that and other reasons not to compromise Mr. Stanton, or other loyal members of his Cabinet, by making public the conferences which were held between any of them and myself. In some cases peculiarly perplexing I had Mr. Stanton's permission to refer to him as authority for information I gave some of my Union associates. The holding of the consultations was made known by me, with Mr. Stanton's consent, to President Lincoln and some other political friends. With these exceptions, the consultations between Mr. Stanton and myself were kept by me in entire confidence, and they have remained so.

"One day, as I was riding through F Street from the Capitol, I met Mr. Stanton on foot. We recognized each other, and a hurried explanation concerning our relations, as they were being conducted through the agency of Mr. Watson, took place. We separated quickly, from the motive on my part, and I supposed on his, of avoiding public observation. This was the only occasion, as I remember, on which I met Mr. Stanton until after the expiration of Mr. Buchanan's Presidential term."

While Mr. Seward forbears giving details of the consultations held with Mr. Stanton, he states that whenever they had occasion "to discuss measures it was only the right, fitness, expediency, and sufficiency of these measures that came in question"; and that Mr. Stanton expressed "entire confidence in the loyalty of the President and of the heads of the departments who remained in association with him until the close of that administration."

Concerning the midnight visit which

so excites the incredulity and indignation of Mr. Black Mr. Sumner himself writes:

"My acquaintance with Mr. Stanton goes back to my first entrance into the Senate, as long ago as 1851, when Mr. Chase said to me one day, 'There is an Ohio friend of mine here who will be glad to know you,' and he introduced me to Mr. Stanton. I was busy in the Senate and he was busy in court, so that we saw little of each other, but whenever we met it was as friends. I remember well how much he was excited, when, in the debate on the Boston petition for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Bill, immediately after the surrender of Anthony Burns, June, 1854, I was set upon by the slavemasters of the Senate, Mr. Mason and Mr. Butler leading in the assault. Stanton was on the floor of the Senate while I was speaking, and afterwards spoke of the incident with much sympathy for me. On the evening of this debate he was at the house of our excellent friend Dr. Bailey, who did so much against slavery, and there dwelt on the conduct of certain Senators.

Mr.

"I always understood that Mr. Stanton was a Democrat who hated slavery; and when he went into the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, I felt that the national cause must derive strength from his presence there. You do not forget those anxious days. At last, in the month of January, 1861, while our troops were left to starve in Fort Sumter, I called on him at the AttorneyGeneral's office, relying on his patriotism for information and counsel with regard to the state of the country. He was in the inner room, where he received me kindly, seeming glad to see me. Looking about and seeing somebody in the room, he whispered that we must be alone, and then passed into the anteroom, where was also somebody, and then into the next room, and then into the next, when, finding somebody in each room, he opened the door into the corridor, where he began an earnest conversation, saying that he must see me alone,

--

- that this was impossible at his office, that he was watched by the traitors of the South, - that my visit would be made known to them at once, and he concluded by proposing to call on me at my lodgings at one o'clock that night, when he would tell me of the fearful condition of affairs as he saw them. I said in reply that I would expect him at the time named by him.

"He came at one o'clock that night, and was alone with me for an hour. During this time he described to me the determination of the Southern leaders, and developed particularly their plan to obtain possession of the national capital and the national archives, so that they might substitute themselves for the existing government. I was struck, not only by the knowledge he showed of hostile movements, but by his instinctive insight into men and things. His particular object was to make us all watchful and prepared for the traitors. I saw nobody at the time who had so strong a grasp of the whole terrible case. The energies which he displayed afterwards as Secretary of War, and which wore him to death, were already conspicuous; nor can I doubt that, had his spirit prevailed in the beginning, the Rebellion would have been strangled at its birth.

"In the summer that followed, especially during the July session of Congress, I was in the habit of seeing Mr. Stanton at his house in the evening, and conferring with him freely. His standard was high, and he constantly spoke with all his accustomed power of our duties in the suppression of the Rebellion. Nobody was more earnest than himself. Compared with him the President and Congress seemed slow.

"It was his burning patriotism and remarkable vigor of character which determined his selection as Secretary of War; but at this time he was very little known to Senators personally. You may remember that, on the receipt of his nomination by the Senate, I rose at once, and, after stating my acquaintance with him, declared that within my knowledge he was one of us."

This testimony of Mr. Sumner may satisfy Mr. Black that Mr. Stanton's midnight visit was actually made, and may give him some insight into that gentleman's associations and antislavery proclivities. It may perhaps lead him to modify somewhat his bald and unsupported declaration that "he had no affinities whatever with men of your [my] school in morals or politics," and that "his condemnations of the Abolitionists were unsparing for their hypocrisy, their corruption, their enmity to the Constitution, and their lawless disregard for the rights of States and individuals."

Mr. William A. Howard, of Michigan, was for several years a member of the House, and a gentleman of large and commanding influence. In a letter to Attorney-General Hoar, under date of the 7th of February, from which I am permitted to quote, he says: "And now commenced a series of efforts most strange, that lasted through two long and fearful months, so fearful, indeed, that even now at this late day, and when the Republic is safe, I shudder to think of them. If you will refer to the resolutions of the House early in January, 1861, under which the special committee, of which I was chairman, was appointed, you will see that the committee was clothed with very ample powers. That committee was raised at the request of loyal members of the Cabinet. The resolutions came from them and were placed in my hands with a request that I would offer them, and thus become, if they should pass, chairman of the committee. At first I refused to assume so fearful a responsibility. But being urged to do so by members and Senators, I at last consented to do so, on condition that the Speaker would allow me to nominate two members of the committee. I selected Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts and Mr. Reynolds of New York. Mr. Reynolds was elected as a Democrat, but he was true as steel and a good lawyer.

"I do not know that Mr. Stanton wrote the resolutions creating the

committee. I did not see him write them. I never heard him say he wrote them. It would be easier, however, to persuade me that Mr. Jefferson did not write the Declaration of Independence than that Mr. Stanton did not write those resolutions. If he did write them, they are a sufficient answer to all that Mr. Black has said or can say. Whoever wrote them and requested the House of Representatives to adopt them would not have occupied any doubtful position. I do not think I saw Mr. Stanton at any time between the 1st of January and the 4th of March, 1861; but I think I heard from him more times than there were days in those two months. The clearest statements of legal rights, defining the boundaries of treason, the most startling facts, when the evidences of treachery could be found, were furnished.

"One of the secretaries had accepted the resignation of officers who had joined the Rebellion, and had dated back the resignations, in one case two days, for the avowed purpose of protecting the scoundrel from trial by naval or military law, for leading the attack on the Pensacola Navy-Yard on the 12th day of January, 1861, while he still held his commission. The letter covering the resignation stated that the resignation was written on the 13th, but dated back to the 11th, the day before the attack, and he wanted the acceptance to be dated from that day, so as to save him from military law. It boasted that they had smashed the civil courts in Florida. The resignation was received at the department on the 22d day of January at eight o'clock in the afternoon; but the acceptance was dated on the 11th as requested. I state dates from memory, and may not be entirely accurate. We were put upon this inquiry by information brought to us by a bird' which flew directly from some Cabinet minister to the committee-room. I never suspected Mr. Black or Mr. Toucey of this impropriety.' If I suspected Mr. Stanton or Mr. Dix or Mr. Holt, it was