But

delicate as a woman, and as honest a man as ever lived. he could not bear criticism. No braver spirit ever sat on the bench, but he could not imagine such a thing as a newspaper complaint of his rulings. He was a strict temperance man withal, but did not believe in the prohibitory law, regarding it as illegal and unconstitutional. And he said as much, in a case brought to his attention, in a somewhat elaborate opinion. No notice was taken of it, because his judgment was right and his law sound-no notice, except by a little paper not more than six by eight inches, in the interest of the ultra temperance men, called The Bee, and that enjoyed its own tempest in its own teapot. I was sitting with Mr. Buchanan when the irate Judge came in with The Bee in his hand. He was a warm friend of the Pennsylvania Senator; and when the latter said, "Won't you take a glass of wine with us, sir?" the answer was, “I thank you, sir; but I came to show you this terrible article againt my opinion in The Bee." "The what?" said old Buck, then a very handsome bachelor of fifty. "The Bee, sir," said the little Judge, in high anger. "And where the devil is The Bee printed, Judge?" "Why, Mr. Buchanan, it is printed in this very town, and has a very large circulation among the temperance people, and it has given me much pain by its censure of my judicial action; and by G-d, sir, I intend to take notice of it from the bench to-morrow!"

The honest

These words were uttered with much feeling. and sensitive jurist had been stung to the quick by the little Bee, yet I never can forget Buchanan's words as he pushed a cold, bright glass of old "Wanderer" Madeira to his judicial friend:

"Let me have the honor of a glass of wine with you, sir. I declare to you I never to this day heard of the paper you call The Bee; but you have made a good record as an impartial and honest judge, and you will be remembered for this long after the name of that paper is forgotten. The faithful public man who

feels that he is right, must expect criticism, but he will outlive it as sure as that both of us must die."

They are both gone; but the story of The Bee lives like a moral without a sting.

THE first time I saw General George Cadwalader was in my native town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1838. He was as handsome a young fellow as I ever met. I was a boy; he was a man, and captain of one of the Philadelphia companies called to Harrisburg during the celebrated Buckshot war, and they were passing through Lancaster on their way to the State capital. He and General Patterson and Colonel James Page-all dead but Patterson-were the conspicuous ornaments of that renowned military era. It was a very cold winter morning, and as they defiled along the streets of Lancaster I thought they were an army equal to any conquest. Forty-two years is a long stretch in an individual life, though little in that of a nation; and yet to-day, as I remember General Cadwalader walking the streets of Philadelphia, healthy, erect, and alert, I wonder at the rare art with which he preserved all his faculties. He was really one of the heroes of three wars-the Buckshot war, the war with Mexico, and the war against the Rebellion. The Buckshot war, I need not tell my elder readers, was produced by the resistance of the friends of Governor Ritner to the inauguration of Governor Porter in 1838. Ritner was defeated and Porter elected. Ritner was the anti-Masonic, or Whig, candidate; Porter the Democratic candidate. Under the leadership of Thaddeus

Stevens, the ground was taken that Porter was elected by fraud, and that Ritner should continue to hold on, notwithstanding the majority in favor of his adversary. Great excitement ensued. President Van Buren was asked to interfere, but he refused, and so the State troops were called out. There were many scenes which threatened to be tragical, but ended in simple comedy. The tempest which followed was without parallel. The affair looked critical for a long time. It became a sort of national question, and crimination and recrimination were the order of the day. But, as proving the evanescence of all popular excitements, that of which I am now writing has probably never been heard of, or, if heard of, only dimly remembered by the young men of the present generation. The speeches of Judge Parsons, Charles B. Penrose, Jesse R. Burden, Thaddeus Stevens, and William B. Reed, the editorials of Ovid F. Johnson and Edwin W. Hutter, the letters between the State and National authorities-these may be found printed in musty volumes, but have never been dignified by anything like written history. If some of the survivors could sit down and relate their experience in a lecture, the present generation would be surprised at the madness of their fathers over what, looking through our spectacles, seems to have been a very small affair.

But I was talking of General George Cadwalader, of Pennsylvania, not of the Buckshot war, nor to give the incidents of his life, but to dwell briefly upon the scene which took place at Washington city in 1874, at the meeting between the Northern and Southern men who fought in the Mexican wara war which began in 1847, although long prepared for by the politicians. The whole American army, in both divisions, did not amount to more than one of the many army corps engaged in the late civil conflict; and yet it produced results and cemented friendships that will never be forgotten. The war against the South for the maintenance of the Government saved

the Government, but left many harsh and bitter feelings, which it will require many years to overcome. The war with Mexico united the North and the South. The war against the Rebellion divided the North and the South. The war with Mexico made friends of all who fought in it; the war against the Rebellion made many enmities; and while I have no doubt that the latter will be reconciled in the course of time, the attachments produced between the men who fought against Mexico will always endure. And hence it was a pleasant thing to see General Cadwalader presiding over the reunion between the soldiers of both sections who had fought under Taylor in the battle of Buena Vista, and under Scott in the capture of the city of Mexico. He died a few years ago.

And what was pleasant in this gathering was the fact that both President Grant and General Sherman had fought in the Mexican war. Let me see! How old does that make them? Grant was a boy lieutenant, and Sherman was a boy captain; and the one boy was our President, the other boy the head of all our armies. I do not wonder that General Cadwalader was glad to meet his old companions in arms, and that he came back to Philadelphia quite full of the pleasure of having had a chance to take them by the hand.

It was in 1846 or '47 that I attended an evening party in Washington, such an intermingling as you can only enjoy at the national capital. You never realize it in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia; but in Washington you are often pell-mell with the best people of all nations. They rush into society for a few days, and are eager to make acquaintances. I have often said, Washington is a winter watering-place, a sort of hotel life; in fact, a society like that on board an ocean steamer. You meet, you admire, you pledge eternal friendship or love, and part, and rarely meet again. But some of these acquaintanceships stick. And so that night in the spring of 1846 or '47, when I was introduced to a young New Hampshire colonel on

his way to Mexico, I only recollected that he was a handsome, warm-hearted fellow. A few years after, I went to Baltimore (1852) to help to make James Buchanan President. [We were all working to make J. B. President twenty-five years before we got him in, and a pretty mess we made of it!] Buchanan had a great many enemies in his own State. He had none of the ways of making people like him, and we were defeated; and in December, 1852, when I visited Concord, New Hampshire, on the invitation of the President elect, to talk to him about his future policy, the first question Franklin Pierce asked me, as he met my friend and myself at the railroad-station, and put his arm into mine, was about this: "Now, Forney, did you ever think Frank Pierce would be President of the United States the night we met at Washington, when I was on my way to Mexico ?"

XXXI.

A FEW MEMOIRS OF THE ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN TO THE PRESIDENCY IN 1856.

THE people of Philadelphia in 1874 had a stormy struggle over the choice of a Centennial Mayor, and I was about as busy as I was in 1856, when we elected James Buchanan. The bustle and the bitterness of the first campaign recall vividly the scenes of the other, some of which were infinitely amusing. One night John Slidell, of Louisiana, came to my committeeroom while I was dictating to three short-hand reporters at the same time. It is not easy work, especially as each had a different subject; but practice made me reasonably perfect. Thus I would speak five minutes to one, say on fair play for the people of Kansas; five minutes to another on the high character and long public services of our candidate; and then five minutes to