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ington, District of Columbia, November 12, 1869, and therefore eighty years old, was one of the characters who write the history of others and have a romance of their own. He was a man when I was a boy; a leader long before I aspired to be a follower; and lived to see more of men and to shape more of measures than many who were bred to public affairs.

When Amos Kendall left New England for Kentucky on the 21st of February, 1814, he had little idea that his future would be cast first in the family of Henry Clay as an humble teacher, and that in less than twenty years he would be called to Washington as one of the advisers of Andrew Jackson, and one of the sternest opponents of the great Kentucky statesman. Reared a Democrat in the hardy school of early Massachusetts Republicanism, temperate and even frugal in his habits, literally without a vice, of delicate and almost feminine organization, he was not well prepared for a Western experience, and, above all, for the quarrelsome manners of the frontier. Gentle and unimpassioned, yet nevertheless quick to act, and fertile of resources, it was strange what an influence he finally acquired over General Jackson, and how steadily he aided to shape the anti-bank policy of Jackson's Administration. Not less interesting was his connection with journalism, first as a religious. and neutral writer, then as a political essayist, and, finally, as one of the readiest and boldest pens in the Democratic organ at the national capital. He was the most effective campaign writer until the star of Horace Greeley rose upon the horizon. The short paragraphs of Amos Kendall were sharpened and brightened by contact with the veteran Kentucky journalist Shadrach Pen, and were strangely effective against the solid leaders of Gales and Seaton, when he fired them from The Globe into The National Intelligencer. Not less interesting was his original connection with Morse and his electric telegraph, an enterprise which, after years of trial and defeat, finally made him a rich man; so that, in the decline of life, he rested from heavy

journalistic labors, and shone conspicuous for his piety, benevolence, and charity. And when, even as he was preparing to meet his God, the storm of the Rebellion broke upon his country, his Jackson Democracy placed him at once on the right side of the question, revitalized his pen, and made him a most effective, because a voluntary and disinterested, champion of the cause of the Union. In no sense an abolitionist, and, I believe, at the end, more of a Democrat than of a Republican, yet, to save the nation, and to put down the Rebellion, which was to him nothing more than theoretical Nullification in arms against the Government, he stood ready to surrender slavery, and even his own property, if necessary. Early in the war, he placed at the disposition of the President his beautiful country home; and Kendall Green was rapidly converted into a military post, from which he removed to more tranquil quarters, happy in the consciousness that he had so far assisted the Administration in its efforts to put down the Rebellion.

His death was preceded by signal acts of generosity to the cause of education and religion, and especially to the Calvary Baptist Church, of which he was a member, as well in its original construction as in its rebuilding after the fire of Sunday, December 15, 1867. Mr. Kendall's journal of his journey from Boston, beginning February 21, 1814, to New York, and from New York to Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to Elkton. and thence to Baltimore, and so on to Washington, which I find in his Autobiography, edited by his son-in-law, William Stickney, Esq., of Washington, is not unlike the incomparable sketch of the travels of Benjamin Franklin on his first visit to the city of Penn. As marking the difference between that day and the present-between 1814 and 1873-it may be stated that Mr. Kendall left Boston on the 21st of February, spent eight days in Washington and eight days in Pittsburgh, and three in Cincinnati, reaching Lexington, Kentucky, on the 12th of April of that year. Four days were occupied from Boston

to New York, a distance now traversed in eight hours; two days from New York to Philadelphia, now traversed in three hours; two days from Baltimore to Washington, now traversed in one hour; nine days from Washington to Pittsburgh, now traversed in as many hours. In these times there was little public conveyance beyond Pittsburgh. Men travelled on horseback, or rowed boats on the river.

Amos Kendall's life may be said to have been divided into four eras. Twenty-seven years in New England, where he was born and educated in New England ways; fourteen years in Kentucky, where he was an inmate of Henry Clay's family as a teacher, while Mr. Clay was abroad as one of the commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. Afterwards admitted to the bar, he finally made journalism his profession, beginning as a religious or neutral, and closing as an ardent Republican or anti-Federalist. About this time he made the acquaintance of Colonel Richard M. Johnson, who will be remembered as VicePresident with Martin Van Buren; but especially as the hero who is said to have killed Tecumseh, and as a Representative and Senator in Congress from 1815 to 1829. At the national capital, from 1829 to 1845, he was the most trenchant and indefatigable of Democratic agitators and editors, and filled the rôles of Fourth Auditor, Postmaster-general, and political essayist with unexampled integrity and ability. In 1845 he made the acquaintance of Professor Morse of telegraphic fame, and, as his lawyer and confidant, cemented a friendship which continued for twenty-five years without interruption. This new field wholly removed Mr. Kendall from active politics, and founded the great fortune which he employed with enlightened wisdom and munificence.

Rarely has one man filled so large a space with such various acquirements and experiences; rarely have the seeds of early training been rewarded by a growth more healthy or an example more elevated. Four eras, each as different from the other

as if it had been a new life, may be likened to four scenes in a drama: Kendall as the New England student and scholar; Kendall as the Western pioneer and partisan; Kendall as the inflexible official and journalist; and, finally, Kendall as the man of science, joined in close companionship with Professor Morse, under whose patents electricity was "tamed and harnessed until it traversed with equal speed and certainty the depths of the ocean, the snows of the mountains, and the burning sands of the desert."

Amos Kendall always impressed me by his silence. It seemed impossible to believe that this gentle, quiet, and soft-spoken man was the same whose nervous editorials aroused the resentment of the Whigs and the enthusiasm of the Democrats; or that the tranquil and unpretending gentleman whose presence brightened the social circle, and whose liberality encouraged every great charity, had stood unmoved before the ruffian spirits of the wild West, and had led in the war against the Bank of the United States. His spare figure, ashen pale face, snowwhite hair, restless eye, and expressive mouth, when he was about sixty, indicated study, work, firmness, and bright intelligence; they did not certainly indicate the aggressive champion of the Cabinet, or the muscular controversialist of the press.. He survived generations of political chiefs, and died at last, at eighty, a leader of science and of religion. He knew Henry Clay, Richard M. Johnson, John J. Crittenden, Robert J. Breckinridge, of Kentucky; but it was in Washington that his knowledge of men and his labors for the Government introduced him to the chiefs of all opinions, and to men of every class, condition, and persuasion. In his official and editorial situations, he knew Van Buren, Benton, Grundy, Silas Wright, Daniel Webster, Robert Y. Hayne, John C. Calhoun, Duff Green, Francis P. Blair, Joseph Gales, William Winston Seaton, together with Livingston, General Scott, General Macomb, Commodores Stewart and Stockton, Cass, Buchanan, Harrison, John Tyler,

Polk, William Allen, Henry A. Wise, and the hosts that lived and died around them. He knew the great financiers of the country-bank presidents, bank directors, and capitalists—and studied them carefully in his visits to their different institutions, before the Government deposits were removed from the Bank of the United States. He knew the old contractors before the age of railroads and steamboats; the knights of the whip, the "stage," the turnpike, those dashing pioneers of the wilderness, who won and lost fortunes in carrying the United States mails; the Reesides, Stocktons, Rectors, Falls, and their associates. As Fourth Auditor he had an insight into the expenses of the army and the navy, and so met the leading characters of those arms of the public service. As Postmaster-general and editor of The Globe and The Expositor, he knew most of the journalists of all the States-Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire; James Gordon Bennett, James Watson Webb, Horace Greeley, Thurlow Weed, and Charles King, of New York; Charles Gordon Green and Joseph Tinker Buckingham, of Massachusetts; Shadrach Pen and George D. Prentice, of Kentucky; Samuel Medary, of Ohio; George Wilkins Kendall, of Louisiana; and, of course, the writers of Pennsylvania and Washington city-John Binns, Joseph R. Chandler, Joseph C. Neal, Zachariah Poulson, William M. Swain, of the one, and the able men who clustered around the old Telegraph, Globe, and Intelligencer, of the other -from Blair and Rives to Ritchie; from Gales and Seaton to Bullitt, Gideon, and Harvey. From these he received alternate praise and blame, both well laid on, and both now utterly forgotten, or lost before the aggregate of a life crowned with good works and a memory fragrant with genuine patriotism and piety. As I turn my face to the past, it is difficult to reconcile the violent criminations and recriminations of 1834 and 1840 and the calm philosophy and toleration of 1860 and 1869; difficult to realize that the Amos Kendall of the first period is the same so honored and loved in the second. Such a life is a me

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