advocacy of the anti-slavery cause, and while in Dartmouth College made himself famous among his fellows as a leader therein. At that time, it will be remembered, the abolition agitation was unpopular; parties frowned upon it, the church was at least cold toward it, and the college authorities strove to crush out its growth among their students. To be what young Hood then was, a pioneer and leader in it, indicated high character- an independent conscience and an unflinching courage — and what did not necessarily follow, also, but what was always conspicuous in him, a sweet and unassuming modesty and personal self-abnegation in walking firmly the path of duty.

"From Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1841, he soon went to the Andover Theological Seminary, intending to fit for the ministry; but, finding after a year's experience there, partly on account of his antagonism to the popular church organizations on the slavery question, and partly on account of an independent spirit of inquiry and thought on theological questions, that he was not likely to be in such close sympathy with the churches that Andover represented as his conscience would require of him to take a pastorate, he surrendered this purpose, and turned his attention to journalism." He began at Hanover, N. H., as editor of a small temperance and anti-slavery paper, the Family Visitor, which in 1844 he removed to Concord, enlarged, and re-named the Granite Freeman. The paper was the organ of the Liberty and afterward the Free-soil party, and was merged in the Independent Democrat. In 1849 Mr. Hood left journalism to engage in the telegraph business, and this employment brought him to Springfield. "It was while thus living in Springfield that his abilities as a journalist became known to the Republican, and after waiting a year or two to grow strong enough to employ him, it engaged his services in 1855. From that time until 1869-full fourteen years — he held a leading position in the editorial department of that journal. He had no taste for business; he declined executive responsibilities, and had no capacity for what may be called the directing and managing of a public journal; but in the details of

its columns-for writing editorials not only on the current topics of politics and life, but on abstract questions of civil and political economy, on practical and theoretical religion, on literature and science, indeed on all the conceivable questions that come within the greedy grasp of the modern newspaper, as well as in condensing and arranging news and making selections, I never saw a man who was even his equal, either in the character, variety, or amount of the work that he could and did do. Irregularity in life and labor was impossible to him; day in and day out, month after month, and almost year after year, he was as steady as a clock in attendance at the office, and in a constant and quiet and yet rapid execution of every species of editorial labor. His style was admirable,— simple, direct, pure, forcible without being passionate, pungent without being vulgar, often delicately sarcastic and deliciously humorous, never egotistical, never suggesting the writer, always representing the journal, and this as the voice of the people,- he was by nature, by culture, by experience the model modern working journalist. He saw the world without, partly through others, but chiefly through its own words, interpreted to him by his own divine instincts. The Republican has had many capable and faithful servants, but no one who united so much of capacity with so much of fidelity as Mr. Hood; and few of its readers knew how much of the varied charms and value of its columns during these fourteen years was due to his sagacity of thought, varied culture, lively interest in all progress, and delicate deftness of expression. His life seemed very narrow; he knew as few people personally in Springfield as in Denver; yet to him it was very rich. He loved his work only less than he loved his home; he spent his time between his pet corner in the office and his family fireside; the one sustained and upheld him for the other; together they more than satisfied all his nature. He felt the great though unseen power he was exerting through the paper; he had no ambition to stand in nearer or more personal relations to his audience; his wife and children gave him all he wanted else.

"But the infirmities of inheritance were brought out by these years of indoor labor, though long restrained by simple and

regular and healthful habits of living and laboring, and in 1868 his attendance at the office began to be irregular, and he had to confront the sad necessity of a change." He passed a spring in Kansas, and in 1869 settled permanently in Colorado, where he found relief from bronchial consumption and chronic dyspepsia, and did various journalistic work, including regular editorial writing for the Rocky Mountain News, all of high quality. "But still he could never do elsewhere what he did on the Republican, he left his heart, as he had done his life's best and great work, in it; and even these tenderer skies and drier airs could not bring him up to his old enthusiasm and delight in his labor. He loved Colorado and the few dear friends he made here, but his chief desire, almost his only hope, was to be able to go back some time to his old associates and his old work in the Republican office. He knew it was not to be, but it was a pleasure to him to think it might be.

"In the spring of 1871, the weaknesses of lungs and stomach obliged him to give up all work. The summer was to him that of a quiet but growing invalidism-he was better and worse, but the worse grew upon him, and within the last month he has rapidly failed. He held on till his old chief and friend,— nominal master, but real pupil in all that was sweetest and purest and noblest in personal and professional life-came to sit by his bedside and to exchange for the last time greetings and partings. Then he quietly sank away-in peace and in resignation, with sweet thoughts of the past, with sweeter faith in the future. No life was ever better lived than this; no man ever did more and better work on earth, and made less noise about it; no memory could be more grateful to friends and relatives; no example purer and nobler. He was both an honor and an ornament to the profession of American journalism—he was more and better, a glory to humanity.

"It is fit, before closing, to say something of Mr. Hood's religious character. It was both peculiar and positive; the spirit of Christ was indeed abroad in his nature and in his life; theology was a favorite study of his, and with the Scriptures he was most familiar,- few ministers are more learned in both respects; and he often said the work he could do the best was

a commentary upon and exposition of the Bible; but he thought not always with the priests and teachers, and his soul was always open to every form and shade of honest and intelligent belief. Though he was attached through all his life to what is known in New England as Congregational orthodoxy, and fellowshiped with its churches, he was, in the largest and best sense, a Liberal Christian, and preached, alike in life and writings, the gospel of love and charity to all. As to his personal and practical Christianity, if there ever was a disciple of his Lord, it was Joseph E. Hood."

Mr. Hood's accession to the Republican may be fairly regarded as an epoch in the history of the paper and of Mr. Bowles. The presence of so able and versatile a journalist brought to the paper a strength which allowed to its chief a freer way of work, a wider range of travel and reading, than had before been possible. Mr. Hood, too, was the first instrument he found that was perfectly adapted to one of his peculiar powers-the transmission of his own ideas through another's personality. In Mr. Bryan's words: "Mr. Bowles would talk to Hood for five minutes, giving him points for an article, and then go off, and Hood would work it out perfectly." To thus use another man's brain and hand is one of the special gifts of a great journalist. Mr. Bowles had it in a high degree, and he found in Mr. Hood an almost perfect medium for such transmission. One result for him. was an economizing of vital force, and a corresponding liberation of energy for other uses.

IN

CHAPTER XIII.

THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH.

the political field the struggle between slavery and freedom in America went on only in preparation and skirmishing until the year 1854. Up to that time, the two great parties treated it as a side issue. Then, when the truce made by the compromise of 1850 was broken by the repeal of the Missouri compromise, the contest suddenly expanded until the whole country became its theater.

When, in 1820, the state of Missouri was organized out of a part of the immense north-western territory acquired from France years before by the Louisiana purchase, there was a struggle in Congress as to whether slavery, which had a foothold in the new state, should be excluded therefrom as a condition of its admission. The question was settled by allowing Missouri to retain slavery, but upon condition that it should be forever prohibited in all the rest of the Louisiana purchase lying north of the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude,-the line which marks the southern boundary of Missouri. The debates of 1850 had no reference to this region, but concerned that other vast country which had just been conquered from Mexico. Now, in the winter of 1853-4, a proposal was made to organize, under territorial government,-first as one