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rapid succession, have almost wiped from memory the incident now to be mentioned.

The pride of the American Navy, the man-of-war Princeton, Commodore Stockton in command, was lying in the Potomac just below Washington, on the morning of February 28, 1843. The day was beautiful, and the distinguished commander, who had known much of gallant service, had invited more than one hundred guests to accompany him on a sail to a point a few miles below Mount Vernon. Among the guests were President Tyler and two members of his Cabinet; Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State, and Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy; the widow of Ex-President Madison; Mr. Gardner, a prominent citizen of New York, and his accomplished daughter; Commodore Kennan; and a number of Senators and Representatives. Commodore Stockton was anxious to have his guests witness the working of the machinery of his vessel and to observe the fire of his great gun, his especial pride. Mr. Gardner and his daughter were guests at the Executive Mansion; and to the latter, the President then for many years a widower - was especially attentive. Officers and guests were all in the best of spirits, and nothing seemed wanting to make the occasion one of unalloyed pleasure. Upon the return, and when almost directly opposite Mount Vernon, the company were summoned by the Commodore from the dinner table to witness the testing of the gun. Preceded by an officer, the guests were soon assembled in proximity to the gun. A place at the front was reserved for the President, but just as he was advancing, his attention was directed by his fair guest to some object on the shore. This for a moment arrested his progress, and prevented his instant death, for at this critical moment the gun exploded, causing the immediate death of more than twenty persons, and serious injuries to many others. Among the injured were Senator Benton and Commodore Stockton. The list of the dead included Secretary of State Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Gilmer, Commodore Kennan - one of the heroes of the second war with Great Britain, — and Mr. Gardner, the father of the lady whose timely interposition had caused

the moment's delay which had saved the President from the terrible fate of his associates. Upon the return of the Princeton to Washington the dead were removed to the Executive Mansion, and the day, so auspicious in the beginning, ended in gloom.

Something in the way of romance is the sequel to that sad event. A few months later Miss Gardner, the fair guest of the President upon the ill-fated Princeton, became his bride, and during the remainder of his term of office did the honors of the Executive Mansion.

The thousands of visitors who have, during the past sixty years, passed through the spacious rooms of that Mansion, have paused before a full-length portrait of one of the most beautiful of women. Possibly the interest of no one who gazed upon her lovely features was lessened when told that the portrait was that of the wife of President Tyler, the once charming and accomplished Miss Gardner, whose name is so closely associated with the long-ago chapter of sorrow and of

romance.

A thought pertaining to the domain of the real rather than of the romantic is suggested by the sad accident upon the Princeton. But for the trifling incident which detained President Tyler from the side of his Cabinet officers at the awful moment, the administration of the Government would have passed to other hands. As the law then stood, the Speaker of the House of Representatives would have succeeded to the Presidency; and how this might have changed the current of our political history is a matter of at least curious speculation. Remembering that

"Two stars keep not Their motion in one sphere,"

might not the removal of one have healed the widening breach in the Whig party? What might have been its effect upon the grand Internal Improvement Scheme - the darling project of Henry Clay? what upon the determination of the Oregon Boundary Question - whether by diplomacy or

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war? and how might the destiny of the "Lone Star," the Republic of Texas, have been changed? What might have been the effect upon the political fortunes of Tyler's great antagonist, around whom the aggressive forces of the party he had founded were even then gathering for a life-and-death struggle against a comparatively obscure rival in the Presidential campaign of 1844?

Trifles light as air are sometimes the pivots upon which hinge momentous events. The ill-timed publication of a personal letter defeated Cass in 1848; and within our day the utterance of a single word, unheard by the candidate to whom it was addressed, lost the Presidency to Blaine.

The antagonism of Tyler and his adherents eliminated, it is within the bounds of probability that Henry Clay would have triumphed in his last struggle for the Presidency. If so, what change might not have been wrought in the trend of history? Under the splendid leadership of the "great pacificator," what might have been the termination of vital questions even then casting their dark shadows upon our national pathway?

With Clay at the helm, himself the incarnation of the spirit of compromise, possibly — who can tell? - the evil days so soon to follow might have been postponed for many generations.

XVI

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

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HIS

MR. INGERSOLL'S ELOQUENCE WHILE A YOUNG MAN CANDIDACY FOR CONGRESS — HIS AGNOSTICISM A HINDRANCE TO HIS POLITICAL ADVANCEMENT – - HIS ORATION AT THE FUNERAL OF HIS BROTHER.

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T was in April, 1859, that for the first time I met Robert G. Ingersoll. He came over from his home in Peoria to attend the Woodford Circuit Court. He was then under thirty years of age, of splendid physique, magnetic in the fullest significance of the word, and one of the most attractive and agreeable of men. He was almost boyish in appearance, and hardly known beyond the limits of the county in which he lived. He had but recently moved to Peoria from the southern part of the State.

To those who remember him it is hardly necessary to say that even at that early day he gave unmistakable evidence of his marvellous gifts. His power over a jury was wonderful indeed; and woe betide the counsel of but mediocre talents who had Ingersoll for an antagonist in a closely contested case.

The old Court-house at Metamora is yet standing, a monument of the past; the county seat removed, it has long since fallen from its high estate. In my boyhood, I have more than once heard Mr. Lincoln at its bar, and later was a practitioner there myself—and State's Attorney for the Circuit,— when Mr. Ingersoll was an attendant upon its courts. Rarely at any time or place have words been spoken more eloquent than fell from the lips of Lincoln and of Ingersoll in that now deserted Court-house, in the years long gone by.

The first appearance of Mr. Ingersoll in the political arena was in the Presidential struggle of 1860. In his later years he was a Republican, but in the contest just mentioned he was the earnest advocate of the election of Mr. Douglas to the Presidency and was himself the Democratic candidate for

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Congress in the Peoria District. His competitor was Judge Kellogg, a gentleman of well-known ability and many years' experience in Congress. Immediately upon his nomination, Ingersoll challenged Kellogg to a series of joint debates. The challenge was accepted, and the debates which followed were a rare treat to the throngs who heard them. The discussions turned upon the vital issues yet pending at the outbreak of the Civil War, issues which were to find their final determination on the field of battle. Possibly, with the exception of the historic debates two years earlier, between Lincoln and Douglas, the country has known no abler discussion of great questions. It was then for the first time that Ingersoll displayed the marvellous forensic powers that at a later dayand upon a different arena — gave him world-wide renown.

It was at a period subsequent to that just mentioned that he became an agnostic. I recall no expression of his during the early years of our acquaintance that indicated a departure from the faith in which he had been reared. That his extreme views upon religious subjects, and his manner, exceedingly offensive at times, of expressing them, formed an insuperable barrier to his political advancement, cannot be doubted. But for his unbelief, what political honors might have awaited him cannot certainly be known. But recalling the questions then under discussion, the intensity of party feeling, and the enthusiasm that his marvellous eloquence never failed to arouse in the thousands who hung upon his words, it is probable that the most exalted station might have been attained. To those familiar with the political events of that day, it is known that the antagonism aroused by his assaults upon the citadel of the faith sacred to the many, compassed his defeat in his candidature in 1868 for the Governorship of Illinois. His explanation was, that his defeat was caused by a slight difference of opinion between himself and some of the brethren upon the highly exciting question of total depravity.

Some years later, the nominee of his party for the Presidency was exceedingly obnoxious to him. Meeting the Colonel the morning after the adjournment of the conven

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