ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC MEN BY JOHN W. FORNEY WHILE HE WAS CLERK OF THE HOUSE of REPRESENTATIVES SECRETARY OF THE SENATE of the united STATES Editor of the organ oF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY (the washinGTON DAILY UNION) AND EDITOR OF The organ OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FROM 1862 TO 1868 Volume I. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. ΤΟ DANIEL DOUGHERTY: UNFORGOTTEN AND UNFORGETTING. I HAVE known you, my dear Dougherty, for nearly thirty years; when your hair, now turning gray, was glossy black; when both of us were struggling young men. You have met most of the characters I have attempted to describe in these plain and unpretending "Anecdotes," and I feel that I take no liberty in dedicating this volume to you. From Franklin Pierce to Ulysses S. Grant, including most of the intermediate actors, whether statesmen or lawyers, soldiers or politicians, men of work or men of leisure, the artist or the artisan, the priest or the player, you can at least do justice to the motive that has led me to speak of all of them impartially and generously. Instead of One Hundred Anecdotes of Public Men, as originally intended, you will find interwoven into these pages four times as many references to the characters who figured in the past and will be remembered in the future. One lesson I have tried to inculcate that while none of us are indispensable, the good we do in our life is sure to be kindly, even if briefly, remembered after that life ends. And still another lesson, so well taught in your own career-the lesson of self-reliance, of sincere friendship, of personal independence and integrity, of toleration and forbearance. It is a maxim, that when men begin to write their recollections they are getting old; but you have taught me in our long and unbroken devotion to each other that nothing keeps the heart so young and so fresh as the habit of reviving the best deeds of our fellow-creatures and forgetting the worst. As I glance through these chapters, written hastily, often in the rush of editorial work, I am surprised to realize how much one man can condense into a letter repeated every week for over two years; and if those who read this book will enjoy as much pleasure in perusing it as I did in writing it, and will sympathize with me in the spirit with which it was composed, I shall be abundantly compensated. J. W. FORNEY. PHILADELPHIA, June 2, 1873. |