the Legislature went on his bond. Clarkson Nott Potter, Rep resentative from the Eleventh New York District, is the grandson of the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, President of the great Union College of New York, and son of the distinguished Episcopal bishop Alonzo Potter. The father of Roscoe Conkling, Senator in Congress from the same State, was a United States judge (appointed by John Adams), Minister to Mexico (appointed by President Fillmore), and previous to that a Representative in Congress.

But nearly all the men of mark in both Houses are what come under the category of self-made. I could fill columns with the romance of many of these lives. The experience of the humorous James W. Nesmith, former Senator and now Representative from Oregon; of Senator Cameron, William D. Kelley, Carlton B. Curtis, Glenni W. Scofield, of Pennsylvania; of Schurz and Bogy, of Missouri; of Henry Wilson and George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; of Reuben E. Fenton, of New York; of John A. Logan, of Illinois; of Alex. Ramsey, of Minnesota; of William Sprague and Henry B. Anthony, of Rhode Island; of James Gillespie Blaine, Speaker of the House of Representatives; of Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts; of James B. Beck, of Kentucky; of the brothers Hoar, of Massachusetts; of Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut; of Samuel S. Marshall, of Illinois; of William G. Brownlow and Horace Maynard, of Tennessee; of Godlove S. Orth, of Indiana; of Lucius Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi; of John D. Young, of Kentucky, and Pierce M. B. Young, of Georgia; of Marcus L. Ward, of New Jersey; and of the several colored members-Josiah T. Walls, of Florida; Robert B. Elliott and Richard H. Cain, of South Carolina. And if each of these men could tell his own story, describe his own career, we should have a record not paralleled by any political or representative body in the world.

It is easy to perceive that the controlling influences in the American Congress are not the men of wealth, nor the descend

ants of great families, nor the apostles of extinguished theories. A new, self-made class dominates the situation-men generally highly cultivated, and almost without exception inspired by modern progress and development. The future is in their hands. The war opened a wonderful era to our country. The Whigs of the South joined the Democrats, and hundreds of thousands of the Democrats of the North joined the Republicans, and these two organizations are no longer managed by the old leaders. The ideas that triumphed over the Rebellion are the masters of both; and the Congress which began with Mr. Lincoln's administration, followed by others made by the same majorities, stimulated by the same motives, and pushing forward the same reforms, whatever may be said of them, accomplished far more for the general benefit than any of their predecessors. These reforms permeate the whole system; and at the end of another decade nothing will be more clearly and more firmly established than that the Government which was saved by force will be perpetuated by the peaceful principles which gave victory to the Union arms.

P. S.-This, and many of the letters in this part of the Second Volume, was written in 1874-5.

XLII.

SOME OF THE DUELS IN AMERICA, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE.MASON AND M'CARTY, BURR AND HAMILTON, JACKSON AND DICKINSON, BARREN AND DECATUR, BRODERICK AND TERRY, O'CONNELL AND D'ESTERRY, CILLEY AND GRAVES, BENTON AND LUCAS, GILBERT AND DENVER. - -AND SOME OF THE

HARMLESS DUELS.

IF civilization has not lessened war among nations, it has unquestionably lessened combats among individuals. We hear of an occasional duel in the South, or on the frontiers, and among the gold and silver mines; but gentlemen have gradually ruled it out of their books, and left it to outlaws and bullies. Nothing has done so much to bring the practice into disrepute as public sentiment. It has been fairly laughed out of fashion, and it requires a very severe provocation to justify a resort to arms for the adjustment of personal differences. In France alone it maintains its influence; but even there many of the "affairs" are a good deal less tragical than comical. It is nevertheless worth recalling a few of the numerous instances in history to show how many duels were fought for the slightest cause. I was in Washington in 1841 when the difficulty took place between Henry Clay and William R. King, of Alabama, who was elected Vice-President in 1852, and took the oath before the American consul at Havana, where he had gone for his health, and came home to die on his plantation at Cahawba, Alabama, April 17, 1853.. Colonel King, of Alabama, was as courtly a gentleman as ever breathed; but he would have fought Mr. Clay without hesitation if the affair had not been compromised. The cause of the quarrel was a bitter attack of Mr. Clay upon Francis P. Blair, editor of the Democratic organ at Washington, the Globe, which Colonel King resented. Clay hated Blair bitterly at the time. They were both Kentuckians,

and Blair was the friend of Jackson, and, of course, the censor of Clay. The only survivor of the dispute between King and Clay is the cause of it, Mr. Blair, who lived in Washington city to honored old age, surrounded by an intelligent and affectionate family. His recollections of the Jackson era, and of the old party men on both sides for the last fifty or sixty years, were very fresh; and nothing pleased him more than to recall them in conversation with his friends.

I was also in Washington, and Clerk of the House of Representatives, when the challenge passed between John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and Francis B. Cutting, of New York, in consequence of angry words in debate, March 21-22, 1854, and shared in the solicitude of their friends for a peaceful settlement. They were a high-strung pair, the Northman not a whit behind the Southron, and sectional pride made them obstinate. They were well matched. Cutting, like Breckinridge, was a splendid speaker, and one of the first lawyers of the New York bar, a man of society, culture, and wealth; and the Kentuckian came of a gallant and gifted race. I knew them well, and remember as of yesterday how glad we all were when the sensitive twain were reconciled on the 31st of March. Mr. Cutting has been dead several years. Mr. Breckinridge is living at Lexington, Kentucky, in his fifty-fourth year.

John F. Potter, of Wisconsin, and Roger A. Pryor, of Virginia, both members of the House, came very near fighting in April of 1860. I had just been re-elected Clerk of the House by the anti-slavery Democrats and Republicans. The unconscious cause of this fracas was Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois (he died March 25, 1864), whose brother was killed at Alton, in that State, for publishing an antislavery paper. His terrific speech on the 5th of April, 1860, was one of the most thrilling appeals ever heard in Congress. It was the outburst of a heart agonized by undying grief over a brother's assassination. There had been equal violence on the part of the South be

forehand, and Lovejoy's speech was the overwhelming response. Out of his wonderful denunciation grew the angry discussion between Pryor and Potter, and a challenge from the one, accepted by the other. Potter, being the challenged party, chose bowie-knives as the weapons, to which the other side objected. In The Press of April 15, 1860, I commented on this affair, in an "Occasional," as follows:

"The discussion in reference to the Pryor and Potter difficulty is kept up in all circles with uncommon animation. The great question of the hour is whether the bowie-knife is any more vulgar,' unchristian, or savage than the pistol, the double-barrelled gun, the small-sword, or the rapier. The friends of Potter are multiplying data and strengthening themselves by going back to the code of honor in the days of chivalry, and coming down to the present era. They allege that the battle-axe was the favorite weapon in the tournaments of old, and was used by the bravest and most polished knights of the Middle Ages. They contend that the small-sword exercise continues to be used in France, and the broad-sword in Germany; and that the preliminaries of these contests are duly and carefully arranged. They argue, further, that the bowie-knife, being a Southern production, has been for long years regarded as an improvement upon all; that it is used by many Southern gentlemen; and that, to this day, the Arkansas 'toothpick' is regarded as an important part of the domestic economy of many of the most ardent advocates of the Southern code of honor. Among a large number of the Southern men, this view of the bowie-knife is heartily sustained. I forbear the use of names, but have heard several distinguished authorities quoted in proof of this remark.

"Had Broderick accepted the knife in place of the pistol, he would have had an even chance for his life; but, being opposed by an expert-by one who, to use Colonel Baker's language in his eloquent eulogy, 'understood the trick of the