"Proud memories of many fields-sweet memories alike of valor and friendship, and memories of fraternal strife; tender memories of our fallen brothers and sons whose dying eyes looked last upon their flaming folds; grand memories of heroic virtues, sublime by grief; exultant memories of the great and final victories of our country, our Union, and the righteous cause; thankful memories of a deliverance wrought out for human nature itself, unexampled by any former achievement of arms; immortal memories with immortal honors blendedtwine around these splintered standards, and weave themselves along the warp and woof of these familiar flags, war-worn, begrimed, and baptized with blood.

"Let the brave heart, the trusty heart, the deep, unfathomable heart, in words of more than mortal eloquence, uttered, though unexpressed, speak the emotions of grateful veneration for which these lips of mine are alike too feeble and unworthy.

"General, I accept these relics in behalf of the people of the commonwealth. They will be preserved and cherished amidst all the vicissitudes of the future as mementoes of brave men and noble actions."

I have now reached the subject which will constitute my seventh anecdote The Character and Conduct of Andrew Gregg Curtin immediately before and during the Rebellion.

VII.

OTHER WAR GOVERNORS DURING THE REBELLION.-THE PROPHECY OF "OCCASIONAL IN 1860.

ONE notable circumstance deserves record. The War Governors who will be best and longest remembered-John A. Andrew, of Massachusetts; Oliver Perry Morton, of Indiana; William Sprague, of Rhode Island; William Dennison, Jr.,

David Tod, and John Brough, of Ohio; Edwin D. Morgan, of New York; and Andrew Gregg Curtin, of Pennsylvania-had never been in Congress, although Morton, Morgan, and Sprague were subsequently chosen United States Senators, mainly because of their splendid services in that historic interval.

Andrew Gregg Curtin was Secretary of the Commonwealth under Hon. James Pollock, from 1854 to 1857, and retired to private life till he became a candidate for Governor himself in 1860.

General W. F. Packer (Democrat) was chosen Governor Pollock's successor in 1857. And here let me say of Governor Packer, that, however we may have differed during the war, he was a chief magistrate who deserves to be honored among the most honored of the great men who filled that high place. He had the courage to refuse obedience to the fatal policy of President Buchanan; and in his inaugural message of January, 1858, boldly held the National Administration to the solemn pledge upon which alone it was elected in November of 1856. And, not content with this, he appointed John C. Knox, Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, his Attorney-general, and Hon. William M. Hiester, of Berks County, his Secretary of the Commonwealth, both my personal and political friends, and now in full accord with the Republican party. As if still further to mark his sympathy with the independent Anti-Lecompton Democracy, he offered the vacancy on the Supreme Bench, created by the resignation of Justice Knox, to James L. Reynolds, Esq., for years the confidential attorney of Mr. Buchanan (also in hearty co-operation with the protest against the insane dictators of the party), who died greatly respected in Philadelphia in March of 1880. Mr. Reynolds became a thorough and radical Republican; one of that class who separated from their old political associates from the purest motives, and constitute a most important element in every State, North and South, With characteristic modesty, however, he

declined Governor Packer's unsolicited offer, much to the regret of the members of the bar, who knew his rare ability and integrity. Such were the influences that surrounded Governor Packer from 1857 to 1860, called together by himself, in utter contempt of the party managers. He was a true gentleman and a thorough Pennsylvanian. Prompt, generous, of large experience and winning address, a fine writer and speaker, independent in his circumstances and in his character, I am glad of the opportunity to pay this just tribute to his memory. He died of heart-disease, at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, September 27, 1870, aged sixty-three.

Andrew G. Curtin's name was first mentioned as a candidate for Governor in 1854, but he did not enter the field till 1860. He was a popular candidate, not because he had been an actor on the national stage, but on account of his high intellectual and social qualities. Born in Bellefonte, Centre County, April 22, 1817, he has ever since regarded it as his residence, and is living there with his family now. His father was a native of Ireland, and a gentleman of considerable culture, and is especially remembered as one of the first founders of iron-works in Middle Pennsylvania. His mother was the daughter of the well-known Andrew Gregg, for several years a Representative in Congress, afterwards a Senator in Congress, and Secretary of the Commonwealth under Governor Hiester. In 1823 he was a candidate for Governor, and was defeated by John Andrew Shultze. What a flood of events is opened by this reminiscence! I was very young, a few months younger than Curtin, when his grandfather ran for Governor; but though many years have elapsed, I still remember how both sides abused each other. My father was for Andrew Gregg for Governor, and Andrew Jackson for President-in fact, both the Federal and Democratic parties were reaching out for Old Hickory, and I suspect I was a noisy urchin on what I believed to be the only right side. It is wholesome to reflect that party

excitements, even the hatreds of civil war, inevitably perish with the generation, and often with the decade, they disturbed. If our tempests are not always in a teapot, they burn out or die out with amazing rapidity. What a fiery time that was when John Quincy Adams was made President by the vote of Kentucky! When Andrew Jackson roared, John Randolph. challenged Henry Clay, and George Kremer cried aloud and spared not! Parties dissolved into thin air. Thousands of Federalists went over to the Democrats. Headed by James Buchanan, Pennsylvania wheeled into line in 1828, and gave Andrew Jackson fifty thousand of a majority. John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, ran against Governor Shultze when the latter was a candidate for re-election, in 1826, and got but one thousand votes to about seventy-two thousand for his competitor. There were only three Federal newspapers in Pennsylvania that withstood the Jackson whirlwind-the Philadelphia United States Gazette, the West Chester Village Record, and the Pittsburgh Gazette. The Jackson Federalists were taunted with having turned their coats, and they heartily swore they were not Democrats, only Jackson men. The newspapers bristled with criminations and recriminations. In 1830-32 came the rupture between Jackson and Calhoun, opened after the immortal debate between Webster and Hayne on Foot's resolution. How bitter the conflict was the journals of the day will tell you. Webster was charged with having sold out to the Administration, though he never had any intercourse with it; and it was only when he antagonized Jackson on the Bank question that the impartiality of his former service to the nation was proved. The haughty ability of Calhoun when he defended his theories in favor of Nullification in February, 1833, and the intense, almost agonizing, interest that followed his two days' speech; the alternate dignity and vehemence of his argument; the purity of his private life; the sincerity of his belief in his theories; his bitter attack on Jackson, and the angry retaliation of the latter, even to the

threat of his arrest for disunion-how calmly posterity judges of all these tumultuous scenes! Then the protest of Jackson against the censure of the Senate for the removal of the deposits; who that lived in those days can forget them, and the terrible animosities they aroused? Clay and Calhoun were the leaders of the Opposition; Benton the champion of Jackson; Webster siding with Clay, but refusing to echo his personal resentments. Time passed, and Benton, some years later, offered and carried his resolution to expunge the censure; and the Senate, changed over for Jackson, as it had been against him in his war with the banks, sealed the vindication. All the passions of those angry days are dead and forgotten, at least by the young men of this era, and are only recalled as matters of curiosity and surprise, or as themes for the historical student. It is better so. In ten more years we shall think of the Rebellion as a mistake rather than a crime, and the South will be as willing to forget as the North is already eager to forgive it. Both sides will regard it, as all sides now regard Mr. Calhoun and his followers, with that judicial toleration which springs from the operation of time, and the happy influences of free institutions, under which all are free to speak and write what they think at pleasure, and even to run to extremes in support of their theories.

It was in such a school, in the study of such characters, that Andrew G. Curtin grew to manhood. Inheriting his genial nature and his genuine humor from his Irish father, and his politics from his statesman-grandfather, he was soon a prominent Whig and Republican, but remained a lawyer in Bellefonte until Governor Pollock called him into his Cabinet in 1854, in which capacity he was unconsciously trained for a higher vocation. In 1860 he was nominated as the Republican candidate for Governor against Henry D. Foster.

The Democrats were divided between Douglas and Breckinridge for the Presidency, but there was a very cordial union