CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT COMMONER OF GEORGIA—SPEECH OF A. H. STEPHENS—HENRY A. WISE OF ACCOMAC—HENRY WINTER DAVIS—HIS CHARACTER—JOHN KELLY MEETS HIM IN DEBATE—KELLY’S STANDING IN CONGRESS—HIS CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY LEWIS CASS, BY A. H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT—THE ERA OF KNOW-NOTHINGISM—KELLY’S PART IN ITS OVERTHROW.
THE GREAT COMMONER OF GEORGIA—SPEECH OF A. H. STEPHENS—HENRY A. WISE OF ACCOMAC—HENRY WINTER DAVIS—HIS CHARACTER—JOHN KELLY MEETS HIM IN DEBATE—KELLY’S STANDING IN CONGRESS—HIS CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY LEWIS CASS, BY A. H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT—THE ERA OF KNOW-NOTHINGISM—KELLY’S PART IN ITS OVERTHROW.
The future historian of the United States, when he comes to treat of that extraordinary movement in American politics called Know-Nothingism, will not do justice to the subject unless he assigns the post of honor in the work of its overthrow as a national organization to Stephens of Georgia, Wise of Virginia, and Kelly of New York. A glance at the great work accomplished by these three men is all that can be attempted in this memoir.
“True Americanism,” said Alexander H. Stephens in his memorable Anti-Know-Nothing contest in Georgia in 1855, “as I have learned it, is like true Christianity—disciples in neither are confined to any nation, clime or soil whatever. Americanism is not the product of the soil; it springs not from the land or the ground; it is not of the earth, or earthy; it emanates from the head and the heart; it looks upward,and onward and outward; its life and soul are those grand ideas of government which characterize our institutions, and distinguish us from all other people; and there are no two features in our system which so signally distinguish us from all other nations asfree tolerationof religion and the doctrine ofexpatriation—the right of a man to throw off his allegiance to any and every other State, prince or potentate whatsoever, and bynaturalizationto be incorporated as a citizen into our body politic. Both these principles are specially provided for and firmly established in our Constitution. But these American ideas which were proclaimed in 1789 by our ‘sires of ’76’ are by their ‘sons’ at this day derided and scoffed at. We are now told that ‘naturalization’ is a ‘humbug,’ and that it is an impossibility. So did not our fathers think. This ‘humbug’ and ‘impossibility’ they planted in the Constitution; and a vindication of the same principle was one of the causes of our second war of independence. Let no man, then, barely because he was born in America, presume to be imbued with real and true ‘Americanism,’ who either ignores the direct and positive obligations of the Constitution, or ignores this, one of its most striking characteristics. An Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, or Russian, can be as thoroughly American as if he had been born within the walls of the old Independence Hall itself. Which was the ‘trueAmerican,’ Arnold or Hamilton? The one was a native, the other an adopted son.”[6]
Mr. Stephens had declined to be a candidate for Congress in 1855, and the Know-Nothings taunted him with cowardice, because, they said, if he should run he knew he was doomed to defeat. His letter on Know-Nothingism to Judge Thomas, from which the preceding extract is quoted, was denounced furiously by the Know-Nothings, who loudly predicted that the letter would prove to be his political winding-sheet. These taunts were published throughout the country, and induced Mr. Stephens to change his mind, and re-enter the field as a candidate for the Thirty-fourth Congress. In a speech at Augusta, Georgia, in which he announced this purpose, he said: “I have heard that it has been said that I declined being a candidate, because a majority of the district were Know-Nothings, and I was afraid of being beaten. Now, to all men who entertain any such opinion of me, I wish to say that I was influenced by no such motive. I am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth, or under the earth, except to do wrong—the path of duty I shall ever endeavor to travel, ‘fearing no evil,’ and dreading no consequences. Let time-servers, and those whose whole object is to see and find out which way the popular current for the day and hour runs, that they may float upon it, fear or dread defeat if theyplease. I would rather be defeated in a good cause than to triumph in a bad one. I would not give a fig for a man who would shrink from the discharge of duty for fear of defeat. All is not gold that glitters, and there is no telling the pure from the base until it is submitted to the fiery ordeal of the crucible and the furnace. The best test of a man’s integrity and the soundness of his principles is the furnace of popular opinion, and the hotter the furnace the better the test. I have traveled from a distant part of the State, where I first heard these floating taunts of fear—as coming from this district—for the sole and express purpose of announcing to you, one and all, and in this most public way to announce to the other counties, without distinction of party, that I am again a candidate for Congress in this district. The announcement I now make. My name is hereby presented to the district; not by any convention under a majority or a two-third rule—but by myself.
“I know, fellow-citizens, that many of you differ with me upon those exciting questions which are now dividing—and most unhappily, too, as I conceive—dividing our people. It is easy to join the shouts of the multitude, but it is hard to say to a multitude that they are wrong. I would be willing to go into one of your Know-Nothing lodges or councils, where every man would be against me, if I could be admitted without first having to put myself under obligationsnever to tell what occurred therein, and there speak the same sentiments that I shall utter here this night. Bear with me, then, while I proceed.[7]It is to exhibit and hold up even to yourselves the great evils and dangers to be apprehended from this ‘new,’ and, I think, most vicious political ‘monster,’ that I would address you; and against the influences of which I would warn and guard you, as well as the rest of our people. While the specious outside title of the party is that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ when we come to look at its secret objects as they leak out, we find that one of its main purposes is, not that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ but that those of a particular religious faith, though as good Americans as any others, shall be ruled by the rest.
“But it is said the ‘proscription’ is not against a religious but a political enemy, and the Roman Church is a political party, dangerous and powerful. Was a bolder assertion, without one fact to rest upon, ever attempted to be palmed off upon a confiding people? The Roman Church a political party! Where are its candidates? How many do they number in our State Legislatures or in Congress? What dangers are they threatening, or what have they ever plotted? Let them be named. Was it when Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, established the colony of Maryland, and forthe first time on this continent established the principle of free toleration in religious worship? Was it when Charles Carroll, a Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence? But it is said that great danger is to be apprehended from the Catholics because of a ‘secret order’ amongst them, known as Jesuits. ‘No one,’ says a Know-Nothing writer, ‘knows, or possibly can know, the extent of their influence in this country. One of them may eat at your table, instruct your children, and profess to be a good Protestant, and you never suspect him. Their great aim is to make their mark in America. Perjury to them is no sin, if the object of it be to spread Catholicism or acquire political influence in the country.’ Whether this be true of the Jesuits or not I cannot say. But I submit it to the consideration of candid minds how far it is true of the new order of Know-Nothings, which is now so strenuously endeavoring to make its mark in America, and to gain political influence in the country, not only by putting down all foreigners, and all native-born citizens who may be of Catholic faith, but also all other native-born citizens who will not take upon their necks the yoke of their power. Do not hundreds and thousands of them go about daily and hourly, denying that they belong to the order, or that they know anything about it? May they not, and do they not ‘eat at your table,’ attend your sick,and some of them preach from your pulpits, and yet deny that they know anything about that ‘order’ which they are making such efforts to spread in the land? I do not say all of them do this; but is it not common with the ‘order,’ thus by some sort of equivocation and slippery construction, to mislead and deceive those with whom they converse? There is nothing worse that can be said of any man or any people indicating a destruction of morals or personal degradation, than that ‘the truth is not in him.’ It is the life and soul of all the virtues, human or divine. Tell me not that any party will effect reformation of any sort, bad as we now are in this land, which brings into disrepute this principle upon which rests all our hopes on earth, and all our hopes for immortality. And my opinion is that the Protestant ministers of the Gospel in this country, instead of joining in this New England, puritanical, proscriptive crusade against Catholics, could not render a better service to their churches, as well as the State, in the present condition of morals amongst us, than to appoint a day for everyone of them to preach to their respective congregations from this text, ‘What is truth?’ Let it also be a day set aside for fasting, humiliation and prayer—for repentance in sackcloth and ashes—on account of the alarming prevalence of the enormous sin of lying! Was there ever such a state of general distrust between man and man before? Could it ever have been saidof a Georgia gentleman, until within a few months past, that he says so and so, but I don’t know whether to believe him or not? Is it not bringing Protestantism, and Christianity itself, into disgrace when such remarks are daily made, and not without just cause, about Church communicants of all our Protestant denominations—and by one church member even about his fellow-member? Where is this state of things to lead to, or end, but in general deception, hypocrisy, knavery, and universal treachery?
“Was ever such tyranny heard of in any old party in this country as that which this new ‘order’ sets up? Every one of them knows, and whether they deny it or not, there is a secret monitor within that tells them that they have pledged themselves never to vote for any Roman Catholic to any office of profit or trust. They have thus pledged themselves to set up a religious test in qualifications for office against the express words of the Constitution of the United States. Their very organization is not only anti-American, anti-republican, but at war with the fundamental law of the Union, and, therefore, revolutionary in its character, thus silently and secretly to effect for all practical purposes a change in our form of government. And what is this but revolution? Not an open and manly rebellion, but a secret and covert attempt to undermine the very corner-stone of the temple of our liberties.
“Whenever any government denies to any class of its citizens an equal participation in the privileges, immunities, and honors enjoyed by all others, it parts with all just claim to their allegiance. Allegiance is due only so long as protection is extended; and protection necessarily implies an equality of right to stand or fall, according to merit, amongst all the members of society, or the citizens of the commonwealth. The best of men, after all, have enough of the old leaven of human nature left about them to fight when they feel aggrieved, outraged and trampled upon; and strange to say, where men get to fighting about religion they fight harder, and longer and more exterminatingly than upon any other subject. The history of the world teaches this. Already we see the spirit abroad which is to enkindle the fires and set the fagots a blazing—not by the Catholics, they are comparatively few and weak; their only safety is in the shield of the constitutional guarantee; minorities seldom assail majorities; and persecutions always begin with the larger numbers against the smaller. But this spirit is evinced by one of the numerous replies to my letter. The writer says: ‘We call upon the children of the Puritans of the North, and the Huguenots of the South, by the remembrance of the fires of Smithfield, and the bloody St. Bartholomew, to lay down for once all sectional difficulties,’ etc., and to join in this great American movement of proscribing Catholics.What is this but the tocsin of intestine strife? Why call up the remembrance of the fires of Smithfield but to whet the Protestant appetite for vengeance? Why stir up the quiet ashes of bloody St. Bartholomew, but for the hope, perhaps, of finding therein a slumbering spark from which new fires may be started? Why exhume the atrocities, cruelties, and barbarities of ages gone by from the repose in which they have been buried for hundreds of years, unless it be to reproduce the seed, and spread amongst us the same moral infection and loathsome contagion?—just as it is said the plague is sometimes occasioned in London by disentombing and exposing to the atmosphere the latent virus of the fell disease still lingering in the dusty bones of those who died of it centuries ago. Fellow citizens, Fellow Protestants, Fellow Americans—all who reverence the constitution of your country—I entreat you, and I envoke you to give no listening ear to such fanatical appeals.
“When the principles of the Constitution are disregarded, when those ‘checks and restraints,’ put in it as Mr. Madison has told us, for ‘a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions,’ are broken down and swept away, when the whole country shall have been brought under the influence of the third degree of this Know-Nothing order, if that time shall ever come, then, indeed may the days of this Republic, too, be considered as numbered.
“I wish to say something to you about this third degree, the union degree, as it is called. For under this specious title, name or guise, the arch-tempter again approaches us, quite as subtly as under the other of ‘Americans shall rule America.’ The obligation taken in this degree is ‘to uphold, maintain and defend’ the Union, without one word being said about the Constitution. Now, as much as we all, I trust, are devoted to the Union, who would have it without the Constitution? This is the life and soul of it—this is its animating spirit. It is this that gives it vitality, health, vigor, strength, growth, development and power. Without it the Union could never have been formed, and without it it cannot be maintained or held together. Where the animating principle of any living organism is extinguished, this is death, and dissolution is inevitable. You might just as well expect that the component parts of your bodies could be held together by some senseless incantations after the vital spark has departed, as that this Union can be held together by any Know-Nothing oaths when the Constitution is gone. Congress is to be done away with, except in so far as its members may be necessary, as the dumb instruments for registering the edicts of an invisible but all-powerful oligarchy. Our present Government is to be paralyzed by this boa-constrictor, which is now entwining its coils around it. It is to be supplanted and displaced by anotherself-constituted and secretly organized body to rise up in its stead, a political ‘monster,’ more terrible to contemplate than the seven-headed beast spoken of in the Apocalypse.
“I have seen it stated in the newspapers by some unknown writer, that my letter to Col. Thomas will be my political winding-sheet. If you and the other voters of the Eighth Congressional District so will it, so let it be; there is but one other I should prefer—and that is the Constitution of my country; let me be first wrapped in this, and then covered over with that letter, and the principles I have announced this night; and thus shrouded I shall be content to be laid away, when the time comes, in my last resting-place without asking any other epitaph but the simple inscription carved upon the headstone that marks the spot—‘Here sleep the remains of one who dared to tell the people they were wrong when he believed so, and who never intentionally deceived a friend, or betrayed even an enemy.’”[8]
Thus spoke Alexander H. Stephens, Georgia’s greatest statesman, of the pernicious tendencies of the Know-Nothing party. On that speech he ran for Congress and was elected by three thousand majority. Know-Nothingism was thus slain in Georgia. Since the death of Mr. Stephens some scribbler with a talent for forgery has taken the quotation marks from theparagraph about the Jesuits in the foregoing speech, affixed Mr. Stephens’s name to it, and sent it on its rounds through the press as the declared opinion of the dead statesman concerning the followers of Loyola. Mr. Stephens quoted the paragraph from a Know-Nothing writer, not to approve the attack on the Jesuits, but for the opposite purpose of showing it applied to the Know-Nothings themselves. No man in this country could use the weapon of retort with more effect than Alexander H. Stephens, and his remarks on the paragraph in question afford a favorable instance of his power in that line. That this stupid calumny on the great man who battled so nobly for the equal rights of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, foreign born and native Americans, should have been palmed off on the public, is less surprising than that it should have found its way into certain Catholic newspapers, in the columns of at least one of which the present writer read it shortly after the death of Mr. Stephens.
The ever memorable conflict in Virginia of 1855, between the Know-Nothings and Democrats, was led on the part of the latter by the gallant Henry A. Wise. That conflict was one of great national magnitude. If the Know-Nothings, theretofore victorious, had then succeeded, it is likely a civil war precipitated by religious fanaticism would have followed, not to be conducted between the States, as later unfortunatelyoccurred, but between citizens of the same cities, and towns and neighborhoods throughout the Union, with a fury to make humanity shudder—in every sense of the word a civil war. The Virginia election of that year was, therefore, watched with intense interest by the whole American people, and a feeling of feverish excitement was everywhere visible. Henry A. Wise, the uncompromising enemy of the Know-Nothings, was named as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia. Never was such a canvass before. He went everywhere, pouring out fiery eloquence in the Western Mountains, in the Blue Ridge that milks the clouds, upon the Potomac, lovely River of Swans, on the Rappahannock, the Piankatank, Mob Jack Bay, James River, Elizabeth River, down to the North Carolina line; and wherever he went this second Patrick Henry stirred the people’s hearts as they had not been stirred before. One of the best stump speeches ever heard in this country was made by Mr. Wise at Alexandria. He had declared hostility to the Know-Nothings in a letter to a citizen of Virginia, written September 18, 1854.
In that letter he said: “I am a native Virginian; my ancestors on both sides for two hundred years were citizens of this country and this State—half English, half Scotch. I am a Protestant by birth, by baptism, by intellectual belief, and by education and by adoption. I am an American, in every fibre and in everyfeeling an American; yet in every character, in every relation, in every sense, with all my head and all my heart, and all my might, I protest against this secret organization of native Americans and of Protestants to proscribe Roman Catholic and naturalized citizens. As early as 1787 we established a great land ordinance, the most perfect system of eminent domain, of proprietary titles, and of territorial settlements, which the world had ever beheld to bless the homeless children of men. It had the very house-warming of hospitality in it. It wielded the logwood axe, and cleared a continent of forests. It made an exodus in the old world, and dotted the new with log-cabins, around the hearths of which the tears of the aged and the oppressed were wiped away, and cherub children were born to liberty, and sang its songs, and have grown up in its strength and might and majesty. It brought together foreigners of every country and clime—immigrants from Europe of every language and religion, and its most wonderful effect has been to assimilate all races. Irish and German, English and French, Scotch and Spaniard, have met on the Western prairies, in the Western woods, and have peopled villages and towns and cities—queen cities, rivalling the marts of Eastern commerce; and the Teutonic and Celtic and Anglo-Saxon races have in a day mingled into one undistinguishable mass—and that one is American. The children of all are crossed in bloodin the first generation, so that ethnology can’t tell of what parentage they are—they all become brother and sister Jonathans. As in the colonies, as in the revolution, as in the last war, so have foreigners and immigrants of every religion and tongue contributed to build up the temple of American law and liberty until its spire reaches to heaven, whilst its shadow rests on earth. If there has been a turnpike road to be beaten out of the rocky metal, or a canal to be dug, foreigners and immigrants have been armed with the mattock and the spade and if a battle on sea and land had to be fought, foreigners and immigrants have been armed with the musket and the blade.
“We can name the very hour of our birth as a people. We need recur to no fable of a wolf to whelp us into existence. As a nation we are but seventy-eight years of age. Many persons are now living who were alive before this nation was born. And the ancestors of this people about two centuries only ago were foreigners, every one of them coming to the shores of this country to take it away from the aborigines, and to take possession of it by authority either directly or derivatively of Papal Power. His Holiness the Pope was the great grantor of all the new countries of North America. Foreigners in the name of the Pope and Mother Church took possession of North America, to have and to hold the same to their heirs against the heathen forever. Andnow already their descendants are for excluding foreigners, and the Pope’s followers from an equal enjoyment of this same possession. So strange is human history. Christopher Columbus! Ferdinand and Isabella! What would they have thought of this had they foreseen it when they touched a continent and called it theirs in the name of the Holy Trinity, by authority of the keeper of the keys of Heaven, and of the great grantor of the empire and domain of earth? What would have become of our national titles to northeastern and northwestern boundaries, but for the plea of this authority, valid of old among all Christian powers?”
Writing thus in September, 1854, Mr. Wise, although he had been a Whig years before, was nominated for Governor by the Democrats in December of the same year. In his famous Alexandria speech, before discussing Know-Nothingism, he told the people some practical truths explanatory of the decadence of the prosperity of Virginia, of the causes producing it, and the remedies to be applied. “You have,” he said, “the bowels of your Western mountains rich in iron, in copper, in coal, in salt, in gypsum, and the very earth is so rich in oil that it sets the rivers in flame. You have the line of the Alleghany, that beautiful Blue Ridge which stands placed there by the Almighty, not to obstruct the way of the people to market, but placed there in the very bounty of Providence to milkthe clouds, to make the sweet springs which are the sources of your rivers. And at the head of every stream is the waterfall murmuring the very music of your power to put spindles in motion. And yet commerce has long ago spread her sails and sailed away from you; you have not as yet dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own hearths; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows worthy of gods in the iron foundries. You have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have had no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of agriculture; and such agriculture! Your sedge patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth has scarred the very bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed steer through the sedge patches to procure a tough beef-steak. You are in the habit of discussing Federal politics; and permit me to say to you, very honestly and very openly, that next to brandy, next to card playing, next to horse-racing, the thing that has done more harm to Virginia than any other in the course of her past history, has been her insatiable appetite for Federal politics. She has given all her great men to the Union. Her Washington, her Jefferson, her Madison, her Marshall, her galaxy of great men she has given to the Union.Richmond, instead of attending to Richmond’s business, has been too much in the habit of attending to the affairs of Washington city, when there are plenty there, God knows, to attend to them themselves. * * “Puritanism,” said Mr. Wise, has disappeared, and we have in place of it Unitarianism, Universalism, Fourierism, Millerism, Mormonism—all the odds and ends of isms—until at last you have a grand fusion of all those odds and ends of isms in theomnium gatherumof isms called Know-Nothingism. Having swept the North, the question was: How can this ism be wedged in in the South? And the devil was at the elbow of these preachers of ‘Christian politics’ to tell them precisely how.” [At this point Mr. Wise was interrupted by cat-calls, derisive cheers and other manifestations of the Know-Nothing element of the meeting.] “There were three elements in the South,” continued the speaker, “and in Virginia particularly, to which they might apply themselves. There is the religious element, the 103,000 Presbyterians, the 300,000 Baptists, the 300,000 Methodists of Virginia. Well, how were they to reach them? Why, just by raising a hell of a fuss about the Pope!
“Cæsar’s kingdom is political, is a carnal kingdom. And I tell you that if I stood alone in the State of Virginia, and if priestcraft—if the priests of my own Mother Church dared to lay their hands on the political power of our people, or to use their churches towield political influence, I would stand, in feeble imitation it may be, but I would stand, even if I stood alone, as Patrick Henry stood in the Revolution, between the parsons and the people. These men, many of whom are neither Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Lutherans, nor what not—who are men of no religion, who have no church, who do not say their prayers, who do not read their Bible, who live God-defying lives every day of their existence, are now seen with faces as long as their dark-lanterns, with the whites of their eyes turned up in holy fear lest the Bible should be shut up by the Pope! You tell the people that Catholics never gave aid to civil liberty; that they never yet struck a blow for the freedom of mankind. Who gave you alliance against the crown of England? Who but that Catholic king, Louis XVI. He sent you from the Court of Versailles Lafayette, the boy of Washington’s camp, a foreigner who never was naturalized, but who bled at the redoubt of Yorktown, when Arnold, a native, like Absalom proved traitor.
“And, Sir, before George Washington was born, before Lafayette wielded the sword, or Charles Carroll the pen for his country, six hundred and forty years ago, on the 16th of June, 1214, there was another scene enacted on the face of the globe, when the general charter of all charters of freedom was gained, when one man, a man called Stephen Langton, swore theBarons of England for the people against the power of the King—swore the Barons on the high altar of the Catholic Church at St. Edmundsbury, that they would have Magna Charta or die for it. The charter which secures to every one of you to-day trial by jury, freedom of the press, freedom of the pen, the confronting of witnesses with the accused, and the opening of secret dungeons—that charter was obtained by Stephen Langton against the King of England, and if you Know-Nothings don’t know who Stephen Langton was, you know nothing sure enough. He was a Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. I come here not to praise the Catholics, but I come here to acknowledge historical truths, and to ask of Protestants—what has heretofore been the pride and boast of Protestants—tolerance of opinion in religious faith.
“All that I have to say to the Democracy is that you want active, earnest organization. Remember that if these Know-Nothings hold together they are sworn compact committees of vigilance. Go to work then. Organize actively everywhere. Appoint your vigilance committees, but take especial care that no Know-Nothings are secretly and unknown to you upon them. Be prepared. I have gone through most of Eastern Virginia, and in spite of their vaunting I defy them to defeat me. There are Indians in the bushes, but I’ll whack on the bayonet, and lunge at every shrub in the State till I drive them out. I tellthem distinctly there shall be no compromise, no parley. I will come to no terms. They shall either crush me, or I will crush them in this State.”
Mr. Wise, though his health was impaired, conducted his campaign with extraordinary energy, travelling about 3000 miles, to every point in the State, and speaking fifty times before the election. He was triumphantly elected Governor of Virginia, receiving upwards of ten thousand majority over his Know-Nothing competitor. The impartial verdict of history is that Henry A. Wise did more to kill the Know-Nothing party than any other man in the United States.
Many Know-Nothings were elected to Congress from the Northern States, and a few from the Southern States. In the Senate and House of Representatives there were seventy-eight members of that party in 1855. Conspicuous among them all, on account of his prejudices no less than his ability, was Henry Winter Davis, a member of the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses from Baltimore.
The celebrated controversy upon the floor of Congress between Davis and John Kelly on the Know-Nothing question entitles the Know-Nothing leader to some notice here.
Henry Winter Davis was born at Annapolis, Maryland, August 16, 1817, and received his education at Kenyon College, Ohio, where he was graduated in1837. His father was an Episcopalian minister. Young Davis was sent to the University of Virginia in 1839 by his aunt, a Miss Winter of Alexandria, Virginia, and entered upon his preparatory legal studies at that institution. He afterwards opened a law office at Alexandria, where he struggled with poverty for some years, making but little mark in that community, save as an occasional contributor of political essays to the AlexandriaGazette, but applying himself closely to his studies, and becoming an able lawyer. Reverdy Johnson recognized his talents and advised him to remove to Baltimore, where he would find a wider field for their display. Mr. Davis acted on this advice, and made Baltimore his home. He had married a Miss Cazenove of Alexandria, who soon died, and subsequently he married a daughter of John S. Morris, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Baltimore. Mr. Morris opposed the marriage on account of Davis’s peculiar political views.
Henry Winter Davis was a man of genius, with a natural bent for an opposition leader. In person he was handsome, in manners haughty and reserved, in demeanor elegant; and he possessed the gift of a fine oratory, both logical and persuasive. A morose temper and a cynical and cold nature served to heighten the picturesque effect of his character, and to make him delight in fomenting discord and violence. “The ignorant Dutch and infuriated Irish, let thembeware lest they press the bosses of the buckler too far,” is said to have been a form of expression he applied to Germans and Irishmen in the course of one of his invectives on the stump in Baltimore. He soon became an acknowledged leader of the Know-Nothings, and no man knew better how to fire the rage and incite to acts of bloodshed the Plug Uglies of that city. Had Davis lived during the era of the Alien and Sedition Laws, his genius probably would have placed him at the head of that conspiracy, and his name would have become famous in history. He was a contemner of the sanctions of authority. The sacredness of institutions handed down from generation to generation unimpaired by the ravages of time, awakened no sense of reverence in the mind of this iconoclast. Burke’s beautiful allusion to the bulwarks of civil society which have been stamped with the “mysterious virtue of wax and parchment,” must have appeared to him only as a figure of rhetoric or a ridiculous fetich. How contemptuously he regarded the warning of Washington to his countrymen in the Farewell Address against entangling alliances with the nations of Europe is discovered in the following passage, found at page 367, of a book written by Mr. Davis, called “The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century.”
“They who stand with their backs to the future and their faces to the past, wise only after the event,and refusing to believe in dangers they have not felt, clamorously invoke the name of Washington in their protest against interference in the concerns of Europe. With such it is useless to argue till they learn the meaning of the language they repeat.”
With many similar sophistries he declared it would be wise policy on the part of the United States to take part in European controversies, and pretended to find warrant in the Monroe doctrine for this radical reversal of Washington’s maxim. But that Davis was a demagogue in the offensive sense of the word is evident from the fact that the very advice of General Washington against foreign influence, which he scouted at in his book, was soon after relied upon by the same Davis as his chief argument in Congress for the exclusion of foreigners from the rights and privileges of citizenship. In the course of a Know-Nothing speech, delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6th, 1857, he said: “Foreign allies have decided the government of the country. * * * * Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Recall the warnings of Washington against foreign influence, here in our midst, wielding part of our sovereignty; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and power.” The insincerity of Davis is further shown from his conduct in regard tothe Republican party. He denounced that party in the speech above quoted from, saying, among other things, “the Republican party has nothing to do and can do nothing. It has no future. Why cumbers it the ground?” In the course of a few years he became a Republican, and notwithstanding his former denunciation of them, swallowing at a single breath the most ultra tenets of that party. Consistent only in his inconsistencies, he again prepared to bolt from the Republican organization shortly before his death, and was the author of the celebrated Wade-Davis Manifesto in 1864, against the renomination of Abraham Lincoln. Once having been invited by a literary society of the University of Virginia to deliver the annual address before that body, he took up some eccentric line of political conduct before the commencement day occurred, and compelled the society in self-respect to revoke its invitation. He affected the Byronic manner, and the contagion spread to other members of Congress. Roscoe Conkling, after he entered the House of Representatives, is said to have become a great admirer of Henry Winter Davis, and to have fallen into his peculiarities of style as a public speaker. Mr. Conkling’s famous parliamentary quarrel with Mr. Blaine soon after occurred.
Such was the man the Know-Nothings recognized as their leader in the House of Representatives when John Kelly entered that body. In the early part of1857 Mr. Kelly replied to a sneering assault of Mr. Davis on the Irish Brigade, and in the debate which followed not only proved himself able to cope with the Know-Nothing leader, but in a running debate with Mr. Kennett of Missouri, Mr. Akers of the same State, and Mr. Campbell of Ohio, who entered the lists against him, Kelly established his reputation as one of the best off-hand debaters in Congress.
A few extracts from the speeches on the occasion, which are taken from theCongressional Globe, will furnish an idea of the style of the speakers, and the merits of the controversy. In referring to the Presidential election of 1856, and the victory of the Democrats, Mr. Davis said: “The Irish Brigade stood firm and saved the Democrats from annihilation, and the foreign recruits in Pennsylvania turned the fate of the day. They have elected, by these foreigners, by a minority of the American people, a President to represent their divisions. The first levee of President Buchanan will be a curious scene. He is a quiet, simple, fair-spoken gentleman, versed in the by-paths and indirect crooked ways whereby he met this crown, and he will soon know how uneasy it sits upon his head. Some future Walpole may detail the curious greetings, the unexpected meetings, the cross purposes and shocked prejudices of the gentlemen who cross that threshold. Some honest Democrat from the South will thank God for the Union preserved. A gentlemanof the disunionist school will congratulate the President on the defeat of Mr. Fillmore. The Northern gentlemen will whisper ‘Buchanan, Breckenridge and Free Kansas’ in the presidential ear, and beg without scandal the confirmation of their hopes. * * But how to divide the spoils among this motley crew—ah! there’s the rub. Sir, I envy not the nice and delicate scales which must distribute the patronage amid the jarring elements of that conglomerate, as fierce against each other as clubs in cards are against spades. * * The clamors of the foreign legion will add to the interest of the scene. They may not be disregarded, for but for them Pennsylvania was lost, and with it the day. Yet what will satisfy these indispensable allies, now conscious of their power? That, Sir, is the exact condition of things which will be found in the ante-chamber—exorbitant demands, limited means, irreconcilable divisions, strife, disunion, dissolution—whenever the President shall have taken the solemn oath of office and darkened the doors of the White House.
“The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil against which the American party protested. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country—men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influenceon the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result.”
Mr. Kelly replied to the Know-Nothing leader. He said: “I rise for the purpose of submitting as briefly as I can a few remarks in reply to the very extraordinary speech of the honorable member from Baltimore city. In the great abundance of his zeal to assail the President of the United States, the gentlemen from Baltimore could not permit so good an occasion to pass without hurling his pointless invectives against my constituents, in terms and temper which demand a reply. * * * His ambition seems restless and insatiable, for he cannot conclude his speech without trying a bout with what he denominates the ‘Irish Brigade.’ What particular class of our fellow-citizens this fling was aimed at, I am at a loss to conjecture. There is a body known to history under that appellation—a body of historical reputation, whose deeds of bravery on every battle-field of Europe have long formed the glowing theme for the poet’s genius and the sculptor’s art. But, sir, they were too pure to be reached by the gentleman’s sarcasm—too patriotic to be measured by his well conned calculation of the ‘loaves and fishes’ which have unfortunately slippedthrough his fingers—too brave to be terrified by the menaces or insults of those who would justify brutal murder—the murder of defenceless women and helpless children—the sacking of dwellings and the burning of churches, under the insolent plea of ‘summary punishment.’ Sir, the Irish Brigade of history was composed of patriots whom oppression in the land of their birth had driven to foreign countries, to carve out a home and a name by their valor and their swords. The brightest page of the history of France is that which records the deeds and the names of the ‘Irish Brigade.’ France, however, was not the only country in which the Irish Brigade signalized its devotion to liberty, and its bravery in achieving it. Sir, the father of your own navy was one of that glorious band of heroes who shed lustre on the land of their birth, while they poured out their life-blood for the country of their adoption. John Barry was a member of the Irish Brigade in America—he, who when tempted by Lord Howe with gold to his heart’s content, and the command of a line-of-battle-ship, spurned the offer with these noble words: ‘I have devoted myself to the cause of my adopted country, and not the value or command of the whole British fleet could seduce me from it.’ He, who when hailed by the British frigates in the West Indies and asked the usual questions as to the ship and captain, answered: ‘The United States ship Alliance, saucy Jack Barry,half-Irishman, half-Yankee. Who are you?’ Sir, saucy Jack Barry, as he styled himself, was the first American officer that ever hoisted the Stars and Stripes of our country on board a vessel of war. So soon as the flag of the Union was agreed on, it floated from the mast-head of the Lexington, Captain John Barry. But Captain John Barry was not the only member of the ‘Irish Brigade’ whose name comes down to us with the story of the privations and bravery of our revolutionary struggle. Colonel John Fitzgerald was also a member of that immortal band. Of this member of the ‘Irish Brigade’ I will let the still living member of Washington’s own household, the eloquent and venerable Custis speak:
“‘Col. Fitzgerald,’ says G. W. P. Custis in his memoirs of Revolutionary Heroes, ‘was an Irish officer in the Blue and Buffs, the first volunteer company raised in the South, in the dawn of the Revolution, and commanded by Washington. In the campaign of 1778 and retreat through the Jerseys, Fitzgerald was appointed aid-de-camp to Washington. At the battle of Princeton occurred that touching scene, consecrated by history to everlasting remembrance. The American troops, worn down by hardships, exhausting marches and want of food, on the fall of their leader, that brave old Scotchman, General Mercer, recoiled before the bayonets of the veteran foe. Washington spurred his horse into the interval between the hostilelines, reigning up with the charger’s head to the foe, and calling to his soldiers, ‘Will you give up your General to the enemy?’ The appeal was not made in vain. The Americans faced about and the arms were leveled on both side—Washington between them—even as though he had been placed as a target for both. It was at this moment Colonel Fitzgerald returned from conveying an order to the rear—and here let us use the gallant veteran’s own words. He said: ‘On my return, I perceived the General immediately between our line and that of the enemy, both lines leveling for the decisive fire that was to decide the fortunes of the day. Instantly there was a roar of musketry followed by a shout. It was the shout of victory. On raising my eyes I discovered the enemy broken and flying, while dimly, amid the glimpses of the smoke, was seen Washington alive and unharmed, waving his hat and cheering his comrades to the pursuit. I dashed my rowels into my charger’s flanks and flew to his side, exclaiming, ‘Thank God, your Excellency’s safe.’ I wept like a child for joy.’”
“This is what history tells us of another member of the ‘Irish Brigade.’ Now, Sir, if the gentleman from Maryland will only suppress his horror, and listen with patience, I will tell him what tradition adds concerning this brave aid-de-camp of Washington—this bold and intrepid Irishman. After peace was proclaimed and our independence achieved—after theConstitution had been put in operation, and Washington filled the office of chief-magistrate of the nation—he sent for his old companion in arms, then living in Washington’s own county of Fairfax, and invited him to accept the lucrative office of collector of the customs for the port of Alexandria. This tradition will be found to correspond with the records of the Treasury Department, on which may be read the entry that Colonel John Fitzgerald was appointed collector of the customs at Alexandria, Virginia, by George Washington, President of the United States, April 12, 1792. Thus we find that the Father of his country, were he now living, would come under the denunciations of the gentleman from Maryland, and his Know-Nothing associates, for conferring office on one of the ‘Irish Brigade.’
“The gentleman from Baltimore city professes great devotion to the memory and fame of the illustrious Clay. He was the gentleman’s oracle while living. Hear his eloquent voice coming up to us as if from his honored grave. He, too, is speaking of the ‘Irish Brigade,’ and in his warm, honest and manly soul the only words which he can find sufficiently ardent to express his feelings are ‘bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.’ ‘That Ireland,’ exclaims the orator of America in a speech delivered as late as 1847, ‘which has been in all the vicissitudes of our national existence our friend, and has ever extended to us herwarmest sympathy—those Irishmen who in every war in which we have been engaged, on every battle-field from Quebec to Monterey, have stood by us shoulder to shoulder and shared in all the perils and fortunes of the conflict.’ If anything, Mr. Chairman, were wanting after this to ennoble the ‘Irish Brigade,’ and give it its proper and constitutional position in the family of American freemen, it is the obloquy of His Excellency Henry J. Gardner of Massachusetts, and the Hon. Henry Winter Davis, of Baltimore.
“I now propose, Mr. Chairman, to address myself for a few moments to the honorable gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akers), who is, I learn, a minister of the gospel. While his friend from Baltimore city exhausts all his powers upon the ‘Irish Brigade,’ he, with an equal stretch of fancy, but a much vaster stride over space, obtrudes himself at a bound into the cabins of the Irish peasantry, far away across the Atlantic. Hailing from a State first settled by Catholics, whose chief city was named by its pious founders after the sainted crusader King of France, the gentleman from Missouri calls on you to hear the Irish priest beyond the Atlantic holding converse with his enslaved parishioners. Mr. Chairman, from boyhood to manhood, I have known more priests of native and foreign birth than Mr. Akers ever saw. I have seen them at the cradle of infancy; I have been with them at the death-bed of old age; but, sir, my ears are only thoseof a man; I never heard a word of the speeches the gentleman from Missouri puts into their lips. Is it not known, sir, to every candid and impartial traveler who has visited that beautiful but ill-fated Island that the only true, devoted, loyal, self-sacrificing friend that the Irish peasant has in the land of his birth is the Catholic priest? He stands between him and the oppression of his haughty, blood-stained rulers; and when he cannot ameliorate his condition he bears on his own shoulders his full share of the burden. In suffering and misfortune he administers to him the consolations of his religion and the counsel of a friend; he sympathizes with him in all his trials, and when the minister of a strange faith, armed with all the terrors of the law, sends his bailiffs and his minions to seize the very bed on which his sick wife is preparing to meet the God of her fathers—when under the maddening spectacle a momentary burning for revenge perhaps seizes upon his agonized soul—the priest is by his side whispering in his ear ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord’; takes him by the hand, provides with his last penny for the safe removal of the sick and the helpless, and leaves them not until the hour of their trial is passed—a trial that will continue to harrass and oppress the Irish Catholic so long as the national Church of England prolongs a life of debauchery and vice on the plunder and pillage of the Irish peasant.”
Mr. Kelly made a deep impression on the House. The Know-Nothing members held a consultation while he was speaking, and decided that he must be interrupted and overcome if possible by a running fire of cross-questions. Luther M. Kennett of Missouri, formerly Mayor of St. Louis, and Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, were selected to open fire upon him. Mr. Kennett began by saying, “Will the gentleman from New York allow me to interrupt him for a moment?”
Mr. Kelly: “Certainly, sir.”
Mr. Kennett: “I see, Mr. Chairman, that my colleague to whom the gentleman refers, is not in his seat. I will, therefore, with his permission, say that I think he has unintentionally misinterpreted my colleague’s remarks. The inference which I drew from the argument of my colleague on this floor was that he was opposed to the consolidation of political and religious questions and to the proscribing of any man on account of his religious belief—and such are the principles and policy of the American Party. My colleague said further that the American Party was the first party that ever introduced that principle in their political platform.”
Mr. Kelly: “I must insist, Mr. Chairman, with all deference to the gentleman from Missouri, that I have not misunderstood the remarks of his colleague. Ilistened to his speech, as I have already said, with attention, and read it very carefully as it is printed in theGlobe, and as it now appears in that paper to speak for itself. While I admit an apparent effort on the part of the gentleman from Missouri tolookliberal, I must be permitted to remark that he seems no way solicitous totalkliberal, and an unbiased perusal of the gross libel which he has published in theGlobeconcerning the Irish Catholic priesthood will lead his colleague, however reluctantly, to the same conclusion. But the gentleman only acts out the principles and ritual of the midnight order, which conceals all it can, and denies everything.”
Mr. Kennett: “I will answer the gentleman more fully in my own speech, and will here state that I am ready to answer any question he may propound.”
Mr. Kelly: “Then I ask the gentleman did he or does he now give his adhesion to the platform of principles adopted by the American Party in Philadelphia in February, 1856? If so, does not the gentleman by his own showing concur in the principle of proscribing Catholics because of their religious belief? I allude to the fifth article of the American platform.”
Mr. Kennett: “I will answer the gentlemen by referring him to the platform laid down by the American Party of my State which proscribes no man because of his religious belief. And now let me further say that the gentleman is in error when he assertsthat this debate was commenced by my colleague. It was introduced by Mr. Bowie of Maryland, in his animadversions upon his colleague, Mr. Davis.”
Mr. Kelly: “The gentleman certainly is in error, for Mr. Davis himself in his wild foray against the ‘Foreign Brigade,’ unnecessarily and unfoundedly attributed the defeat of his party in the last election to the ‘religious influences’ which brought so many alien citizens to the polls. The gentleman has not, however, yet answered my question.”
Mr. Kennett: “I am sorry I cannot suit the gentleman in my reply. He says the Democratic party are a unit, that they everywhere fully endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska bill; I say they nevertheless claim the largest liberty in its construction, and that construction is notoriously different in different sections of the Union among brethren of the same political faith. Now, the American party also needed a platform for the Presidential canvass, and that of February last was put forth for that purpose. If it was not perfect, it was the best we could get, and we had to take it, those of us that it did not precisely suit, with the mercantile reservation, ‘Errors excepted.’ Was your President, the present occupant of the White House, elected by a majority of American-born citizens? On the contrary, without the foreign vote, which was cast for him almost unanimously, he never would have been elevated to the position he now occupies.”
Mr. Kelly: “Suppose he was not elected by American-born votes (which was very likely the case), were not the principles advocated by the party which elected Mr. Pierce national principles, without the benefit too of ‘Errors excepted’? Was there anything in the platform laid down at Baltimore by the convention which nominated him violative of the spirit or letter of the Constitution of the United States?”
Mr. Kennett: “I have not charged the contrary to be so. My point is that the foreign-born vote holds the balance of power in our country, that that vote is almost always on the Democratic side, and thus it shapes the policy and action of the Government. This I consider wrong.”
Mr. Kelly: “I will say to the gentleman that the illiberal and narrow policy parties have pursued in this country has contributed much to drive both native and foreign-born Catholics in self-defense into the Democratic party. That this is true is proved by the fact which you know full well, Mr. Chairman [Mr. Humphrey Marshall], that the large Catholic vote of Kentucky and Maryland had always been found with the Whig party, until the Know-Nothing monster and its protean brood of platforms drove them in self-respect as well as in self-defence into the ranks of the national Democracy, where they have found repose and peace under the broad shadows of the Constitution. I will add further, that with the exception oftwo terms the administration of this Government has been in the hands of the Democratic party. It appears to me, therefore, that the fact that the foreign-born population, in the exercise of the elective franchise being always found on the side of the dominant party, is rather doubtful evidence that they are not as loyal to the country as any other class of voters. The high state of prosperity which the country has attained under Democratic rule would, I should think, lead to quite a different conclusion.”
Mr. Kennett: “The Democratic party have been sharper and more successful hitherto in bidding for their votes than we. Not that we would not have won them too, had it been in our power. Office-seekers are all in love with German honesty and the ‘sweet Irish brogue.’”
Mr. Campbell, of Ohio: “I have no desire to interrupt the gentleman from Missouri, or to interfere with the very interesting colloquy between him and the gentleman from New York. I have had something to do with this matter of Americanism myself; something to do with the tariff, and, like the gentleman from Missouri, I have been a Whig. I think the greatest statesman of America was stricken down by a religious influence.”
Mr. Kelly: “To whom does the gentleman refer?”
Mr. Campbell: “I refer to Mr. Clay of Kentucky. I well remember when he was last a candidate—in1844—that there was an individual on the ticket with him—a distinguished gentleman, Theodore Frelinghuysen and I know of my own personal knowledge that a priest of the Catholic Church said that because Theodore Frelinghuysen was placed on the ticket for Vice-President, therefore the influence of the Catholic Church of the United States would be exercised against the ticket.”
Mr. Kelly: “Supposing this to be so, does the gentleman mean to argue that because an individual Catholic priest used such a remark it is sufficient ground upon which to condemn and disfranchise the four millions of Catholics in this country?”
Mr. Campbell: “No, sir, by no means; nor would I interfere with their religion, even though it was true that they had done so. The point I make is this: That because Theodore Frelinghuysen was nominated on the ticket with Henry Clay, who was recognized as one of the greatest statesmen of his age, the influence of the Catholic Church—I mean especially that of the foreign Catholic Church, I do not include the American Catholic Church—was brought to bear against him; and wherever you find a foreign Catholic vote in referring to the election of 1844 you will find, particularly in your large cities where the power was wielded, that the power was exercised for the prostration of Harry of the West, for the reason, as admitted to me in person by a priest of your church, that TheodoreFrelinghuysen was a leading Presbyterian and President of the American Protestant Bible Society; and it is against that spirit on the part of foreign Catholic influence in this country, which has sought to control, through the power of its Church, the destinies of this great nation that I make war.”
Mr. Kelly: “Allow me to say that I am a native-horn citizen of Irish parents; and I wish to say to this House, and to the country, that no such feelings actuate the Catholic Christians of this Republic. There may be individual cases, but I deny that such influences have anything to do with the Catholic population. And Mr. Clay himself, in writing a letter on this very subject in the canvass referred to, made a public acknowledgement that he had as much confidence in the Catholic people as he had in any other religious sect in this Union. That letter was published in a speech which I made in this House last session, and the gentleman from Ohio can find it in the records of the House. To convict the gentleman from Ohio, however, of misrepresenting Harry of the West in this matter, I will again quote the same extract from the letter referred to:
“‘Nor is my satisfaction diminished by the fact that we happen to be of different creeds; for I never have believed that that of the Catholic was anti-American and hostile to civil liberty. On the contrary, I have with great pleasure and with sincere conviction, onseveral public occasions, borne testimony to my perfect persuasion that Catholics were as much devoted to civil liberty, and as much animated by patriotism as those who belong to the Protestant creed.’”
“I have already quoted from Mr. Clay’s speech delivered in 1847, four years afterwards, enough to show that his views and sentiments in reference to foreign-born voters and religious creeds underwent no change. But it was ever Mr. Clay’s misfortune to be damaged by his friends. We have proof this evening that the fatality follows him to the grave.”
In this debate, Mr. Kelly, who was the only Catholic in Congress, sustained the concentrated charge of the leading Know-Nothing members, and in the estimation of the House had the best of the argument over them all. His speech was published and read throughout all parts of the Union, and was received with manifestations of approval and pride by Democrats generally, but especially by Catholics and adopted citizens.
In the celebrated Hayne-Webster debate in the Senate of the United States on the Foot Resolution in 1830, Andrew Jackson, then President, was so much pleased with Col. Hayne’s speech that he caused a number of copies to be struck off on satin, and placed one of them on the walls of his library in the White House.[9]The speech of John Kelly, from which thepreceding extracts are taken, was also published on satin, and is still preserved in many households throughout the country as a souvenir of the dark days of Know-Nothingism, and of the gallant stand that was made in the House of Representatives against the proscriptionists by the future leader of the New York Democracy.
During another debate in Congress—that of May 5, 1858—on the bill for the admission of Minnesota into the Union, introduced by Alexander H. Stephens, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, Henry Winter Davis again attacked those he called “unnaturalized foreigners;” and Mr. John Sherman, then a member of the House, and at present a Senator from Ohio, and a recent aspirant for the Presidency, declared that “Ohio never did allow unnaturalized foreigners to vote, and never will.” Mr. Muscoe R. H. Garnett, of Virginia, made a fierce attack on the same class, designating them as the “outpourings of every foreign hive that cannot support its own citizens.” When these tirades were made, Mr. Kelly rose to address the House in reply, but so bitter was the native American feeling on the subject, and especially since his refutation of the sectarian and anti-foreign speech of Davis in the preceding year, that John Sherman resorted to every parliamentary quibble to cut off Kelly’s speech. “Gentlemen here,” Mr. Kelly said, “directed many of their arguments against emigration and against the naturalizationof foreigners. I intend to confine my remarks to that particular branch of the subject.” At this point Mr. Sherman objected.
Mr. Sherman, of Ohio: “I rise to a question of order. The rule requires that the debate shall be pertinent to the question before the House. If the gentleman desires to make a speech upon the benefits of emigration I hope he will make it in Committee of the Whole. Such debate is not in order here.”
Mr. Kelly: “What I shall say will be pertinent to the issue before the House.”
Mr. Sherman: “I insist on my question of order. I would inquire whether the subject of emigration, which is manifestly the question which the gentleman intends to discuss, is debatable on this bill? I do not wish to embarrass the gentleman, but desire, if he wants to debate that subject, that he shall do it in the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union.” This objection by Mr. Sherman to Mr. Kelly’s continuing the discussion which he himself had just been indulging in, shows that Kelly’s method of handling the subject was not relished by the proscriptionists. Elihu B. Washburn, of Illinois, afterwards Minister to France, here interposed in favor of fair play.
Mr. Washburn: “I hope by unanimous consent the gentleman from New York will be permitted to continue his speech. He is upon the floor now, and the matter of naturalization is involved more or less inthe merits of the question before the House.” But Mr. Sherman was ready with another quibble.
Mr. Sherman: “If unanimous consent be given, I am willing to go into Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union and allow the gentleman to speak, but I must object to it in the House.”
Mr. Wright, of Georgia: “I would remark that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Jenkins) introduced this particular subject yesterday, and occupied twenty-five minutes in its discussion.”
Mr. Kelly: “It is singular that gentlemen should make objection, when it is a well-known fact that the whole discussion on this bill has directed itself to that particular point. But I think there is a disposition on the part of the House to let me go on.”
Several Members: “There is; go ahead.”
The Speaker: “Does the Chair understand that unanimous consent is given to the gentleman’s proceeding?”
Mr. Lovejoy: “Not unless he is in order.”
Mr. Morris, of Pennsylvania: “I object; because if the gentleman is allowed to proceed, other gentlemen must be allowed to speak in reply, and thus we would have a general debate in violation of the rules of the House, and I will not agree to violating the rules of the House.”
Mr. Kelly: “Inasmuch as there are objections I withdraw my appeal. I do not desire to force myself upon the House.”
Thus did the Know-Nothings wince under the lash of John Kelly of New York. Had he chosen to insist, he would have been heard, for he was now one of the leaders of the House, and the majority would have found a way to secure him the floor. He was the most formidable enemy of the Know-Nothings in the Northern States, for he knew how to act as well as to talk. Dreamers and visionaries write fine theories, but only great men reduce them to practice. Mr. Kelly’s youth and early manhood were passed at a period when native American bigotry and intolerance were burning questions in State and National affairs. He had been taught by observation, and a study of the fathers of the government, that the best service he could render his country was to make war on Know-Nothingism. He had met the leaders of that party in their strongholds in the city of New York, and vanquished them. Before his day there were clubs and factions, and local leaders and captains of bands—Bill Poole and his Know-Nothings, Isaiah Rynders and his Empire Club, Arthur Tappan and his Abolitionists, Mike Walsh and his Spartans, Samuel J. Tilden and his Barnburners, Charles O’Conor and his Hunkers—but the born captain had not appeared to mould the discordant elements to his will, and make them do the work that was to be done. When John Kelly struck the blow at Know-Nothingism at the primary election on the corner of Grand and Elizabethstreets, already described, and drove out the ballot-box stuffers, the people of New York instantaneously recognized a man behind that blow, and everybody felt better for the discovery. When he ran against the celebrated Mike Walsh for Congress, one of the most popular characters who ever figured in New York politics, and beat him, the native American proscriptionists were glad that John Kelly was out of the way, for while they feared him in local politics, they persuaded themselves that he would be swallowed up in obscurity among the great men at Washington, and that he would be heard of no more. Given a big idea lodged in the centre of a big man’s head, and be sure fruit will spring from the seed. Kelly carried his idea with him to Congress, and hostility to Know-Nothingism marked his career there, as it had done at home.
When James Buchanan became President, John Kelly became one of the leaders of the Administration party in Congress. He was then thirty-four years old. One day General Cass, Secretary of State, visited the Capitol, and in conversation with a friend said: “Look at John Kelly moving about quietly among the members. The man is full of latent power that he scarcely dreams of himself. He is equal to half a dozen of those fellows around him. Yes, by all odds, the biggest man among them all. The country will yet hear from Honest John Kelly.” These words ofGeneral Cass, uttered in his imposing George-the-Third style of conversation, shortly after were repeated to old James Gordon Bennett, the friend of Kelly’s boyhood, and the editor took early opportunity to mention Honest John Kelly in theHerald, and frequently afterwards applied the same title to him. The appellation struck the public as appropriate, and soon passed into general use. The subject of this memoir has been called “Honest John Kelly,” from that day to this. In a letter to the present writer, in 1880, the late Alexander H. Stephens said: “I have stood by John Kelly in his entire struggle, and have often said, and now repeat, that I regard him as the ablest, purest and truest statesman that I have ever met with from New York.”
Mr. Buchanan was urged by Mr. Kelly to appoint Augustus Schell Collector of the Port of New York. Other members of the New York delegation in the House, and both the New York Senators opposed the selection of Mr. Schell. Mr. Seward was vehement in his opposition. But John Kelly stuck with the tenacity of Stanton in the War Department, or Stonewall Jackson in the battle-field. The President nominated Mr. Schell Senator Clay of Alabama reported the nomination favorably from the Committee of Commerce, William H. Seward and the others were overborne, and Mr. Schell was confirmed by the Senate.
When Mr. Kelly entered upon his political career, to be a foreigner, or the son of a foreigner, in New York, in the opinion of the intolerant of both parties, was deemed a matter that required an apology, or at least an explanation. In 1857 one of the leading representative men of the Federal Administration in New York was John Kelly, and those who had been persecuted and oppressed before were recognized and advanced equally with all others in the city and State of New York; and the vanishing Know-Nothings at last realized that the absent Kelly had dealt them heavier blows from Washington than he ever delivered in New York. In these later and happier days men are no longer ashamed to be called the sons of Irishmen, and at the festive board of the Irish societies the notable ones of the country gather to make eloquent speeches and drink rousing toasts. But while some men forget, true Irishmen and true descendants of Irishmen have not forgotten their Horatius at the bridge in the brave days of old. John Kelly, were he a man of vanity, in contrasting the auspicious scenes of to-day with those of the dark days of 1844 and 1854, and in viewing his own part in effecting the change, could not fail to find much cause for pride and complacent reflection; but vanity is not his weakness.