CHAPTER VII.

MR. KELLY IN VARIOUS DEBATES—FAMINE IN THE CAPE DE VERDE ISLANDS—“IRISH WAITERS”—MAYNARD’S SNEER AND KELLY’S REBUKE—KNOW-NOTHING RIOT IN WASHINGTON—KELLY WITNESSES THE SCENE—HIS GREAT HOMESTEAD SPEECH—OTHER SPEECHES BY HIM—WASHINGTON SOCIETY IN THE OLDEN DAY.

As a comprehensive portrayal, rather than biography in detail, is the design of this volume, a general survey of Mr. Kelly’s Congressional career is all that can be attempted in these pages, with concise mention of some of its leading events and incidents. His speeches alone would fill a book of equal size to this.

In the course of a debate in the Committee of the whole on the State of the Union, May 26, 1856, Mr. Kelly delivered a strong speech upon New York politics, in which he gave an interesting review of the divisions that had prevailed in the Democratic party of that State. Tracing back those divisions to 1848, he gave a lucid insight into the history of the Hunkers and Barnburners, and of the later factions known as Hard Shells and Soft Shells. He evinced thorough acquaintance with the complexional differences between those factions, and with the political history of the Empire State, a knowledge which was to prove so useful to him in after years. He charged that many ofthe Hards were Know-Nothings, but attributed patriotic motives to other members of that wing of the party. He might have made the same charge of Know-Nothingism with equal justice against many of the Softs. Subsequent history probably has led Mr. Kelly to modify some of the opinions he expressed in that speech. There were good National Democrats in both wings of the party, the disturbing question of slavery being the chief cause of dissension. The anti-slavery agitation at the North, and consequent dissemination at the South of the old New England doctrine of secession, were the two growing ideas, the monomania of that age of American history. The Republican party was more largely recruited from the ranks of the Soft Shells than from those of the Hard Shells, and the resolutions and speeches in the Syracuse Soft Convention of 1855, of which Mr. Kelly was a member, and which were discussed at large in a former chapter, clearly indicated that such would be the case.

As sound a Democrat as President Pierce was, he made the mistake of placing the chief control of his Administration in the hands of those Democrats, both at the North and South, who had opposed the compromise of 1850, such as John A. Dix and John Van Buren on the one hand, and Jefferson Davis on the other.

“Notwithstanding,” said Mr. Kelly, “the outcry raised by our enemies, who desire to destroy the influenceof New York, let me assure you, Mr. Chairman, that there now exists no division among the Democratic masses there. They now happily constitute a united party, bound together by a common creed and a common interest. This union of the Hunker and Barnburner sections of the party was accomplished in 1849, the year after the unfortunate defeat of General Cass, and it has gone on strengthening ever since, in spite of the transient fanaticisms of Republicanism and Know-Nothingism, from one or the other of which the party in every section of the country has suffered temporary damage, our late reverses in New York forming no exception to the general rule. If the Democrats of Louisiana, or Tennessee, or of any other Southern States, have been prostrated when opposed to only one of these evils, is it a peculiar disgrace—is it any special evidence of impotency, that we have had to yield once or twice before the combined forces of both?”

During the year 1855 the crops in Europe and other parts of the world suffered greatly from unseasonable and excessive rains. In some places, particularly in the Cape de Verde Islands, the wet weather was succeeded by a protracted drought. For two years prior to that year the Cape de Verdes had suffered from a scarcity of food owing to similar causes, and a third visitation now reduced the inhabitants in many places to a state of starvation. The Bishop of those islandson the 12th of March, 1856, wrote an earnest appeal for succor to Archbishop Hughes, of New York. “Having exhausted all our own means,” said he, “it only remains for us to appeal to the charity of the public. If these people are not promptly succored more than twenty thousand persons will perish, victims of famine.” A movement was organized in New York to send food to the famine-stricken islanders, and a resolution was introduced in Congress by Mr. Wheeler, of New York, in which the President was requested to instruct the Secretary of the Navy to detail twenty-five seamen to man the vessel in which the cargo of food was to be shipped to the sufferers. Archbishop Hughes had confided Bishop Patricio’s appeal to Mr. Kelly, and requested him to lay it before Congress, and use his best offices with his fellow-members to secure favorable action upon it. On the 19th of May, Mr. Kelly asked and obtained the unanimous consent of the House, after the introduction of Mr. Wheeler’s resolution, to have the letter to Archbishop Hughes read. The picture which the Bishop of the Cape de Verde Islands had drawn of the dreadful scourge deeply impressed members. In the course of the debate some objections were made to the passage of the resolution, to which Mr. Kelly replied as follows:

“This resolution, Mr. Speaker, merely proposes to relieve the poor people in those islands, who are nowin a state of starvation on account of the blight to their vine crop; and it is astonishing to me that any member of this House should object to a resolution of this kind. It asks no appropriation of money; it does not ask Congress to appropriate a single dollar towards relieving them. The generous citizens of New York have come forward and held a meeting at the Exchange in that city, and agreed to load a vessel with provisions for the use of these destitute people of the Cape de Verdes, who are now living on the bark of trees, the stalks of bananas, and anything else they can pick up to save themselves from utter starvation. Therefore, I trust that there will be no objection from any gentleman in this House to the resolution presented by my colleague. It merely asks that a crew of United States seamen may be given to navigate the vessel, in order that relief may reach those poor people in time to save them from impending destruction. It is not much that is asked, and we ought, I think, cheerfully to grant it.”

This simple, strong appeal proved effective, and the resolution was passed by the large vote of 123 ayes to 24 noes.

Mr. Kelly was again nominated for Congress in 1856, and at the election on November 4th of that year was returned to the Thirty-fifth Congress by an overwhelming majority. Of the 11,599 votes cast in the Fourth Congressional District of New York, JohnKelly received 8,319, L. W. Ryckman, 1,497; W. F. Gould, 1,735, and 48 were scattering. Kelly’s majority over all was 5,039.

During Mr. Kelly’s second term in Congress a savage riot occurred in Washington at the District election in June, 1857. For some time the city was at the mercy of a gang of professional desperadoes, composed of Washington Know-Nothings, and Plug Uglies of the same party from Baltimore, the latter being the pets and followers of the malignant Henry Winter Davis. The Mayor was powerless to preserve the peace with the insufficient police force at his command, and President Buchanan, on the Mayor’s requisition, called out the Marines at the Navy Yard under Major Tyler to disperse the rioters. The military proceeded to the Northern Liberties, where they were attacked by the mob, and several innocent citizens were killed. Major Tyler was finally compelled to return the fire of the infuriated mob, and for some time that portion of the city was the scene of a fierce battle. It was not until the fire of the soldiers was directed in a few cases with fatal effect that the miscreants were driven off and dispersed.

After the disturbance, the Mayor of the city and the Chief of the Washington police, feeling themselves unable to cope with the lawless bands in their midst, appealed to Congress for relief. A bill to establish an Auxiliary Guard for the protection of public andprivate property in the city of Washington was accordingly introduced in the Senate, and after an extended debate the excellent measure passed that body, and was sent to the House of Representatives for action there. The remedies applied in the city of Baltimore, where still more atrocious scenes of bloodshed annually had occurred under Mayor Swan’s Know-Nothing administration, with Henry Winter Davis firing the hearts of his Plug Uglies to a war of extermination against foreigners, presented an example to Washington of the effective way of redeeming the latter city from the scoundrels who infested it. The Legislature of Maryland took the control of the police force of Baltimore from the Mayor, and lodged it in the hands of an independent officer known as Marshal of Police. In the bill creating the office the celebrated George P. Kane was designated as Marshal, and no better man ever lived for a position of that kind. Col. Kane was a gentleman by instinct and education; the purity of his character was universally recognized, and the intrepidity of his nature was perfectly understood by the law-breakers of Baltimore. A man of gigantic stature, he possessed wonderful symmetry and comeliness of person, enormous physical strength, and a courage that would have carried him to the stake to be flayed alive in vindication of an idea or principle he believed to be right. This man did more to redeem Baltimore from the assassins and ruffians whohad controlled it than all other men and agencies combined. Under Marshal Kane’s magnificent administration the Monumental City became one of the most peaceable, as it long had been one of the most beautiful of American cities. In after years the people rewarded this destroyer of Know-Nothingism in their midst, first with the office of High Sheriff, and next with that of Mayor of Baltimore.

The bill to establish an Auxiliary Guard in Washington, whose features resembled those of the Maryland Act creating a Marshal of Police in the city of Baltimore, received Mr. Kelly’s decided approval and support when it reached the House. In the course of the debate on this bill, April 15, 1858, Mr. Kelly said:

“The proposition before the Committee is that the police laws of this city are of such a character that the citizens of Washington have to ask Congress to alter them in order to protect them from the murderer and assassin. The bill proposes to give to the President of the United States the power to appoint the Chief of Police, and that that Chief of Police, with the consent of the Secretary of the Interior, shall have the power to appoint his subordinate officers. The people here are willing to throw up their charter, given to them by Congress, for the reason, as they say, that they are not able to protect themselves against the criminals that infest the city. The amendmentproposed by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Dodd) providing for the selection of Commissioners by the people is, in my opinion, objectionable. Men elected as Americans will, of course, appoint Americans or Know-Nothings to office, andvice versa, Democrats will do the same thing. The only way to give this city an efficient police is by passing the bill reported by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goode), placing the power in the hands of the President of the United States to appoint the Chief of Police. Mr. Chairman, in the various arguments that have been made on this bill, all kinds of logic have been brought to bear in favor of gentlemen’s different prejudices. The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Maynard), in discussing this bill yesterday, referred to a transaction which took place during a former Congress.[44]He spoke of men who earn their living by the sweat of their brow as a ‘parcel of Irish waiters.’ Now, sir, I do not think that that expression was called for. These men, whether Irish or German, or belonging to any other country, have the same rights under the Constitution as American-born citizens. Itis not to be said that because these men were waiters, they had not their independent rights and privileges as much as the Representatives of the people on this floor. I tell the gentleman from Tennessee, and other members of this House, that the humble Irishman has his rights under the Constitution, naturalized as he is by your laws, equally with the native-born, and until he commits some act in derogation of the true principles of manhood, it does not become any gentleman to stigmatize him or speak of him in such a contemptuous style.

“The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stanton), in speaking on this Bill, attributes the defeat in 1844 of that great and honored statesman, Mr. Clay, who has long since gone to his grave, to the Empire Club in the city of New York, and to the manner in which the election was conducted in that city. Let me tell the gentleman that I was conversant with all those facts, and knew of the transactions which took place in New York in 1844. There was another Club there at that time, and it was a very objectionable one, because all the pugilists, all the fighters, and all the rowdies you could find, were brought together by pay, by solicitations of whatever nature, and were formed into a Club in opposition to the Empire Club at that time. Now, I ask the gentleman if he knows who was president of that Club?”

Mr. Stanton: “I know nothing in regard to that Club. Who was the man?”

Mr. Kelly: “Bill Poole. I am sorry to say he got into a personal difficulty in New York and was killed. Let me say to the gentleman that when both of those Clubs were organized at that particular time, though there were violent men in both, neither one of these Clubs used violence against citizens in going to the polls to exercise the right of suffrage. That cannot be said in this city, for I am reminded of the transactions which took place at the election here last June.”

“The gentleman from Mississippi, (Mr. Quitman,) said, in his speech, that there was no violence in this city; that he had travelled around on frequent occasions, in order to see if some one of the rowdies here would not attack him. Now I know that the gentleman has displayed courage upon the battle-field, and rendered essential service to his country. No man doubts his integrity, his honesty and his bravery; but had he been here last June, he would have met in the streets of this city that which no man desires to meet. I saw a body of young men from eighteen to twenty years of age, driving men of thirty and forty years of age before them like sheep from the field, and firing their pistols among them indiscriminately. Yet there did not appear to be, so far as I could see, courage enough in the citizens of this city to resent the outrage which was perpetrated upon them at that time.

“Crime, Mr. Chairman, in all cities, whether it be here, or in New York, or elsewhere, unless checked by the physical power of man, will continually manifest itself. Some gentlemen here have argued that you cannot check it by physical force; that moral force must be resorted to. That is all humbug, for such a check amounts to nothing at all. Violence of all description will be committed, unless you have proper officers to prevent it. Then you ought in the present case to organize a police force to meet this exigency, and to arrest the individuals who are in the habit of committing crimes in your city. Now this bill organizes an efficient police, under the jurisdiction of officers of this Government who have the full control of it,—a force which will be the means of protecting individuals who come here to transact business, as well as yourselves, for many of you admit that it is dangerous to leave your rooms at night,—that you are afraid of encountering these marauders who infest the city. The main objection on the other side of the House is that the Chief of Police, who may be appointed by the President, will be partial in his appointments, selecting only partisans, or those who favor his political principles, just as it is supposed the President himself will appoint a man who is of his politics. That argument, in my opinion, cannot hold good. I do not think such a course will be carried out, and I know if I had anything to do with it, I would not bepartial at all. I would select men for their character alone. If I saw they were efficient, physically able to do the duties of policemen, and of good moral character, I would appoint them upon such grounds alone, without regard to politics. But, gentlemen on the other side say they are afraid to trust the President. Well, we are afraid to trust them in the city of New York. The case of this city and that of New York, between which some analogies have been made, are not parallel cases at all. This city is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. The President and the Congress of the United States are here; Ministers from foreign Governments are here; and the courts here are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. The only difference between the appointment of a Chief of Police by the President and by the Mayor is this: in the former case the Chief of Police is responsible to the Federal Government, and if he does not carry out the laws, can easily be reached; while on the other hand if the Mayor does not appoint satisfactorily, the people cannot reach his appointee, in the same manner.”[45]

The Republicans and Know-Nothings were strong enough, with the aid of a few Democrats, who had fine-spun constitutional objections to it, to prevent the passage of this excellent bill by the House, but Mr. Kelly’s argument was not successfully answered by any of the opponents of the measure.

An interesting debate took place in the House, May 3, 1858, in relation to the Bureau of Statistics of the State Department, in which Mr. Kelly took a prominent part. This Bureau was established by Congress upon the recommendation of Mr. Marcy during the last Administration. The urgent necessity for such a Bureau was originally pointed out by Mr. Webster in 1842, when he was at the head of the Department. Several volumes upon the Commercial Relations of the United States with all other countries were issued during 1856 and 1857, prepared ostensibly by Edmund Flagg, Superintendent of the Bureau, but in reality Flagg had very little to do with the work. Hugh C. McLaughlin of Virginia, Mr. Flagg’s assistant, and who was soon after appointed his successor as Superintendent, was the real compiler, translator and editor of the valuable materials contained in those volumes. But Flagg was Superintendent, and he not only contrived to get his name printed on the title page as such, but to monopolise the whole credit to himself for the work. The volumes were received with remarkable favor by the leading commercial authorities in this country and Europe. Hunt’s Merchants Magazine spoke highly of them. In a notice of the fourth volume, the London Athenæum of February 20, 1858, said: “The highest praise is due to the House of Representatives for publishing this comprehensive and really nationalreport, which brings into one view the commercial status of the United States with the entire world.”[46]The celebrated M. Rouher, then Minister of Agriculture and Commerce in France, who subsequently figured so conspicuously under the Empire of Napoleon the Third, expressed unqualified praise of this work of the State Department at Washington. To a friend who sent him one of the volumes, M. Rouher wrote: “This document is executed under the direction of the Secretary of State, by Mr. Edmund Flagg, an officer of the State Department. The Minister of France at Washington had already communicated to the Imperial Government the remarkable Report of Mr. Flagg to Mr. Marcy. It contains abundant and useful information; and I am happy to recognize in it marked improvement over works of the same character previously published by the American Government. A further improvement will be accomplished when, in accordance with the wish of Mr. Flagg, Congress shall prescribe a continuous, periodical and practically useful publication, like that which my Department has constantly issued for many years.”[47]

If M. Rouher was in the habit of following the proceedings of the American Congress, his surprise must have been great to find this same Mr. Flagg, who but a few months before had expressed so earnesta desire for the continued and regular publication of the Commercial Relations by the State Department, now haunting the lobbies of Congress, and supplying specious arguments to the opposition or Republican members against the further publication of the work, and in favor of the abolition of the Bureau itself. That which he proclaimed a work of national importance yesterday, he declared to be a useless encumbrance to-day. Flagg’s sudden change of mind was easily explained. Certain irregularities in his accounts had been discovered, and Secretary Cass had compelled him to send in his resignation.Hinc illae lachrymæ.The opposition members were always ready to attack the Administration, and Mr. Flagg plied them with frivolous arguments against the Bureau from which he had been discharged. Mr. Nichols of Ohio, and Mr. Washburne of Illinois, two Republican Congressmen, perhaps unaware that Flagg was a man with a grievance, espoused his cause, and while the Appropriation Bill for the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Government was under consideration, May 3, 1858, they declared that it would be a waste of money to make any appropriation for the Bureau of Statistics in the State Department, and Mr. Nichols made this a pretext to denounce the extravagance of the Administration. After he had made his attack, and elicited no reply, Mr. Nichols was emboldened to go farther, and indiscreetly began to cross-questionthe members of the Committee of Ways and Means, of which Mr. Kelly was one, and by which the Appropriation Bill had been brought in, and to extol Flagg as a disinterested patriot, who had resigned his office, because he could not conscientiously draw a salary for work that was wholly useless. This was a fatal line of attack for Nichols to pursue, as he soon discovered to his cost. Senator Clay of Alabama, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce in the Senate, had investigated Flagg’s case in the State Department, and Mr. Kelly afterwards had become acquainted with the doings of the latter individual. Challenged to defend the appropriation, Mr. J. Glancy Jones, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and Mr. Kelly, a member of the same Committee, completely turned the tables upon Mr. Nichols and Mr. Washburne and after Kelly’s crushing rejoinder, Mr. Nichols, the would-be-champion of Flagg, dropped him as he would have run away from the contagion, and made a most ludicrous retreat from the field of his own selection.

To quote Mr. J. Glancy Jones, in his able defense of this item of the Appropriation Bill brought in by his Committee, would occupy too much space here; but the spicy debate between Messrs. Nichols, Kelly, and Washburne cannot be entirely omitted in a memoir of Mr. Kelly’s life.

Mr. Nichols: “I cannot take my seat without paying a just tribute to the late Mr. Marcy, and Mr. Flagg, who had charge of the preparation of the volume known as the ‘Commercial Relations.’ I would enquire of the gentleman (Mr. J. Glancy Jones) whether the former Superintendent did not resign his office under the express declaration that a discharge of the duties of the office was no longer necessary; and whether after that, and during this year, a successor was appointed?”

Mr. J. Glancy Jones: “I do not know what induced the gentleman alluded to to resign the office.”

Mr. Kelly: “I have made some enquiry on this subject, and from the best information I could get, I learned that Mr. Flagg was compelled to resign because there were charges made against him, to the effect that he had employed women ostensibly at four dollars a day, and only paid them at two dollars a day, requiring their receipts for four dollars a day. This fact was ascertained by the gentleman who represents the Committee on Commerce of the Senate. When he found that such was the case, he went to the State Department and said, that if Mr. Flagg was not turned out of that office, he would expose the matter to the country. This was the reason that Mr. Flagg was compelled to resign. So far as the Bureau itself is concerned, every gentleman knows that there is no Bureau in the Government that has been so effectivein giving the country valuable statistical information. But Mr. Flagg being compelled to resign, now comes to Congress, and makes the effort to abolish a Bureau which has been of so much benefit to the country.”

Mr. Nichols: “I beg leave to say that so far as my action here is concerned, Mr. Flagg has nothing to do with it whatever. He has been connected with that Bureau, but I have spoken to him hardly half a dozen times.”

Mr. Nichols, but a few minutes before, had been extolling Flagg, and coupled his name with that of Secretary Marcy in what he called a “just tribute.” Now he wriggles out of the debate in the following amusing style:

Mr. Nichols: “I desire to conclude what I have to say. I wish the gentleman from New York to understand that, in reference to anything he may say about troubles in the Democratic camp which may have led to the removal of any of its children, I desire to enter into no discussion. I have nothing to do with it, then, or the difficulties of this happy family.”

Mr. Kelly: “I think the gentleman from Ohio is entirely in error. The duty of the statisticians in the State Department is to collate and compile all the reports made by consuls at foreign ports upon commercial matters, and everything which pertains to the welfare and benefit of this Government. It is done not only for the benefit of commercial men, but forthe benefit of the community generally, and I think the abolition of that particular branch of the Government would be entirely wrong. The whole expense of keeping it up amounts to very little. I say again that the whole of this matter originated—though I do not attribute it to the gentleman from Ohio—on the part of disappointed gentlemen who had been turned out of office, and in nothing else.”

Mr. Washburne, of Illinois: “My object in asking my friend to yield me the floor is to say a word here in reference to Mr. Flagg. I have had some acquaintance with that gentleman from my connection with this matter during the last Congress, and I am astonished at the charges the gentleman from New York has made here to-day; and I think it is due to Mr. Flagg that the gentleman from New York should state his authority. Those charges go to the country, and reflect severely upon Mr. Flagg.”

Mr. Kelly: “I have made no charge, and shall make no charge against the gentleman.”

Mr. Washburne “Will the gentleman state his authority for what he has said?”

Mr. Kelly: “The State Department itself. If the gentleman desires to have this matter investigated, let him introduce a resolution for that purpose. If information on the subject be desired for the House and the country, let a resolution be introduced and passed calling on the State Department to furnish it.”

Mr. Maynard: “I should like to know who is the present head of the Bureau?”

Mr. Nichols: “These interruptions have entirely broken the thread of my remarks. With the discussion of family differences and difficulties which have led to the removal of one man and the substitution of another, I have nothing to do, and I desire to have nothing to do with them. I do not know who fills this office. It is nothing to me who does. I find I have occupied about enough of the time of the Committee with this question.”[48]

The Bureau of Statistics flourished on, and was no longer disturbed by Edmund Flagg. Mr. Kelly had overwhelmingly refuted the charges of Messrs. Nichols and Washburne against the management of the State Department under General Cass.

There was a warm controversy between the Senate and House of Representatives over the appropriations for the naval service for the year ending June 30, 1859. Committees of Conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses were appointed, and held frequent meetings. The managers on the part of the Senate were Stephen R. Mallory, Solomon Foot, and Judah P. Benjamin; those on the part of the House were Thomas S. Bocock, John Kelly and F. H. Morse. The conferees finally agreed upon their report. Mr. Bocock submitted the report to the House, June 11,1858. Of the few amendments in controversy, the House Committee receded from their disagreement to the second and third amendments, relating to an appropriation of fifty thousand six hundred dollars for a new purchase in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Messrs. Morgan, Grow, Clemens and others energetically opposed this appropriation. Mr. Bocock and Mr. Kelly of the Conference Committee as strongly advocated it. The members of the Conference Committees of both Houses had unanimously approved the report, and each of the managers had signed it. Mr. Kelly answered the objections to this appropriation.

Mr. Kelly: “I will say a word on this matter with the permission of the gentleman from Virginia. The Government owns the land between the Navy Yard and the Marine Hospital. It is now all, or nearly all, a swamp. A part has been filled in, and filled in, I believe, for the very small price of sixteen cents a yard. As the property now stands, it cannot be of any use to the Government. Even if the Government desires to sell, it would be a sound economy and prudent foresight to first fill it in. It would then command a large price. It extends for a considerable way along what is called the Wallabout, and it shows a complete water-front. If the Government filled it in at the rate contracted for before, they might sell lots there for large sums, which are now of no earthly use to anybody. Until it is filled in the MarineBarracks ordered by Congress cannot be built; and the Marines at that Yard are now quartered in sheds. They are small, and not at all suitable for the purpose for which they have been temporarily put up. I hope, therefore, that this appropriation will be concurred in. I am convinced that it is needed and needed now.”[49]

The objectors, however, were unyielding, and the report of the Committee of Conference was disagreed to by a vote of 74 noes to 67 ayes.

The interests of Brooklyn always have had a warm advocate in Mr. Kelly, and although in more recent days he has found there some of his most active political opponents, it may be doubted whether those gentlemen have proved themselves truer friends of the general interests of that great city than John Kelly.

In a former chapter of this book allusion has been made to the many gross misrepresentations of Mr. Kelly’s motives and actions to which the press has given circulation. A glaring instance of this bearing of false witness against the neighbor is to be found in a volume entitledThe American Irish, by “Philip H. Bagenal, B. A., Oxon.” This Mr. Bagenal seems to be, not an American Irishman, but an English Irishman of the London Tory variety, whose booklet smacks of the facile courtier of some Cabinet Minister,not far off from Downing Street or Pall Mall. It is a libel on Ireland and Irishmen at home and abroad, now on Mr. Parnell in Wicklow, and again on Mr. Kelly in New York. Bagenal writes not so well, but after the fashion of Dr. Russell, another English Irishman, familiarly known as “Bull Run Russell.” The latter’s vulgar caricatures of President Lincoln, in his letters to the LondonTimes, caused his expulsion from the military lines of the Federal army during the war. Peripatetic book-makers from abroad, who take hasty journeys through this country, generally contrive to pick up a budget of miscellaneous misinformation, which they cram into misbegotten books, and offer for sale in the London market. Mr. Bagenal’s mission appears to have been to contribute an English tract on Irish life in the United States, for English partisan use in Ireland. To say that the alleged facts in this book are frequently untrue, is to characterize the performance very mildly. Mr. Parnell and his followers, according to Bagenal, are enemies of Ireland, and architects of ruin and anarchy only less reprehensible than the dynamiters.

“In New York,” says this scribe of the LondonTimes, “we find the Irish dying faster than any others, less given to marriage than any others, and more given to hard work and fasting than any others. * * I visited the tenement houses in New York where the Irish population dwell. * * Everywherethe moral atmosphere is one of degradation and human demoralization. Gross sensuality prevails. The sense of shame, if ever known, is early stifled. * * Thus live the descendants of the great Irish exodus of 1845-48. * * They sought such occupation as offered; they underbid labor, adapted themselves manfully to the conditions of industry, or joined the rabble that trooped as ‘ballot-stuffers’ and ‘shoulder-hitters’ in the train of the Tweeds, the Morrisseys, and the Kellys of the day; and so became the scourge of American politics. In those bygone days when the Irish-American nation began to grow on Yankee soil, had Government directed and assisted the tide of emigration, hundreds of thousands would have been carried out West; where, accustomed to agricultural pursuits, they would have become quiet and prosperous citizens, instead of fire-brands and perpetuators of the animosity between England and Ireland.”[50]

This slanderous picture of the Irish population in New York is followed by an account of Bishop Ireland’s noble efforts to build up an Irish colony in Minnesota, and the great West. Mr. Bagenal holds up Mr. Kelly as an enemy of this great movement. What a pity he did not ask Bishop Ireland, with whom, he says, he became acquainted at St. Paul, who were the leading co-workers with that pious churchman in opening up a home for Irish settlers in thenew States of the West? Bagenal would have learned from Bishop Ireland, had he sought to know the truth, that John Kelly had aided this philanthropic work by giving to the Bishop one thousand dollars, afterwards increased to nearly two thousand, as a contribution to the St. Paul Catholic Colonization Bureau. Knowledge of this circumstance probably would not have deterred Bagenal, the vilifier of Mr. Parnell, from describing Mr. Kelly as the enemy to Irish colonization in the West. The typical London snob abroad is revealed in the mendacious sentence concerning “the rabble that trooped as ‘ballot-stuffers’ and ‘shoulder-hitters’ in the train of the Tweeds, the Morrisseys and the Kellys of the day,” and sufficiently proves the Downing Street inspiration of this Tory romancer, who, it appears from his preface, is a writer for the LondonTimes.

John Kelly, throughout his whole career, has been an earnest advocate for the settlement on the fertile prairies of the West of the poor emigrants who crowd into the Eastern cities, too often to starve for the want of employment. Twenty-seven years ago he introduced one of the first Homestead bills brought forward in Congress, which was a statesmanlike effort to relieve the overcrowded population of the great cities, and to build up the prosperity and happiness of the struggling masses of his fellow-citizens. He supported this bill in a speech of great vigor, in which he pointed out the advantages of homes in the Westto the poor, and sought to place the acquisition of such homes within the reach of every citizen of the United States, who wished to become an actual settler upon the teeming millions of land that then belonged to the Government. Had his bill been passed, the gigantic railroad monopolies of to-day might not be in possession of the mighty landed empire which they, in so many cases, acquired by fraud, and hold by corruption, against the rights of the people of the United States.

On the 18th of January, 1858, Mr. Kelly introduced a bill in Congress to secure homesteads to actual settlers upon the public domain. The bill was read a first and second time, and referred to the Committee on Agriculture. This great measure which Mr. Kelly then brought forward, one of the most beneficent that ever claimed attention in the American Congress, was originally introduced by Andrew Johnson, March 27, 1846, then a Representative in Congress from Tennessee. More than six years elapsed before the House acted on this bill, but the indomitable Andrew Johnson, future President of the United States, persevered in his statesmanlike advocacy of the measure, and the House of Representatives finally passed it May 12, 1852, by a majority of two thirds. The bill, unfortunately, failed in the Senate. The same bill, in substance, was again introduced in the House in 1853 by John L. Dawson of Pennsylvania, where it waspassed a second time by an overwhelming majority. As it had done before, the Senate again rejected the bill, under the mistaken notion that it would weaken some of the old States to allow a flood-tide of population to pour into the new ones.

The next attempt to carry through the measure in Congress, and to bestow happy homesteads on homeless millions of American citizens, was that of Mr. Kelly of January 18th, 1858. About the same time Andrew Johnson, then a Senator, introduced a similar bill in the Senate, and became, as before, its powerful champion. The House, being in the Committee of the Whole, May 25, Mr. Kelly made one of the ablest speeches of his life on the Homestead Bill. The length of the speech, and the scope of this volume, preclude its reproduction here. A few extracts are all that can be given:

“Mr. Chairman,” said he, “I regret that the bill which I had referred to the Committee on Agriculture, in the early part of this Session, has not as yet been reported on, as I would have much preferred addressing my remarks on the homestead question to the bill itself. I will take occasion to observe, in passing, that the Committees of this House have been prompt in making their reports even on matters that sink into insignificance when compared with the question of giving an humble homestead to actual settlers on the lands of the Government. If the Committee shouldthink proper to delay their report much longer, I shall feel it to be my duty, at an early day, to move for their discharge from the further consideration of the subject, and ask leave to bring the bill directly before the House. If the Senate bill does not reach us in the meantime, I may fail even in this way to secure a vote on the question; but I will have the consolation to know that I have done my duty to those of our fellow-citizens who are either too modest or too poor to command much influence in this Hall.”

“The main provision of the bill now before the Committee consists in the liberal appropriation contained in the first section, in the following words: ‘That any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, shall, from and after the passage of this act, be entitled to enter, free of cost, one quarter section of vacant and unappropriated public lands which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to private entry, at $1.25 per acre, or a quantity equal thereto, to be located in a body, in conformity with the legal sub-divisions of the public lands, and after the same shall have been surveyed.’”

“The other sections of the bill are either explanatory of the first, or designed to guard against mistakeor fraud in its execution. Its general purport and object is, as its title indicates, to secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain.”

Mr. Kelly next enters into a minute history of the vast extent of the public lands of the United States, how and when title to them was acquired, from whom derived, and an interesting resumè of the subject from a period anterior to the adoption of Articles of Confederation between the thirteen original States, down to the latest acquisition of territory in 1854, known as the Gadsden Purchase. After an instructive review of European, and especially of English colonization, he continues as follows:

“But, sir, humanity claims for this bill the serious consideration of every member of this House, more especially of those who, like myself, represent in part any of the large and populous cities of the Union. For the laboring classes, large cities and towns, with superabundant populations, are too often but the portals from wretchedness to death. They can find no employment whereby to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and idleness, poverty and crime are the inevitable results. The very shifts they resort to, the avocations they follow in quest of subsistence, even if they desire to live honestly, yield but scarcely sufficient to supply unwholesome, scanty, unnutritious diet; and hence the statistics of city life exhibit a frightful mortality. * * Does not humanity, then,as well as patriotism, invoke our favorable action on a bill which will withdraw from our large cities this overplus population, and by giving a proper incentive to its industry and labor, rescue it from pauperism and death? It is not for the worthless vagrant who is found in every large city, lurking amid the haunts of vice and wretchedness, I appeal. This pauperism strikes down those who are able and willing to work, and, therefore, are fit subjects for the bounty of Congress. It is a truism in political economy that when pauperism siezes upon this class of citizens, the wages of labor are reduced to the cost of subsistence. The whole class must therefore be subjected to the necessity of working, rather to avoid the poor-house than to better their condition. Rescue these and such as these, not only from New York or Boston, or New Orleans or Baltimore, but from every city, and town, and village in the Union; rescue them from drudgery and death, and transform them into useful and industrious citizens of a free Republic. The earth which God made is man’s. Give him, at least, a share of it, a spot for a cot and a garden, and a grave when he dies, else God will hold us as usurpers and faithless stewards, when the great day of reckoning shall come.”[51]

Nothing in the political career of John Kelly has been more marked than his hostility to the great landcormorants, particularly the railroad corporations, and in nearly all his public utterances from that day to this he has uniformly denounced the venal men who have controlled the lobbies of Congress, and bought legislation by bribery and gifts, whereby they have usurped so vast a part of the public domain. A true history of Congressional grants to those corporations has yet to be written. The annals of Congress show nothing so disgraceful, and so disastrous to the public welfare, as the wholesale donations of the lands of the people to the great railroad monopolists.

In closing this rapid sketch of John Kelly’s Congressional career, it may be observed that necessarily many things have been omitted which properly should find a place in his complete biography. The object sought here is to elucidate his character, and the transactions which have been selected for this purpose were among those in which he more especially displayed the bent of his mind, his love of human kind, and the practical business direction of his thoughts and language. Mr. Kelly had not reached his thirty-fourth year when he entered Congress. He had had no former experience in National politics, and was called upon to contend with statesmen of great ability, long service, and with a large following in the House. Two or three terms are required, generally, before members can hope to attain prominence as legislators and debaters in a body where men of so much abilityare in rivalry for the palm of superiority. In spite of these obstacles, Mr. Kelly took rank among the leading men even during his first term, and during his second he was placed on the Committee of Ways and Means, the most important committee of the House, was recognized as one of the leaders of his party, and wielded an influence with the Administration scarcely exceeded by any one. Had he remained in the House of Representatives, considering the high position he won there in two terms, and judging from the remarkable ability he has displayed in his subsequent career, in all probability John Kelly would have become one of those few great parliamentary worthies whose names occupy so large a space in American history. He has given ample evidence that he possessed the requisite qualifications to have succeeded Stephen A. Douglas as leader of the Northern Democracy, when death snatched the sceptre from the hands of that gifted man. Of the calibre of Kelly, the reader has seen the opinions in the preceding pages which were expressed by such weighty statesmen as Lewis Cass, and Alexander H. Stephens. The gauge and measurement which those distinguished men took of him over a quarter of a century ago have been justified by the events of the past fifteen years, and the marvellous grip upon the minds and imagination of the American people which the very name of Kelly has come to possess.

Hardly had he taken his seat in Congress when he was confronted by Wm. H. Seward, as leader of the Banks forces, in the famous contest over the Speakership in the Thirty-fourth Congress, and yet after nine weeks of stubborn battle in the House, John Kelly named a candidate, William Aiken, as competitor against Mr. Seward’s candidate, and Aiken came within two votes, in a House containing seventy-four Democrats and one hundred and four Republicans, of beating Mr. Banks for Speaker of the House of Representatives. In his second struggle with Mr. Seward, when the Collectorship of the Port of New York was at stake, Mr. Kelly may be said to have entered the lists almost single handed against a powerful adverse interest in the Senate and House from his own State. He was, nevertheless, completely successful in securing the confirmation by the Senate of Augustus Schell for that office, as he had been mainly instrumental in procuring his nomination by President Buchanan. In a letter to a friend in New York, written some time after, Mr. Kelly said: “Mr. Schell’s nomination was opposed very bitterly by a large number of Democrats, and I have no doubt but that it was my influence with Clay, Orr, Dowdell, Shorter, Fitzpatrick, and I might say quite a number of the members of the Senate, that brought about the confirmation of Mr. Schell.” John Kelly and Augustus Schell were devoted personal and political friends, although in thefactional divisions in New York the former had been a Soft Shell and the latter a Hard Shell Democrat. They stood shoulder to shoulder in victory and defeat, thinking the same things about the Republic, inseparable in affection and fellowship throughout a long and tempestuous period in the politics of the country. In city, State and National conventions of the Democratic party these two men always appeared together, and in their journeys to and fro they travelled together, roomed together, sat at the same table, and presented a picture to the public eye of more than brotherly affection. In looking at them, as they conversed with each other at such times, one would be reminded of Gales and Seaton in real life, or of the Cheeryble Brothers of romance. The death of Mr. Schell, in 1884, was a grievous blow to Mr. Kelly. All who heard his speech at the memorial meeting for his departed friend at Tammany Hall, will remember the unwonted emotions under which he labored.

Society at the Capital during Mr. Kelly’s day in Congress was very agreeable and homelike, and the manners and tastes of the people were formed in the school of frugality and simplicity well befitting a Democratic Republic. Boast as men may of the material progress of the country, the old school which held sway at Washington, during Democratic Administrations, was the nursery of civic virtues, and had about it the flavor of the golden age of the fathers.This was the school Jefferson founded, and Madison and Monroe illustrated. It was the school in which appeared John Taylor of Caroline, Rufus King, William Pinkney, Governor Gore, Josiah Quincy, William Gaston, and Littleton Waller Tazewell. Along Pennsylvania Avenue John Marshall and Daniel Webster might be seen wending their way to market with baskets on their arms, while Chancellor Bibb has gone fishing to the Long Bridge, John Quincy Adams to have a swim in the Potomac, and John C. Calhoun has gone out in the old-fashioned omnibus to Georgetown College to talk philosophy with Father Dzierozynsky.[52]This society was based on simplicity, the heritage handed down from Revolutionary soldiers, offshoot of freedom and downrightness. There was no charlatanism in Washington then, neither had there been any since Jefferson came to tell the people “we are all Republicans, all Federalists.” For fifty years the official rogues could be counted on the ten fingers. How different in that respect since the antique school has passed away. The great wars have blown out the old-fashioned virtues, and money-changers have unhinged the morality of the people. Corruption in high places has prevailed, and it has been in Washington as it was in Romeduring the last days of the Empire, when Fabricius and Tully were forgotten, and turgid and loquacious rhetoricians mouthed in the Capitol. The golden age of manners, and tastes, and honest living still survived while the subject of this memoir sat in Congress. To be a gentleman above reproach was glorious. Poverty was no badge of disgrace, for James Monroe had given his fortune to the country in the war of 1812, and died, “like rigid Cincinnatus, nobly poor.” Henry Clay could never reach the White House, because after the fashion of the simple great ones he would rather be right than President. Webster was an old school patriot, for after Calhoun’s speech in 1833, he modified his views so greatly that he never afterwards denied that the Government of the United States was a compact between sovereign States. The rule of right living was so inflexible that Calhoun relinquished all hopes for the Presidency, rather than have his wife visit Bellona, at the dictation of General Jackson.

Happy days! Fortunate John Kelly! to have been there to witness the antique social phases, and to have come away again before the era was quite passed and gone, and another and a different one had arisen in its place.

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