Chapter 3
spirit.
We must refer, too, to the most distinctive American humorist of the last half century, Samuel Langhorne Clemens--"Mark Twain." Born in Missouri, knocking about from pillar to post in his early years, serving as pilot's boy and afterwards as pilot on a Mississippi steamboat, as printer, editor, and what not, but finally "finding himself" and making an immense reputation by the publication of a burlesque book of European travel, "Innocents Abroad," he followed it up with such widely popular stories as "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn," "The Prince and the Pauper," and many others, in some of which, at least, there seems to be an element of permanency. "Huckleberry Finn," indeed, has been hailed as the most distinctive work produced in America--an estimate which must be accepted with reservations.
Three living novelists have contributed to American letters books of insight and dignity--William Dean Howells, George W. Cable and Henry James. Mr. Howells has devoted himself to careful and painstaking studies of American life, and has occasionally struck a note so true that it has found wide appreciation. The same thing may be said of Mr. Cable's stories of the South, and especially of the Creoles of Louisiana; while Mr. James, perhaps as the result of his long residence abroad, has ranged over a wider field, and has chosen to depict the evolution of character by thought rather than by deed, in his early work showing a rare insight. Of the three, he seems most certain of a lasting reputation.
Others of less importance have made some special corner of the country theirs, and possess a sort of squatter-right over it. To Bret Harte belongs mid-century California; to Mary Noailles Murfree, the Tennessee mountains; to James Lane Allen and John Fox, present-day Kentucky; to Mary Johnston, colonial Virginia; to Ellen Glasgow, present-day Virginia; to Stewart Edward White, the great northwest. Others cultivate a field peculiar to themselves. Frank R. Stockton is whimsically humorous, Edith Wharton cynically dissective; Mary Wilkins Freeman is most at home with rural New England character; and Thomas Nelson Page has done his best work in the South of reconstruction days.
But of the great mass of fiction being written in America to-day, little is of value as literature. It is designed for the most part as an amusing occupation for idle hours. Read some of it, by all means, if you enjoy it, since "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"; but remember that it is only the sweetmeat that comes at the end of the meal, and for sustenance, for the bread and butter of the literary diet, you must read the older books that are worth while.
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It may be questioned whether America has produced any poet or novelist or essayist of the very first rank, but, in another branch of letters, four names appear, which stand as high as any on the scroll. The writing of history is not, of course, pure literature; it is semi-creative rather than creative; and yet, at its best, it demands a high degree of imaginative insight. It appears at its best in the works of Prescott, Motley, Bancroft and Parkman.
George Bancroft was, of this quartette, the most widely known half a century ago, because he chose as his theme the history of America, and because he was himself for many years prominent in the political life of the country. Born in Massachusetts in 1800, graduating from Harvard, and, after a course of study in Germany, resolving to be a historian, he returned to America and began work on his history, the first volume of which appeared in 1834. Three years later, came the second volume, and in 1840, the third.
Glowing with national spirit as they did, they attracted public attention to him, and he was soon drawn into politics. During the next twelve years he held several government positions, among them Secretary of the Navy and Minister to England, which gave him access to great masses of historical documents. It was not until 1852 that his fourth volume appeared, then five more followed at comparatively frequent intervals. Again politics interrupted. He was sent as Minister to Prussia and later to the German Empire, again largely increasing his store of original documents, with which, toward the last, he seems to have been fairly overburdened. In 1874, he published his tenth volume, bringing his narrative through the Revolution, and eight years later, the last two dealing with the adoption of the Constitution. His last years were spent in revising and correcting this monumental work.
It is an inspiring record--a life devoted consistently to one great work, and that work the service of one's country, for such Bancroft's really was. Every student of colonial and revolutionary America must turn to him, and while his history has long since ceased to be generally read, it maintains an honored place among every collection of books dealing with America. It is easily first among the old-school histories as produced by such men as Hildreth. Tucker, Palfrey and Sparks.
At the head of the other school, which has been called cosmopolitan because it sought its subjects abroad rather than at home, stands William Hickling Prescott. Of this school, Washington Irving may fairly be said to have been the pioneer. We have seen how his residence in Spain turned his attention to the history of that country and resulted in three notable works. Prescott, however, was a historian by forethought and not by accident. Before his graduation from Harvard, he had determined to lead a literary life modelled upon that of Edward Gibbon. His career was almost wrecked at the outset by an unfortunate accident which so impaired his sight that he was unable to read or to write except with the assistance of a cumbrous machine. That any man, laboring under such a disability, should yet persevere in pursuing the rocky road of the historian seems almost unbelievable; yet that is just what Prescott did.
Let us tell the story of that accident. It was while he was at Harvard, in his junior year. One day after dinner, in the Commons Hall, some of the boys started a rude frolic. Prescott took no part in it, but just as he was leaving, a great commotion behind him caused him to turn quickly, and a hard piece of bread, thrown undoubtedly at random, struck him squarely and with great force in the left eye. He fell unconscious, and never saw out of that eye again. Worse than that, his other eye soon grew inflamed, and became almost useless to him, besides causing him, from time to time, the most acute suffering. But in spite of all this, he persisted in his determination to be a historian.
After careful thought, he chose for his theme that period of Spanish history dominated by Ferdinand and Isabella, and went to work. Documents were collected, an assistant read to him for hours at a time, notes were taken, and the history painfully pushed forward. The result was a picturesque narrative which was at once successful both in Europe and America; and, thus encouraged, Prescott selected another romantic theme, the conquest of Mexico, for his next work. Following this came the history of the conquest of Peru, and finally a history of the reign of Philip II, upon which he was at work, when a paralytic stroke ended his career.
Prescott was fortunate not only in his choice of subjects, but in the possession of a picturesque and fascinating style, which has given his histories a remarkable vogue. Fault has been found with him on the ground of historical inaccuracy, but such criticism is, for the most part, unjustified. His thoroughness, his judgment, and his critical faculty stand unimpeached, and place him very near the head of American historians.
Prescott's successor, in more than one sense, was John Lothrop Motley. A Bostonian and Harvard man, well-trained, after one or two unsuccessful ventures in fiction, he turned his attention to history, and in 1856 completed his "Rise of the Dutch Republic," for which he could not find a publisher. He finally issued it at his own expense, with no little inward trembling, but it was at once successful and seventeen thousand copies of it were sold in England alone during the first year. It received unstinted praise, and Motley at once proceeded with his "History of the United Netherlands." The opening of the Civil War, however, recalled his attention to his native land, he was drawn into politics, and did not complete his history until 1868. Six years later appeared his "John of Barneveld"; but his health was giving way and the end came in 1877.
In brilliancy, dramatic instinct and power of picturesque narration, Motley was Prescott's equal, if not his superior. The glow and fervor of his narrative have never been surpassed; his characters live and breathe; he was thoroughly in sympathy with his subject and found a personal pleasure in exalting his heroes and unmasking his villains. But there was his weakness; for often, instead of the impartial historian, he became a partisan of this cause or that, and painted his heroes whiter and his villains blacker than they really were. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it--because of the individual and intensely earnest personal point of view--his histories are as absorbing and fascinating as any in the world.
The last of this noteworthy group of historians, Francis Parkman, is also, in many respects, the greatest. He combined the virtues of all of them, and added for himself methods of research which have never been surpassed. Through it all, too, he battled against a persistent ill-health, which unfitted him for work for months on end, and, even at the best, would permit his reading or writing only a few minutes at a time.
Like the others, Parkman was born in Boston, and, as a boy, was so delicate that he was allowed to run wild in the country, acquiring a love of nature which is apparent in all his books. In search of health, he journeyed westward from St. Louis, in 1846, living with Indians and trappers and gaining a minute knowledge of their ways. The results of this journey were embodied in a modest little volume called "The Oregon Trail," which remains the classic source of information concerning the far West at that period.
Upon his return to the East, he settled down in earnest to the task which he had set himself--a history, in every phase, of the struggle between France and England for the possession of the North American continent. Years were spent in the collection of material--and in 1865 appeared his "Pioneers of France in the New World," followed at periods of a few years by the other books completing the series, which ends with the story of Montcalm and Wolfe.
The series is a masterpiece of interpretative history. Every phase of the struggle for the continent is described in minute detail and with the intimate touch of perfect knowledge; every actor in the great drama is presented with incomparable vividness, and its scenes are painted with a color and atmosphere worthy of Prescott or Motley, and with absolute accuracy. His work satisfies at once the student and the lover of literature, standing almost unique in this regard. His flexible and charming style is a constant joy; his power of analysis and presentment a constant wonder; and throughout his work there is a freshness of feeling, an air of the open, at once delightful and stimulating. He said the last word concerning the period which his histories cover, and has lent to it a fascination and absorbing interest which no historian has surpassed. The boy or girl who has not read Parkman's histories has missed one of the greatest treats which literature has to offer.
Other historians there are who have done good service to American letters and whose work is outranked only by the men we have already mentioned--John Bach McMaster, whose "History of the People of the United States" is still uncompleted; James Ford Rhodes, who has portrayed the Civil War period with admirable exhaustiveness and accuracy; Justin Winsor, Woodrow Wilson, William M. Sloane, and John Fiske. John Fiske's work, which deals wholly with the different periods of American history, is especially suited to young people because of its simplicity and directness, and because, while accurate, it is not overburdened with detail.
We have said that, during the Colonial period of American history, most of the New England divines devoted a certain amount of attention to the composition of creaking verse. More than that, they composed histories, biographies and numberless works of a theological character, which probably constitute the dullest mass of reading ever produced upon this earth. The Revolution stopped this flood--if anything so dry can be called a flood--and when the Revolution ended, public thought was for many years occupied with the formation of the new nation. But in the second quarter of the nineteenth century there arose in New England a group of writers who are known as Transcendentalists, and who produced one of the most important sections of American literature.
Transcendentalism is a long word, and it is rather difficult to define, but, to put it as briefly as possible, it was a protest against narrowness in intellectual life, a movement for broader culture and for a freer spiritual life. It took a tremendous grip on New England, beginning about 1830, and kept it for nearly forty years; for New England has always been more or less provincial--provincialism being the habit of measuring everything by one inadequate standard.
The high priest of the Transcendental movement was Amos Bronson Alcott, born on a Connecticut farm in 1799, successively in youth a clockmaker, peddler and book-agent, and finally driven by dire necessity to teaching school. But there could be no success at school-teaching for a man the most eccentric of his day--a mystic, a follower of Oriental philosophy, a non-resistant, an advocate of woman suffrage, an abolitionist, a vegetarian, and heaven knows what besides. So in the end, he was sold out, and removed with his family to Concord, where he developed into a sort of impractical idealist, holding Orphic conversations and writing scraps of speculation and criticism, and living in the clouds generally.
Life would have been far less easy for him but for the development of an unexpected talent in one of his daughters, Louisa May Alcott. From her sixteenth year, Louisa Alcott had been writing for publication, but with little success, although every dollar she earned was welcome to a family so poor that the girls sometimes thought of selling their hair to get a little money. She also tried to teach, and finally, in 1862, went to Washington as a volunteer nurse and labored for many months in the military hospitals. The letters she wrote to her mother and sisters were afterwards collected in a book called "Hospital Sketches." At last, at the suggestion of her publishers, she undertook to write a girls' story. The result was "Little Women," which sprang almost instantly into a tremendous popularity, and which at once put its author out of reach of want.
Other children's stories, scarcely less famous, followed in quick succession, forming a series which has never been equalled for long-continued vogue. Few children who read at all have failed to read "Little Men," "Little Women," "An Old-Fashioned Girl," "Eight Cousins," and "Rose in Bloom," to mention only five of them, and edition after edition has been necessary to supply a demand which shows no sign of lessening. The stories are, one and all, sweet and sincere and helpful, and while they are not in any sense literature, they are, at least, an interesting contribution to American letters.
But to return to the Transcendentalists.
The most picturesque figure of the group was Margaret Fuller. Starting as a morbid and sentimental girl, her father's death seems suddenly to have changed her, at the age of twenty-five, into a talented and thoughtful woman. Her career need not be considered in detail here, since it was significant more from the inspiration she gave others than from any achievement of her own. She proved herself a sympathetic critic, if not a catholic and authoritative one, and a pleasing and suggestive essayist.
What she might have become no one can tell, for her life was cut short at the fortieth year. She had spent some years in Italy, in an epoch of revolutions, into which she entered heart and soul. A romantic marriage, in 1847, with the Marquis Ossoli, served further to identify her with the revolutionary cause, and when it tumbled into ruins, she and her husband escaped from Rome and started for America. Their ship encountered a terrific storm off Long Island, was driven ashore, broken to pieces by the waves, and both she and her husband were drowned.
By far the greatest of the Transcendental group and one of the most original figures in American literature was Ralph Waldo Emerson--a figure, indeed, in many ways unique in all literature. Born in Boston in 1803, the son of a Unitarian clergyman and a member of a large and sickly family, he followed the predestined path through Harvard College, graduating with no especial honors, entered the ministry, and served as pastor of the Second Church of Boston until 1832. Then, finding himself ill at ease in the position, he resigned, and, settling at Concord, turned to lecturing, first on scientific subjects and then on manners and morals. His reputation grew steadily, and, especially in the generation younger than himself, he awakened the deepest enthusiasm.
In 1836, the publication of a little volume called "Nature" gave conclusive evidence of his talent, and, followed as it was by his "Essays," "Representative Men," and "Conduct of Life," established his reputation as seer, interpreter of nature, poet and moralist--a reputation which has held its own against the assaults of time.
And yet no personality could be more puzzling or elusive. He was at once attractive and repulsive--there was a certain line which no one crossed, a charmed circle in which he dwelt alone. There was about him a certain coldness and detachment, a self-sufficiency, and a prudence which held him back from giving himself unreservedly to any cause. He lacked heart and temperament. He was a homely, shrewd and cold-blooded Yankee, to put it plainly. Yet, with all that, he was a serene and benignant figure, of an inspiring optimism, a fine patriotism, and profound intellect--a stimulator of the best in man. Upon this basis, probably, his final claim to memory will rest.
Another Transcendental eccentric with more than a touch of genius was Henry David Thoreau, and it is noteworthy that his fame, which burned dimly enough during his life, has flamed ever brighter and brighter since his death. This increase of reputation is no doubt due, in some degree, to the "return to nature," which has recently been so prominent in American life and which has gained a wide hearing for so noteworthy a "poet-naturalist"; but it is also due in part to a growing recognition of the fact that as a writer of delightful, suggestive and inspiring prose he has had few equals.
Thoreau is easily our most extraordinary man of letters. Born in Concord of a poor family, but managing to work his way through Harvard, he spent some years teaching; but an innate love of nature and of freedom led him to seek some form of livelihood which would leave him as much his own master as it was possible for a poor man to be. To earn money for any other purpose than to provide for one's bare necessities was to Thoreau a grievous waste of time, so it came about that for many years he was a sort of itinerant tinker, a doer of odd jobs. Another characteristic, partly innate and party cultivated, was a distrust of society and a dislike of cities. "I find it as ever very unprofitable to have much to do with men," he wrote; and finally, in pursuance of this idea, he built himself a little cabin on the shore of Walden pond, where he lived for some two years and a half.
It was there that his best work was done, for, at bottom, Thoreau was a man of letters rather than a naturalist, with the most seeing eye man ever had. "Walden, or Life in the Woods," and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" contain the best of Thoreau, and any boy or girl who is interested in the great outdoors, as every boy and girl ought to be, will enjoy reading them.
The last of the Transcendental group worthy of mention here is George William Curtis, a versatile and charming personality, not a genius in any sense, but a writer of pleasant and amusing prose, an orator of no small ability, and one of the truest patriots who ever loved and labored for his country. It is in this latter aspect, rather than as the author of "Nile Notes" and "The Potiphar Papers," that Curtis is best remembered to-day. The books that he produced have, to a large extent, lost their appeal; but the work he did during the dark days of reconstruction and after entitles him to admiring and grateful remembrance.
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It is scarcely possible to close a chapter upon American prose writers without referring to at least one of the great editors who have done so much to mould American public opinion. To James Gordon Bennett and Charles A. Dana only passing reference need be made; but Horace Greeley deserves more extended treatment.
Early in the last century, on a rocky little farm in New Hampshire, lived a man by the name of Zaccheus Greeley, a good neighbor, but a bad manager--so bad that, in 1820, when his son Horace was nine years old, the farm was seized by the sheriff and sold for debt. The proceeds of the sale did not pay the debt, and so, in order to escape arrest, for they imprisoned people for debt in those days, Zaccheus Greeley fled across the border into Vermont, where his family soon joined him. He managed to make a precarious living by working at odd jobs, in which, of course, the boy joined him whenever he could be of any use.
He was a rather remarkable boy, with a great fondness for books, and when he was eleven years old, he tried to get a position in a printing office, but was rejected because he was too young. Four years later, he heard that a boy was wanted in an office at East Poultney, and he hastened to apply for the position. He was a lank, ungainly and dull-appearing boy, and the owner of the office did not think he could ever learn to be a printer, but finally put him to work, with the understanding that he was to receive nothing but his board and clothes for the first six months, and after that forty dollars a year additional.
The boy soon showed an unusual aptitude for the business, and finally decided that the little village was too restricted a field for his talents. With youth's sublime confidence, he decided to go to New York City. He managed to get a position in a printing office there, and two years later, at the age of twenty-two, he and a partner established the first one-cent daily newspaper in the United States. It was ahead of the times, however, and had to be abandoned after a few months.
But he had discovered his peculiar field, and in 1840 he established another paper which he called the "Log Cabin," in which he supported William Henry Harrison through the famous "log cabin and hard cider" campaign. The paper was a success, and in the year following he established the New York "Tribune," which was destined to make him both rich and famous. For more than thirty years he conducted the "Tribune," making it the most influential paper in the country. He became the most powerful political writer in the United States, and in every village groups gathered regularly to receive their papers and to see what "Old Horace" had to say. He was to his readers a strong and vivid personality--they had faith in his intelligence and honesty, and they believed that he would say what he believed to be right, regardless of whose toes were pinched. It was as different as possible to the anonymous journalism of to-day, when not one in a hundred of a newspaper's readers knows anything about the personality of the editor.
We have already referred to the fact that, at the beginning of secession, Greeley doubted the right of the North to compel the seceding states to remain in the Union. Indeed, he counselled peaceful separation rather than war, as did many others, but he was later a staunch supporter of President Lincoln's policy.
We have also spoken of the fact that, when Grant was re-nominated for President in 1872, a large section of the party, believing him incompetent, broke away from the party and named a candidate of their own. The party they formed was called the Liberal Republican, and their candidate was Horace Greeley. They managed to secure for him the support of the Democratic convention, which placed him at the head of the Democratic ticket, but they could not secure the support of the Democrats themselves, who could not forget that Greeley had been fighting them all his life; and the result was that he was overwhelmingly defeated. He had not expected such a result, his health had been undermined by the labors and anxieties of the campaign, and before the rejoicing of the Republicans was over, Greeley himself lay dead.
SUMMARY
IRVING, WASHINGTON. Born at New York City, April 3, 1783; went abroad for health, 1804; returned to America, 1806; published "Knickerbocker's History of New York," 1809; attache of legation at Madrid, 1826-29; secretary of legation at London, 1829-32; minister to Spain, 1842-46; died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859.
COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE. Born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789; entered Yale, 1802, but left after three years; midshipman in United States navy, 1808-11, when he resigned his commission; published first novel, "Precaution," anonymously, 1820, and followed it with many others; died at Cooperstown, New York, September 14, 1851.
HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804; graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825; served in Custom House at Boston, 1838-41; at Brook Farm, 1841; settled at Concord, Massachusetts, 1843; surveyor of the port of Salem, 1846-49; United States consul at Liverpool, 1853-57; published "Twice-Told Tales," 1837; "Mosses from an Old Manse," 1846; "The Scarlet Letter," 1850; "The House of the Seven Gables," 1851; and a number of other novels and collections of tales; died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, May 19, 1864.
STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER. Born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June 14, 1812; educated at Hartford, Connecticut; taught school there and at Cincinnati; published "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 1852; "Dred," 1856; and a number of other novels; died at Hartford, Connecticut, July 1, 1896.
CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. Born at Florida, Missouri, November 30, 1835; apprenticed to printer, 1847; alternated between mining and newspaper work, until the publication of "Innocents Abroad," 1869, made him famous as a humorist; died at Redding, Connecticut, April 22, 1910; published many collections of short stories and several novels.
BANCROFT, GEORGE. Born at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3, 1800; graduated at Harvard, 1817; collector of the port of Boston, 1838-41; Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts, 1844; secretary of the navy, 1845-46; minister to Great Britain, 1846-49; minister to Berlin, 1867-74; published first volume of his "History of the United States," 1834, last volume, 1874; died at Washington, Jan. 17, 1891.
PRESCOTT, WILLIAM HICKLING. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796; published "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," 1838; "Conquest of Mexico," 1843; "Conquest of Peru," 1847; "History of the Reign of Philip II," 1858; died at Boston, January 28, 1859.
MOTLEY, JOHN LOTHROP. Born at Dorchester (now part of Boston), Massachusetts, April 15, 1814; graduated at Harvard, 1831; studied abroad, 1831-34; United States minister to Austria, 1861-67, and to Great Britain, 1869-70; published "Rise of the Dutch Republic," 1856; "History of the United Netherlands," 1868; "Life and Death of John of Barneveld," 1874; died in Dorset, England, May 29, 1877.
PARKMAN, FRANCIS. Born at Boston, September 16, 1823; graduated at Harvard, 1844; published "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," 1851, and continued series of histories dealing with the French in America to "A Half Century of Conflict," 1892; died at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, November 8, 1893.
ALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON. Born at Wolcott, Connecticut, November 29, 1799; a book-peddler and school-teacher, conducting a school in Boston, 1834-37; removed to Concord, 1840; published "Orphic Sayings," 1840; "Tablets," 1868; "Concord Days," 1872; "Table-Talk," 1877; "Sonnets and Canzonets," 1882; died at Boston, March 4, 1888.
ALCOTT, LOUISA MAY. Born at Germantown, Pennsylvania, November 29, 1832; teacher in early life and army nurse during Civil War; published "Little Women," 1868; "Old-Fashioned Girl," 1869; "Little Men," 1871, and many other children's stories; died at Boston, March 6, 1888.
FULLER, SARAH MARGARET, MARCHIONESS OSSOLI. Born at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, May 23, 1810; edited _Boston Dial_, 1840-42; literary critic _New York Tribune_, 1844-46; published "Summer on the Lakes," 1843; "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," 1845; "Papers on Art and Literature," 1846; went to Europe, 1846; married Marquis Ossoli, 1847; drowned off Fire Island, July 16, 1850.
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. Born at Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803; graduated at Harvard, 1821; Unitarian clergyman at Boston, 1829-32; commenced career as lecturer, 1833, and continued for nearly forty years; edited the _Dial_, 1842-44; published "Nature," 1836; "Essays," 1841; "Poems," 1846; "Representative Men," 1850; and other books of essays and poems; died at Concord, Massachusetts, April 27, 1882.
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID. Born at Concord, Massachusetts, July 12, 1817; graduated at Harvard, 1837; lived alone at Walden Pond, 1845-47; published "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," 1849; "Walden, or Life in the Woods," 1854; died at Concord, May 6, 1862. Several collections of his essays and letters were published after his death.
CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM. Born at Providence, Rhode Island, February 24, 1824; joined the Brook Farm Community, 1842, and afterwards spent some years in travel; published "Nile Notes of a Howadji," "The Howadji in Syria," "The Potiphar Papers," and other books; prominent as an anti-slavery orator and as the editor of "Harper's Weekly"; died at West New Brighton, Staten Island, August 31, 1892.
GREELEY, HORACE. Born at Amherst, New Hampshire, February 3, 1811; founded _New York Tribune_, 1841; member of Congress from New York, 1848-49; candidate of Liberal-Republican and Democratic parties for President, 1872; died at Pleasantville, Westchester County, New York, November 29, 1872.