Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

I have known personally and quite intimately, or have known intelligent and trustworthy persons who have known personally and quite intimately, many men who have had a great sha...

My mother, who died in 1866, at the age of eighty-three, was the daughter of Roger Sherman of Connecticut. Her father died when she was ten years old. She lived in her mother's...

I was born in Concord August 29, 1826. My grandfather, two great-grandfathers, and three of my father's uncles were at Concord Bridge in the Lincoln Company, of which my grandfa...

I have never got over being a boy. It does not seem likely that I ever shall. I have to-day, at the age of three score and sixteen, less sense of my own dignity than I had when...

There were in Concord in my boyhood three writers who afterward became very famous indeed--Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau. Mr. Lowell said that these three names shine among all...

I spent my life in Concord until I entered college except one year when I lived on a farm in Lincoln. There I had an opportunity to see at its best the character of the New Engl...

I do not think Harvard College had changed very much when I entered it on my sixteenth birthday in the year 1842 either in manners, character of students or teachers, or the cou...

The story I am to tell may seem trivial enough to my readers. But it is to me a very tender and sacred memory. The time was ripe for the great movement that abolished slavery. I...

After leaving college I studied for a year in my brother's office in Concord, then for two years at the Harvard Law School, and afterward for four months in the office of Judge...

In 1848, the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts nominated candidates for State officers. It was made up of Whigs, Democrats and members of the Liberty Party. It had made no distin...

The political history of Massachusetts from 1846 to 1865 is, in general, the history of the share of the Commonwealth in the great National contest with Slavery; the beginning a...

In the year 1868 one chapter of my life ended and a very different one began. In the beginning of that year I had no doubt that what remained of my life would be devoted to my p...

When I took my seat on the 4th of March, 1869, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had a position of power in both Houses of Congress never held by any other State before or since...

I have been, in general, enabled to avoid angry conflicts in debate or the exchange of rough personalities. My few experiences of that kind came from attacks on Massachusetts, w...

The House, when I entered it, contained many very able men. Some of them remained long enough in public life to fill a large and prominent place in the history of the country. O...

When the Republican Party came into power in 1869 under its great and simple-hearted President, it found itself confronted with very serious duties. They were enough to fill ord...

The reconstruction policy of the Republican Party has been bitterly denounced. Some men who supported it are in the habit now of calling it a failure. It never commanded in its...

The career of a Member of either House of Congress is determined, except in rare cases, by his assignment to Committees. In the House that is wholly dependent on the favor of th...

Among the very interesting characters with whom I have formed an acquaintance in Washington was Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. I saw him but a few times. But on those occasions...

The political history of Massachusetts from 1850 until 1888 cannot be written or understood without a knowledge of the remarkable career of Adin Thayer. When I was first nominat...

John Jay said that the greatest achievements of diplomacy were often little noted by history and that their authors got, in general, little credit. He compared it to the work of...

During the election of 1872 many rumors appeared in the press of the country that there had been great corruption in the management of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad....

The forty-second Congress, at its second session, repealed all laws which provided for the payment of moieties, or commissions, to informers, so far as related to internal reven...

No person can adequately comprehend the political history of Massachusetts for the thirty-five years beginning with 1850 without a knowledge of the character, career and behavio...

March 3, 1876, a message was sent to the Senate from the House of Representatives, impeaching General Belknap, the Secretary of War. He was charged with having received corruptl...

When the Presidential election of 1876 was over both sides claimed the victory. When the certificates of the result in the different States reached the President of the Senate,...

It has been my fortune to be a delegate from Massachusetts in four National Conventions for the nomination of President and Vice-President--those of 1876, 1880, 1884 and 1888. I...

As the time approached for the Republican Convention of 1880, it had become clear that it would witness a mighty struggle. Conkling, Don Cameron, who had succeeded to his father...

It happened to me again to be put at the head of the Massachusetts delegation in the convention of 1884. The leading candidates were Mr. Blaine and President Arthur. Mr. Arthur...

In 1888 there was a very strong, almost irresistible feeling among Republicans in the country that Blaine should be put in nomination again, although he had peremptorily and pub...

In 1877, about the time of my election to the Senate, I was chosen a member of the famous Saturday Club. I always attended the meetings when I could be in Boston until after the...

I have been for fifty years a member of another club called the Worcester Fire Society, some of whose members have had a remarkable relation to important events in the history o...

I have every reason to believe that my constituents in the Worcester district would have gladly continued me in the public service for ten years longer, if I had been so minded....

which I have already made extracts. I had incurred his bitter personal enmity, and was regarded with perhaps one exception, that of my older brother Judge Hoar, as his most unre...

President Hayes's Administration began under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. In the first Congress of his term the Democrats had a majority in the House. They had refused...

There has hardly been a stronger Cabinet since Washington than that of President Hayes. Its members worked together in great harmony. All of them, I believe, were thoroughly dev...

In general the determination of the title to the Presidency was acquiesced in in a manner highly creditable to the people. The Democratic party submitted to their disappointment...

When I came to the Senate that body was at the very height of its Constitutional power. It was, I think, a more powerful body than ever before or since. There were no men in it,...

As I just said, there was no man in the Senate when I entered it who equalled in renown either Webster, Clay or Calhoun, or wielded in the Senate an influence like that of Olive...

I was appointed on the same day a member of the Committees on Claims, Indian Affairs and Agriculture. I made a special study in the vacation of 1877, expecting to master, as wel...

I have throughout my whole public political life acted upon my own judgment. I have done what I thought for the public interest without much troubling myself about public opinio...

Much of what I have said in the preceding chapter is, in substance, applicable to my vote on another matter in which I had been compelled to take an attitude in opposition to a...

The Treaty of Washington, creditable to all who engaged in it, not to be judged by its details, but by its great effect in securing peace to the world, saved Great Britain from...

The two most important questions of the construction of the Constitution which came up in our early history have been finally put at rest in our day. I have had something to do...

If, on looking back, I were to select the things which I have done in public life in which I take the most satisfaction, they would be, the speech in the Senate on the Fisheries...

In December, 1889, the Republican Party succeeded to the legislative power in the country for the first time in sixteen years. Since 1873 there had been a Democratic President f...

The great inconvenience grew out of the fact that by the Constitution the session of Congress must end on the fourth of March every other year. A third of the Senate goes out at...

I earnestly supported William B. Hornblower against the opposition of Senator Hill, when he was nominated by Mr. Cleveland for Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. I...

Another most delightful Democrat, with whom it was my pleasure to form quite intimate relations, was Senator Howell E. Jackson of Tennessee. He had been in the Confederate servi...

Cushman Kellogg Davis was born at Henderson, Jefferson County, New York, June 16, 1838, and died at St. Paul, Minnesota, November 27, 1900. On his mother's side he was descended...

One of the most delightful friendships of my life was with George Bancroft, the famous historian. I never knew him until I went to Washington in 1877. But we established at once...

I was born within a mile of the spot where the War of the Revolution began. My ancestors and other kindred on both sides took an active and prominent part in the struggle with E...

My next visit to England was in the spring of 1892. The winter before, I had a severe attack of iritis, which left my eyes in a very demoralized condition. I did not find much r...

In 1896 I found myself again utterly broken down in health and strength. I had, the November before, a slight paralysis in the face, which affected the muscles of the lower lid...

I was compelled, by the state of my health, to be absent from the country in the campaign which preceded the Presidential election of 1896, except for the last week or two. But,...

I visited England again in 1899. I did not go to the Continent or Scotland. My wife consulted a very eminent London physician for an infirmity of the heart. He told her to go to...

I have had occasion several times to prepare the Republican platform for the State Convention. The last time I undertook the duty was in 1894. I was quite busy. I shrunk from th...

When I was in the House the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States were raised to ten thousand dollars a year, and a provision for a retiring pension,...

The race of demagogues we have always with us. They have existed in every government from Cleon and the Sausage-maker. They command votes and seem to delight popular and legisla...

In August, 1890, the Pittsburg _Post,_ a Democratic paper, made a savage attack on me. He attributed to me some very foolish remark and declared that I lived on terrapin and cha...

Before the year 1897 I had become very much alarmed at the prospect of the total extinction of our song-birds. The Bobolink seemed to be disappearing from the field in Massachus...

One very unreasonable, yet very natural excitement has stirred deeply the American people on several occasions in our history. It came to us by lawful inheritance from our Engli...

I may as well put on record here a matter which I suppose has never been made public. When in President Hayes's time Mr. Welsh resigned the English Mission, Mr. Lowell, then in...

A neighbor and countryman of his had a few years before emigrated to the United States and established himself in Worcester. Soon afterward, he formally declared his intention o...

I have, since I have been in the Senate, taken great interest in the passage of a bill for a system of National Bankruptcy. The Constitution gives Congress power to establish a...

It has been my singular ill fortune that I have been compelled to differ from the Republican Party, and from a good many of my political associates, upon many important matters.

Among the great satisfactions in the life of public men is that of sometimes being instrumental in the advancement to places of public honor of worthy men, and of being able to...

The longer I live, the more highly I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not the single gift most to be coveted by man. It is hard, perhap...

I have given the best study I could to the grave evil of the accumulation in the country of vast fortunes in single hands, or of vast properties in the hands of great corporatio...

The Worcester Bar, when I came to it, was much like a class of boys in college. There was rivalry and sharp practice in some cases, and roughness of speech toward each other and...

Unquestionably the most important character in the legal history of Massachusetts is Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. He was a great lawyer before he came to the Bench. He had written...

I close this book with a statement of the political principles which I think define the duty of the American people in the near future, and from which I hope the Republic will n...

To give a complete and truthful account of my own life, the name of Edward Everett Hale should appear on almost every page. I became a member of his parish in Worcester in Augus...