Part 17

The only persons designated in his will as legatees are a faithful servant, for whom abundant provision was made, and Henry James Hungerford, nephew of the testator. To the latter was devised the entire estate except the legacy to the servant mentioned. The clause of the will which has given the name of Smithson to the ages seems to have been almost casually inserted; it appears between the provision for his servant and the one for an investment of the funds.

The clause in his will which was to cause his name "to live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten," was,--

"In the case of the death of my said nephew without leaving a child or children, or the death of the child or children he may have had under the age of twenty-one years, or intestate, I then bequeath the whole of my property subject to the annuity of one hundred pounds to John Fitall (for the security and payment of which I have made provision) to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

Why he selected the United States as his residuary legatee has long been, and will continue to be, the subject of curious inquiry. He had never been in America, had no correspondent here, and nowhere in his writings has there been found an allusion to our country. So far as we know, he could have had no possible prejudice in favor of our system of representative government.

It is a singular fact, however, in this connection, that the pivotal clause in his will bears striking resemblance to the admonition, "Promote as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge," contained in the farewell address of President Washington.

The contingency provided for happened; the death of the nephew Hungerford unmarried and without heirs occurred six years after that of the testator. The first announcement to the people of the United States of the facts stated was contained in a special message from President Jackson to Congress, December 17, 1835. Accompanying the message was a letter with a detailed statement, and copy of the will, from our Legation in London. In closing his brief message of transmission, President Jackson says: "The Executive having no authority to take any steps for accepting the trust and obtaining the funds, the papers are communicated with a view to such measures as Congress may deem necessary."

On the first day of July, 1836, a bill authorizing the President to assert and prosecute the claim of the United States to the Smithson legacy became a law. This, however, was after much opposition in Congress; a member of the House indignantly declaring that our Government should receive nothing by way of gift from England, and proposing that the bequest should be denied. The prophetic words of the venerable John Quincy Adams--then a member of the House after his retirement from the Presidency--in advocating the passage of the bill are worthy of remembrance:

"Of all the foundations of establishments for pious or charitable uses which ever signalized the spirit of the age, or the comprehensive beneficence of the founders, none can be named more deserving the approbation of mankind than this. Should it be faithfully carried into effect with an earnestness and sagacity of application and a steady perseverance of purpose proportioned to the means furnished by the will of the founder, and to the greatness and simplicity of his design as by himself declared,--'the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men,'--it is no extravagance of anticipation to declare that his name will hereafter be enrolled among the benefactors of mankind."

In the execution of this law, the President immediately upon its enactment appointed Richard Rush, a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia, to proceed to London, and take the necessary steps to obtain the legacy. To the accomplishment of this purpose a suit was soon thereafter instituted by Mr. Rush. The hopelessness of its early termination in an English Chancery Court of that day will at once occur to the readers of Dickens's famous "Jarndyce against Jarndyce." It was truly said, that a chancery suit was a thing which might begin with a man's life, and its termination be his epitaph.

A wiser selection than Mr. Rush could not have been made. He entered upon the work to which he had been appointed, with great determination. In a letter to our Secretary of State just after he had instituted suit, he says:

"A suit of higher interest and dignity, has rarely perhaps been before the tribunals of a nation. If the trust created by the testator's will be successfully carried into effect by the enlightened legislation of Congress, benefits may flow to the United States, and to the human family, not easy to be estimated, because operating silently and gradually throughout time, yet not operating the less effectually. Not to speak of the inappreciable value of letters to individual and social man, the monuments which they raise to a nation's glory often last when others perish, and seem especially appropriate to the glory of a Republic whose foundations are laid in the assumed intelligence of its citizens, and can only be strengthened and perpetuated as that improve."

The successful termination of the suit came, however, sooner than could have been expected; and in May, 1838, the amount of the legacy, exceeding the substantial sum of five hundred thousand dollars, was received and invested as required by law.

The facts stated were communicated by special message from President Van Buren to Congress, in December, 1838. Attention was then called to the fact that he had applied to persons versed in science, for their views as to the mode of disposing of the fund which would be calculated best to meet the intent of the testator, and prove most beneficial to mankind.

During the eight years intervening between this message and the passage of the bill for the incorporation of the Smithsonian Institution, much discussion was had in and out of Congress, as to the best method of making effective the intention of the testator.

In the light of events, some of the many plans suggested are even now of curious interest. The establishment of a magnificent national library at the Capital; the founding of a great university; of a normal school; a post graduate school; and astronomical observatory "equal to any in the world," are a few of the plans from time to time proposed and earnestly advocated.

The act of incorporation in 1846, the appointment of a Board of Regents, and the selection of a Secretary, mark the beginning of the Smithsonian Institution. In the selection of a Secretary, the chief officer of the institution, the regents builded better than they knew. The choice fell upon Professor Joseph Henry of Princeton, then peerless among men of science in America. The appointment was accepted, and the essential features of the plan of organization he proposed were adopted in December, 1847. This plan recognized as

"Fundamental that the terms 'increase' and 'diffusion' should receive literal interpretation in accordance with the evident intention of the testator; that such terms being logically distinct, the two purposes mentioned in the bequest were to be kept in view in the organization of the institution; that the increase of knowledge should be effected by the encouragement of original researches of the highest character; and its diffusion by the publication of the results of original research, by means of the publication of a series of volumes of original memoirs; that the object of the institution should not be restricted in favor of any particular kind of knowledge; if to any, only to the higher and more abstract, to the discovery of new principles rather than that of isolated facts; that the institution should in no sense be national; that the bequest was intended for the benefit of mankind in general, and not for any single nation.

"The accumulation and care of collections of objects of nature and art, the development of a library, the providing of courses of lectures, and the organization of a system of meteorological observation, were to be only incidental to the fundamental design of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men."

In its inception, and in its widening influence during the passing years, those entrusted with the actual management of this institution have conscientiously kept in view the clearly expressed intention of its founder. Following the distinctive but parallel paths, "increase" and "diffusion," the Smithsonian Institution, yet in its infancy, has added largely to the sum of useful knowledge. Its accredited representatives are out upon every pathway of intelligent research and discovery. Under the wise operation of this marvellous instrumentality, long-concealed secrets of nature have been discovered, and it can hardly be doubted that all that is given to man to know will yet be revealed, and it will be permitted him

"To read what is still unread, In the manuscripts of God."

By indefatigable investigation, and by world-wide publication of the results, mankind has indeed become, as was intended, the beneficiary of the princely bequest.

More fitting words could not be selected with which to close this sketch than those of the gifted and lamented Langley, whose best years were given to scientific research, and whose name is inseparably associated with the Smithsonian Institution:

"What has been done in these two paths the reader may partly gather from this volume--in the former from the various articles by contemporary men of science, describing its activities in research and original contributions to the increase of human knowledge; in the latter, in numerous way--among others from the description of the work of one of its bureaux, that of the International Exchanges, where it may be more immediately seen how universal is the scope of the action of the Institution, which, in accordance with its motto 'PER ORBEM,' is not limited to the country of its adoption, but belongs to the world, there being outside of the United States more than twelve thousand correspondents scattered through every portion of the globe; indeed there is hardly a language, or a people, where the results of Smithson's benefaction are not known, and associated with his name.

"If we were permitted to think of him as conscious of what has been, is being, and is still to be done, in pursuance of his wish, we might believe that he would feel that his hope at a time when life must have seemed so hopeless, was finding full fruition; for events are justifying what may have seemed, at the time, but a rhetorical expression, in the language of a former President of the United States, who has said: 'Renowned as is the name of Percy in the historical annals of England, let the trust of James Smithson to the United States of America be faithfully executed, let the result accomplish his object, the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, and a wreath more unfading shall entwine itself in the lapse of future ages around the name of Smithson than the united hands of history and poetry have braided around the name of Percy through the long ages past.'"

XII THE OLD RANGER

JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS, A BORN POLITICIAN--HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE--HIS AFFECTATION OF HUMILITY--ADMITTED TO THE BAR --HE CONDEMNS A MURDERER TO DEATH--HIS CURIOUS ADDRESS TO ANOTHER MURDERER--BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE--ELECTED GOVERNOR --HIS GENEROSITY TO HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES--BECOMES A MEMBER OF CONGRESS--HIS ADMIRATION FOR HIS ASSOCIATES--ELECTED A MEMBER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE--RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE.

This world of ours will be much older before the like of John Reynolds, the fourth Governor of Illinois, again appears upon its stage. The title which he generously gave himself in early manhood, upon his return after a brief experience as a trooper in pursuit of a marauding band of Winnebagoes, stood him well in hand in all his future contests for office. "The Old Ranger" was a _sobriquet_ to conjure with, and turned the scales in his favor in many a doubtful contest.

The subject of this sketch was a born politician if ever one trod this green earth. He was a perennial candidate for office, and it was said he never took a drink of water without serious meditation as to how it might possibly affect his political prospects. The late Uriah Heep might easily have gotten a few points in "'umbleness," if he had accompanied the Old Ranger in one or two of his political campaigns.

While Illinois was yet a Territory, his father had emigrated from the mountains of Tennessee and located near the historic village of Kaskaskia. This was at the time the capital of the Territory. The village mentioned was then the most, and in fact, the only, important place in the vast area constituting the present State of Illinois. There were less than five thousand persons of all nationalities and conditions in the Territory, and they mainly in and about Kaskaskia, and southward to the Ohio. Beck's Gazetteer published in 1823--five years after the admission of the State into the Union--contains the following: "Chicago, a village of Pike County, situated on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago Creek. It contains twelve or fifteen houses, and about sixty or seventy inhabitants."

The acquaintance of John Reynolds with what was then known as "the Illinois Country" began in 1800, and his thorough knowledge of the people and their ways gave him rare opportunities for acquiring great personal popularity. Fairly well educated for the times, gifted with an abundance of shrewdness, and withal an excellent judge of human nature, he soon became a man of mark in the new country. He was at all times and under all circumstances the self-constituted "friend of the people." He affected to be one of the humblest of the sons of men; and his dress, language, and deportment were always in strict keeping with that assumption. For the pride of ancestry he had a supreme contempt. In his "My Own Times," published a few years before his death, he said: "I regard the whole subject of ancestry and descent as utterly frivolous and unworthy of a moment's serious attention."

This recalls what Judge Baldwin said of Cave Burton:

"He was not clearly satisfied that Esau made as foolish a bargain with his brother Jacob as some think. If the birth-right was _a mere matter of family pride,_ and the pottage of agreeable taste, Cave was not quite sure that Esau had not gotten the advantage in his famed bargain with the Father of Israel."

Humility was Reynolds's highest card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes. A few extracts from his book may be of interest:

"I was a singular spectacle when in 1809 I started to Tennessee to college. I looked like a trapper going to the Rocky Mountains. I wore a cream-colored hat made of the fur of the prairie wolf, which gave me a grotesque appearance. I was well acquainted with the mysteries of horse and foot races, shooting matches, and other wild sports of the backwoods, but had not studied the polish of the ball-room and was sorely beset with diffidence, awkwardness, and poverty."

Later, and when out in pursuit of the Indians, he said: "But diffidence never permitted me to approach an officer's tent, or solicit any one for office."

None the less, the office of Orderly Sergeant being thrust upon him, he managed in his humble way to get through with it passably well.

When the State Government was organized in 1818, while shrinking from even the gaze of men, and spurning from the depths of his soul the arts of politicians, he managed in some way to be designated one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the new State. His admiration for the dispensing hand appears as follows: "Wisdom and integrity, with other noble qualities, gave Governor Bond a high standing with his contemporaries. Wisdom and integrity shed a beacon light around his path through life, showing him to be one of the noblest works of God."

Four years prior to this appointment, he had been admitted to the bar, after "undergoing with much diffidence" his examination. This accomplished, he adds: "In the Winter of 1814, I established a very humble and obscure law-office in the French village of Cahokia, the county seat of St. Clair County." The bearing of the one whose meat was locusts and wild honey, and whose loins were girt about with a leathern girdle, was arrogance itself, when compared with the deportment of the later John in the wilderness at the period whereof we write.

That he was orthodox upon what pertained to medical practice will now appear: "It was the universal practice to give the patient of the bilious disease, first, tartar emetic; next day, calomel and jalap; and the third day, Peruvian bark. This was generally sufficient." The latter statement will hardly be questioned.

How his first visitation of the tender passion was mingled with a relish of philosophy is recorded for the benefit of posterity:

"During all my previous life until within a short time before I married, I had not the least intention of that state of existence, and I expressed myself often to my friends to the same effect; but on the subject of matrimony, a passion influences the parties which generally succeeds. Judgment and prudence should be mixed in equal parts with love and affection in the transaction, to secure a lasting and happy union."

With all his diffidence, however, the Old Ranger happened to turn up at the seat of Government in time "to be persuaded by my friends to be a candidate for a Judgeship. It broke in on me like a clap of thunder." The mite of philosophy with which he excused himself for giving way to the urgent demand of his friends is as follows: "Human nature is easier to persuade to mount upwards than to remain on the common level."

His mind, as will appear, was essentially of the strictly practical cast. He no doubt believed with Macaulay that "one acre in Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia."

That the Republican simplicity of the new Judge followed him from his "very humble and obscure law-office" to the Bench, will now appear:

"The very first court I held was in Washington County, and it was to me a strange and novel business. I was amongst old comrades with whom I had been raised, ranged in the war with them, and lived with them in great intimacy and equality, so that it was difficult to assume a different relationship than I had previously occupied with them. Moreover I detested a mock dignity. Both the sheriff and clerk were rangers in the same company with myself, and it seemed we were still ranging on equal terms in pursuit of the Indians. The sheriff was of the same opinion and very familiar. He opened court sitting astride on a bench in the Court-house, and without rising, proclaimed: 'The court is now open, and our John is on the bench.'"

It may here be mentioned that the first case of importance that came before Judge Reynolds, was the trial of one William Bennett for murder. He had killed his antagonist in a duel in St. Clair County, for which he suffered the death penalty. This is the only duel ever fought in Illinois. No doubt the prompt execution of Bennett did much to discourage duelling in the State.

In reply to the charge that he had acted with unbecoming levity upon the trial of Bennett, the Judge said, "No human being of my humble capacity could have acted with more painful feelings and sympathy than did I on this occasion." Having thus vindicated himself from the serious charge mentioned, he adds:

"I am opposed to capital punishment in any case where the convict can be kept in solitary confinement without pardoning his life; it was extremely painful and awful to me to be the instrument in the hands of the law to pronounce sentence of death upon my fellow-man, extinguishing him forever from the face of the earth, and depriving him of life, which I think belongs to God and not to man."

He consoles himself, however, as he closes his narrative of this sad affair, that "it never did assume the character of a regular and honorable duel." It is very satisfactory also, even at this distant date, to be assured by the Judge that "the prisoner embraced religion, was baptized, and died happy, before spectators to the number of two thousand or more."

Governor Ford, in his history of Illinois, relates the following incident as characteristic of Judge Reynolds. The latter was holding court in Washington County when one Green was found guilty upon an indictment for murder. The court was near the hour of adjournment for the term, when the prosecuting attorney suggested to the court that the prisoner Green be brought in in order that sentence be passed upon him. "Certainly, certainly," said the Judge, and the prisoner was at once brought in from the jail near by.

"Mr. Green," said the Judge in a familiar tone, "the jury in your case have found you guilty. I want you to understand, Mr. Green, and all your friends down on Indian Creek to know, that it is not I who condemns you, but the jury and the law. The law allows you time for preparation, Mr. Green; and so the court wants to know what time it would suit you to be hung?" The prisoner replying that he was ready to suffer at whatever time the court might appoint, the Judge said;

"Mr. Green, you must know that it is a very serious matter to be hung. It can't happen to a man more than once in his life, and you had better take all the time you can get; the court will give you till this day four weeks. Mr. Clerk, look at the almanac and see if this day four weeks comes on Sunday." The Clerk after examination reported that that day four weeks came on Friday. The Judge then said: "Mr. Green, the court gives you till this day four weeks, and then you are to be hanged."

Whereupon the prosecuting officer, the Hon. James Turney, an able and dignified lawyer, said:

"May it please the court, on solemn occasion like the present, when the life of a human being is to be sentenced away for crime by an earthly tribunal, it is usual and proper for courts to pronounce a formal sentence, in which the leading features of the crime shall be brought to the recollection of the prisoner, a sense of his guilt impressed upon his conscience, and in which the prisoner should be duly exhorted to repentance and warned against the judgment in a world to come."

To which the Judge replied: "Oh, Mr. Turney, Mr. Green understands the whole matter as well as if I had preached to him a month. He knows he has got to be hung this day four weeks. You understand it that way, Mr. Green, don't you?"

"Yes," said the prisoner, upon which the Judge again expressing the hope that he and all his friends down on Indian Creek would understand that it was the act of the jury and of the law, _and not of the Judge,_ ordered the prisoner to be remanded to jail, and the court adjourned for the term.

For some reason, by no means satisfactorily explained, Judge Reynolds retired from the bench at the end of his four years' term. In "Breese," the first volume of Illinois reports, is an opinion by Judge Reynolds which has been the subject of amusing comment by three generations of lawyers. After giving sundry reasons why there was error in the judgment below, the learned Judge concludes: "Therefore, the judgment _ought to be_ reversed; but inasmuch as the court is equally divided in opinion, it is therefore _affirmed."_