Chapter 16

As to Burr, the proverb found instant verification that "in duels the victor is always the victim." Had he, instead of Hamilton, fallen on that ill-fated July morning, how changed their possible places in history. A halo has gathered about the name of Hamilton. Monuments have been erected to his memory, his statue has been given high place in the Capitol. The hour of his fall was that of his exaltation.

The self-same hour witnessed the ruin of his antagonist. From the fatal field, unharmed in body, he turned away, henceforth to the followed by the execrations of his countrymen. Past services were forgotten, brilliant talents availed nothing. His desperate attempt to found a rival government by the partial dismemberment of the one he had helped to establish was thwarted, and after years of poverty and misfortune abroad, he returned to die in neglect and obscurity in his own country. As was truly said: "He was the last of his race; there was no kindred hand to smooth his couch, or wipe the death-damp from his brow. No banners drooped over his bier; no melancholy music floated upon the reluctant air."

The Hon. Hamilton Spencer, one of the ablest of lawyers, gave me an interesting account of an interview he had with Colonel Burr in Albany not long before his death. Notwithstanding his advanced age, broken health, and ruined fortunes, he deeply impressed Mr. Spencer as a gentleman of most courteous manners, dignified bearing, and commanding presence such as he had rarely seen.

The one object of his love was his daughter, the beautiful Theodosia. Her devotion to her father increased with his accumulating misfortunes. The ship in which she sailed from her home in Charleston, South Carolina, to meet him in New York, never reached its destination. In all history, there are few pictures more pathetic than that of the gray-haired, friendless man, with faded cloak drawn closely about him, day after day wandering alone by the seaside, anxiously awaiting the coming of the one being who loved him, the idolized daughter whose requiem was even then being chanted by the waves.

One of the men I occasionally met in Washington was Joseph C. McKibben, a former representative in Congress from the Pacific coast. He was thoroughly familiar with the history of California from its cession to the United States at the close of the Mexican War. He had been an active participant in many of the stirring events occurring soon after the admission of the State into the Union.

"Men, except in bad novels, are not all good, or all evil."

Colonel McKibben was the second of David C. Broderick in his duel with Judge Terry. At the time of the duel, Broderick was a Senator of the United States, and Terry the Chief Justice of California. The challenge given by Terry was promptly accepted. As will be remembered, in the encounter which immediately followed, Terry escaped unhurt and Broderick was killed.

I recall vividly the description given me of the meeting between these men in that early Spring morning in 1859. Both possessed unquestioned courage. Their demeanor upon the field, as in deadly attitude they confronted each other a few paces apart, was that of absolute fearlessness. "Each had set his life upon a cast, and was ready to stand the hazard of the die."

Rarely have truer words been uttered than those of the gifted Baker over the dead body of Broderick:

"The code of honor is a delusion and a snare; it palters with the hope of true courage, and binds it at the feet of crafty and cruel skill. It surrounds its victim with the pomp and grace of the procession, but leaves him bleeding on the altar. It substitutes cold and deliberate preparedness for courage and manly impulse, and arms the one to disarm the other. It makes the mere trick of the weapon superior to the noblest cause and the truest courage. Its pretence of equality is a lie; it is equal in all the form, it is unjust in all the substance. The habitude of arms, the early training, the frontier life, the border war, the sectional custom, the life of leisure, all these are advantages which no negotiations can neutralize, and which no courage can overcome. Code of honor! It is a prostitution of the name, is an evasion of the substance, and is a shield blazoned with the name of chivalry to cover the malignity of murder."

The tragic ending of the eventful career of Judge Terry, which occurred within the last decade, will be readily recalled. Immediately following his assault upon Justice Field at the railway station in Lathrop, California, he was slain by a deputy United States marshal. The wife of Terry was at his side, and the scene that followed beggars description.

The name of Terry at once recalls the "Vigilance Committee" of early San Francisco days. The committee was composed largely of leading men of the "law-and-order" element of the city. Robberies and murders were of nightly occurrence, and gamblers and criminals in many instances were the incumbents of the public offices. The organization mentioned became an imperative necessity for the protection of life and property. The work of the committee constitutes one of the bloodiest chapters of early Californian history.

Nearly a third of a century ago, Colonel Thornton, a prominent lawyer of San Francisco, related to me an incident which he had witnessed during the time the famous Vigilance Committee was in complete control. A young lawyer, recently located in San Francisco, was arrested for stabbing a well-known citizen who was at the time one of the most active members of the Vigilance Committee. The name of the lawyer was David S. Terry, at a later day Chief Justice of the State. The dread tribunal was presided over by one of the most courageous and best known citizens of the Pacific coast. At a later day, his name was presented by his State to the National Convention of his party for nomination for the Vice-Presidency.

When brought before the Vigilance Committee, the demeanor of Terry was that of absolute fearlessness. Standing erect and perfectly self-possessed, he listened to the ominous words of the president: "Mr. Terry, you are charged with attempted murder; what have you to say?" Advancing a step nearer the committee "organized to convict," and in a tone that at once challenged the respect of all, Terry replied, "If your Honor please, I recognize the jurisdiction of this court, and am ready for trial." He then clearly established the fact that his assault was in self-defence, and after a masterly speech, delivered with as much self-possession as if a life other than his own trembled in the balance, was duly acquitted.

Another California with whom I was personally acquainted, was William M. Gwin. He had long passed the allotted three score and ten when I first met him at the home of the late Senator Sharon. Few men have known so eventful a career. He had been the private secretary of Andrew Jackson. He knew well the public men of that day, and related many interesting incidents of the stormy period of the latter years of Jackson's Presidency. In his early manhood Gwin was a member of Congress from Alabama. At the close of the Mexican War he removed to California, and upon the admission of that State he and John C. Fremont were chosen its first Senators in Congress.

During a ride with him, he pointed out to me the spot where he had fought a duel in early California days. He was then a Senator, and his antagonist the Hon. J. W. McCorkle, a member of Congress. A card signed by their respective seconds appeared the day following, to the effect that after the exchange of three ineffectual shots between the Hon. William M. Gwin and the Hon. J. W. McCorkle, the friends of the respective parties, having discovered that _their principals were fighting under a misapprehension of facts,_ mutually explained to their respective principals how the misapprehension had arisen. As a result, Senator Gwin promptly denied the cause of provocation and Mr. McCorkle withdrew his offensive language uttered at the race-course, and expressed regret at having used it.

To a layman in these "piping times of peace" it would appear the more reasonable course to have avoided "a misapprehension of facts" before even three ineffectual shots.

At the beginning of the great civil conflict, the fortunes of Senator Gwin were cast with the South, and at its close he became a citizen of Mexico. Maximilian was then Emperor, and one of his last official acts was the creation of a Mexican Duke out of the sometime American Senator. The glittering empire set up by Napoleon the Third and upheld for a time by French bayonets, was even then, however, tottering to its fall.

When receiving the Ducal coronet from the Imperial hand the self-expatriated American statesman might well have inquired,

"But shall we wear these glories for a day, Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?"

A few months later, at the behest of our Government, the French arms were withdrawn, the bubble of Mexican Empire vanished, and the ill-fated Maximilian had bravely met his tragic end. Thenceforth, a resident but no longer a citizen of the land that had given him birth, William M. Gwin, to the end of his life, bore the high sounding but empty title of "Duke of Sonora."

Frequent as have been the instances in our own country where death has resulted from duelling, it is believed that in but one has the survivor incurred the extreme penalty of the law. That one case occurred in 1820 in Illinois. What was intended merely as a "mock duel" by their respective friends, was fought with rifles by William Bennett and Alphonso Stewart in Belleville. It was privately agreed by the seconds of each that the rifles should be loaded with blank cartridges. This arrangement was faithfully carried out so far as the seconds were concerned; but Bennett, the challenging party, managed to get a bullet into his own gun. The result was the immediate death of Stewart, and the flight of his antagonist. Upon his return to Belleville a year or two later, Bennett was immediately arrested, placed upon trial, convicted, and executed.

In more than one instance, at a later day, while well-known Illinoisans have been parties to actual or prospective duels, no instance has occurred of a hostile meeting of that character within the limits of the State. A late auditor of public account, but recently deceased, killed his antagonist in a duel with rifles nearly half a century ago in California.

William I. Ferguson, one of the most brilliant orators Illinois has known, in early professional life the associate of men who have since achieved national distinction, fell in a duel while a member of the State Senate in California.

During the sitting of the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1847, two of its prominent members, Campbell and Pratt, delegates from the northern tier of counties, became involved in a bitter personal controversy which resulted in a challenge by Pratt to mortal combat. The challenge was accepted and the principals with their seconds repaired to the famous "Bloody Island" in the Mississippi, when by the interposition of friends a peaceable settlement was effected. The sequel to this happily averted duel was the incorporation in the Constitution, then in process of formulation, of a provision prohibiting duelling in the State, and attaching severe penalties to sending or accepting a challenge.

The earliest hostile meeting of Illinoisans was upon the island last mentioned before State organization had been effected. The principals were young men of well-known courage and ability--one of whom, Shadrack Bond, upon the admission of Illinois was elected its Governor. His adversary, John Rice Jones, was the first lawyer to locate in the Illinois country, and was the brother of the second of the unfortunate Cilley in the tragic encounter already related. The late Governor Bissell of Illinois was once challenged by Jefferson Davis. Both were at the time members of Congress, and the _casus belli_ was language reflecting upon the conduct of some of the participants in the then recently fought battle of Buena Vista. After the acceptance of the challenge, mutual friends of Davis and Bissell effected a reconciliation, just before the hour set for the hostile meeting.

So far as Illinois combatants are concerned, the historic island mentioned above has little claim to its bloody designation, inasmuch as the "affairs" mentioned, and one much more famous, yet to be noted, were all honorably adjusted without physical harm to any of the participants.

The "affair of honor," the mention of which will close this chapter, owes its chief importance to the prominence attained at a later day by its principals. The challenger, James Shields, was at that time, 1842, a State officer of Illinois, and later a general in two wars and a Senator from three States. The name of his adversary has since "been given to the ages." Mr. Lincoln was, at the time he accepted Mr. Shields's challenge, a young lawyer, unmarried, residing at the State capital. He was the recognized leader of the Whig party, and an active participant in the fierce political conflicts of the day. Some criticism in which he had indulged, touching the administration of the office of which Shields was the incumbent, was the immediate cause of the challenge.

That Mr. Lincoln was upon principle opposed to duelling would be readily inferred from his characteristic kindness. That "we are time's subjects," however, and that the public opinion of sixty-odd years ago is not that of to-day will readily appear from the published statement of his friend Dr. Merryman:

"I told Mr. Lincoln what was brewing, and asked him what course he proposed to himself. He said that he was wholly opposed to duelling and would do anything to avoid it that might not degrade him in the estimation of himself and friends; but if such a degradation, or a fight, were the only alternatives, he would fight."

It is stated by one of the biographers of Mr. Lincoln that he was ever after averse to any allusion to the Shields affair. From the terms of his acceptance, it is evident that he intended neither to injure his adversary seriously nor to receive injury at his hands. In his lengthy letter of instruction to his second, he closed by saying:

"If nothing like this is done, the preliminaries of the fight are to be, first, weapons: cavalry broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal in all respects. Second, position: a plank ten feet long and from nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed on edge on the ground as the line between us which neither is to pass his foot over upon forfeit of his life. Next, a line drawn on the ground on either side of said plank and parallel with it, each at the distance of the whole length of the sword, and three feet additional from the plank; the passing of his own line by either party during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest. Third, time: on Thursday evening at five o'clock within three miles of Alton on the opposite side of the river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you. Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at liberty to make at your discretion, but you are in no case to swerve from these rules or to pass beyond their limits."

The keen sense of the humorous, with which Mr. Lincoln was so abundantly gifted, seems not to have wholly deserted him even in the serious moments when penning an acceptance to mortal combat. The terms of meeting indicated--which he as the challenged party had the right to dictate--lend color to the opinion that he regarded the affair in the light of a mere farce. His superior height and length of arm remembered, and the position of the less favored Shields, with broadsword in hand, at the opposite side of the board, and not permitted "upon forfeit of his life" to advance an inch --the picture is indeed a ludicrous one.

Out of the lengthy statements of the respective seconds--the publication of which came near involving themselves in personal altercation--it appears that all parties actually reached the appointed rendezvous on time.

But it was not written in the book of fate that this duel was to take place. Something of mightier moment was awaiting one of the actors in this drama. Two level-headed men, R. W. English and John J. Hardin, the friends respectively of Shields and Lincoln, crossing the Mississippi in a canoe close in the wake of the belligerents, reached the field just before the appointed hour. These gentlemen, acting in concert with the seconds, Whiteside and Merryman, soon effected a reconciliation deemed honorable to all, and the Shields-Lincoln duel passed to the domain of history. That the reconciliation thus brought about was sincere was evidenced by the fact that one of the earliest acts of President Lincoln was the appointment of General Shields to an important military command.

How strangely "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges!" A few paces apart in the old Hall at the Capitol at Washington, stand two statues, the contribution of Illinois for enduring place in the "Temple of the Immortals." One is the statue of Lincoln, the other that of Shields.

XI A PRINCELY GIFT

DESCENT OF JAMES SMITHSON, FOUNDER OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION-- HIS EDUCATION AND HIS WRITINGS--HIS WILL--THE UNITED STATES HIS RESIDUARY LEGATEE--SUCCESSFUL PROSECUTION OF THE CLAIM OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE LEGACY--PLANS SUGGESTED FOR THE DISPOSAL OF THE FUND --PROF. JOSEPH HENRY APPOINTED SECRETARY--BENEFICENT WORK OF THE INSTITUTION.

Although a third of a century has passed since I met Professor Joseph Henry, I distinctly recall his kindly greeting and the courteous manner in which he gave me the information I requested for the use of one of the Committees of the House.

The frosts of many winters were then on his brow, and he was near the close of an honorable career, one of measureless benefit to mankind. He was the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the originator of the plan by which was carried into practical effect the splendid bequest for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

As Vice-President of the United States, a regent _ex-officio_ of the Smithsonian Institution, I had rare opportunity to learn much of its history and something of its marvellous accomplishment. As is well known, it bears the name of James Smithson. He was an Englishman, related to the historic family of Percy, and a lineal descendent of Henry the Seventh, his maternal ancestor being the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, cousin to Queen Elizabeth.

Mr. Langley, the late secretary of the institution, said:

"Smithson always seems to have regarded the circumstances of his birth as doing him a peculiar injustice, and it was apparently this sense that he had been deprived of honors properly his which made him look for other sources of fame than those which birth had denied him, and constituted the motive of the most important action of his life, the creation of the Smithsonian Institution."

The deep resentment of Smithson against the great families who had virtually disowned him, finds vent in a letter yet extant, of which the following is a part: "The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to kings; but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten."

How truly his indignant forecast was prophetic is now a matter of history. Few men know much about the once proud families of Northumberland or Percy, but the name of the youth they scornfully disowned lives in the institution he founded, the greatest instrumentality yet devised for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

Smithson was born in 1765, and received the degree of Master of Arts from Pembroke College at the age of twenty-one. A year later he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, upon the recommendation of his instructors, as being "a gentleman well versed in the various branches of Natural Philosophy, and particularly in Chemistry and Mineralogy." As a student, he was devoted to the study of the sciences, especially chemistry, and his entire life, in fact, was given to scientific research. Twenty-seven papers from his pen were published in "The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" and in "Thompson's Annals of Philosophy," near the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and "all give evidence that he was an assiduous and faithful experimenter."

In this connection, the statement of Professor Clarke, Chief Chemist of the United States Geographical Survey, is in point:

"The most notable feature of Smithson's writings from the standpoint of the analytical chemist, is the success obtained with the most primitive and unsatisfactory appliances. In Smithson's day, chemical apparatus was undeveloped, and instruments were improvised from such materials as lay readiest to hand. With such instruments, and with crude reagents, Smithson obtained analytical results of the most creditable character, and enlarged our knowledge of many mineral species. In his time, the native carbonate and the silicate of zinc were confounded as one species under the name calamine; but his researches distinguished between the two minerals, which are now known as Smithsonite and Calamine, respectively.

"To theory Smithson contributed little, if anything; but from a theoretical point of view, the tone of his writings is singularly modern. His work was mostly done before Dalton had announced the atomic theory; and yet Smithson saw clearly that a law of definite proportions must exist, although he did not attempt to account for it. His ability as a reasoner is best shown in his paper on the Kirkdale Bone Cave, which Penn had sought to interpret by reference to the Noachian Deluge. A clearer and more complete demolition of Penn's views could hardly be written to-day. Smithson was gentle with his adversary, but none the less thorough, for all his moderation. He is not to be classed among the leaders of scientific thought; but his ability and the usefulness of his contributions to knowledge, cannot be doubted."

The life of Smithson was uncheered by domestic affection; he was of singularly retiring disposition, had no intimacies, spent the closing years of his life in Paris, and was long the uncomplaining victim of a painful malady. Professor Langley said of him:

"One gathers from his letters, from the uniform consideration with which he speaks of others, from kind traits which he showed, and from the general tenor of what is not here particularly cited, the remembrance of an innately gentle nature, but also of a man who is gradually renouncing not without bitterness the youthful hope of fame, and as health and hope diminished together, is finally living for the day, rather than for any future."

He died in Genoa, Italy, June 27, 1829, and was buried in the little English cemetery on the heights of San Benigno. The Institution he founded has placed a tablet over his tomb and surrounded it with evidences of continued and thoughtful care.

His will--possibly of deeper concern to mankind than any yet written --bears date October 23, 1826. In its opening clause he designates himself: "Son of Hugh, First Duke of Northumberland, and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley, and niece to Charles the proud Duke of Somerset." Herein clearly appears his undying resentment toward those who had denied him the position in life to which he considered himself justly entitled.