dressing was demanded. There we were put to the study of music, in accordance with her longcherished wish. Then a carriage and a span of handsome iron-gray horses were purchased, and, shortly afterward, a piano and new parlor furniture, preparatory to my début as a young lady. Some thirteen months after my father's death the last payment on the plantation, amounting to some four hundred dollars, fell due. My mother, already paying heavy interest on borrowed money, sold one of the slave women to meet the payment. Her husband becoming dissatisfied, with his son, a lad of sixteen years, made good his escape to Canada, from which quarter he sent us a letter of adieus, not, however, until my mother had spent three hundred dollars in efforts to recover the fugitives. Well, all these things together brought a large debt upon the estate, and one day, some three years after my father's death, the farm and negroes were sold at auction. My mother took a small house in the village and advertised a spare room for gentlemen boarders that never came. About this time Fanny, who had always been a tiny, delicate thing, gave indications of having inherited the seeds of consumption from our father's family. She began to decline rapidly, and my mother, with whom she was always the favorite, became absorbed in the care of the sick girl. "Pocahontas," said my mother, as she perceived that her advertisement for gentlemen boarders remained unanswered, "I suppose you'll have to go to teaching; I don't see any other way. Somebody must do something. Fanny can't, and I don't see what I can do." Had I been sentenced to the gallows I could scarcely have felt worse than on hearing this from my mother, convinced, as I was, that she spoke the truth. But I passed weeks after this in irresolution and inactivity. I had a feeling that to sit there in that poor house, in my shabby dress, with my sister sick and with want staring us in the face-to sit there doing nothing was less disgraceful than to go to work. Such is the unhealthy sentiment which slavery engenders. However, after a time, feeling that starvation was at the door, I summoned sufficient courage to answer an advertisement for a visiting governess to take charge of the instruction of a little boy and girl in an adjoining village. In a few days I received a letter from the mother, containing information in reference to the situation, and stating that, provided I could teach Latin, the position was at my acceptance. I wondered what my father would say to this! Here was what promised to be a pleasant situation, with light labors and good pay, from which I was shut off by my ignorance of Latin, which he had always pronounced a useless study for had no thought that she was near the Dark River. Her sickness had wrought no material change in my manner. There was no open persecution; but I was cold, and endeavored to make the poor girl feel my indifference to her health and comfort. I have not the memory of a single kind or sisterly act performed for her to comfort me now. My mother, I suppose, had acquainted Fanny with my disqualification for the governess's place; for in my plans, and arrangements, and confidences I completely ignored her existence. "Poky," she said, shyly and timidly. I merely lifted my eyes to her face in token that I heard her; I would not condescend to speak. "You know, if you could get that place, mother would give up this house and go to Nso that you could board at home; and I've been thinking that you might study Latin at home. You are very clever; you could learn so much faster than the boy, you know. In two or three weeks you could acquire all that a child of his age could learn in a year. Your perceptions are so quick, you'd not be likely to find any difficulty, and if you should, I- Well, you know I've studied it a great many years, and perhaps I might be able to help you, you know, Poky," she said, deprecatingly, and with a pitiful, beseeching tone. As I remember it now, I hear in that tone the pleading of a slighted, heart-crushed sister. Then I believe I could have walked up to her and taken her life-the little chit of a girl proposing to teach me Latin! "Fanny," I said, trembling in every muscle with rage, "if you ever mention your Latin to me again I am afraid I shall kill you. You have been the bane of my existence. You have caused me all the unhappiness I ever knew. I hate you, and I'd see you starve before I'd learn any thing from you." I was too excited to mark narrowly the effect of my words. I observed, however, that when I had finished speaking she covered her face with her hand, closed her eyes, and lay very quiet, while I swept from the room. Those cruel words were the last I spoke to my sister. I found in a distant State a situation as resident governess at a poor salary in no very pleasant family. I did not begrudge the remittances which went to the support of my mother and sister. Indeed, I enjoyed the thought that my sister was in a degree dependent upon me. Occasional letters passed between my mother and myself, but they contained no messages for or from Fanny. I don't know whether or not my mother observed this. Perhaps she excused their absence, on the one hand, from the general character which I gave my letters, and on the other from my sister's sickness. As I have before said, I did not appreciate my sister's condition. "Fanny is a little better this morning"-"Your sister does not seem quite so well to-day"-I would read from my mother's letters; but had I believed her to be near eter nity I know I should have been afraid to hate "Hurry! hurry! hurry!" was about all they could draw from me as they made the necessary arrangements for my departure. The boat, almost as soon as we started, entered upon a race with another steamer; and while the other lady passengers cowered and trembled at the fearful speed at which we moved, I exulted. Often, as I stood on the guards watching the mad dash of the turbid waters as we sped down the mighty river, and thinking of my sister as dead, I was tempted to throw myself under the wheel, where death was certain, and in the land of spirits seek her whom I had so injured, and win her forgive ness. folded. On the brow, which had a look of almost painful intellectuality, rested a wreath of white rose-buds. This much I remarked, and turned to go, when a blindness, a darkness-the darkness of despair and the horrible pit-enveloped me, and I plunged headlong. "Tell Poky that I forgive her.'" This, uttered by my mother in a tone of insistence, was the first thing I remember after my fall by my sister's coffin. The words had just arrested my attention, though my poor mother had been repeating them to me a hundred times a day for more than a week. "What is that you say?" I cried, starting up in bed. "Who said that?" "Your sister said it, dear, your sister Fanny; and she left her love, and some messages for you. Would you like to hear them?" "Yes, tell me," I said, eagerly; "tell me all about it. Make haste!" 6 "A little while before she went," responded my mother, "Fanny called me to her, and said, Mother, I sha'n't last until Poky gets here, and when she finds me dead and gone forever she'll feel very sorry for some things; but tell her, mother, that I forgive her, and that I have loved her all along, for she was my own, own sister. She'll want to do something for me-I know she will-and tell her to plant a rose-bush over my grave; tell her I meant to ask her to do so with my arms around her neck, but they'll be stiff when she comes. So, mother, kneel down here, and kiss me for poor dear Poky.' And that was all she said." I heard and understood and devoured every word my mother had spoken, and I wept-the despair was gone. PRESIDENT MONROE AND HIS THE period of Mr. Monroe's administration, from the 4th of March, 1817, to the 4th of March, 1825, is justly regarded as the golden age of our political history. It will be well for the present generation to make themselves familiar with its incidents and their lessons. It was the transition-period between the patriotic devotion of the Revolution and the dominant At last I was set down at home. With a fear- selfishness of the present day. The native saful dread I remarked that there was not a sound gacity with which our early statesmen baffled or look of life about the house. The doors and the diplomatic skill and intrigue of Europe had blinds were all closed, though it was a beautiful ripened by the practical experience of thirty day in May, and the soft, sweet air would have years in the administration of affairs. Private been grateful to an invalid's cheek. As I turned interests had not swelled to such enormous magthe door-knob I perceived a knot of crape. Then nitude as to keep the ablest of our men from I crept softly into the little parlor where I knew engaging in the public service. Party-spirit she must be lying. An open rose-wood coffin | had not eaten out a just concern for the honor rested on the chairs, I opened the shutters, and drew back the curtains; then I stood beside the coffin and looked for the last time upon the face of my little sister. Those solemn, blue eyes with a heartache look in them, were closed forever; the droll, wistful mouth was rigid; over the meek, patient heart the faithful hands were VOL. XXIX.-No. 172.-Hн of the country. Slavery had not extinguished patriotism in half of the States of the Union. John Adams, Jefferson, Marshall, and others, who had been the pilots of the nation through the stormy sea of the Revolution, and the fathers of the Constitution, were still alive. Madison, Monroe, Rufus King, William Pinckney, and many others, had participated in the organi- man of the Committee of Congress on whose zation of the Government, and shared the anx-recommendation the Convention was called that ieties of the "Second War of Independence;" by framed our glorious Constitution. Mr. John which, whatever else it did or failed to do, the Quincy Adams, in the eulogy which he delivpublic contempt of Europe, that had been our ered at the request of the city of Boston, August shield from aggression, was exchanged for the 26, 1831, relates in detail a transaction of the profound conviction that we were best to be "let Old Congress which illustrates the great specialalone." During this administration occurred ty of Mr. Monroe's mind-his clear perception that extraordinary lull in party strife among us and unyielding maintenance of all that belongs which is still known as the "era of good feel- to the honor and independence of the nation in ings." So completely had party-spirit died out its relation to other powers. In the year 1785 the that Mr. Monroe was elected to his second term King of Spain showed the estimation in which by every vote of the electoral colleges but one he held the infant republic by sending us, not a solitary dissentient. The truth is, that after the Minister Plenipotentiary, but an "Encargado de experiences of the war of 1812, and the triumph- Negocios," a diplomatic agent of the lowest rank, ant election of Mr. Monroe in 1816 as the Re- to negotiate in regard to our claims to the free publican candidate, the leaders of the old Fed- navigation of the Mississippi River. Mr. Aderal party gave up the contest, and desired now ams says that at that time "Spain denied the to be known as all Jeffersonian Republicans. right of the people of the United States to naviIn the spring of 1817, a few weeks after his in- gate the Mississippi as pertinaciously, and in as auguration, President Monroe made a journey, lofty a tone, as Great Britain denies to us, on partly of business, through all the Northern the same pretense, to this day the right of naviStates, to Portland in the East and Detroit in gating the St. Lawrence." Mr. Jay, then our the Northwest, and was every where greeted with Secretary for Foreign Affairs, recommended to the utmost cordiality by the whole body of the Congress to make a compromise, and agree that, people. He appeared in public clothed in the in return for certain commercial advantages conproper uniform-three-cornered hat and scarlet- ceded to us, we would forego the exercise of the bordered blue coat-of a colonel in the army of right we claimed on the Mississippi for a limitthe Revolution, which was his military rank, re-ed term of twenty-five or thirty years. Mr. Monceived from General Washington after he was roe instinctively saw what a fatal concession this wounded at Trenton. His appropriate costume, would be for an infant republic to make to the combined with his simple dignity of manner, dictation and arrogance of a European power, and evident sincerity of purpose, served to win and he opposed the scheme with great earnestthe general respect and confidence of the people. ness and ability. Mr. Rufus King, then a repBoston well remembers the splendid and costly resentative from Massachusetts, supported the entertainments and other displays made for the proposal with equal vigor, and carried the votes President by Harrison Gray Otis and other of all the Northern States in its favor, while the wealthy and distinguished Federalists, as a to- whole South was equally united against it. The ken of their acquiescence in his administration. dispute was very bitter, and was the first purely This had not been purchased by any trimming sectional struggle between the North and the or truckling on his part; for when General Jack-South, in the series of which the great Rebelson recommended to him to appoint some Fed-lion is the last. The vote, taken by States, stood eralists to his Cabinet or other leading stations, seven for to five against the proposal, Delaware he defended his course by saying that “decided not being represented at the time. The figures friends who stand firm in the day of trial are to show the falsity of the pretext alleged so confibe principally relied on;" and he considered it dently in our day, that the Northern and Southnecessary that "the administration should restern States were equal in number when the Constrongly with the Republican party." It was the unity, strength, and self-reliance of the dominant party, controlled by liberal patriotism and guided by far-seeing wisdom, that secured public confidence and prepared the way for "the era of good feelings." It is a lesson of wisdom for other Presidents and other generations of statesmen. Mr. Monroe has not been estimated at his full worth in the public opinion of this generation. He was in truth one of the great men of our history. He left college in his eighteenth year to join the army as a cadet, and rose rapidly to the rank of colonel, and was elected a member of the Old Congress before he was twenty-five years old. There he distinguished himself by the breadth of his views, the soundness of his judgment, the extent of his knowledge, and the sincerity of his patriotism. He was the Chair stitution was adopted. But as nine States were required to make a treaty, the measure was defeated. It was a most fortunate deliverance for us. In seven years from that time the right of navigating the Mississippi to the sea was conceded by Spain in solemn treaty; and in less than twenty years Mr. Monroe had the satisfaction of giving to the United States the undivided dominion of the Mississippi and all its branches from source to mouth. Such are the fruits of intelligent and determined firmness in maintaining the honor of the nation in our intercourse with foreign powers, instead of the bargaining and compromising propensities of the commercial interests. It was by no means the last of the occasions in which the country has been indebted to Southern statesmen for the ready perception and firm support of our true honor and independence. It remains to be seen whether the statesmen of the North can ever free themselves | vance the interests of France no less than those so far from what Napoleon called the genius of of the United States. At that moment Napothe shop as to comprehend and stand by the de- leon was not in a humor to listen to the propomands of national honor, although that is al- sal. President Jefferson then threw upon Mr. ways in the long-run the wisest policy for com- Monroe the perilous and almost hopeless responsmerce as it is for every other national interest. ibility of the case on which the whole future of the country so much depended, by sending him to France as Envoy Extraordinary, to preserve He reached Havre on the 10th of April, and Paris on the 12th, to find that every thing was most unexpectedly changed. The flames of war had broken out again in Europe, the twenty thousand veterans encamped at Helvoetsluys for the military colony in Louisiana were wanted elsewhere, "France wanted money, and must have it," the First Consul had already, on the 8th, announced to his Council his determination to sell the whole territory to the United States. In fact, Talleyrand had gone so far, on the 10th, as to ask Mr. Livingston how much the United States would give for the whole. Of course nothing remained for Mr. Monroe but to agree in the price, and "the negotiation was concluded Mr. Monroe took an active part in the discussions connected with the adoption of the Constitution, and was very strenuous in urging Vir-and secure to us the use of the Mississippi River. ginia to a conditional adoption-an absurdity now sufficiently palpable, but it puzzled many honest minds at that time. Although he finally voted against the adopting act in Virginia, and was always ranked with the anti-Federal party, he was undoubtedly much more national in his feelings than many of the Southern leaders. He was chosen a Senator of the United States in the first session of the new Congress, and lent his aid in the organization of the Government for about four years. President Washington, who knew him thoroughly, not only as a soldier and a statesman but as a near neighbor and friend, selected him in 1794 to represent the United States at the Court of France. It was at the most trying period of Washington's administra-in a fortnight." tion, when our country fairly reeled with the Thus the whole valley of the Mississippi, the excitement growing out of the Proclamation of Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and the Neutrality, and France was drunk with the ex- Pacific Coast, down to the forty-second degree cesses of the Revolution, during the administra- of latitude, became the territory of the United tion of the Committee of Public Safety and the States; in fact, doubling the extent of our naExecutive Directory. It was a most distin- tional domain. His special mission to Spain, to guished mark of confidence toward Monroe, as it settle the question of boundaries and purchase was a most momentous responsibility that he as- the territory of Florida, failed at that time. Mr. sumed. Looking back at his conduct from this Adams says of the papers which he prepared and distance of time, although his mission accom- presented in this case, "that among the creditplished but little of specific results, it ought to able State papers of this nation they will rank be admitted the appointment was a fortunate one in the highest order; that they deserve the close for the country, as it helped to carry us over a and scrutinizing attention of every American most perilous situation. Mr. Monroe's course statesman, and will remain solid, however unwas not only honorable and faithful, but in ornamented, monuments of intellectual power several cases singularly sagacious and discreet. applied to national claims of right." And in Soon after his recall he was chosen Governor 1819, during his first Presidential term, he had of Virginia for three years. In the mean time the satisfaction of acquiring Florida by peaceful Bonaparte had been made First Consul, and had purchase, and thus of rounding out our national conceived a magnificent project for establishing boundary in a manner that, to human view, a grand military colony in Louisiana, the terri- would leave us no more trouble with our “outtory which he had just extorted from the imbe-side row" for a century at least. Mr. Adams cility of Spain, having first procured the exclu- exclaims: sion of our people from the privilege of deposit at New Orleans. His veteran legions, released from active service by the transient peace of Amiens, were to be planted on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and of the Mississippi, to overawe and curb, and eventually to dominate this republic. It was the precursor of the more gigantic and grasping project of his successor, now in process of execution a little further to the South. These things acted like an electric shock upon the whole country. The West especially clamored for war. Fortunately Mr. Jefferson had conceived the idea of effecting a purchase of New Orleans and the adjacent territory, and Mr. Robert R. Livingston, our Minister at Paris, had already prepared and presented to the French Government a very able memorial in favor of the transfer, showing that it would ad "Look at the map of United North America, as it was at the definitive peace of 1783. Compare it with the map of that same Empire as it is now (1826) limited by the Sabine and the Pacific Ocean; and say, the change, more than of any other man, living or dead, was the work of JAMES MONROE."......He adds, "The acquisition of the Floridas completed that series of negotiations (perhaps it were no exaggeration to say of revolutions) which had commenced under the Confederation with the Encargado de Negocios of Spain. Viewed as a whole, throughout its extent, can there be a doubt in considering it as the most magnificent supplement to our national Independence presented by our history? And can there arise a historian of this Republican Empire, who shall fail to perceive, or hesitate to acknowledge, that throughout the long series of these transactions, which more than doubled the territories of the North American Confederation, the leading mind of that great movement in the annals of the world, and thus far in the march of human improvement upon earth, was the mind of JAMES MONROE ?" Mr. Adams was the greatest master of diplomacy in this nation. With the highest natural gifts appropriate to a negotiator, improved by a most finished education both in this country and in Europe, he had grown up in diplomacy from the eleventh year of his age, when he went with his father on the mission to France in 1778. Washington appointed him Minister to the Hague in 1794, when he was still so young as to be called the "General Washington's Boy Minister," and afterward to Portugal. President John | Adams sent him to Prussia, where he negotiated a treaty of commerce. In 1803 he was chosen Senator to Congress, where he served six years. On the nomination of Jefferson he became our first accredited Minister to Russia. There he laid the broad foundation for that good understanding which for half a century has never once been broken, and whose effects in controlling the policy of Europe for our advantage during our present struggle can not be overestimated. It was during a friendly conversation with the Emperor Alexander, as they walked arm in arm in the garden of the palace, that the proposal was originated of Russian mediation in the war with Great Britain which led to the treaty of Ghent, in which Mr. Adams was the leading negotiator by appointment of Madison. He then remained Minister to London until he became Secretary of State under Monroe. He had thus enjoyed the confidence of every President, and gained success in the most important negotiations of his time. With a genius that fitted him for every attainment, with habits of the most absolute self-control and the most untiring industry, with a memory that retained all knowledge, however large or however minute, and held it always ready for use when wanted, with an experience in diplomacy larger and more varied than that of any other American, with an integrity that was never tarnished, and a patriot Time fails for describing his service, as Minister to England, in the grand struggle between neutral rights and belligerent pretensions. From 1805, as Mr. Adams says, "to the peace of Ghent, the biography of James Monroe is the history of that struggle, and in a great degree the history of this nation." These negotiations, Mr. Adams thinks, would have been successful had Mr. Fox lived, and "might have restored peace and harmony so far as it can subsist between emulous and rival nations." The death of Fox changed it all. In 1811 Mr. Monroe became Secretary of State under President Madison; and in 1814, after the trial and failure of two others in the conduct of the war with England, he was appointed Secretary of War also. There are a few yet living who remember with admiration the success of the third occupant of the War Office in diffusing vigor, confidence, and unity through the military affairs of the country. One difficulty he had to meet, from which the present Government has been wonderfully preserved, by the blessing of Heaven upon the transcendent financier whose genius has saved the nation. At that day, as Mr. Adams says, "so degraded was the credit of the nation, that Mr. Monroe, to raise the funds indispensable for the defense of New Orleans, could obtain them only by pledging his private individual credit as subsidiary to that of the nation. This he did without an instant of hesitation. Nor was he less ready to sacrifice the prospects of laudable ambition to the suffering cause of his country." Finding that the draft was the only means of filling up the army, he boldly recommended it, with all its risks of un-ism that had been burned into his boyhood in popularity, on the eve of the pending Presidential election, in which he was the leading candidate of his party. If it was necessary to carry his measure, and if the war continued, he re- William H. Crawford was a native of Virsolved to withdraw his name from the canvass.ginia, and a citizen of Georgia, a man of comOur history records no instance of equal self-manding appearance and commanding talents, denial among candidates for the Presidency. educated at Dr. Waddell's famous academy in The news of peace in the beginning of the year Georgia, admitted to the bar at the age of twenty1815 removed all these embarrassments. six, and elected to the Senate of the United States in 1807, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. He took a leading part in Congress during that momentous period, and was chosen President of the Senate on the death of Vice-President George Clinton; thus introducing a usage which was maintained almost unbroken down to Mr. Lincoln's time, of placing a Southern man in the chair of the Senate, to stand second in the succession in case of a vacancy in the Presidency. In 1813 he went as Minister to France. In 1815 he returned, and was appointed by Mr. Madison Secretary of War in place of Mr. Monroe, and in 1816 Secretary of the Treasury in place of A. J. Dallas; which place he filled through the whole of Monroe's administration. With such abilities, after such experiences, and through such public services, on the 4th of March, 1817, he became President of the United States. For his cabinet he chose John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State; William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury; John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War; and Smith Thompson, Secretary of the Navy. No President has had an abler council. It may be doubted whether the executive administration of the Government has not been weakened rather than strengthened by the usage which now makes the cabinet consist of seven members. Washington had only three. But then he took the Vice-President into his confidence. '76, he was selected by Mr. Monroe, of Virginia, for the first place in his cabinet. Nor was the choice ever regretted. |