XVIII

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOVERNORS

My work yielded knowledge of many governors. Back of them was our war governor. John A. Andrew held the office from 1861 to 1866, and willed his retirement. When he came to Williams College in 1864, three years before his death, he filled my boyish ideal of what a chief magistrate and popular leader should be. He was beloved by Massachusetts, and his presence in Williamstown was an event of moment. I recall him as not of great stature, his fine head covered with curly hair, with gold-bowed spectacles, smooth face, and orator's mobile mouth.

In countless homes of the State hung Governor Andrew's picture. Ours, perhaps grown tiresomely familiar, was in a modest oval frame, which was amusingly desecrated when the great man's face was set aside to make way for the photograph of a boy, — a spindling lad, who remembers the cold clammy feeling of the iron headrest, without which no photographic establishment of the period was complete. Everybody then "dressed up" to have pictures taken, and this boy was arrayed in light brown trousers and coat, with cloth-topped shoes of a like shade. The coat was a loose garment, gathered at the waist with a belt of patent leather, held by a buckle which had a

round tongue that must be put in one way, and then turned to get the button held in the metal buttonhole. Boys of a bygone generation will remember all about that.

At the head of the editorial page of the North Adams Transcript, James T. Robinson, an early fighting abolitionist, kept standing the following words of Governor Andrew until death put a stop to the judge's remarkable weekly editorials:

"I know not what record of sin awaits me in the other world, but this I do know, that I never was so mean as to despise a man because he was poor, because he was ignorant, or because he was black."

It was against this background that I saw the governor who so early embodied for me ideals of freedom and justice. The glow of fine feeling marked his public utterances, and the grace of his expression was exceptional. Take that moving message sent to the mayor of Baltimore after Massachusetts troops, rushing to the defense of Washington, had been attacked by a mob:

"I pray you to cause the bodies of our Massachusetts soldiers, dead in Baltimore, to be immediately laid out, preserved with ice, and tenderly sent forward by express to me. All expenses will be paid by this Commonwealth." How Massachusetts hearts respond to-day, as they did then, to the use of that word "tenderly."

William S. Robinson ("Warrington"), an impatient radical, on occasion thought Governor Andrew - charged with the gravest public responsibility moved too slowly. History sees him leading all the

time. But when this critic wrote of the governor that "no man ever excelled him in democratic instinct", how much of greatness was depicted. There is the root of the matter as it was in Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, with all his impetuous faults, and, in his comprehending statesmanship, in Woodrow Wilson. Warrington also said of Governor Andrew that "He was an excellent hater of all men who thwarted and tried him"; and again we have a trait of Cleveland, Roosevelt and Wilson, and of other public men who have sought results under the imperative urging of high purposes.

Promptly on the outbreak of the Civil War, Governor Andrew sent to England for a thousand Enfield rifles, a small matter it seems now, but a great one it was then. Thereafter he was instant and forceful in everything calculated to forward the prosecution of the war. His fatherly care for Massachusetts soldiers was tirelessly exercised from the beginning to the end. But Governor Andrew was no hater for hate's sake. After the downfall of slavery he was ready for reconciliation, while lesser men nursed their fears and resentments, and forgot the necessity for rebuilding the union.

Governor Alexander H. Bullock, of Worcester, followed Andrew, retiring after three years in office. He was a friend of Samuel Bowles, and I had opportunities to observe him. He was a scholar and a polished orator of the Edward Everett school. It is not generally known that President Hayes in 1879 offered him the English mission. At the Mount Holyoke commencement of 1876 Governor Bullock delivered

an address, and on the same day Mark Hopkins spoke at Williams. Mr. Bowles in an editorial compared their contrasting styles. That week Congressman James A. Garfield also spoke at Williamstown, and ex-Congressman Charles W. Willard of Vermont at Dartmouth, and Mr. Bowles was including the four addresses when he wrote, "None of these addresses approach Governor Bullock's in rhetorical brilliancy, but Dr. Hopkins excels all in the gravity and force of thought, as well as in the polished sobriety and clarity of language. It is the cut and polished lens, achromatic, with all rainbow tints excluded, all distorting air bubbles worked out."

The great teacher whose personality and spirit for so long inspired Williams College had clearness of thought and expression beyond most men. Of the public men I have known Samuel J. Tilden and John G. Carlisle were comparable with Doctor Hopkins in this respect. It is refreshing in a world given to the multiplication of words to encounter crystal clarity in speech and writing.

was a

Governor William Claflin - 1869-1872 sensible business man of religious bent, who began his business life in a tannery in Becket. Visitors to that Berkshire town used to climb in the old building to see the little room that had been young Claflin's bedchamber, and I was one of them.

The fact that Charles H. Taylor was Governor Claflin's secretary, and so acquired the title of colonel, helps to distinguish that administration. Unlike some holders of state-made military titles in days before some military knowledge was required of them by

law, Colonel Taylor had seen service in the Civil War. Appointment to Governor Russell's staff gave the late editor of the Boston Globe the title of general. But those were incidents. It is not even as the developer of a successful newspaper that General Taylor would wish to be remembered. It is rather as an allround newspaper man who created his opportunities and knew how to make the most of them. When John H. Holmes was in charge of the Boston Herald he was eager to enlarge its foreign news after the James Gordon Bennett fashion. I asked General Taylor what he thought of this, and his reply was that Holmes might have Europe if he would leave New England for the Globe. Here was the sound foundation upon which General Taylor builded.

Governor William B. Washburn of Greenfield and of Erving, where his pail-making establishment was located, was another sensible business man. In bearing he was unpretentious. His public career outran any reasonable expectation of its development. He was four times elected to the national House of Representatives, was governor from 1872 to 1874, and was then elected United States senator to succeed Charles Sumner, whose death in March, 1874, shocked the State. Another example of Washburn's "pleasant, Sunday school luck", commented George M. Stearns.

Mighty had Sumner been in moral power and influence in the anti-slavery discussion and the conflict for the preservation of the Union; none more insistent and persistent. Generous-minded he also was after victory. Well do I remember the intolerant