Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1885 — REMINISCENCES OF PUBLIC MEN. [ARTICLE]

REMINISCENCES OF PUBLIC MEN.

BY BEN: PERIEY POORE.

The month of January, 1832, was signalized all along the Atlantic coast by one of the severest storms in our meteorological annals. In some quarters it raged with unabated fury for a week, and the sn< w fell to such a depth as to render travel impossible. American commerce was widely extended. Many ships were due from Calcutta and China seas, from South America, and other warm latitudes. The effect on. the crews of such ships, coming out of the warm Southern seas and encountering, without an hour’s notice, this side the Gulf Stream, this euroclydon from the northeast, was terrific. Blinded by the snow, chilled by the blast, frostbitten to disability in many cases, short of provisions—-or, if provided, no fire in the caboose possible in such an overwhelming sea—the runing rigging stiffened to the rigidity of iron, the masts crashing over the sides, and hardly a man on board with strength to wield an axes to clear ’> the wreck and save the ship from founderihg by collision with her lost spars. All this was vividly depicted to the mental eye of the old merchants and great commercial lawyers who then addressed the Senate and the House. On the 17th of January, after the storm had raged for four days about the Capital, Edward Livingston, of Louisiana, who had made many a voyage between New York and New Orleans since 1800, rose in the Senate and by unanimous consent introduced a bill to enable the President to employ without delay two or more vessels, with supplies of men, provisions and cordage, to cruise off the coast for the relief of vessels that might have suffered from stress of weather. Governor Tazewell, of Virginia, regarded the substance of the bill as unconstitutional, and opposed its passage. Mr. Livingstone said in reply that he was surprised (it the extraordinary objection of the Senator from Virginia. These vessels were not to be sent out “to pick up wrecks,” as that Senator had suggested. They were to be sent but to prevent wrecks; not to remedy the mischiet, but to prevent it. The storm had now lasted four days. It was not over. The wind was still high. Vessels had been, probably, driven forty or fifty leagues from the coast. It might be days and weeks and months before some of them could get into port Their seamen might be frozen, their rigging stiff with snow and ice. In this situation they would consider the relief proposed to be sent to them as a messenger from Heaven. The constitutional objection weighed nothing with him. If the measure were, as it would be, useful and humane, that was enough for him in the present instance.’J

Mr. Sillsbee, the old Salem merchant.! sustained from his own experience Mr. Livingston’s views of the exigency of the case. The bill was ordered to be engrossed, and the next day it passed by a vote of 26 to 13. Among the nays were Benton, Forsyth, Grundy, Hayne, Poindexter, King, of Alabama, Tazewell, and Tyler, all Democrats of the Jeffersonian school. Martin Van Buren’s friends always referred to his career in the Legislature of the State of New York as the exemplification of “savage” politics. The controversies in which he was a leading participant commenced with the debates involving the injustice and the expediency of the war of 1812, and were continued when De Witt Clinton had inaugurated the construction of the Erie Canal. The character of these contests, the consequences that resulted* from them, and the tendency to excite the most implacable hostility, are well known to all who are familiar with the political history of New York. They may also be guessed at by others, when it is stated that in the course of those conflicts, or some of them, Governor Clinton was twice driven into retirement; Chief Justice Spencer removed from office, and for some time kept from public employment; Judge Van Ness compelled to retire from the bench, and Mr. Van Buren twice removed from office, and for years proscribed and pursued with unrelenting severity. But each of these great men bore testimony to the liberality, fairness, and honor with which he had been treated by Mr. Van Buren, and to the general uprightness of his conduct as a man and a politician. Judge Van Ness did it on his death bed; Governor Clinton almost in the last moments of his life, and as to Chief Justice Spencer, with characteristic frankness he often did it, even in the midst of those violent collisions which made the “ferocious politics of New York” a proverb and a by-word throughout the Union. The breakfast-table at a first-class Washington “mess” (where from eight to a dozen Congressmen of congenial tastes had the entire possession of a house, paying different rates in accordance with their accommodations) was very different from the present matitudinal repasts at the metropolitan hotels. There were tea, coffee, beefsteaks, oysters, eggs, ham and eggs, devilled turkeys, bread —wheaten, Indian and rye, and mixed of all, dyspeptic and antidyspectic—pancakes and buckwheat cakes, rivalling those far-famed ones of Pennsylvanian Chester, hoe-cakes and Johnny-cakes, with the interminable variety of Indian cakes known to the Virginia kitchen, together with the appropriate condiments of sugars, domestic and foreign, molasses, honey, pepper, vinegar, and moutard de Alaille. Doctor Johnson was in error, pace tanti viri, when he observed of his breakfast in Scotland, “where the tea and coffee were accompanied not only with bread and butter, but with honey, conserves and marmalade,” that, “if an epicure could remove by a wish, wherever he had supped, he would breakfast in Scdtlhnd." The breakfast at the Washington messes cast those of Scotland lar into the background, nor were the dinners less enjoyable There were wild and tame turkeys and geese, Virginia hams, Kentucky beef, canvasback ducks, terrapin, oyster’, shad, sheepshead, and occasionally a buffalo.hump or a beaver-tail brought from, the far west Wine was drank by every one. .

It is related of the late J. B. Buck*, jtone, the English comedian, that an imbitious author onoe read a drama to him. The wit and poetry of the dia*

logue went for nothing. Meanwhile the embryo Shakspeare listened in vain for a word of commendation from the manager of the Haymarket. A last he said: “I am afraid that you do not care for my writing?” “Oh, yes,” replied Buckstone, “I dare say the company will be very pleased with it, but I am waiting till I enter. You don't expect a hen to cackle over another hen’s eggs, do you?”