Plain farmers would not only travel long distances to hear him, but they would stand for hours under a burning sun, or in a pelting rain, seemingly oblivious of everything but the speeches by which their attention was absorbed. Nor was his fame as an orator confined to Ohio. By his speeches in Congress he acquired a national reputation. Made upon subjects which have long ceased to be interesting, no one can read them now without feeling that they place him in the front rank of American orators.

One of the earliest, and in many respects the pleasantest, of the acquaintances which I formed in Indiana was that of Henry Ward Beecher, who in 1839, on the invitation of Samuel Merrill, president of the State Bank, and a few other prominent citizens of Indianapolis, left Lawrenceburgh, where he had been preaching for two or three years, to become the first pastor of a NewSchool Presbyterian church at the capital of the State. There were not more than a dozen members when he took charge of it, but it grew rapidly in membership until 1847, when he accepted a call to Brooklyn.

Mr. Beecher was not only the most popular but the most influential preacher that this country has produced. He did more than any other man to liberalize religious sentiment-to lift orthodox theology out of the ruts in which it had been running from the days of the Puritans. His sermons were very rarely doctrinal. He was in no respect a theologian. He cared little for creeds. Belief with him was a matter of secondary importance; conduct was everything. He had a decided taste for horticulture, and one of his most intimate acquaintances was a man (Aldrich, I think his name was) who had a fine nursery and garden near Indianapolis. "I like him," said Mr. Beecher to me one day; "I like him because he loves flowers as I do, and I have a great admiration of him because he is one of the honestest men I have ever met. I have made him a study. He is always what he appears to be, a perfectly upright man. Nothing would induce him to swerve from the truth, and yet he is an infidel, a disbeliever in the Bible and a future

life. I wish that I and my church members were more like him."

I was very intimate with Mr. Beecher as long as he lived in Indianapolis. He was frequently at my house. I once travelled with him on horseback from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, when it took full three days to make the trip; stopped with him at the same taverns, and slept in the same rooms with him. To me he was an open book. If there had been anything wrong about him I should have discovered it. He was incapable of disguise, and I never heard a sentiment from him that the strictest moralist could object to. His vitality was immense; his jollity at times irrepressible. He was physically very strong. His health was perfect, his buoyancy of spirits unflagging. I recollect how he sang and shouted as we rode through the woods together-how admirably he mimicked preachers who seemed to think that sanctimonious countenances and whining tones were the indications of zealous faith. To Mr. Beecher religion was joyousness-Christianity the agency by which men were to be made not only better but happier. "Some people," said he, "think that I am not solemn enough in the pulpit, nor staid or reverent enough out of it. I wonder what they would think if I should act just as I feel!"

Mr. Beecher gave proof of his pluck in his encounters with secessionists and sympathizers of the South in Liverpool and London. It was sometimes tested in a different way. The people of Indiana before the war, if not pro-slavery in sentiment, were, with few exceptions, opposed to all anti-slavery movements, and the negroes who came to the State were frequently the subjects of barbarous treatment. One day there was what was called a negro riot in Indianapolis, in which some inoffensive colored people were driven from their homes and treated with savage inhumanity. A leader of the rioters, whose behavior toward these people was especially infamous, was a constable. Mr. Beecher, upon being informed of his conduct, denounced it in his usual emphatic manner. This came to the ears of the constable, who expressed his determination to hold Mr. Beecher responsible.

"Beecher must take back what he has said about me, or I'll lick him within an inch of his life." The next day as Mr. Beecher was walking leisurely by the constable's office, the constable opened the door and asked Mr. Beecher to step in. The office was near the principal hotel of the city, and some young men who had heard of the constable's threats, and happened to be standing on the sidewalk, gathered around the door to see, as they said, the fun. The constable was a big, brawny fellow, and as Mr. Beecher entered, he advanced to meet him, and said in a rough voice: "I understand, Mr. Beecher, that you said so and so about me," repeating the offensive language. "Did you say that, sir?" "I don't think I said exactly that, but it was about what I meant to say," replied Mr. Beecher as he looked the constable steadily in the face. "You're a damned liar, sir; and if you weren't a preacher I'd lick you like a dog," said the constable. “Don't mind that; I ask no favor on that score," responded Mr. Beecher. The constable looked at the stoutly built, sturdy man that stood before him without flinching, and concluded that it was safer to threaten than to strike. Mr. Beecher listened for a moment to the constable's oaths, then left the office, saying, as he went out, "Good-bye, Mr. Constable; you will feel better when you cool off." The bystanders clapped their hands as Mr. Beecher stepped upon the sidewalk, and it was a long time before the constable heard the last of his interview with Mr. Beecher. "What would you have done," I asked Mr. Beecher, "if the constable had attempted to make good his threats?" "I should have warded off his blows and laid him upon his back in no time. I knew if I was not stronger that I was quicker and a better wrestler than he was, and I was sure that he could not have stood before me for an instant. I should have been sorry to have had a contest with such a fellow, but I could not stand and be whipped," was Mr. Beecher's reply.

Mr. Beecher wrote a great deal, and usually with great ability; but it is upon his talents and accomplishments as a preacher that his fame will most securely rest. Few of his sermons were

what might be called finished productions, but they abounded in eloquent passages and striking illustrations and original ideas. They were instructive as well as captivating. No man has ever been heard by so many people; no man of the present century has expressed so many loving thoughts, or touched so many hearts, or influenced so many lives, or done so much to soften theological austerities and liberalize religious sentiment as Henry Ward Beecher.

Although I had gone West with the full intention of practising law, and, indeed, met with gratifying success in my early efforts, I was diverted from my profession in 1835, when I was appointed cashier and manager of the Fort Wayne Branch of the State Bank of Indiana. I liked the business of banking so much that I had no disposition to resume the practice of law, and so it happened that when the new Bank of the State of Indiana was organized, in 1857, I was elected its president. In 1862 I went to Washington to oppose the passage of the bill to establish a National Banking System, which, if it passed, might be greatly prejudicial to the State Banksthe one of which I was president being among the largest of them. In March, 1863, I was again in Washington. I had left home with my wife, to be absent for a couple of weeks on a pleasure trip. I had been a hard worker without intermission for nearly a quarter of a century, and so we decided that we would make a flying visit to the Eastern cities, letting no one at home know where letters would reach us, in order that we might enjoy a few genuine holidays.

In the afternoon of the day before we left Washington we went through the Treasury Department. As I had no business to transact, and was not acquainted with Secretary Chase, I did not feel at liberty to call upon him, but as we passed by the door of his room I handed my card to his messenger. The next morning we were on our way to Baltimore, where we spent a day very pleasantly. Thence we went to Philadelphia, New York, and Plattsburgh, where we were married twenty-five years before, and were at home again within the time fixed for our return. Here, to my sur

prise, I found a number of telegrams, some of which had followed me from place to place, requesting me to return to Washington, and a letter from Mr. Chase, offering to me the position of Controller of the Currency, and expressing an earnest wish that I should accept it. I had been forced to admit that there was a necessity for a National Banking System, and I felt that the Government had a right to any services that I might be able to render in the tremendous struggle in which it was engaged. Being in a strait, I did what all men who have sensible wives ought to do when important questions are to be considered and acted uponI consulted my wife. The conclusion was that I should resign the presidency of the bank and go to Washington to organize the National Currency Bureau, with the understanding, however, that I should remain in Washington no longer than might be necessary to give the new banking system a successful start. As soon as this conclusion was reached, I informed Mr. Chase that I would accept the office which he had so kindly tendered to me.

Mr. Chase was one of the most extraordinary men that our country has produced. In 1837 he was pointed out to me in the Cincinnati court-house as the rising young lawyer at the bar, which was even then distinguished by the high character of its lawyers. Had he continued in the practice he would have been the peer of Henry Stansberry in legal accomplishments, and have come up to the standard of Thomas Ewing, the ablest lawyer who has appeared west of the Alleghanies. His mind was clear and logical, comprehensive in its grasp, and certain in its conclusions. He was a fine scholar, a master of the English tongue. He spoke with ease and distinctness. He was not what might be called a fluent, nor, according to the American idea (which is rapidly changing), an eloquent speaker; but he had few equals in analyzing difficult questions and making abstruse subjects intelligible. Inclined to be dogmatic and overbearing, he was, nevertheless, genial in social intercourse, and at times fascinating. In manners he was courtly without assumption; in opinion tenacious

without intolerance. He was strong in his convictions and steadfast in his principles. Hostile to slavery, and a strict constructionist, he was willing to grant to the slave power just what was granted by the Constitution, not an iota more.

The movements of the armies, the great battles that were fought with varying successes on both sides, so absorbed the public attention that comparatively little interest was felt in the measures that were adopted to provide the means to meet the enormous and daily increasing demands upon the treasury. It was the successful general who was the recipient of honors, not the man by whose agency the sinews of war (money) were supplied, and yet but for the successful administration of the Treasury Department during the war, the Union would have been riven asunder. If I were asked to designate the man whose services next to Mr. Lincoln's were of the greatest value to the country from March, 1861, to July, 1864, I should unhesitatingly name Salmon P. Chase.

When Mr. Chase was appointed Secretary, the public credit was lower than that of any other great nation. The Treasury was empty. The annual expenditures had for some years exceeded the revenues. To meet the deficiencies shifts were resorted to which, while they gave present relief to the Treasury, added to its embarrassment.

It is not necessary for me to speak of the various loans that were negotiated, the taxes that were imposed, to raise the immense sums that were needed in the prosecution of the most expensive war that the world has ever known. It is enough for me merely to refer to the extraordinary fact that the people were patient under very burdensome taxestaxes to which they were entirely unaccustomed, taxes direct and indirect, taxes upon almost everything that they consumed, taxes which before the war it would have been considered impossible to collect; and to the still more extraordinary fact that the public credit steadily improved, notwithstanding the rapid increase of the public debt, and was higher when it reached the enormous sum of $2,757,803,686, as it did in August, 1865, than it was when the Government did not owe a dollar.

in action, he would not, had he been President in the spring of 1861, have waited for South Carolina to strike the first blow: it was therefore fortunate that he was not in Mr. Lincoln's place. Mr. Lincoln had no educational advantages in his early life. In appearance he was unprepossessing, in manners ungraceful, in taste unrefined, or at least peculiar, but he was warmhearted and genial. In knowledge of men, in strong common sense, in sound judgment, in sagacity, Mr. Lincoln had no superior. He was unassuming, patient, hopeful, far-seeing. He was also one of the bravest of men. In saying this I do not refer to personal courage -in which he was by no means deficient, but to bravery of a higher and rarer kind, bravery which was steadfast under the criticism of his friends and the assaults of his enemies. His inaction for some weeks after his inauguration greatly disappointed many of his most devoted political adherents, who became fearful that it indicated indecision; and the feeling became widespread that he lacked nerve-one of the most essential qualities in a statesman who is called upon to act when danger is imminent and great interests are at stake. In these respects he was misjudged. He was anxious to prevent a decided rupture of the relations of the Government with the Southern States, and he was determined, if a rupture should occur, that the administration should not be responsible for it. It was his duty to enforce obedience to the Federal authority throughout the Union, but he hoped that this might be accomplished in the Southern States without a resort to arms. He knew how strong the opposition was in the West to what was called coercion, the coercion of sovereign States; and he foresaw that if a conflict should occur, and the government should be regarded as the aggressor, it would fail to command hearty support in that section, and how important it therefore was, if war was to be the result of attempts to execute the law, that the first blow should not be struck by the Government. His wisdom was vindicated by the manner in which the report of the cannonade upon Fort Sumter was received throughout

the loyal States. It was, as I have remarked, like an electric shock to a seemingly inanimate body, which, however, was full of life. It vitalized the dormant patriotism of the people, it hushed party strife, it united Republicans and Democrats in a common cause-the defence of the Union. Thenceforward many who had been the opponents of coercion were its strongest advocates. Some of them attained high distinction in the field.

Throughout his administration Mr. Lincoln was wiser than his assailants, wiser than his friends. Beside the attacks of his political enemies, to which he was indifferent, he was constantly charged by those who claimed to be friendly with hesitation, when hesitation was dangerous. They were, for instance, impatient at his tardiness in using his war power to free the slaves, and they censured him without stint. He was troubled by these censures, but his purposes were not shaken by them. Although one of the mildest of men, he was unyielding to efforts which were made to force him to acts which he considered erroneous in themselves, or erroneous because untimely. His aim was to keep abreast with the public sentiment, with which no man was better acquainted, and not to go too fast to avoid the charge of going too slow. He issued his celebrated Emancipation Proclamation when he thought the people were prepared for it and when the military condition of the country seemed to justify it. It came at the right time; it breathed the right spirit, and it was hailed with almost universal satisfaction in almost all the loyal States. I never think of the manner in which Mr. Lincoln fulfilled the most difficult and responsible duties which ever devolved upon mortal man, of the enormous labors which he performed, of his faith in the right, his constancy, his hopefulness, his sagacity, and his patience under unmerited and bitter criticism, without feelings of admiration akin to reverence.

When Mr. Chase resigned (as Secretary of the Treasury) the eyes of the people turned to Mr. Fessenden as the right man to be his successor.

Mr.