Autobiography of Seventy Years | Page 2

brother the General, and
several other gentlemen of equal distinction, the story of the battles of
Nashville and Franklin. The story was full of dramatic interest. Yet no
one who heard it would have known that the speaker himself had taken
part in the great achievement, until, just at the end, he said of the Battle
of Nashville that he thought of sending a detachment to cut off Hood's
army at a ford by which he escaped after they were defeated, but he
concluded that it was not safe to spare that force from immediate use in
the battle. "If I had done it," he added, with great simplicity, "I should
have captured his whole army. There is where I made my mistake."
The recollections of the actors in important political transactions are
doubtless of great historic value. But I ought to say frankly that my
experience has taught me that the memory of men, even of good and
true men, as to matters in which they have been personal actors, is
frequently most dangerous and misleading. I could recount many
curious stories which have been told me by friends who have been
writers of history and biography, of the contradictory statements they
have received from the best men in regard to scenes in which they have
been present.
If any critic think this book lacking in dignity, or wisdom, or modesty,
it is hoped that it may, by way of offset, make up for it in sincerity. I
have so far lived in the world without secrets. If my countrymen, or the
people of Massachusetts, have trusted me, they have fully known what
they were doing. "They had eyes and chose me."

I have never lifted any finger or spoken a word to any man to secure or
to promote my own election to any office. I do not mean to criticise
other men who advance their honorable ambition for public service or
exert themselves to get office for which they think themselves fit. It
was the "high Roman fashion." It has been the fashion in England
always. English gentlemen do not disdain a personal solicitation for
political support, and think no harm in it, to which no American
gentleman would for a moment stoop.
It has been the custom in other parts of the country almost from the
beginning of the Government. But what I think a better custom has
prevailed in Massachusetts. I arrogate to myself no virtue in this respect.
I only say that it has been my supreme good fortune to be the son of a
Commonwealth among whose noble and high-minded people a better
and more fastidious habit has prevailed.
The lesson which I have learned in life, which is impressed on me daily,
and more deeply as I grow old, is the lesson of Good Will and Good
Hope. I believe that to-day is better than yesterday, and that to-morrow
will be better than to- day. I believe that in spite of so many errors and
wrongs and even crimes, my countrymen of all classes desire what is
good, and not what is evil. I repeat what I said to the State Convention
of Massachusetts after the death of President McKinley:
"When I first came to manhood and began to take part in public affairs,
that greatest of crimes, human slavery, was entrenched everywhere in
power in this Republic. Congress and Supreme Court, Commerce and
Trade and Social Life alike submitted to its imperious and arrogant
sway. Mr. Webster declared that there was no North, and that the South
went clear up to the Canada line. The hope of many wise and
conservative and, as I now believe, patriotic men, of saving this country
from being rent into fragments was in leaving to slavery forever the
great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific, in the Fugitive
Slave Law, a law under which freemen were taken from the soil of
Massachusetts to be delivered into perpetual bondage, and in the
judgment of the Supreme Court which declared it as the lesson of our
history that the Negro had no rights that a white man was bound to

respect.
"Last week at Dartmouth, at the great celebration in honor of Daniel
Webster, that famous college gave the highest honor in its power to a
Negro, amid the applause of the brilliant assembly. And there was no
applause more earnest or hearty than that of the successor of Taney, the
Democratic Chief Justice of the United States. I know that the people
of that race are still the victims of outrages which all good men deplore.
But I also believe that the rising sense of justice and of manhood in the
South is already finding expression in indignant remonstrance from the
lips of governors and preachers, and