My Memories of Eighty Years | Page 8

same conclusion and charged him five
hundred dollars. On account of this gentleman's national reputation the
farmer thought that fee was very reasonable. In subsequent years I have
received several very large retainers, but none of them gave so much
satisfaction as that dollar and seventy-five cents, which I had actually
earned after having been so long dependent on my father.
After some years of private practice Commodore Vanderbilt sent for
me and offered the attorneyship for the New York and Harlem Railroad.
I had just been nominated and confirmed United States minister to
Japan. The appointment was a complete surprise to me, as I was not an
applicant for any federal position. The salary was seven thousand five
hundred dollars and an outfit of nine thousand. The commodore's offer

of the attorneyship for the Harlem Railroad, which was his first venture
in railroading, was far less than the salary as minister. When I said this
to the commodore, he remarked: "Railroads are the career for a young
man; there is nothing in politics. Don't be a damned fool." That decided
me, and on the 1st of January, 1921, I rounded out fifty-five years in
the railway service of this corporation and its allied lines.
Nothing has impressed me more than little things, and apparently
immaterial ones, which have influenced the careers of many people.
My father and his brothers, all active business men, were also deeply
interested in politics, not on the practical side but in policies and
governmental measures. They were uncompromising Democrats of the
most conservative type; they believed that interference with slavery of
any kind imperilled the union of the States, and that the union of the
States was the sole salvation of the perpetuity of the republic and its
liberties. I went to Yale saturated with these ideas. Yale was a favorite
college for Southern people. There was a large element from the
slaveholding States among the students. It was so considerable that
these Southerners withdrew from the great debating societies of the
college and formed a society of their own, which they called the
Calliopean. Outside of these Southerners there were very few
Democrats among the students, and I came very near being drawn into
the CaIliopean, but happily escaped.
The slavery question in all its phases of fugitive slave law and its
enforcement, the extension of slavery into the new territories, or its
prohibition, and of the abolition of the institution by purchase or
confiscation were subjects of discussion on the campus, in the literary
societies, and in frequent lectures in the halls in New Haven by the
most prominent and gifted speakers and advocates.
That was a period when even in the most liberal churches the pulpit
was not permitted to preach politics, and slavery was pre-eminently
politics. But according to an old New England custom, the pastor was
given a free hand on Thanksgiving Day to unburden his mind of
everything which had been bubbling and seething there for a year. One
of the most eminent and eloquent of New England preachers was the
Reverend Doctor Bacon, of Center Church, New Haven. His
Thanksgiving sermon was an event eagerly anticipated by the whole
college community. He was violently anti-slavery. His sermons were

not only intently listened to but widely read, and their effect in
promoting anti-slavery sentiment was very great.
The result of several years of these associations and discussions
converted me, and I became a Republican on the principles enunciated
in the first platform of the party in 1856. When I came home from Yale
the situation in the family became very painful, because my father was
an intense partisan. He had for his party both faith and love, and was
shocked and grieved at his son's change of principles. He could not
avoid constantly discussing the question, and was equally hurt either by
opposition or silence.

II. IN PUBLIC LIFE
The campaign of 1856 created an excitement in our village which had
never been known since the Revolutionary War. The old families who
had been settled there since colonial days were mainly pro-slavery and
Democratic, while the Republican party was recruited very largely
from New England men and in a minority.
Several times in our national political campaigns there has been one
orator who drew audiences and received public attention and reports in
the newspapers beyond all other speakers. On the Democratic side
during that period Horatio Seymour was pre-eminent. On the
Republican side in the State of New York the attractive figure was
George William Curtis. His books were very popular, his charming
personality, the culture and the elevation of his speeches put him in a
class by himself.
The Republicans of the village were highly elated when they had
secured the promise of Mr. Curtis to speak at