Joshua R. Giddings. A sketch

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Read any page of the history of the final struggle m and out of Congress which culminated in the war of the Rebellion, and resulted in the abolition of slavery in the United States, and you will encounter the name of Joshua R. Giddings. The history of that contest is given elsewhere in this volume and must convey, to one who reads it, a sufficient understanding of the relation of parties and the bearings of the all important question in 1838, when Mr. Giddings entered the House of Representatives. The present generation is intolerant of any theory of affairs which supposes a providential agency ; like the French of the great revolution, it has taken down the Holy Image

from the temple, and in the empty niche placed lO JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.

the brazen figure of Chance. Were it not so, had we half the practical and literal faith of a hun_ dred years ago, it would be difficult to doubt that Giddings was chosen before his birth for the great work to which he devoted the best years of his life ; that his clearness of brain and of moral vision was given him that he might see the right, and seeing it, unfalteringly uphold it in the face of the bitter opposition, the deadly personal hatred, the venomous slanders and malice of his opponents. When he was born, the old struggle against the slave trade was not yet passed. Throughout his youth the engrossing demands of war and the inactivity which followed a victory gained by the friends of the negro, in the interdiction of the slave trade, kept the subject in abeyance. In the prime of his early manhood, while he was receiving the discipline of legal practice and serving an apprenticeship in the councils of his own State, there entered the House of Representatives a venerable and noble man, who took up the burthen which the old champions of liberty had left by the wayside, and, almost singlehanded, carried the war into the country of a united and powerful enemy. That man was John Quincy Adams — scholar, diplomat, and, in the best sense of the word, statesman. He stood not entirely unsupported in his advocacy, but so far in advance of the few of his inclining as to be

JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I I

quite alone — the single target of all the blows of a most malignant foe. Thus he remained until 1838, when Joshua R. Giddings entered Congress. Giddings accepted his election and took his seat, intending for one session at least, to learn and vote — not to talk. On an early day following the organization of the House, the proposal of the infamous Atherton gag rule, the object of which was to deny the right of anti-slavery petition and discussion, was, by the united vote of Southern slavocrats and Northern doughfaces, forced upon the House. This outrage set the young man to thinking ; other high-handed measures in the House, and the sight of some of the lesser abuses of the slave system without, made him think the more, until he saw his duty clearly, cast his lot — and with him such an act was irrevocable — with the little band of anti-slavery men, and Adams, already seventy-three years old and feeling the infirmity of body which never touched his mind, found standing beside him, with brawny shoulder to his own, an unknown champion.

For a year or two Giddings was a learner, yet he drew from the gray head of his tpaster many a blow, and when, nine years after his entry upon the arena, Adams fell in his place, the mantle, the inspiration, and the guardianship of the cause which he had held so dear, fell to the younger but not less earnest man. Congress was then divided among slaveholders, their Northern sympathizers, the doughfaces who had no principles or, having them, feared to acknowledge them, and the little band of anti-slavery advocates — a forlorn hope indeed— which, when Adams fell, would certainly, for the time, have ceased to be an appreciable element in the problem, had not Giddings stood ready to lead it. No man in Congress save he, had at once ability, courage, and honesty in the measure demanded for the task. Of all these qualities he possessed enough and to spare. He carried the contest on until the tide was turned, the once despised cause had become popular, until the question was ripe for the stern arbitrament by which it was finally decided. If his birth, education, election, choice of place and splendid service were but a series of chances, then indeed was the goddess kind to the American people.

Joshua R. Giddings was remotely of English stock, an ancestor having emigrated from England in 1635, and settled at Gloucester, Massachusetts. His great-grandfather removed from Massachusetts to Lynn, Connecticut, in 1725, and there Joshua Giddings, father of the future Congressman, was born. Later the family lived at Howland, Connecticut, and in 1773, Joshua Giddings, having married, followed the westward tide of emigration, settling in Bradford county, Pennsylvania, at the little town of Tioga Point, where Joshua R. Giddings was born on the 6th day of October, 1795. Pennsylvania can not be said to have made any considerable direct contribution to the spirit and taste of the boy, for he was but six weeks of age when his father, who was endued with the characteristic spirit of an American pioneer, again broke up his home and moved to the village of Canandaigua, New York, then standing very near the western limits of civilization, and holding, as it did for many years after, an unquestioned place as the social and intellectual capital of western New York.

At Canandaigua the family remained until the spring of 1806, when, having made an exchange of his farm at that place for a large tract of wild land in what is now Wayne township, Ashtabula county, the family, save the father and the eldest son, who had preceded, set out, with farm stock and household goods, upon the weary journey into the heart of the Ohio wilderness. Hon. A. G. Riddle has written graphically of that journey, as follows :

"The 1 6th of June, 1806, was noted for a total eclipse of the sun. Darkness came down on an emigrant train of four oxen slowly moving a wagon in which were a middle-aged woman, a fresh young girl, a bride, whose young husband drove the cattle and guided the movement, aided by a youth and attended by a lad often. Just across the Ohio and Pennsylvania line were they when darkness came down and they were obliged to camp in the woods. They journeyed all the way from Canandaigua, for weeks, on the road ; from Buffalo much of the way on the lake beach, beaten hard by the waves ; one night they camped in the forest, caused by the breaking of the wagon. They were kept awake by the howling of the near wolves, the most melancholy and plaintive sound of all the wilds. At nightfall of the 2ist they crossed a stream called by the natives Pymatuning; on the bank they found a deserted wigwam, where they passed the night not far from the famous Omica's town. The next day they made their way across the woods to where the center of Wayne nov/ is, in Ashtabula county, where they found a new rude cabin, without hearth, chimney, or window, surrounded by a small clearing, prepared by the father and eldest son, who had preceded them."

The life of the Giddings family during those first years in Ohio has been described a thousand times ; for only in detail does it differ from that of any other of the hundreds who emigrated at nearly the same time. The greater part was made up of hard, constant, wearing toil against all the odds of nature, which had been for ages entrenching itself upon the virgin soil. Neighbors were few and distant. Time, too, was precious; when leisure came arms were tired and eyes heavy ; the woods were trackless in the gloom or deep with snow. So there was little society save that of the home circle, and the independence or self-dependence, which the father had learned in Pennsylvania and New York, came practically and naturally to the sons. This independence was not merely a matter of spirit ; it extended to all the practicalities of life. Food they won from the everenlarging clearing, from the forest, with gun or line ; their corn and wheat they at first ground in a mortar hollowed in the top of a stump, by means of a stone pestle attached to a pole above it ; later, when a mill was built in the * ' neighborhood"— and neighborhood meant anywhere within fifty miles — the grist was carried thither on horseback. Clothing was the product of their own soil and flocks; was carded, hatcheled, spun, and woven by the women of the house; and thus there was a necessary self-sufficiency in the life that taught self-denial as well as self-reliance. The story does not need re-telling in these pages. Call on any one of the fast diminishing number of pioneers; tell him your curiosity to know how he and his fared seventy years ago. With a ready hospitality that went out of date with home-used spinning wheels, and cards, he will bid you stay, will draw you near the fire and tell you the very story that would be written here were the fortunes of young Giddings to be followed day by day from that June morning when he first reached his father's new home until he came to maturity.

The uncleared farm in Wayne lay at the very center of the Western Reserve, — which, years after, stump speakers and writers of political editorials among the southern Democrats and the ''doughfaces," were wont to sneer at as a State separate and distinct from Ohio. It lay not at the geographical center but at the moral center. About it there grew up on all sides a community so firm and fearless; so impatient of wrong and injustice; so hard-headed, practical and sensible ; so liberal and enlightened, that from it spread the influence which the Western Reserve so early began to exert over the opinions and in the counsels of State and Nation, and which has known no change or diminution since that day.

We are tempted to give the Western Reserve credit for having made such men as Giddings, Wade, and Garfield. It is not so. Giddings, Wade, and Garfield, their fathers, brothers, and friends, those hundreds who thought as rightly and spoke as strongly in the counsels of towns and villages and in the circle of the home, as did these others in the broader arena of American affairs, made the Reserve, as surely as the Puritans made

Massachusetts, the CavaHers Virginia, or the Dutch New Amsterdam. Yet back of all this there is an indebtedness of the individual to the spirit of the place. The Giddings family came to Ohio, people of broad and cosmopolitan taste and view, as compared with most of their neighbors. They had as a family come in contact, before their removal to Ohio, with many communities in four States — Massachusetts and Connecticut, where they laid the best o^ all foundations of character and opinion, in a genuine New England atmosphere; Pennsylvania, rude and ready, and if prejudiced, prejudiced in a channel quite different from that of the Puritans; and then New York, where modified Massachusetts and mollified Connecticut had merged into a society far in advance of any west of the old towns on the Mohawk and Hudson. Coming thus to Ohio after so diverse a life, the Giddings family had learned more than half the lesson which their neighbors, coming directly from the old Connecticut soil, were to study for a lifetime. There is surely something in western air and life which seems to melt the intellectual and moral starch of the New Englander and, after a generation, produces from the fully acclimated stock a something which, while it has not the reckless, swaggering freedom of Kentucky or Texas, is as far from the grim and somewhat repellant stiffness of Connecticut ; and, like most social resultants, is superior to either of the elements which produced it.

There is no doubt that much of Giddings' influence and success as a representative of his district arose from his thorough sympathy with and appreciation of the opinions and spirit of his constituents. Every day of his boyish life, on the farm and in the woods of Ashtabula county, contributed to this result. He may almost be said to have been present at the birth of the Western Reserve, and he grew up in the midst of the formation and development of the distinctive social and political faith which, in its maturity, made the opinions and the votes of his neighbors and friends so far transcend in influence their mere numerical value. He never had need of feeling the pulse of his constituents, for it beat in his own body ; he never erred in forecasting their views upon any political question, for, giving due latitude for minor differences, it was always his own.

Riddle has given us an a postei'iori picture of Giddings as a boy, evolved from his familiarity with him in later life — "a tall, raw, shapeless boy, with pleasant face, frolicsome gray eyes and an abundance of light curly hair that grew dark, fairish until the sun tanned him." He had everything to learn save the alphabet, when he came to Ohio: the subduing of the forest which stood between the farmer and his future crops, the care of the cattle, and the never ceasing round of farm duties called for every hand, and no small share of the lighter labor fell to his lot. There was little opportunity for systematic education for any one; less for the busy son of a poor man, but the boy had that in him of more worth than tutors, scholarships, or wealth — an insatiable appetite for knowledp-e, which p^rew in the face of difficulties, fed and thrived upon the smallest food, and found new keenness in the very discouragement of the quest. We are told that the entire time passed by him at school was not beyond a few weeks. With the small capital which his knowledge of the alphabet gave him he worked out his own intellectual salvation. Books were very few in the country about ; of such as there were he became possessed as owner or borrower. If he heard of some new treasure, no miles of walking through woods and across fords, wet or dry, winter or summer, could deter him from its pursuit. He was omniverous ; nothing was too dry, too profound, too stupid for him. Not only did he read everything that came in his way but, v/ith the mental digestion of an ostrich, he mastered and assimilated the very broken glass and old iron of philosophy, theology and science. With such a heterogeneous collection of matter he acquired a most catholic taste. Travels, biography, poetry, fiction — he read them all, was thankful, but, like the young raven of the wilderness, ever opened his mouth for more. In some way he became possessed of an old copy of Lindley Murray's grammar — surely not an enticing book ; this he studied and mastered, making himself thoroughly conversant with the how, and so far as any person not inspired can know, the why of the English tongue.

All this time he was laboring in the fields or roaming the woods with gun and rod, not as an idler, but as a purveyor for his family ; he was growing to be a young giant in frame and in strength as well. In all matters of manly skill he yN'd.'B, facile princeps among his fellows — the quickest shot, the most expert angler, an invincible wrestler, a swift and tireless runner. While he was lamenting that he had not more books, their very lack was giving him time to lay up in reserve the physical power which was to be so sorely taxed during more than twenty years of constant struggle. Rev. Harvey Coe gave him primary instruction in mathematics and he carried himself well forw^ard in the science, studying by the firelight or the flickering of a torch at home, or, at spring time, by the light of the blazing logs in the sugar camp, possessing none of the conveniences and luxuries of study — only the text book, the will, and the appetite. This process of self-education had not advanced thus far, when there came to the little home in the woods first an indefinite whisper, then certain news of war. The Indians, who had hved quietly and amicably about them, silently disappeared to join the enemy, leaving behind deserted wigwams and an imminent fear. There was news that the enemy was on th^ Maumee, plundering, burning, murdering, and moving eastward. Then came the disasters of the summer of 1812; Detroit and all Michigan were lost and there was a call for volunteers. Giddings, though but sixteen years of age, responded, joined Colonel Hayes' regiment and marched to the Huron, thence to the stockade later famous under the name of Fort Stephenson.

While at this fort a small scouting party was sent out upon the peninsula with orders to bring to camp a quantity of provisions which had been left at Sandusky during Hull's occupancy of Detroit. During this scout a considerable body of Indians was discovered in possession of the farm of one Ramsdell, at Two Harbors on the shore of the lake. The force of the Indians was estimated by the whites at not far from fifty, but information received from the French, at the mouth of the Maumee, during the ensuing spring, placed the number at no less than one hundred and fifty. This discovery was the first intimation of the presence of an enemy in the vicinity and the little scouting party, retiring unobserved, hastened to the stockade and reported the facts. The garrison, originally but one hundred and fifty in number, had been so reduced by sickness that every man was obHged to stand guard one-third of the time. The necessity of still further weakening this slender force was a sad one, but the officer in charge, recognizing the importance of attacking the enemy before he could be reinforced, made a call for volunteers for the dangerous service. Young Giddings was just coming in from guard duty, when he encountered the drummer beating up volunteers, and joined the party. But thirty minutes was given for supper and preparation ; then the little party of seventy-two men, commanded by Captain Cotton, set out in boats and landed soon after sunrise at Middle Orchard, near where the enemy had been seen.

Leaving a guard of eight men with the boats, the remainder of the party pushed forward to attack. During their absence, the Indians, who had deserted their position, approaching in canoes, stumbled upon the guard which had been left with the boats and, though the men escaped in safety to a neighboring island, it was at the expense of the two larger and more important boats. It is probable that this encounter was the first intimation which reached the enemy that they were liable to attack.

Finding the expected battle ground deserted Cotton set his face toward the boats, taking the fortunate precaution of throwing out a flanking party. When still some distance from his destination he was suddenly attacked by the savages who rose from the deep grass before him. The men dispersed behind shelter and the fight was kept up sharply for some time after the arrival of the flankers, when it ceased as if by mutual consent, neither party having obtained any definite advantage, though the Indians lost more heavily than the whites, of whom but three were killed. Continuing his march toward the boats, Cotton was again attacked when near the place of landing, and, finding his boats destroyed, was obliged to take shelter in an old log house, from which the Indians were unable to dislodge him. About thirty of the whites passed, unobserved, to the shore, were taken off by the boat guard which came over from the island where it had taken refuge, and thus almost miraculously escaped massacre. A party was sent on to the fort, assistance obtained, and Cotton and his men rescued from their perilous position. The Indians then deserted the peninsula. These two skirmishes were the first engagements fought in Ohio during the War of 1812, and were overlooked by all historians of the war until, in 1843, Mr. Giddings himself contributed an account from which the above particulars are gleaned, to Squire's History of the Fire Lands.

Five months after enlistment Mr. Giddings was mustered out of the service with his regiment and returned to his home life. Several times thereafter, during- the war, the Reserve was menaced, but it never was attacked, and the young man was not called upon to take further part. His assistance in fact was sorely needed at home, for his father had invested his all in the lands upon which he had settled and spent so much labor, and, the title failing, he was thrown upon the world in poverty, a misfortune from which he never recovered.

Though, as this sketch has sufficiently shown, young Giddings' education was very desultory, it was broad and exact enough to earn him the exceptional place among his neighbors which, in those simple pioneer communities, was readily awarded to one whose knowledge extended beyond the "three r's." He was consulted in matters of law and business, at the age of nineteen, was requested to teach a school in the neighborhood and accepted the post. Like many other men and women striving for self-enlightenment, he gained doubly in his efforts to instruct others, systematizing his knowledge, so that it was always afterward available, grasping principles where he had before recognized only the facts which were their outward manifestation, and, while he showed his scholars how to creep, himself making great strides toward the broad and liberal plane which he sought.

For four years he lived thus — a farmer, more a teacher, most of ah a student. He never for a moment vegetated, but constantly grew. His was not a receptive but an aggressive mind ; he was no doubt ambitious, for no man ever did such work as his to whom ambition was not a birthright, yet he was no dreamer of dreams or builder of castles. With him to know good was to covet it, and to covet it meant, by the means nearest his hand, to strive for its possession.

At the age of twenty-three he made choice of his life work and entered the law office of Elisha Whittlesey, of Canfield, Ohio, as a student. Whittlesey was himself a man of no common parts and, judging from results, must have possessed to a marked degree that rare tact which makes the successful teacher, for many of the lawyers whose brilliant powers contributed to make the bar of Ashtabula county one of the most notable in the State, came from his office, and bear, in their methods and ideas, the marks of his training. There is no memorial of Giddings' student life in that office, save that spread by his subsequent achievements upon the records of the court. This would tell us, if the character and habits of the man did not do so, that his work was constant and systematic, that his enthusiasm never flagged, that he read widely and deeply, and, at the end of his two years' clerkship, stood at the threshold of his noble profession, well prepared to enter and to honor it.

The professional reputation of Mr. Giddings rests upon the labor of the seventeen years from 1 82 1, when he was admitted to the bar and began practice at Jefferson, the county seat of Ashtabula county, until 1838, when he entered Congress, and, to all intents and purposes, abandoned his profession forever. No lawyer could have made better arguments before a court in banc, than did he in Congress, when discussing the legal and constitutional bearings of the slavery question ; nor more moving appeals at nisi prius, than were his in behalf of the same cause from stump and rostrum ; but these efforts, impossible for any but a learned advocate to make, still contribute to his repute as a statesman, not as a lawyer.

A country practice is to-day the best training school for the general lawyer ; in those years this was more emphatically true than now. Then lawyers mounted their horses and rode the circuit with the judge, working side by side, and under mutual criticism day after day and week after week. Every cause was tried in the presence of a large proportion of the bar, — friends, rivals, and enemies, — and this professional audience was attentive as well as critical. Men more often came late into causes, accepting a retainer perhaps when the case was actually called, and relying upon general knowledge, wit, and the inspiration of an auditory for success. There was less of technicality, perhaps less of scholarship, than now ; certainly there was more dependence upon eloquence and personal magnetism than upon cold argument. People having no direct interest in a cause flocked to the court room as they now go to the theater, for amusement, attracted by the prospect of a pleasurable intellectual excitement, rare enough in their lives. They crowded the court room while the cause was tried, and gossiped concerning it about the tavern and village store at night. The man who was in those days a leader at the bar was indeed a leader among men. With however much of justice the people judged the quarrels among their fellows, they estimated lawyers by one stern rule — that of success. They cared more for results than for methods ; they delighted to see elaborate preparation set at naught by ready wit, and learning defeated by expedient.

These little knots of fireside gossips were the makers or spoilers of a lawyer's name, and for their approval there was an emulation as keen as ever rose between knights tilting for a lady's favor.

Specializing was then almost or quite unknown. Of course natural bent had its effect, but the leading lawyer of the bar might be seen, like an actor of the same time, in drama, tragedy, farce, burlesque, and pantomime, — defending a murderer, defining a boundary line, prosecuting a slander suit, trying a horse case — all in turn. Such a practice made lawyers — many sided, versatile, ready lawyers — and gave a preparation for political and legislative service beyond any that now exists.

It was into such association as this that Giddings was thrown at the outset of his professional career. This was more than sixty years' ago; the generation of lawyers which saw the beginning of his professional career, has passed away ; the gray-headed fathers at the bar of to-day were but neophytes when he ceased to practice and there is little save tradition to guide us in picturing him personally. Some of these traditions have been so well crystallized by Mr. Riddle, in his sketch already quoted, that his words may again be borrowed with profit:

"With the first collection of the Ohio statutes, known as ''the sheepskin code," and such other books as he could command, such clients and cases as came, the young lawyer procured a horse and portmanteau, joined his few professional brethren and started with the presiding judge on the common pleas circuit, through mud and forest, legal lance in rest, stopping at log cabins and settling grave cases in log temples of justice. Those were the days of free manners, free lives, and practical jokes ; though the Grand River presbytery expressed their disapproval of gathering sap on Sunday. The commanding figure, six feet two in moccasins, massive head, laughing gray eyes, and frank manner of the young lawyer, with a reputation for great physical strength, agility, and courage, made him a favorite with the primitive people who flocked from all parts of the country, and crowded the court rooms to hear and see the lawyers and to treasure up and repeat their sayings, and tell absurd stories of them to their less fortunate neighbors at home. Those were not the days of long trials nor of great speeches. Court began at eight in the morning and sat until ten at night. The young lawyer soon became noted for the thoroughness with which he studied his case itself, the tact with which he brought out his evidence, and shrew^dness in dealing with witnesses on the other side. Bland and wary, an inflexible will, a passionate earnestness lay seemingly passive under a suavity of manner not easily disturbed. With his industry, application, and power of physical and mental endurance, he grew rapidly — for good lawyers grow rather than are made — to be an accomplished lawyer of his day and his name was mentioned at points outside of his circuit with admiration and respect. His strength was in the care and thoroughness of his preparation, his tact and skill in conducting the trial of his case so that the final argument was really a summing up — a condensed statement of points already brought out in a forcible and happy arrangement. His knowl- ■edge of the law, in the range of the cases of his time, was thorough, his method of presentation to the court clear and logical. He had some difficulties to overcome in his addresses to juries, but became a persuasive, ingenious advocate, knowing exactly the quality and calibre of his men and the reasons and motives that would control them."