The life and work of Frederic Thomas Greenhalge, governor of Massachusetts

Front matter

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Boston Public Library

Preface

The author has been influenced in the preparation of this book by a belief that the story of the life and work of the late Governor Greenhalge would prove valuable and interesting to a wide circle of readers, by the expressed desire for such a work on the part of many of Governor Greenhalge's political and personal friends and admirers, and by the not unnatural wish of his family that such a record of his life should exist.

The character and career of Governor Greenhalge are indeed worthy to be made the subject of a biography. They were equal to each other, and deserved the admiration and interest which they excited during his life, and the respect which followed him to the grave.

There seeming to be no other person prepared to undertake the work, the author, though with little confidence in himself, felt it to be a duty incumbent on him to perform.

The demands upon the author in its preparation have not, however, been large ; and the book is chiefly the work of Governor Greenhalge himself, who through its pages speaks, though dead, to the people, as he was wont to address them in life.

The letters written by Governor Greenhalge are unfortunately few in number, but the few that exist are noble and characteristic expressions of the man ; those of the number suitable for publication are contained in this volume. His via PREFACE.

speeches and addresses, on the contrary, are very numerous; and, on account of their general excellence, it is somewhat difficult to make a selection. Those included in the book are of his best, however, and afford a good idea of the range and power of his oratory.

The life of Governor Greenhalge was a suggestive life, and therein lies its peculiar significance ; it could not be written with great amplitude of personal detail. His private life was the ordinary life common to us all, and presents no striking incidents and vicissitudes. The life of a public man to-day is also commonly devoid of exciting contrasts, and is in a measure one of routine.

The story of the life of Governor Greenhalge is necessarily for the most part political. His life, however, was broader in its interests than is common with politicians and statesmen, and touched more closely the sphere of literature and culture, which gives it an added interest and variety.

In the preparation of this book the author has enjoyed the co-operation and invaluable assistance of Mrs. Greenhalge. He desires as well to extend here his thanks to Rev. Ithamar W. Beard, Rector of St. Thomas Church, Dover, New Hampshire, who has also assisted materially in its composition ; and to those other friends of Governor Greenhalge who have contributed to the book and whose names appear within the volume.

JAMES E. NESMITH.

February 8, 1897.

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Eaely Life in England „ 3

II. Schools and College Career 13

Chapter I. Eakly Life In England

The flight of time in this age seems more hurried than ever before. Events that would once have been memorable are quickly forgotten. Things that once would have stood long in the memories of men like an " altar stone or ensigned citadel " soon pass from their recollection. The eyes of all are turned toward the future with expectation, and their thoughts are engrossed with the vast activities of the present.

Life has become like a battle-field where the living still press on, recalled from their pity of the fallen by the stern necessities of war. There is a greater need than ever, therefore, that the memories of vanished greatness should be kept alive among us by sculptured bust or published memoirs, that so what has perished from the earth may still be honored there and the good that men do live after them.

Frederic Thomas Greenhalge, the subject of the succeeding biographical sketch, is not numbered with those who have died in the ripeness of their age, who have reached the full height of their reputation after the exhaustion of all their powers and the accomplishment of all their purposes ; nor is he included with those who, though cut off while yet young, have seemed to leave no broken promises behind them, whose lives seem yet complete by the attainment of their ambition and the fulness of their works.

The life of G-reenhalge was a broken life in so far as the great things he accomplished were full of promise of yet greater things that he might have done in the future. The reputation so honorably won in the last years of his life would have brought him a larger sphere of action, and in the nation's council he would have found again the opportunity of distinction and raised himself still higher in the realm of national politics.

But his life was complete in so much as the man himself stood at the height of his power and genius ; he had reached his full intellectual stature and the maturity of his mind. His equipment would never have been better for action in the arena of public life ; his mental grasp would never have been firmer, nor his taste in literature more sound. But the silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is broken. He went to the grave in his prime, leaving his high office vacant, lamented by thousands who knew him only in the full vigor of his manhood. There is no shadow on his memory, no stain on his official life, no hint of decay in the vision of intellectual force which he has left behind him. His was the sun of Austerlitz even in its setting, and he fell like a warrior snatched from the car of victory.

This were an enviable fate could we but still our deep regret for the unaccomplished good, the broken promises, the high ambitions unfulfilled, and the sad breaking of our hopes involved in such a sudden and unlooked-for death.

It does not matter so much where a man is born ; it is of more importance where he is trained in youth and grows up to manhood, — where his character is formed and the national habits fixed. " As the sapling is bent, so will it grow." Our education shapes us, and the associations of our youth are of more importance than our hereditary bias. Greenhalge grew up a true American ; no truer ever lived. The national character was evident in all he ever did and thought. He was a perfect embodiment of American ideas, of American vigor and liberalism ; a thorough democrat by instinct and education, a

EARLY LIFE IN ENGLAND. 5

natural republican ; a leader of men where men are most advanced, most enfranchised, and most progressive.

Greenhalge was born, however, in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England, on the 19th of July, 1843, the son of William Greenhalgh, who removed with his family to America when the subject of this memoir was twelve years of age, and settled in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the family have since lived. We call him fortunate in being transplanted to these shores, this land of liberalism, opportunity, and unlimited resource. Fortunate, too, is the country which attracts such emigrants, whose opportunities are so great that intrepid spirits everywhere are drawn to it as by a magnet, and become its pioneers and workers ; where liberty is so bright and shining a light that the untrammeled spirits of men everywhere hail it with delight and seek it from afar. This nation, which is the bearer of good tidings to the powers and principalities of the earth, reaps a precious harvest of men from the old world, though there is much chaff mixed with the grain, — many feeble helpers joined with the active workers.

The ocean that has brought us some drones has robbed Europe of many glorious spirits since Hampden and Cromwell so nearly turned their backs on England and their faces toward this new world. England has been ransacked to supply the new world with warriors and statesmen. She used to rifle our ships for sailors, but the golden stream of emigration has robbed her of her choicest sons. Our tribute has been heavy upon her, and our debt to her untold. Exiles by choice, and not, like Themistocles, driven forth by edicts and laws, the proud spirits of England flocked to these shores, inspired by ambition and love of liberty, neither influenced by fear nor compelled by want. No new land was ever settled by more haughty emigrants than the Pilgrim Fathers, — the equals in pride in a good sense of Cortez and Pizarro, their proud English spirit intensified by religious fervor and exclusiveness.

England still contributes some of the best of our citizens, and to this class belonged the Greenhalgh family. Clitheroe, their old home, is in Lancashire, which has become the great industrial county of England, and has suffered more than any other that partial eclipse of beauty and purity which has excited the eloquent philippics of Euskin. Yet the loveliness of England, even of Lancashire, cannot be destroyed. We like to link the hero of this book, even in infancy and remotely, with these old forms of beauty, with rural England. There was a natural delicacy and a vein of poetic feeling in his character that would seem to have rightly sprung from such influences ; his love for nature was always strong and real, a grand basis for character, and the ornament of the most distinguished minds, — especially strong and true in the case of men who once were boys in the country. Many of the world's great men have sprung from the farm. This was not a fact in the life of Greenhalge ; he never dwelt upon a farm, yet his associations with nature were always intimate, and his home was never far removed from her confines.

To the writer of these lines Greenhalge always seemed a great man, perhaps greater than he was ; fitted by nature to be a leader of great masses of men along the paths of peace, — men civilized, indeed, the men of New England and the citizens of free America. I shall freely point out, therefore, what to me appeared the grand character of his heart and brain, without the fear of contradiction, without fear that my language should be called too glowing, or the praise be termed too high.

The sons of great men are seldom distinguished themselves, but the characters of eminent persons are almost invariably traced in their ancestors. Great men are found usually to have had good mothers. Greenhalge was fortunate in both his parents. The name is that of an old Lancashire family. The ruins of Greenhalgh Castle still stand in that shire, raised by the first Earl of Derby, and destroyed after a siege in consequence of an Act of Parliament in the civil wars in 1644. The name is peculiar and somewhat difficult, and the last letter was changed from h to e, to simplify it, by Mr. Greenhalge. It is not a common name in America, and few apparently who have borne it have settled here. There is a family who bear it located in Maine. A certain Captain Greenhalgh is mentioned in one of Parkman's histories, of which personage the author has learned nothing more. He seems, however, to have been a man of some note in our early colonial times. In Lancashire the name is well known.

EARLY LIFE IN ENGLAND. 7

Perhaps the most prominent person who has borne it was Captain John Greenhalgh, son and heir of Thomas Greenhalgh, Esq., of Brandlesome Hall. This worthy was Governor of the Isle of Man from 1640 to 1651, appointed to that post by the great Earl of Derby, who perished on the scaffold at Bolton, in 1651. Captain Greenhalgh, a bold and daring soldier, was present with the brave Earl at the battles of Wigan and Worcester; he died from wounds received in an encounter when Major Edge made the Earl a prisoner in 1651. Governor Greenhalgh had a son Thomas. This son was qualified to be a knight of the Eoyal Oak, and served as High Sheriff of Lancashire. The tombs of this family are in the chancel of the Parish Church, Bury, or were in 1872, before its renovation.

Governor Greenhalgh was a cavalier and royalist; and among the reasons given for the choice of him by the Earl of Derby was, " that he was of good estate, and a gentleman, well born, and scorned a base action. Next he was a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for his own county ; he governed his own affairs well, and therefore was the more likely to do mine so. He had been approved prudent and valiant, and as such fitted to be trusted, and he is that; I thank God for him, and charge you to love him as a friend. " These words spoken of one Governor Greenhalgh might have been truly said of that other Governor Greenhalge whom we knew as the Governor of Massachusetts ; separated as they were by two centuries, and distinguished in different lands and under such changed circumstances. " Prudent and valiant, and fitted to be trusted, " — as such Governor Greenhalge was known to all Massachusetts, and as such he too will be remembered.

It would be fitting indeed if the chain of descent should be found to join these two Governors together by consanguinity and family ties. Such has always been the tradition in the Greenhalgh family. It may be true, and is even exceedingly probable, though the links have not all been traced which would confirm it completely. Greenhalge himself took small interest in questions of this kind, and never concerned himself seriously about his ancestry.

In America we like our public men to spring from the cabin and the farm ; we never inquire into their ancestry. America is not by any means a " penniless lass, " nor has she a " long pedigree. " Her favorites spring from the people, and their escutcheons are the axe and the plough. Greenhalge raised himself to his high position, his station of trust and authority in the Commonwealth. He occupied that station by right of his talents, and his place in the hearts of the people, — because he was one of themselves in the common circumstances of life and in his instinctive feelings. He was singularly free from prejudice, and even the natural pride of intellect was foreign to his nature. He was not hale fellow well met with all men ; he possessed a native reserve of character, on the contrary, and was the least self-assertive of men. Yet he was loved by the common people always, and well understood by them. All could approach him on equal terms as friends and comrades. He was one of the most sympathetic of men, and could share in the griefs and joys of others naturally and without pretence. Pretension of all kinds was absolutely unknown to him; he loved honor and made himself worthy of it by not coveting it when it was possessed by others, and, as it were, holding himself above it and never seeking to gain it except by the most honorable means. Take him all in all, he seemed born to be a great tribune of the people. His active sympathies were all with them ; and to such a man to have sprung from honest though humble ancestors would have been honor enough.

Yet it is human nature to take an interest in coincidence of name, even if it were nothing more, and he showed that common interest which we all have in tracing out our ancestral line.

In the last weeks of his life he was greatly interested in a story published in an English magazine, and introducing as its chief characters the Greenhalghs of Brandlesome. He claimed, however, that beside that branch of Greenhalghs whose members were cavaliers and royalists, there was another branch, the members of which were Puritans and Eoundheads ; this idea suited his own preferences and habits of thought, which were far from being with the cavaliers.

EARLY LIFE IN ENGLAND. 9

Whatever interest or lack of interest Greenhalge may have felt in his ancestry, for his father he had the greatest respect and admiration. Some who knew both have said that in intellectual qualities the father was hardly surpassed by the son. He certainly had remarkable characteristics. Some of his talents his son shared but slightly. Greenhalgh senior possessed, for instance, a remarkable aptitude for the art of painting. His water-colors, though by an amateur, are good examples of the English school. The author possesses a note-book in which Greenhalgh has written down many observations regarding the mixture of colors for landscape painting, which show how much he had reflected upon this subject, and how close had been his study of nature. He was also always deeply interested in literature and books, and possessed a truly cultivated mind. His taste for literature, however, and his talent in this direction descended to his son with increased knowledge and appreciation of the best and greatest achievements of the human mind which the world of literature affords. This ornament to !his father's character was indeed splendidly worn by the son with increased lustre.

It will not be necessary to refer to all the ancestors of Greenhalge of whom anything is known. The family can be traced for six or seven generations. The link which should unite the family with that of Brandlesome seems to be lost in the person of one Eichard Assheton Greenhalge, who disappeared and cannot be traced. The grandfather of Greenhalge was Thomas Greenhalgh, who was born in Burnley, Lancashire, and was married there to Anne Dodson, of Knaseboro, Yorkshire, at the age of twenty-one. Of the seventeen children of this union ten lived to mature age, four sons and six daughters ; only two of the sons married. William Greenhalgh, the father of the Governor, was born at Clitheroe in 1810, and there married a Miss Jane Slater in 1840. They left a large family, of which Governor Greenhalge was the only son ; and he came to be the sole male representative of his family, his uncle's children having died without heirs.

William Greenhalgh, while at Clitheroe, had charge of the Primrose Print Works. Frederic Thomas Greenhalge was born at Clitheroe, July 19, 1842. Two years after the birth of his son, William Greenhalgh moved to Eshton, where he lived until the future Governor of Massachusetts was five years of age. William Greenhalgh moved again, in 1847, to Edenfield, an ideal English village, the memory of which always lingered in the mind of Greenhalge. There the most of his English life was passed, there his school days began; and loving recollections of his early home were cherished by him all his life. He always liked to refer to them ; and the simple, old-fashioned village of Edenfield remained with him in memory as a charming example of English rural life and scenery.

England is indeed a charming home ; nowhere else is country life invested with a greater charm. The race of Englishmen can never forget the beauties of their old home, whatever land they colonize. The educated American still remembers the richly cultivated vales and ancient hamlets of England as the ideal of rural beauty.

At Edenfield Greenhalgh senior and his brother Thomas became the proprietors of an engraving establishment. His literary tastes led him to form a society with other gentlemen of kindred minds for mutual enjoyment and the study of literature. It contained a number of valued friends. The Eev. Nathan Nelson, the rector of the parish, was one, — an intimate and always constant friend. Mr. John Aiken, a wealthy manufacturer, living on an estate called Iswell Vale, was another; also Mr. Hewitts, of Horncliff, another millowner ; and a Mr. Austin. These gentlemen were accustomed to meet at one another's firesides for mutual intercourse.

In the meantime the future Governor of Massachusetts attended a private school located there, and kept by a gentleman named John Ashworth. It was a large day and boarding school, and even at that early age the young scholar always stood at the head of his class. But the time came when the family were to move from their pleasant home and the village, which is still remembered with fondness. This time Greenhalgh senior and his brother removed to Manchester, where the business prospects seemed better. Yet to go from this ideal congenial life at Edenfield to the city life of Manchester was very distasteful to the father, and caused him many regrets.

EARLY LIFE IN ENGLAND. 11

While at Manchester, William Greenhalgh received a call from America to take charge of the printing department of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company of Lowell, Mass., as successor to James Prince, who had died in England. This call he accepted, and with his family sailed from England, May 16, 1855.

Here ends a brief record of Greenhalge's English ancestry and of his early life in that country. He left there at the age of twelve years, too young to have been much influenced by his surroundings. It remained for America to form his character, to mould his habits of thought, and to develop the powers of his intellect, affording him at the same time a magnificent field for their encouragement and display. He became a true American in thought and in ambition. The faint recollections of his childhood were of no effect upon his character. Henceforth he became an American among Americans. He knew no other country save the great Eepublic. An American boy, he grew up in her public schools, and differed in no way from any other American boy. He was as true an American as Napoleon was a Erenchman, who stands in history almost as a personification of France.

It is interesting, as bringing into comparison the two countries, to consider the varying fortunes that might have been his had his life been passed in England rather than in America. The opportunities that England offers to young men of brilliant gifts and political ambition, yet without influence and the advantages of birth and wealth, are comparatively small. The education that America freely gives is not so certain of attainment there, and in its higher branches becomes still more difficult to acquire. Such a career as Greenhalge's would seem almost impossible in any other land save ours. His talents might have remained undeveloped, his ambition might have been quenched or never aroused. The very atmosphere of England is less stimulating than ours, although perhaps affording a stronger support to continued effort. He would not have been surrounded with such stirring political activities. He would have been deprived of the continual object-lessons which here are before the eyes of ambition, where success is always in evidence and seems so easy, — as it were, spread like a lure before us all, like a golden and glittering spoil. Yet, supposing Greenhalge to have enjoyed the advantages that would have enabled him to enter public life with easy access in England, he possessed the talents that Englishmen admire, that take the foremost place in Parliament and are a power in the land. He possessed the genius of a great debater, and might have reached a high position in England's Parliament. It seems so to the writer. Yet his opportunities were higher. It was his destiny to join the great stream of emigration that ceaselessly sets toward the giant of the western star ; he became one of a conquering race, the splendor of whose power is doomed to overshadow that of England, as the spirit of Antony was shadowed by Caesar, —

" Weave o 'er the world your weft, yea ! weave yourselves, Imperial races, weave the warp thereof.

Swift like your shuttles speed your ships, and scoff At wind and wave, and, as a miner delves For hidden treasure bedded deep in stone, Go seek ye and find the treasure patriotism In land remote and dipped with alien chrism, And make those new lands heart dear and your own."

CHAPTEE II.

SCHOOLS AND COLLEGE CAREER.

After a voyage of five weeks, William Greenhalgh and his family landed in Boston, June 22, 1855, and immediately went to Lowell, his future home.

He settled with his family on Dutton Street, in a house belonging to the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, and immediately entered upon the duties of his position in the engraving department of that corporation. His family consisted of his wife, his son Frederic, and six daughters. Mrs. Greenhalgh was a woman of broad mind and strong character, and possessed many remarkable qualities that fitted her to be the mother of a distinguished man, and such as are most commonly found in mothers whose sons have become eminent.

The city of Lowell, which now became and remained throughout his life the home of Greenhalge and his father's family, is the largest manufacturing city in America devoted to the production of cotton cloth. The mills employ thirty or forty thousand operatives. The wisdom of its founders has been justified by the unexampled prosperity which has attended the city which owes its birth to them. The character of its operatives was singularly high in the early years of its growth, and aroused the admiration of Dickens, and other strangers who visited it in the past. The people who were employed in its corporations at their start came from the neighboring villages and farms, — the sons and daughters of New England parents. Many of them possessed literary tastes. Emigration and the changes of times have altered the character of its inhabitants and operatives; but its reputation has always continued high for thrift and industry. Strikes have been rare in Lowell ; and the city has increased in size, until it now numbers eighty or ninety thousand inhabitants, being at present the fourth city in the Commonwealth. Its situation is most beautiful, at the confluence of the Merrimac and Concord rivers, both of them naturally charming streams, and still retaining much of the wildness of nature. The suburb of Belvidere, where the residence of Greenhalge is situated, is perhaps the most beautiful portion of the city, — placed upon the high bluffs along the Merrimac Eiver, which it overlooks, and with a distant view to the west of the New Hampshire uplands, " Monadnock, and the Peterboro hills. " At the time when Greenhalge came as a boy to the city, its population numbered about forty thousand.

Soon after his arrival, young Greenhalge entered as a pupil the old North Grammar School, of which Mr. Fiske was the principal. He remained there one year, and then entered the High School with the highest rank attained by any of the pupils entering with him. He remained in the High School three years, and left it to begin his college course at Harvard University. Like most men of brilliant talents, Greenhalge, as a youth, was precocious, and his remarkable characteristics soon became evident. Mr. Chase, the principal of the High School while he was a scholar there, has declared his conviction that he was the most brilliant pupil that ever came under his instruction. Many of his fellow scholars still retain the recollection of the vivid impression which he made upon their minds, and have told of the pleasure with which they looked forward to hearing his youthful eloquence upon declamation day. He belonged to the order of men of which Sir "William Jones was a prominent type, of whom it has been recorded by one who knew him, himself a distinguished man, that had he been left naked and friendless upon a desert heath, he would have still found means to advance himself to a high position, — to that order of men to which William Pitt belonged, of whom his father, Lord Chatham, declared that it was not in the control of fate to retard the political advancement of that youth.

He belonged to that class of men because his talents were so striking, so ready, so much in evidence all the time, that they could not have been overlooked or neglected. In fact, they were fully appreciated by those who knew him in school or college. This readiness and early display of talent may not always be characteristic of the most profound minds ; but it is often found associated with the genius of successful men, of men of action, whose fitting sphere is the world of politics and party. There was also in the character of Greenhalge, in youth as in manhood, a vein of poetic sensibility and a slight tinge of melancholy. We can trace the source of this in both his parents. His mother was a woman of strong character, courage, and fortitude, and very fond of poetry and music. His father was an artist of no mean talent. His mother was cheerful ; but his father was not devoid of a strain of thoughtful melancholy, and he transmitted something of it to his son. This is often true of those who possess an artistic and sensitive temperament. In fact, the future Governor was always an artist at the base of his character, — an artist in disposition, in thought and training; using not the art of painting, nor often that of verse, but the art of speaking, — par excellence, a master of vivid, forceful, and eloquent speech.

We shall find this talent of his very evident as we follow his school career; it is a talent he shared in common with many American youths, though few in after life have developed it as he did until he became an accomplished orator at the bar, in Congress, and on the platform.