Life and military career of Winfield Scott Hancock

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Prologue

I MAKE no apology for this book. It has already had the double advertisement of praise from friends and abuse from foes, and if that does not secure it a fair clientage, no explanation of mine will. My chief motive is to help once more to put an American into the Presidency who will honestly lead the American people away from quarrels into comradeship and confidence. Such a man is the soldier Hancock.

Believe me, I have no other aspiration in writing his life. I do not want any of his offices. Never having been a candidate before any administration of the general government for place, I have simply, in order to maintain my independence, resigned most valuable positions voluntarily tendered to me Joy other Presidents. I can safely make this statement ; and as for money, I have never learned to steal it from the Grovemment, though I dearly love to earn a &ir living by honest industry in my own chosen profession.

The little organs and placemen of a party just ushered into being one year after I myself co-operated with it to put down human slavery, are now as much disturbed by my refusal to follow that party into the very sectionalism I have always despised, and are as angry as so many disturbed mice in a rich cheese because they say that I have left the ring Republicans. As I never belonged to these rings, I cannot therefore be accused of leaving them. In one thing I am consistent at least, and that is in sincere love of my

J

PROLOGUE, country; and I will join any side or drop any side, if by so doing I can get the American people to be good to each other, to be grateful to those who have served them, to put the best men into office, to help our youth to be honest and manly, and have pluck enough to drive out of positions of trust a set of mercenaries as utterly disqualified for public responsibility as any men that ever lived. I think it is high time for our country to realize that the parrot politicians, running up and down the land, shrieking Republicanism and abusing honest people because they will not bow to such temporary £Eintococcini,* are mere impostors, and no more genuine in their professions than a set of play actors trying to show thai they are real kings, when they are simply paste, spangles and feathers.

G^eral Hancock seems to me to be the constable to clear out these intruders. At all events, let us give the bold soldier a full chance. I believe in him thoroughly, and have always believed in him. I knew him as boy and man, in peace and war, and his other's associates in Montgomery County were the friends of my youth. I do not condemn him because he was bom in my State, for I have a Scotchman's love of home ; and I would not shoot him because he continues a Democrat, when I know that without Democrats we should have been beaten in the civil war.

This is the general scope of the volume now committed to the public. It has been quick work ; and when J recollect that one distinguished American has been toiling nearly twenty years on. the life of Voltaire, that another started on the biography of General Grant twelve years ago, and has only printed one volume, and that another ten years ago advertised an elaborate memoir of Thaddeus Stevens, and has not yet issued a single page of it ; if this campaign life of Winfield S. Hancook, the Democratic candidate for President of the United States, is a little defective, I cannot be

blamed. Very sincerely,

J. W. Forney.

*Fantococcini. Exhibitions and dramatic representations, in which puppets are substituted for human performers. — Wcreeaier,

First Senator. Ton must away to-night

OiheOo. With all my heart The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed^of down. I do agnize A natural and prompt alacrity I find in hardness ; and do undertake These present wars against the Ottomites.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAOB

Frontispiece— Winfield Scott Hancock.

Maternal Home 19

Ancestral Home • 23

Bead between Torktown and Williamsburg 67

Malvern Hills 75

Defenses on Gulp's Hill 79

Ruins of Chancellorsville 79

Antietam Battle-Ground 87

General George 6. Meade 97

General Robert E. Lee .' 97

Gettysburg '. 115

Battle-Field of the Seven Pines 319

Battleof Seven Pines and Fair Oaks 319

Hospital at Fair Oaks 323

Bridge over the Chickahominy 323

Phillips' House on Fire 333

Fredericksburg on the morning of the 12th 333

Battle of Fredericksburg 345

Waiting for Tickets of Admission tb National Convention. 367

Battle-field of Antietam 419

General Hancock receiving Congratulations at Head- Quarters 425

Official Notification 431

Chapter I. Biography

HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH ^ HIS NATIVE COUNTY — THE MUHLENBEBGS — MADE A CADET AT T&E MILITABY ACADEMY— IB MADE LIEUTENANT IN THE ABMY— APTEB THE MEXICAN WAB HE IS OBDEBED TO CAXI- FOBNIA — HIS FIBM SPEECH FOB THE UNION — BETX7BN8 TO WASHINGTON AND ENTEBS THE ABMY AGAINST THE CONFEDEBATEB — MEETS MB. LINCOLN — TO A WAVE.

17-57

Chapter II. The War

HOW THE SOUTH BUFFEBED FOB AN IDEA — HANCOCK WAS SUPEBB THAT DAY— HANCOCK's AFFEABANCE IN BAT- TLS'FBEFABATIONS FOB THE DEATH GBAFPLE ....

58-86

CHAPTER III. HANCOCK 8 aENIU8 FOR 8EIZING THE OPPORTUNITY

Loerr ofpobtunity of the lost cause — battle of

OETTTSBUBO — DEATH OF GEN. BEYNOLDS— HANCOCK'S OWN 8T0BY OF GETTT8BUBO BEFOBE THE COMMITTEE ON THE CONDUCT OF THE WAB— CONFEDEBATE ACCOUNT. 89-128

U

12 CONTENTS.

Chapter IV Cemetery Hill. *

HWTOBIC JUDGMENT UPON HANCOCK AND OETTY8BUBQ — HANCOCK TO THE RESCUE— SOUTHERN VIEW OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG — LETTER FROM A UNION OFFI- CER OF A MARYLAND REGIMENT DESCRIBING MEADE, HANCOCK AND SLOCUM — THE GENERAL AT HIS HOME IN 1863— HANCOCK IN PHILADELPHLA. AFTER THE BAT- TLE—THE CIVIC CELEBRATION — A PATRIOTIC COINCI- DENCE— EDWIN FORREST ON GRANT AND HANCOCK — THE IDIOT BOY 129-160

Chapter V. Edward Everett And Abraham Lincoln

PLEADING FOR RECONCILIATION WITH THE SOUTH ON THE BATTLE-FIELD OF GETTYSBURG SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO — ^EVERETT'S ORATION— HANCOCK CARRIES THE FLAG OF RE-UNION — ORDERED TO WASHINGTON — THE GENE- RAL'S RECEPTION AT INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADEL- PHIA—REFLECTIONS ON THE BATTLE-FIELD OF GET- TYSBURG— DR. DRAPER SHOWS HOW GETTYSBURG SAVED THE COUNTRY TO FREEDOM — WATERLOO AND GETTYSBX7RG 161-198

CHAPTER VI. V IN THE CAMPAIGN WITH GRAl^

GRAPHIC PICTURE OF THE BATTLES OF THE WILDERNESS — * CURIOUS INCIDENT — GEN. HANCOCK's HEADQUARTERS

ESTABLISHED AT WASHINGTON 199-219

Chapter VII. Can A Great Soldier Be A Good Ruler?

DOES HANCOCK POSSESS GIFTS OF ADMINISTRATION ?— GEN. HANCOCK AT GOVERNOR'S ISLAND IN 1880— GENERAL HANCOCK AS A MILITARY GOVERNOR IN TIME OF PEACE —GENERAL HANCOCK*S CELEBRATED LETTER TO CK>VEa- KOR PEASE OF TEXAS— IS HE HONEST? 220-261

CONTENTSf. 18

CHAPTER VIII. A; WORD TO LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS REPUBLICaAs

HANCOCK AND THS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF THE NORTH — THE REPUBLICANS OF THE SOUTH — THE OREELET REPUBIJCAN8 OF 1872 — THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STTATEB — THE EDUCATION OF THE WAR, AND THE BENEVOLENCE OF PEACE — OEOROE WASHINGTON AND THE RKBKIi^ OF PENNSYLVANIA — PRESIDENT LIN- COLN, ROGER A. PRYOR, AND GEN. HANCOCK 262-286

Chapter IX. The Conquered Confederates

THE CLOSE OF THE WAR IN THE SOUTHWEST — NATIONAL UNION FOR THE PEACE AND PROSPERITY OF THE NATION, AND FOR AN ENDLESS POSTERITY— PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE SOUTH —CONCILIATION IS VICTORY, AND ALL SUBSTANTIAL INTEREBTB ARE FOR CONCILIATION — THE CLERGY AND CONCILIATION — THE BALLOT AND THE PARDON— FIFTY YEARS OF HISTORY TEACHING BY EXAMPLE — THE DOCTRINE OF TRUE NATIONALITY 286-313

CHAPTER X. • INCIDENTS AND ANECDOTES OF A GREAT SOLDIER's

CAREER.

GEN. HANCOCK'S CONSIDERATION FOR THE HONOR OF HIS OFFICERS — THE WOUND RECEIVED BY GEN. HANCOCK AT GETTYSBURG, AND ITS EFFECTS— GEN. HANCOCK AT THE BATTLE OF " WHITE OAK SWAMP " — COL. H. BOYD M'KEEN, 81sT PENNSYLVANIA VOLUNTEERS^-COL. ED- WARD £. CROSS, 5th N. H. VOUB. — GEN. HEADERS ESTI- MATE OF GEN. HANCOCK — FAREWELL TO HANCOCK — FAREWELL TO MAJOR-GENERAL HANCOCK— <nT A RLltfs CHOICE OF HORSBB — THE N. C LIZARD— GEN. ALEX. HAYS OF PITTgBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, AT THE BATTLE OF OVITYSBUBO — GIN. HANCOCK AT GETTYSBURG —

14 CONTENTS.

AKBGDOTE OF OXN. HANCOCK — GEN. HANCOCK AT THE BATTLE OF CHSBUBT78CO — HOBSE gHOT UNDER HIH AT CHANCELLOBSVIIiLE — AflBAULT ON ICABTE's HEIGHTS, DEC. 13, 1862 — THE BATTUE OF WHJJAMSBUBO IN 1862 — OOOrO UP TO CHANCELLOBSVILLE— AT FREDEBICK8-

Chapter XI

MBS. SUBBATT.

GZN. HANCOCK'S FOSITIOV— THE REBFONSIBILITT^CHABOEB DENIED — THE HABEAS C0BFU8— THE APPLICATION FOB PABDON— OEN. HANCOCK NOT BESPONSIBLE— DICTATES OFPABTY 352-36^

DOUOHEBTT'S OBEAT SPEECH NOMINATINO HANCOCK — OBATION OF MAJOB DANIEL — THE LETTEB8 OF ACCEPT- ANCE— OEN. Hancock's letteb — letteb of acceptance OF HON. WM. H. ENOLISH*<}EN. HANCOCK FOUR TEABS AGO — ^HIS LETTEBS TO GEN. SHEBICAN ON THE PBEBDOENTIAL COMPLICATION OF 1876 — HANCOCK'S REVERENCE OF CIVIL LAW 366-40^

CHAPTER Xni.

THE LIVINa STATESMEN OP THE PAST.

OKN. GABFIEUyS PBTVATE CHARACTER — GEN. HANCOCK AS A dVXL MAGISTRATE — GEN. HANCOCK AT WASHINGTON

nr 1867— GEN. hancock at antietam— a false mao-

NANDflTT — R06BCRAN8 ON HANCOCK— GEN. HANCOCK RBCETVINO THE NEWS OF HIS NOMINATION — HANCOCK AND ENGLISH FORMALLY NOTIFIED OF THEIR NOMINA- TlOir— NEARLY THREE MILLION SOLDIERS — NUMBER FURNISHED BY EACH STATE AND TEBRITORY DURING CHE WAR—SBOOND ARMY CORPS— MILITARY RECORD OF OKN. HANCOCK 405-4i<

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE.

MB8. MUtTHA WAflHIirOTOK — MBS. JOHN ADAICB — KB8. THOMAS JEFFKB80N — MBS. J AMIS MADISON — MBS. JAMBS MOKBOB — MBS. JOHN qUINCT ADAMS— MBS. AN- DBEW JACKSON — MBS. MABTIN VAN BUBEN — MBS. Wllr LIAM HBNBY HABBI80N— MBS. JOHN TTXKB — MBS. JAS. K. POLK — MBS. ZACHABT TATLOB — ^MBS. MnJiABD FILL- MOBB — MBS. FBANKUN PIXBCX— MESS HABBIXT LANE — MBS. MABT TODD LINCOLN— MBS. ANDBXW JOHNSON — MBS. ULTSBXS S. OBANT— MBS* BT7THEBT0BD B. HATBB 447-479

CHAPTER XV.

HON. WM. H. ENGLISH.

ANCEBTBY — A MODEL BTTSINEBS MAN— A LOYEB OF BOO]

A OONSItnrKNT DEMOCBAT — IN FAYOB OF ALLOWING THE FEOFLE TO YOTE ON BLAYXBY — THE CANDIDATES CON-

483^96

CHAPTER XVI.

Conclusion

OF HALF A CENTUBY 487-^02

WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK.

Chapter I. Biography

HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

THERE are some maxims that grow more precious with age because they seem to apply more forcibly every day to the ordinary transactions of life. One of these is that of the ancient philosopher who declared that most history was false except in its dates and names^ and that much fiction was true except in its dates and names. The life of Winfield Scott Hancock is an experience that sometimes reads like romance and reality combined. It is a succession of lessons to young and to old, and we can read none of it without feeling that Hancock was raised among good people and by careful parents, who had instilled their own domestic methods into his early training. The impression his experience makes upon me revives another saying of the great Roman 2 17 freedman^ Terence, who, more than two thousand years ago, wrote, *' I am a man and have an interest in everything that concerns humanity."

The ancestral homestead of General Hancock, on the maternal side, stands in Montgomery Co., Pa., half a mile east of Lansdale and about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia. The old portion of the house was erected in 1728, and the new portion in 1764. In this house the mother of Greneral Hancock resided at the time of her marriage to the General's father. The county in which this historic homestead stands was named after General Montgomery, who fell at Quebec, and whose monument stands in St. Paul's Churchyard, New York. At the time of his marriage, Mr. Benjamin Franklin Hancock — father of General Hancock — was living in what was afterwards the birth-place of General Hancock, some three miles east of Lansdale. It stands about half a mile east of the Square, and it is a solid, well-preserved building, of fine appearance.

When young Hancock was a year old, his father removed from this old mansion to a liouse of less pretensions, somewhat nearer to Montgomery Square, where he resided and taught school under the same roof. The school-house residence is still standing, but greatly altered in appearance. Two years later, young Hancock's father removed to Norristown, and there taught school and practiced law till he died, at tl^e age of sixty-seven years.

The ancestors of General Hancock, on both sides, belonged to families of revolutionary fame, and were engaged in all the wars, from the French and Indian, before the Revolution, down to the war of 1812.

The father of General Hancock married against the will of his guardian, who was a Quaker, and joined the Baptists, to whom his wife belonged, and became a deacon in the Baptist church at Norristown. He was a constitutional man and a Democrat, but not a politician, and never sought or held any political oflSce. When his son, the present Greneral Hancock, at the age of sixteen, wtent to West Point, the Quakers attempted to induce the sister of his father's guardian, Miss Polly Roberts, to cut off yoimg Winfield in her will, as the profession of a soldier, educated as a man of war, was not to be encouraged. She remained steadfast, however, until General Hancock had graduated and gone to Mexico and become engaged with the enemy, and, as she supposed, had "killed people." Then the "Friends" said it was impossible she could bestow a legacy upon a person who was killing men by wholesale, and this prevailed. Winfield was cut off in the will. But, as she suspected that the "Friends'' wanted her money, she provided for the younger brother in place of Winfield.

In this old homestead his grandfather died, at 84, and was buried in the churchyard at Mont-

22 LIFE AND FUBLIC CAREER OF

gomery Square, and his fetlier before him died in the same house. This very house was attacked by Indians and bravely defended by the women.

Natui:^ cast Hancock in a mould of rare come-' liness. He seems to have been physically fashioned for a soldier. Now in his fifty-seventh year (bom February 14, 1824) he stands six feet two inches, nearly as tall and as broad as the gigantic hero of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, Winfield Scott, after whom he was named; and he resembles in speech and bearing that impressive and courtly soldier, who died at West Point, where Hancock was educated, on the 29th day of May, 1866, in the eightieth year of his age. Doubtless Hancock's father and mother, Benjamin Franklin and Elizabeth Hancock, were largely influenced by the fascinating incidents of the brilliant hero, who waa still sufiering from the wounds he had received in repelling the second British invasion of our northern frontier — then bearing the golden honors of Congress, after declining the generous proffers of high political office from the administration of President Monroe. All unconscious of the future military renown of their son, they called him Winfield Scott. His twin brother, Hillary Hancock, a member of the Minnesota Bar, is living much respected in the beautiful city of Minneapolis, Minnesota; his youngest brother, John Hancock, who was also in the army of the Potomac with the General, is now living in Washington City, D. C, an oflBcer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. These three boys were the only children.

The father, Benjamin F. Hancock, a respected member of the bar, died at Norristown, in hii^ sixty-eighth year, on the first of February, 1867, and his mother, at an advanced age, died in the same town, two years ago. They were always worthy members of the Baptist churches of Norristown and Bridgeport.

The rapid growth of our country is one of the strongest arguments in favor of republican institutions, and the essential changes of government at difierent periods, not only diflfuse oflBcial prizes among the masses, but also make them better acquainted with each other. Peculiar exigencies alone, maintained one party in power, consecutively, for more than a quarter of a century. Alternation in administration, and not mere rotation in ofRce, is the salt that savors and saves at once. The distribution of public trusts among the people, not the wretched plan of removing subordinates at the command of every machine despot, is afler all the highest conservatism. West Point and the Naval School are the real colleges of free government. Their acolytes come from all ranks of society, and from all parties and sections; and while they are thoroughly educated, the course of instruction stimulates gentility, emulation, and manly comradeship; and above all, pride of country. The modem magicians, steam and electricity, add to this individual and general knowledge; and at the end of every decade the citizens have a better knowledge of each other, as well as of the vicinities in which they were respectively bom and lived. A boy raised in one place, trained to duty in the army and the navy at another, sent abroad by government into distant sections and seas, becomes, not simply a student of men and manners, but a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world.

General Hancock was one of the cadets, who have made their native places as renowned as themselves, and there are many who would like to know something of his birthplace, as they study the interesting story of his life. Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, so called after General Bichard Montgomery, the Irish-American General, killed at Queenstown, in 1775, only nine years before that county was taken from the larger district of Philadelphia, is one of many places that preserve the memory of that true-hearted martyr of the cause of human liberty. More than any other people, ours cultivate the habit of calling their sons, their shires, their towns, their counties and their states, after the great men who have figured conspicuously in science, literature, and arms. So that while the subject of our sketch bears the proud name of one of the greatest soldiers of the second generation of our civil existence, the district in which he first saw the light of life, bears that of another eminent hero of the generation which began two years after the Declaration of Independence. I count over sixty Montgomerys in the maps and gazeteers, North and South, to designate towns, villages, counties, and states in this country, a fact which proves that gratitude for bravery is indigenous in the American heart, and springs eternal in the American bosom.

HIS NATIVE COUNTY.

Montgomery County, where Hancock was bom, is one of the loveliest in the State. Nothing could be sweeter in spring and summer, and bolder and more picturesque in winter, than the valley of the Schuylkill river. That useful and historic stream forms the south-western boundary ; for some distance passing through broad cultivated fields, with substantial stone houses and villas : here and there an elegant country-seat; then sweeps past bold bluflfs of rock, almost denying a passage to the railroad, and then rushes by bright and busy manufacturing towns; its own waters helping to drive the machinery. There are other streams applied to other ' practical purposes. The mineral wealth, limestone, and marble, supply valuable material to the markets of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Iron ore is mined in large quantities; copper in limited amount, has been found in one part of the county, while its agriculture and mtoufactaring resources add to the power of the county. The cash value of the land is estimated at over fiftyone millions of dollars^ and the farm products in one year, are estimated to be worth about ten millions, while its many woolen, cotton, and iron mills are famous all over the country. The able editor of the Norristaam Herald^ my friend, Morgan R. Wills, Esq., has printed an excellent picture of the history and resources of this interesting region.

Hancock's native county is rich in Revolutionary memories and materials — ^in facts and legends: it is sacred ground— r Valley Fprge, a spot made memorable by the great encampment of Washington's army, in 1777, where they suffered incredible horrors during that terrible winter, is only six miles from Norristown, where Hancock was bom. In that gloomy crisis in our American affairs, Washington himself wrote: "There was little less than a famine in camp. Part of the army had been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days ; yet naked and starving a. they were, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they had not ere this been excited to mutiny and dissension." Within a few years Valley Forge has become the property of the people, purchased, furnished and decorated by the leading citizens of Pennsylvania.

What is now Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, was originally settled by Welsh and Swedes, and in the upper part by Germans. Subsequently came the Quakers, the Welsh and Swedes, and now their descendants are found all over the district, which is itself composed of eleven boroughs, thirty townships, fifty-four election districts, with a population of about ninety thousand souls.

When I think of the men of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, they seem to pass before the mirror of my memory like the familiars of my youth. I knew many of them, including the descendants of the old families, just as to-day I can mentally hold converse with the leading minds of both parties in all the States and Territories of this Great Republican Empire. I hold in my hand an admirable book just out, prepared and edited by a citizen of Norristown, M. Auge, " Lives of the Eminent Dead and Biographical Notices of Prominent Living Citizens of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania," and with this for my torch and teacher I light up the past and linger upon the present with all the pleasure of the spectator pondering in a great picture gallery. These were the men who went before and walked at the side of General Hancock's ancestors. Every county has its own record, and such is the fortunate condition of our people under republican institutions, aided by scientific discoveries and modern inventions and a thousand adaptabilities, the results of our admirable system of universal education, that the tV^.

record of one county has become interesting to all others; and he who reads the annals of a northern or southern state or district, frequently recognizes unforgotten names and events. Here we have David R. Porter and Francis R. Shunk^ Democratic Governors of Pennsylvania from 1838 to 1841 and from 1844 to 1848, both natives of Montgomery County. Here I find excellent sketches of Jonathan Roberts, John B. Sterigere, Jacob S. Yost, Benjamin Markley Boyer, Joshua Evans, Cadwalader Evans, Joseph Fornance, Jacob Fry, Jr., James Boyd, George Bullock, Peter F. Rothermel, J. F. Hartranft, the Corson families, the Woods families, Samuel Allen, David Crouse, Owen Jones, Charles Cutler, Daniel 0. Hitner, E. F. Acker and John Friedley; a long catalogue of men, most of them dead, some living, members of all professions, every one of them known beyond the borders of Pennsylvania as men of mark in their day and time. The great picture of the Battle of Gettysburg, now at Memorial Hall, opposite the Permanent Exhibition Building, Fairmount *Park, Philadelphia, was painted by the Rothermel, whose name I have just written.

But it is not only in art and arms, in the learning of the Bar, in the inspiration of the Pulpit, and in the great historic deeds of the past that this single county of Pennsylvania is rich. There are manufacturing centres where skilled labor has won some of its proudest triumphs. Conshohocken, the great iron manufacturing centre, a few years ago a comparative village, now with a population of six thousand, with an annual product of from three to four millions of dollars — this and other great centres show how rapidly, in connection with mental development, . the material growth of a great county increases' with years. Montgomery County was also the home and ahnost the birthplace of David Rittenhouse, the astronomer and philosopher; where Charles Thompson, the great secretary of the first revolutionary congress, had his residence — in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County — and where he died in 1824, in the ninety-seventh year of his age. Here too lived Eichard Penn Smith, well beloved and remembered in Philadelphia and elsewhere for his genius and genial nature.

THE MUHLENBERGS.

But no names awaken a deeper and more permanent interest than the Muhlenbergs. How often I have dwelt upon the interesting and attractive story of these wonderful men ! — ^these fighting priests, profound scholars, and natural leaders. Long ago, in my youthful days, these romantic lives came to me, as fascinating as the absorbing* pages of Robinson Crusoe or the Arabian Nights, or Riley's Narratives among the Arabs, or the pious legend of John Bunyan. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the founder of the family, was a

.rk -iJ

Gottingen student, born in Hanover, Germany, who landed in this country in 1742, and founded a Lutheran Congregation at Trappe and New Hanover, Montgomery County, marrying the daughter of Conrad Weiser, the celebrated Indian interpreter. And here were born to him the three noted children, Peter, Frederick Augustus and Henry Ernest, all distinguished clergymen. One of his daughters was the mother of Governor John Andrew Schultz. His sons born at Trappe were educated in Germany. They were a wild set, these early Muhlenbergs, brave, original, imperious, all of fhem Democrats, fighting and preaching for patriotic ideas when they were young and defending them when they were old. Peter, preacher as he was, had a congregation at Woodstock, Shenandoah County, Va. In January, 1776, he .pronounced a sermon on the "duties men owe to their country.'* He preached, adding "There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to fight, and now is the time to fight." Then he descended from the pulpit and took oflf his gown, which covered a colonel's uniform, read his commission, ordered the drummers to beat for recruits, and within a few days recruited three hundred men from his own churches, enlisted for the revolutionary war. It was not long until he had a full regiment mustered into the service. He fought in Georgia and South Carolina, at the battles of Brandywine and G^rmantown, at Valley Forge, in the battle of Monmouth and at the capture of Stony Point. He was at the taking of Yorktown in 1781. Then he came back, not to the church but to the Trappe in Montgomery County. He was chosen as a member of Congress, member of the State Legislature, serving several years in each, and was finally United States Senator. In 1803 he was Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, made so by Thomas Jefferson, which he held until 1807, when he died at the age of sixty -two. The -4i«- nyray the Democratic organ of Philadelphia, said '*In private life just, in domestic life affectionate and sincere, his body lies beside his father's at the Trappe Church." It is this great man's statue that Pennsylvania, by Act of Congress, has selected to place in the Hall of the Old Representatives at Washington, side by side with that of Robert Fulton, the great engineer and inventor, born in Lancaster County, very near Montgomery — the sculptor of Muhlenberg being Blanche Nevin of Philadelphia, and that of Fulton being Edward Roberts of the same city.

The second son, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, was not less brilliant and distinguished than Peter. Educated at the University of Halle^ Germany, he returned, and established a church in New York, but soon entered politics, also returning to Trappe, Montgomery county. He was in the State Assembly in 1779, one of the Judges of the pounty, then Register and Recorder, then

Kepresentative in Congress, and aflei-wards tlie great Speaker of the House of Bepresentatives of the United States.

The other brother, the Rev. Henry Ernest Muhlenberg, was bom in "Trappe, Montgomery county, November, 1753. He was ordained, and acted as assistant pastor of a Lutheran church of Philadelphia, — and a patriot, a man of science, a linguist. He removed to Lancaster, where he remained at the head of a Lutheran church for thirty-five years. The third generation of Muhlenbergs I knew and honored: Henry .A. Muhlenberg of Beading, Dr. Frederick Augustus of Lancaster, and the eminent scholar of the same name, one of the professors in the University of Pennsylvania, — the first two gone, the last surviving,— filled high positions in public, and have always been eminent for their virtues.

MADE A CADET AT THE MILITARY ACADEMY.

It was among such scenes and men, many of the latter known to himself, and those not known to him, frequently spoken of by his father, that young Hancock approached manhood. A proud father and fond mother saw their three boys growing in grace and strength. In 1840, Winfield was just sixteen years old. It is not flattery to say that he was a handsome boy, if you may judge by the picturesque soldier now before the country, as the candidate of the great party, wnrriELD scott hanoock. 85

fiir the highest gift of over forty-eight millions of people. The member of Congress from the district^ in that year, was Joseph Fornance, a Democrat like Hancock's father, who had, at that time, considerable influence in Washington. A mild, yet conscientious lawyer, he wielded a large influence in society and at the bar. It fell to his lot, under the law of the government, to select a cadet to West Point. For some years Winfield had become quite a soldier boy among his school-fellows. He was a lad of spirit and natural elegance of manner, vigilant at Sunday-school, (his father was a Sunday-school teacher,) and a leader among his mates. His parents were sincere Christians ; morning and evening they had their family prayers. Winfield acquired a sort of chivalry, and more than once assumed the championship of weaker and younger boys. The lads of the village organized a volunteer " soldier company," and Winfield was unanimously elected captain, when he was only twelve years old, and to this date it is remembered in Norristown, how well the drills, parades, inspections, reviews, battles, and camps of these little men were conducted under the command of their graceful boyish chief. He had learned at home that obedience was not only a virtue, but a duty. He, and his brother Hillary, worshipped their mother. I wish I could say that the influence of home in these latter days is as controlling as it was fifty so LIFE AND PUBLIC CAREER OF