The life of John Worth Kern, by Claude G. Bowers

Front matter

'-fAd*

LI i

John Worth Kern — 1913

Introduction

Vice-President's Chamber,

Washington, D. C.

BECAUSE carping Pilot asked "What is truth" and did not stay for an answer, the world has thought that question to be the one unsolved riddle. Yet there are many other attributes to which answers have been given that are almost, if not altogether, as great riddles.

What constitutes greatness has received as many answers as there have been men to express them. It all depends upon the mental process of a man as to whether his fellow man has attained unto greatness. The paladin of finance would consider it a joke to be told that an Egyptologist was a great man; the doer of deeds can never think of greatness as an attribute to the dreamer of dreams; and thus it is that the estimate by one man of another will only pass current with those of like mind.

For me, it has been needful that brain and heart should work in unison in the life of a man in order to render his story worthy of being embalmed in a biography. Mere intellect is not sufficient; mere emotion unsatisfactory. For thirty years I knew all about and I also knew John Worth Kern. Heaven molded him with a clear and analytic mind — a mind viii Introduction

capable of grasping and elucidating the great problems of state — and then Heaven further endowed him with a tender and loving heart, so that much as he believed in the principles for which he stood and the faith which he avowed, he had that large-hearted and generous judgment of his fellow men which mark, to my mind, true greatness.

It is the measure of a little man to be cocksure, to be eternally and everlastingly right, to be quite certain that Jehovah gave into his hands all knowledge, all goodness and all power. It is the measure of a really great man to walk with certainty and yet to walk humbly in his public life, granting to other men the right to think, to speak, to act freely.

This was the grade of man John Worth Kern was. He showed it in his brilliant services at the bar, in his forceful presentation of his party's principles on the stump and in that kindly, loveable leadership which, when he left the Senate of the United States, made it the supreme desire of political friend and foe alike to do something for him as the shadows of night began to gather around his head. To my mind he was one of Indiana's great and illustrious citizens whose life, when read by the schoolboy of to-day, will help to sweeten, glorify and adorn the public service of to-morrow.

It were impious here to speak of his beautiful home life. He was great in the counsels of his party

Introduction ix

but in his home he transcended the common mortal and became a demigod of love and good will. The Indianian will know him and love him even more, if possible, when this biography is read and it is remembered that it is the free-will offering of a man who saw our dear, dead statesman and citizen in his hours of exultation, in his moments of depression, when his soul was bare to the inspection of a man who knew when he saw what he saw.

Thomas R. Marshall.

Contents

I — Childhood and Early Youth

The wilderness physician — Alto — Birth of Kern — Playing doctor — Life in Iowa — The partisan of 1860 — Kokomo Academy — The equestrian orator — The pedagogue — Alto society — A temperance speech — The actor in "The Demon of the Glass" — The boy orator — Ann Arbor days — Letters to Morrow — Visit to Canada — The slate-maker of 1868 — Views on Indiana politics — Hears Gough, Philips and Whipple — Work in the Douglas Society — His reconstruction views — Hears Zack Chandler — His thesis — Graduation — Taken for a maniac.

II — Kokomo Days — Lawyer and Citizen . . . 27

CHAPTER I Childhood and Early Youth I

IN the forties the constant stream of sturdy pioneers pouring into Indiana from the eastern and southern states began the work of redeeming the state from the wilderness. These early settlers were a hardy folk, adventurous, inured to toil, and strong of character. In 1840 the first white man settled in Harrison township in Howard county, albeit the locality had been a paradise for trappers for several years before a permanent settlement was made. It vvas a country of rich soil, but heavily wooded with primeval forests, and many years of assiduous labor were to intervene before the stumps could be cleared from the fields or the highways be made at all passable in bad weather. Almost immediately after the first white man established a permanent home in the township a water mill was built, and about it a settlement sprang up which took the name of Alto. Soon the village boasted — and the word is used advisedly — three stores, three cabinet shops, a blacksmith shop, a boot and shoe shop, and during the first two years of its existence it did as much business as Kokomo, a few miles distant. Here was constructed the first church in the township, a large one built of logs, which was to serve as a place of worship for many years. And in the middle of the first decade of the existence of this settlement in the wilderness Dr. Jacob Harrison Kern moved to the village, built a home and opened an office.

Doctor Kern's great grandfather, Adam Kern, had emigrated from Germany about the middle of the eighteenth century, with ten children, seven of whom were boys, and settled in Frederick county, Virginia. One of his sons, the grandfather of Doctor Kern, had made his home at Kernstown, Virginia, about four miles south of Winchester, where six sons were born, the eldest, Nicholas, and the father of the future medical adviser of Alto, having first looked out upon the world on the third anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and in the midst of the revolutionary war. He was the father of ten children, the sixth of whom, born in December, 1813, was christened Jacob Harrison. In 1838 Dr. Kern, accompanied by three of his brothers, moved to Shelby county, Indiana, bringing with them an old negro woman known as "Aunt Giny," whom they set free. A little later the doctor, who appears to have been a victim of the wanderlust after leaving his Virginia home until his ultimate return, moved to Warren county, Ohio, where he began the practice of medicine. Here he met and married a Nancy Ligget, who is remembered by her daughter as "a comely woman, tall, rather slender and with black hair and eyes." Here the first child, Sally, was born in 1845, and soon after this event the little family moved to Alto.

Doctor Kern was a rather stern, grimly serious man, of exceptional professional capacity, and strong, mentality, and his reputation as a physician spread through the surrounding country, resulting in an extensive practice for miles about. He was what is popularly known as a "strong character," possessed of little of the sense of humor with which his more celebrated son was so abundantly gifted. Asked for a description or characterization of him, the few, now living, who remember him almost invariably hesitate and begin with the comment, "Well, it is rather difficult to describe him. He was an unusual man — different from most men. He had a fine mind and a fine character." His son remembered him with an affection in which admiration predominated. He was cast in the Puritanic mould, abhorring indolence and vice, preaching and practicing frugality and toil.

At the edge of the village he built a home which was considered a pretentious structure for the time and place, although it consisted of but two rooms. The fact that instead of being a rough log hut it was weatherboarded and had "two front doors" was enough to stamp it in the wilderness as the abode of the patrician of the community.

Here on December 20, 1849, just nine years after ^ the first white man settled in the township, John Worth Kern was born.

II

The first five years of his life were spent in the house with the "two front doors" and differed in no wise from the early childhood of the other children of the wilderness community except that he had more of the comforts than fell to the lot of many others. The only picture of the future senator of that period that is preserved is in the memory of the venerable sister — a picture of the boy in his favorite amusement, sitting astride an old discarded saddle on a carpenter horse with a pair of saddle bags filled with powders and bottles, going to visit an imaginary patient, and solemnly giving instructions to "give him one powder every hour till Monday, and if he 'plains of it give it to him agin."

In 1854 Doctor Kern moved with his family to Warren county, Iowa, where the next nine years were spent near Indianola in pleasant surroundings, with congenial neighbors, and in the midst of plenty. Here we get our first glimpse of the future partisan in an incident connected with the Lincoln-Douglas campaign of i860. From his earliest boyhood he knew he was a Democrat and he took no pains to conceal the fact. During the dramatic campaign of i860 he frequently drove to Indianola with a load of wood, and on these expeditions he attracted attention by his vociferous yelling for Douglas. On going to town after the election, he was accosted by a friend of his father's with the query as to how he felt over the result.

"Like Lazarus," snapped the eleven-year-old partisan.

"Why, how is that?" he was asked.

"Like I'd been licked by the dogs," was the quick retort.

After the death of Mrs. Kern the doctor soon lost his taste for far western life and in 1865 he returned with his two children to Alto, which was to remain the home of the family until after the only son commenced his professional career.

At the time young John returned to the house of his nativity, a tall, lightly built youth of fifteen, he immediately was accorded a position of leadership among the boys and girls of his own age. The social activities of the community were of a simple nature and revolved about the church. The young people met at the Sunday school services in the old log Methodist church, and at the Cobb church a mile distant from the village, for gossip and flirtations, and it was in connection with the Sunday school that the future statesman first attracted attention to his precocious ability. I am indebted to Mr. Jackson Morrow, a life-long friend, for a description of this event. "John was then an active member of the Alto Methodist Sunday school," he writes. "In that day the annual Sunday school celebration was the great social event of the community. In the community were numerous country churches and each maintaining its Sunday school. It was during the summer of 1865 that there was held in a beautiful grove adjoining Alto a celebration of rather more than ordinary merit. It was an all-day afifair. The forenoon was devoted to singing by the various schools in attendance and an address by a local celebrity. Then followed the picnic dinner — a sumptuous afifair requiring an hour and a half for its disposal. The afternoon was largely given over to recitations and the reading of original papers by selected members of the several schools. John Kern represented the Alto school with a paper. His theme was Temperance. He attacked the saloon and drunkenness in a vigorous manner. It was really an able paper and read in his clear, incisive and earnest manner captured the large audience. From every quarter the comment was heard that if a mere boy could make such an address much could be expected of him when he became a man. The paper was singled out for publication in the county paper."

About this time he entered the Old Kokomo Normal, an educational institution much superior to most of the Indiana schools of that period. The building, a commodious one, had been erected several years before by the people of Kokomo and the surrounding country with the view to giving their children the advantage of training in the elements of higher learning and to fit them for teaching in the public schools. The head of the school at the time was Prof. E. N. Fay, a college graduate and a man of scholarly attainments, and he had surrounded himself with a competent corps of assistants. While attending the Normal young Kern lived at his home in Alto, riding his horse to Kokomo in the morning and returning in the evening. For the sake of economy he took his lunch with him. The six-mile stretch of mud road between his home and the county seat w^as impassable during much of the winter except on horseback. In zero weather the ambitious youth suffered severely, but having developed the habit of declaiming his lessons, and making speeches to his nag during these trips, he managed to neutralize the effect of the weather by vigorous gesticulation and an unsparing exercise of his lungs.

At the Normal young Kern is described by Mr. Morrow as "a brilliant scholar but not a plodder." He seemed to absorb the matter of the textbooks without effort. 'Tn the study of English Grammar he particularly excelled," writes Morrow. ''He studied language not to get its dull formulas, but to know how most forcibly and clearly to express his thoughts."

It was during his Normal days that Kern determined definitely upon the study of law.

While Doctor Kern would have defrayed the expenses of his son's legal education, the latter was of an independent nature and preferred to pay his own way. With the view to making the money required for a course of legal instructions in a university, he took the examination for a teacher's license before he was sixteen, and while the examination was conducted by Rawson Vaile, a graduate of Amherst College and a stickler for thoroughness, he made a very high grade and was granted a twenty-four months' license, which was the highest permissible by the county examiner. Here enters the pedagogue.

Ill

The young teacher took charge of his first school at the age of fifteen, and taught two terms, but in different schools, as he never failed to observe in later years in an attempt to belittle his professional ability. His first experience as a teacher was in the home school at Alto, and in the winter of '66-7 he taught in what is still popularly known as "the old Dyar school house," about three miles east of Alto,

Childhood and Eakly Youth 9

in the country. The John Kern of this period is described by one of the students as "tall, straight, boyish in appearance, not particular in his personal appearance, usually having his trousers over a boot strap." Those still living who knew the future senator as a country school teacher take issue with his own estimate of his success. His methods of instruction were those of an original thinker, and ignoring the hard and fast rules, he succeeded in creating an interest among the students with gratifying results. I am indebted to Albert B. Kirkpatrick, one of his students who was in later years to cross swords with him at the bar, for some interesting recollections which reflect light on the character of the youthful pedagogue :

"The school (Dyar) was large for a country school, about sixty, some boys and girls larger than the teacher. On the playgrounds Kern was one of the boys, and you would scarcely know from his conduct that he was a teacher. One day he ordered a large boy to stand upon the floor and on his refusal Kern told him he could do that or take a whipping. After school he kept the stubborn rebel, together with two other boys as witnesses, and proceeded to administer the castigation which, according to report, was quite severe. One day a dispute arose as to the ownership of a rabbit some boy had caught. Kern acted as presiding judge and found that the boy in possession of the rabbit was not the rightful owner, and fixed as his punishment the restoration of the rabbit and the infliction of lashes, which he proceeded to lay on.

"Kern was good in the common school branches, and he especially delighted to read in McGufifey's Sixth Reader from Patrick Henry and other oratorical notables. He was fine in the school house debates and generally covered about half the school house in his orations, gesticulating wildly and speaking at the top of his voice.

"He was not methodical in his teaching, but original, and the students seemed to learn rapidly. They liked him, as a rule, although he did not then possess those remarkable social qualities that characterized him in after years."

The "school house debates" referred to were features of the Dyar school literary and debating society, which owed its existence to Kern's initiative and bore the pretentious name of the Platonian. It was during the period when the country was torn over the problems of reconstruction, and these furnished the topics for the debates. The sixteen-yearold teacher invariably took part, and his chief competitor was usually Jesse Yager, described as "a solid, substantial citizen of the community and a man of great ability." In these discussions Kern invariably took a positive stand in favor of a liberal policy toward the white people of the southern states who

Childhood and Eakly Youth 11

had returned to their allegiance, and the carpet bagger usually came in for an unmerciful scoring. One who often heard him in those days, Jackson Morrow, in recalling the earnestness and vigor of the boy orator, expresses the opinion that these speeches "would have reflected credit upon the best statesmen of the period." Such views as were held and advocated by the young school teacher were bold indeed for the time and place. Passions still ran high, and Howard county was extreme in its republicanism of the Thad Stevens variety. Strangely enough, the boldness of the pedagogue in no wise detracted from his personal popularity and served to enhance his reputation. Many years afterward, when Kern, soon after his nomination for vice-president, returned to Kokomo to meet his old friends and neighbors in a great non-partisan reception, Jesse Yager, his polemic adversary of the Platonian days, then a very old man, occupied a place on the platform.

It was during the summer of 1866 that the pedagogue, a member of the "Alto Dramatic Society," made his first and only appearance "on any stage" as an actor in "The Demons of the Glass." Mr. Morrow gives an interesting description of the occasion.

"The entertainment," he writes, "was held on a delightful summer evening in a grove not far from the village of Alto. The stage was built of rough lumber and lighted by kerosene lamps, but a full moon flooding the landscape with a mellow light, and the great spreading tops of centuries-old forest trees gave this primitive stage a beauty and dignity hard to surpass. The show was free and the people came en masse from far and near, and when the curtain rose on the entertainment a very large audience was waiting. Kern was easily the star of the evening. So realistic was his acting of the husband and father becoming a drunkard and bringing poverty and ruin on a happy home, that an unpleasant sadness stole over the audience and a strong temperance lesson was impressed upon the people present. As a boy John Kern was an enthusiastic 'dry.' "

It was toward the close of his last term of teaching that he became an active member of the Methodist church, the occasion of his conversion being a revival meeting held at Albright's chapel. For a time he became deeply religious, taking his church duties with a seriousness that attracted attention. This ostentatious spirit of worship soon passed.

During these teaching days, when the young pedagogue was preaching temperance, damning the radicalism of the Thad Stevens, protesting against carpetbag government in the southern states, practicing his embryo eloquence upon debating societies in the woods, and experiencing a spiritual awakening, he v/as attracting attention throughout the community

Dr. Jai.iI! H. Kkkn

John \V. Kkkn-

At tlie University of Michigan

Kern's Birthplace as It Appearkd in 1908

Nancy Kern and county as a youth of precocious ability and rare gifts. This did not affect his natural modesty or his relations with young people of his own age. The society of Alto and the neighborhood could scarcely be described as "fashionable," but its members were genuine and its friendships real. Writing of his boyish characteristics, Mr. Morrow says: "His friendship was steady and faithful. I never knew him to cut a friend as the mood or occasion might suggest. He appeared to always meet his friend with a smile and a friendly handclasp that impressed one as real, and he manifested his interest in helpful ways. He had been trained to know the value of a dollar, taught that it represented real value and should not be squandered, but if he met a friend in need and he had a dollar in his pocket that dollar was his friend's at once. He had large sympathies and in a sense he was his brother's keeper. His general character never changed."

During these pedagogue days he was giving careful attention to the selection of a college in which to prepare himself for the law, and his choice fell on the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, then the great school of the west, with Cooley at the head of the lecture corps. He had not accumulated so much that he did not have to carefully consider the expense without drawing liberally upon his father, and this he had determined not to do. The living expenses at

Ann Arbor presented an attractive prospect as well as the faculty, and in September, 1867, he set out for the university determined to make the most of his opportunities.

IV

In the latter part of the sixties the university at Ann Arbor ranked easily as the first educational institution of the middle west. The faculty of the law department, with Thomas M. Cooley at the head, was in no wise inferior to that of Harvard and Yale. The student body was drawn from the entire Mississippi valley and beyond. The town of Ann Arbor at the time possessed the charm one likes to associate with a college town, with its pleasant homes, wide lawns, and fine old forest trees lining the streets. At the time of his matriculation young Kern, student of law, had not yet reached the age of eighteen, and here he was to spend two profitable years and receive his degree before reaching his twentieth birthday. During the two years he was compelled to economize in every possible way. In the telling of the story of his Ann Arbor days I am deeply indebted to Jackson Morrow, a boyhood friend, with whom he corresponded during the period and who has carefully preserved most of the letters written him by Kern from the university. These rather suggest a youth possessed of considerable assurance, and limited experience, inspired by much ambition, and prone to

"act up" to the role of the embryo lawyer. In his first letter November 3, 1867, he describes his impressions of the university.

''I got here early on Saturday morning and proceeded at once to the university, where I relieved myself of thirty-five dollars, and received a paper which entitles the bearer to a full course of law lectures in the University of Michigan. With a light heart and a materially lightened pocketbook, I then sought a boarding house, which we found at Mrs. Cramptons, in the east part of the city, where we now are paying $4.12^/^ per week, or, as the people here would term it, four dollars with a shillin'. We have a good boarding house, good rooms, good fires, good appetites, etc.

"Well, the Monday following I wended my way to the Law building, where I listened to my first lecture by Hon. Thomas M. Cooley. Since then I have attended two each day, sometimes delivered by Cooley, and sometimes by one of the other professors of law — Campbell, Walker and Pond. The number of students here this winter is hardly so great as last, owing, no doubt, to the hard times, as the number of students in all the colleges of the country has materially decreased since last year. Their general library here, which is free to all, contains over 30,000 volumes and is the best place for reading I was ever in.

*T received a letter from Sturgis the other day. He is, as usual, in all his glory. A short time ago he wrote me giving his views politically, and, as they did not just suit me, I sat down and gave the gentleman the benefit of sixteen pages of foolscap containing some sound old Democratic doctrine which I guess he profited by, as he has held his peace ever since."

It will be noted that the Kern, the law student in his teens, was quite as partisan as in his earlier boyhood, and nothing in these letters to Morrow is more interesting than the sidelights they throw upon his political views.

In his next letter, written three weeks later, he describes the method of instruction in the law department, and gives his correspondent, who had succeeded him as teacher in the Dyar school, some sound advice as to handling the obstreperous "scholars."

"I was glad to learn that you had become teacher in Dist. No. 8, Taylor township, and wish you the greatest success in your undertaking. I think before spring you will appreciate some of my last winter's trials. The scholars, however, are generally well disposed and are not naturally vicious. My advice is not to spare the rod, but crack the whip under their bellies whenever they deserve it. ... I sympathize deeply with every school teacher, knowing as I do the responsibility resting upon them. I think I have done my last teaching unless I ignobly fail in the study of law. I am well pleased with the study so far — as the mode of instruction here makes very pleasant what would otherwise appear intricate and difficult. We here not only get a theoretical but a practical knowledge of the law, for we have club courts, so that every student may have ample opportunity of displaying his legal knowledge. I have been an attorney in four cases and have another in the Indiana Club court next Saturday. Prof. Moses Coit Tyler, professor of rhetoric and elocution in the literary department, lectures to us twice a week on elocution. This is a great advantage to us. . . . Our little winter that we had some days ago has vanished and we are now having a delightful Indian summer — warm and smoky. From all appearances the climate here is not so disagreeable as that of Indiana in the winter season. . . ."

Two weeks later he had changed his opinion of the charms of a Michigan winter and was suffering with a cold, which did not prevent him, however, from giving Morrow the advantage of his eighteen years' experience in the world on the proper method of maintaining discipline in a country school. His reference to the girls about Alto and Kokomo indicates that he was not entirely immune to the charms of the sex.

"The present juncture finds me very unwell, suffering from a miserably bad cold and a very severe sore throat. . . . We now are enjoying (?) the stern realities of a northern winter — chief among which are overcoats, overshoes, comforters, cold feet, frosted ears, etc. The ground is covered with snow to the depth of two or three inches and skating is the chief amusement. They have a skating park here, and it is thronged every evening.

"I w^as glad to hear that you and the school v^ere progressing finely — I would advise you to show a bold front — use the hickory and beech when needed, and you will succeed, for the students generally are well disposed.

"You have my very best wishes in the reorganization of the Platonian. I would like to be with you a while and excrete a 'few gas.' You may tell Mr. Madison Jackson that my days of sleigh riding are over for the present, but were I in Indiana I should very much enjoy such a tear as we had that night. You may also tell Em— that 'sparking' is old and has played out, especially sparking in the rain. When I get home I may do some little of it and she had better look out. . . ."

In his next letter dated after the first of the year 1868 he refers to his holiday dissipation at Detroit and at Windsor in Canada, and the reader will probably smile at the nineteen-year-old globe trotter's careful explanation of the location and character of Detroit:

"We have had on the whole a very pleasant vacation — though rather dull at times — and our lectures commence again to-morrow, and I'm very glad of it. We have a good sleighing snow now, and as I write I hear the sleigh bells jingling as merrily as can be. I don't indulge in the luxury of sleighing this winter, as it is really a dear luxury — only $1.50 per hour.