Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

B... Butler

Published by Langtree and Sullivan. Washington Luy.

POLITICAL PORTRAITS WITH PEN AND PENCIL.

No. XI.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.

THERE are but few men, indeed, of whom we would say, that they do honor to a great party. We are not prone to the common habit of the day, of exaggerating the merits or importance of individuals, in comparison with that stupendous thing, a mass of aggregate millions. It is an honor, according to our conception, to any man, to belong to the Democratic party, if it be in sincerity of heart, and with a liberal expansion of views to the comprehension of the grand, harmonious, simple, and sublime truths of its political faith. But if in any sense allowable, we know no individual, prominent among the public men of the day, to whom-for all the best qualities of heart and head, and a transparent purity of conduct in all the relations of life-we could more sincerely apply the expression, than to the subject of the present sketch. We have heard this opinion so often expressed in private, by political foes as well as friends, whenever brought into personal relations with Mr. Butler, that we feel perfectly justified in thus giving this public expression to it, rather as a matter of general consent than as any tribute of individual sentiment.

Mr. Butler's life presents none of those striking points, of connection with great events of national history, or of adventurous incident, which have lent their interest to some of the biographical narratives we have already presented in this series of Political Portraits. Though he has never yielded to any in the ardor of the interest he has always felt in the political contests of the times, it has only been within a recent period that he has suffered himself to be drawn from the retirement of private and professional life, to bear a conspicuous part on the public stage, in the stirring drama of our national politics. His way of life has therefore flowed on, like an even and unruffled stream, gathering its quiet depth of volume from a thousand springs unseen to the public eye; and though scarcely perhaps noticed by the stranger whose admiration is rather attracted by the more picturesque wildness of the moun- * tain torrent, yet diffusing a daily beneficent utility to the dwellers upon its tranquil borders, and an object of a far higher admiration to the more judicious eye that can better appreciate true excellence. Having risen from a humble beginning, by the quiet but zealous exercise of those qualities which, similarly applied, can never fail VOL. V. NO. XIII.-JANUARY, 1839.

с

to command a similar success, industry, self-cultivation, integrity, and purity of life, his career presents one of those pictures best illustrative of the spirit of our institutions, and best calculated for a useful example and encouragement to others.

Mr. Butler is a native of Kinderhook, Columbia county, New York, and is therefore a fellow-townsman of his early and fast friend, the present President of the United States. For the sake of precision it may be worth while to distinguish, that he was born (December 14th, 1795,) in that part of the town bordering on the river, usually known as Kinderhook Landing, though recently set off a separate town, by the name of Stuyvesant. His parents were both from Connecticut, and are both now living, in the enjoyment of a healthy and honored green old age. The subject of the present memoir is their eldest son. Mr. Butler's parentage has this peculiar interest, that those who know him find no difficulty in recognizing in his character, illustrated by his life, the traces of the different influences which his genealogy was calculated to combine in its formation.

His father, Medad Butler, was born in Branford, Connecticut. The grandfather of the latter, Jonathan Butler, was one of two brothers, Irish adventurers, who came to Connecticut in about the year 1710; and who may therefore be regarded as the earliest pioneers of that stream of emigration from the land of generous hearts and ardent temperaments, which has since poured its wealth over the whole extent of our country, and proved one of the most valuable elements of its growing prosperity. He married a descendant of the original Puritan settlers of that Colony. His son, Ezekiel, married Mabel Jones, a lineal descendant of Colonel John Jones and Catharine, a sister of Oliver Cromwell. This Colonel Jones was one the Regicide Judges, and after the Restoration suffered the penalty for that act whose stern glory shall immortalize the names of all who participated in it, by being beheaded for High Treason. His family came to Connecticut, and many of his descendants are to be found in different parts of the United States. Such a descent, of the Irish stock, combined with the Puritan-the latter taking its origin from that stout and high-hearted bench of judges who inflicted the just doom of a nation's vengeance on a tyrant who had dared to deserve its awful wrath, and directly from the side of Cromwell himself -harmonizes well with the quiet ardor of temperament, the calm firmness of purpose and clearness of judgment, the chastened enthusiasm, the strict purity of religious and moral principle, and the unwavering devotion to the great truths of democracy and freedom, which combine to characterize BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.

His father, after serving an apprenticeship, in New Haven, to a scythe-maker, emigrated, in 1787, to the State of New York; and

engaged soon after in mercantile business, first at Claverack, and afterwards at Kinderhook Landing, in connection with Stephen Hogeboom, then a Senator in the Legislature of the State, and whose name is well known, as one of the most venerated patriarchs of the Democracy of the State, having been, in fact, in connexion with George Clinton, one of the original founders of the Democratic Republican party of New York.

Mr. Butler's father has always been a remarkably active and publicspirited man; has occupied a seat in the Legislature; and has been for the last fifteen years one of the County Judges for Columbia county. In the course of his business, which was of the most multilarious character imaginable, his eldest son Benjamin from a very early age became an invaluable assistant; and as book-keeper, store-keeper, tavern-keeper, farmer, in addition to the business of 'forwarding,' as owner of a line of Hudson river sloops, in all which departments he was factotum in general, he early acquired those practical habits of method, industry, and activity, together with an intimate acquaintance with all descriptions of the people, which has since proved invaluable to their possessor in a different profession and a more elevated sphere of life.

The common schools in that part of the country being, at that period, in a very low state, his father, who had had the advantages of the better school system already in operation in New England, when his eldest son was about six years old, succeeded, by great exertion, in establishing a New England teacher in Kinderhook; and until the excellent common school system of New York went into operation in 1813, kept up the school mainly, if not solely, by his exertions, having been in the habit, for many successive years, of paying all the school-bills in advance to the teacher, and taking on himself all the trouble and risk of collecting them from the individuals, as well as chance might enable him in the course of his miscellaneous business.

From the earliest age Mr. Butler was passionately fond of reading. His father possessed but few books, nor did the neighbourhood afford many more, but all such as could be found and obtained by him were read with avidity. This taste, with the exhibition of an unusual capacity, and especially of a very remarkable memory, soon made him an object of particular attention to his teacher. He commenced Latin as early as the age of seven. He continued at

Among these few, it may not be immaterial to mention, were the Works of Benjamin Franklin, which fastened on the mind of their reader with a peculiar force. The remark will be readily believed which we have heard from Mr. Butler himself, that to the influence of that book and that name he ascribed, more than to any other cause, the formation of his character in the particular mould which it assumed, and of those habits of mind, and general views of men and things, which have given direction to his subsequent career in life. The incident, slight as it is, may not be without its utility to parents who may regard the hint as worthy of attention.

school till the age of fifteen, though during the last five years of that period, at least half of his time was spent out of school, in assisting his father in his business, as already alluded to above. Latin and Greek, with a little French, and mathematics to no greater extent than the earlier rudiments of arithmetic, formed the bulk of the studies of this period, in which he was very assiduous and successful.

On leaving school, in May, 1811, his father's circumstances not enabling him to send him to college, Mr. Van Buren, who was his father's personal and political friend, entertaining a high opinion of his capacity, took him into his office, at Hudson, as a law student. To diminish the expenses which could not easily have been met by his father, without injustice to his other children, Mr. Van Buren, after a short trial of his services in the office, received him into his own family; in which Mr. Butler continued to reside, for the most part, throughout the period of his studies, and in fact for some time afterwards, till his own marriage, in the year 1818. Thus was formed a friendship, founded on intimate and long familiarity, mutual confidence, respect, and attachment-combined, on the part of the subject of our memoir, with an ardor of gratitude equally honorable to both-which the progress of time could only serve to develope and confirm.

The period of his clerkship as a student of law was spent in zealous assiduity to his profession, and to the general cultivation of his mind. Being for the first time placed in a situation affording ample means for the indulgence of his early passion for reading, the first two or three years were devoted by him, in addition to the regular duties of the office, chiefly to miscellaneous literature; and the range of his reading was very extensive and various. But after he commenced to address himself seriously to the duty of studying the law, he did so with a determination and industry rarely surpassed. These pursuits and studies did not, however, prevent his taking a very earnest interest in the high political excitements that agitated the public mind at that period. An ardent democrat from the earliest opening of his mind to the perception of the great principles involved in the contest of parties, his pen indulged itself freely, and was wielded with no slight degree of energy and eloquence, in the columns of the Democratic paper of Hudson, the “ Bee," in support of the war, and of the administration of James Madison. And when at a later day he took his seat in the Cabinet of the late President of the United States, it was not an unpleasing reminiscence, that one of the earliest productions of his pen had been an animated eulogy of which the following was, substantially, the commencement. We give it as a not uninteresting instance of the confirmation of the early impressions of youth, by the mature judgment

« AnteriorContinuar »