EULOGY ON CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE, DELIVERED BY WILLIAM M. EVARTS, BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, AT HANOVER, JUNE 24, 1874. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 AND 551 BROADWAY. 1874. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by D. APPLETON & CO. , In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. EULOGY ON CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE. MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, THE ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE: When, notmany weeks since, the committee of your association did me the honor toinvite me to present, in an address to the assembled graduates of thecollege, a commemoration of the life, the labors, and the fame of thevery eminent man and greatly honored scholar of your discipline, lawyer, orator, senator, minister, magistrate, whom living a whole nationadmired and revered, whom dead a whole nation laments, I felt thatneither a just sense of public duty nor the obligations of personalaffection would permit me to decline the task. Yielding, perhaps tooreadily, to the persuasions of your committee that somewhat closeprofessional and public association with the Chief-Justice in the lateryears of his life, and the intimate enjoyment of his personalfriendship, might excuse my want of that binding tie of fellowship in acommemoration, in which the venerated college does dutiful honor to ason, and the assembled alumni crown with their affection the memory of abrother, I dismissed also, upon the same persuasion, all anxioussolicitudes, which otherwise would have oppressed me, lest importunateand inextricable preoccupations of time and mind should disable me frompresenting as considerable, and as considerate, a survey of the eminentcharacter and celebrated career of Mr. Chase as should comport withthem, or satisfy the just exigencies of the occasion. The commemoration which brings us together has about it nothingfunereal, in sentiment or observance, to darken our minds or sadden ourhearts to-day. The solemn rites of sepulture, the sobbings of sorrowingaffection, the homage of public grief, the concourse of the greatofficers of state, the assemblage of venerable judges, the processionsof the bar, of the clergy, of liberal and learned men, the attendantcrowds of citizens of every social rank and station, both in the greatcity where he died, and at the national capital, have already graced hisburial with all imaginable dignity and unmeasured reverence. To prolongor renew this pious office is no part of our duty to-day. Nor is thematurity or nurture which the college gives to those it calls its sons, bestowed as it is upon their mind and character, affected by the deathof the body as is the heart of the natural mother; nor are you, hisbrethren in this foster care of the spirit, bowed with the same sense ofbereavement as are natural kindred. The filial and fraternal relationwhich he bore to you, the college and the alumni, is hardly broken byhis death, nor is he hidden from you by his burial. His completednatural life is but the assurance and perpetuation of the power, thefame, the example, which the discipline and culture here bestowed hadfor their object, and in which they find their continuing andever-increasing glory. The energy here engendered has not ceased itsbeneficent activity, the torch here lighted still diffuses itsillumination, and the fires here kindled still radiate their heat. Not less certain is it that the spirit of this commemoration imposes notask of vindication or defense, and tolerates no tone of adulation orapplause. The tenor of this life, the manifestation of this character, was open and public, before the eyes of all men, upon an eminent stageof action, displayed constantly on the high places of the world. Nofaculty that Mr. Chase possessed, no preparation of mind or of spirit, for great undertakings or for notable achievements, ever failed ofexercise or exhibition for want of opportunity, or, being exercised orexhibited, missed commensurate recognition or responsive plaudits fromhis countrymen. His career shows no step backward, the places he filledwere all of the highest, the services he rendered were the mostdifficult as well as the most eminent. If, as the preacher proclaims, "time and chance happeneth to all, " the times in which Mr. Chase livedpermitted the widest scope to great abilities and the noblest forms ofpublic service; and the fortunes of his life show the felicity of theoccasions which befell him to draw out these abilities, and to receivethese services. Not less complete was the round of public honors whichcrowned his public labors, and we have no occasion, here, to lament anyshortcomings of prosperity or favor, or repeat the authentic judgmentwhich the voices of his countrymen have pronounced upon his fame. The simple office, then, which seems to me marked out for one whoassumes this deputed service in the name of the college and for thefriends of good learning, is, in so far as the just limits of time andcircumstance will permit, to expose the main features of this celebratedlife, "to decipher the man and his nature, " to connect the true elementsof his character and the moulding force of his education with the workhe did, with the influence he wielded in life, with the power of theexample which lives after him, and always to have in view, as the mostfruitful uses of the hour, his relations to the men and events of histimes, and, not less, his true place in history among the lawyers, orators, statesmen, magistrates of the land. _Vera non verba_ is ourmaxim to-day; truth, not words, must mark the tribute the college paysto the sober dignity and solid worth of its distinguished son. Born of a lineage, which on the father's side dates its American descentfrom the Puritan emigration of 1640, and on the mother's, finds her thefirst of that stock native to this country, the son of these parentstook no contrariety of traits from the union of the blood of the EnglishPuritans and the Scotch Covenanters, but rather harmonious corroborationof the characteristics of both. These, sturdy enough in either, combinedin this descendant to produce as independent and resolute a nature forthe conflicts and labors of his day, as any experience of trial ortriumph, of proscription or persecution suffered or resisted, hadrequired or supplied in the long history of the contests of these twocongenial races with priests and potentates, with principalities andpowers. Nothing could be less consonant with a just estimate of thestrong traits of this lineage, than which neither Hebrew, nor Grecian, nor Roman nurture has wrought for its heroes either a firmer fibre or anobler virtue, than to ascribe its chief power to enthusiasm orfanaticism. Plain, sober, practical men and women as they were, therewas no hard detail of every-day life that they were not equal to, nopatient and cheerless sacrifice they could not endure, no vicissitude ofadverse or prosperous fortune which they could not meet with uncheckedserenity. If it be enthusiasm that in them the fear of God had cast outthe fear of man, or fanaticism that they placed "things that arespiritually discerned" above the vain shows of the world of sense, in sofar they were enthusiasts and fanatics. In every stern conflict, inevery vast labor, in every intellectual and moral development of whichthis country has been the scene, without fainting or weariness they haveborne their part, and in the conclusive triumph of the principles of thePuritans and their policies over all discordant, all opposing elements, which enter into the wide comprehension of American nationality, theirsbe the praise which belongs to such well-doing. The son of a farmer--a man of substance, and of credit with hisneighbors, and not less with the people of his State--young Chase drewfrom his boyhood the vigor of body and of mind which rural life andlabors are well calculated to nourish. Several of his father's brotherswere graduates of this college, and reached high positions in Church andState. An unpropitious turn of the commercial affairs of the countrynipped, with its frost, the growing prosperity of his father, whosedeath, soon following, left him, in tender years, and as one of anumerous family, to the sole care of his mother. With most scanty means, her thrift and energy sufficed to save her children from ignorance ordeclining manners; maintained their self-respect and independence; setthem forth in the world well disciplined, stocked with good principles, and inspired with proud and honorable purposes. To the praise of thisexcellent woman, wherever the name of her great son shall be proclaimed, this, too, shall be told in remembrance of her: that a Christian'sfaith, and a mother's love, as high and pure as ever ennobled the mostfamous matrons of history, stamped the character and furnished theeducation which equipped him for the labors and the triumphs of hislife. One cannot read her letters to her son in college without thedeepest emotion. How many such women were there, in the plain ranks ofNew England life, in her generation! How many are there now! Payingmarvelous little heed to the discussion of women's rights, they show awonderful addiction to the performance of women's duties. His uncle, Bishop Chase of Ohio, assumed, for a time, the care andexpense of his education, and this drew him to the West, where, underthis tutelage, he pursued academic studies for two years. At the end ofthis time he returned to his mother's charge, entered the junior classof Dartmouth College, and graduated in the year 1826, at the age ofeighteen. The only significance, in its impression on his future life, of this brief guardianship of the Western Bishop, was as the determininginfluence which fixed the chief city of the West in his choice as theforum and arena of his professional and public life. After spending fouryears in Washington, gaining his subsistence by teaching, a law-studentwith Mr. Wirt--then at the zenith of his faculties and hisfame--studying men and manners at the capital, watching the newquestions then shaping themselves for political action, observing thecelebrated statesmen of the day, conversant with the great Chief-JusticeMarshall and his learned associates on the bench of the Supreme Court, and with Webster, and Binney, and other famous lawyers at its bar, hewas admitted to practice, and, at the age of twenty-two, establishedhimself at Cincinnati, transferring thus, once and forever, his homefrom the New England of his family, his birth, his education, and hislove, to the ruder but equally strenuous and more expansive society ofthe West. While yet of tender years, following up the earlier pious instruction ofhis mother, and his own profound sense of religious obligations underthe inculcation of the Bishop, he accepted the Episcopal Church as thebody of Christian believers in whose communion he found the best supportfor the religious life he proposed to himself. When he left your collegehe had not wholly relinquished a purpose, once held, of adopting theclerical profession. His adhesion to the Christian faith was simple andconstant and sincere, and he accepted it as the master and rule of hislife, in devout confidence in the moral government of the world, as apresent and real supremacy over the race of man and all human affairs. He was all his life a great student of the Scriptures, and no modernspeculations ever shook the solid reasons of his belief. When he enteredthe city of Washington, fresh from college, "the earnest prayer of hisheart was, that God would give him work to do, and success in doing it. "When he was laying out the plans of professional life, on his firstestablishment at Cincinnati, his invocation was, "May God enable me tobe content with the consciousness of faithfully discharging all myduties, and deliver me from a too eager thirst for the applause andfavor of men. " All through the successive and manifold activities of hisbusy and strenuous life, when, to outward seeming, they were all worldlyand personal, the same predominant sense of duty and religiousresponsibility animated and solemnized the whole. At this point in his life we may draw the line between the period ofeducation for the work he had before him and that work itself. What Mr. Chase was, at this time, in all the essential traits of his moral andintellectual character--in his views of life, its value, its justobjects and aims, its social, moral, and religious responsibilities; inhis views of himself, his duties, obligations, prospects, andpossibilities; in his determinations and desires--such, it seems to mefrom the most attentive study of all these points--such, in a verymarked degree, he continued to be at every stage of his ascent in life. What, then, shall we assign as the decisive elements, the controllingconstituents, of character--and what the assurance of their persistenceand their force--which this youth could bring to the service of theState, or contribute to the advancement of society and the well-being ofmankind? These were simple, but, in combination, powerful, and adequate to fillout worthily the life of large opportunities which, though not yetforeseen to himself, was awaiting him. The faculty of reason was very broad and strong in him, yet withoutbeing vast or surprising. It seized the sensible and practical relationsof all subjects submitted to it, and firmly held them in its tenaciousgrasp; it exposed these relations to the apprehension of those whoseopinion or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct andsincere, discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness ofinsinuation. His education had all been of a kind to discipline andinvigorate his natural powers; not to encumber them with a besettingweight of learning, or to supplant them by artificial training. His oratory was vigorous, with those "qualities of clearness, force, andearnestness, which produce conviction. " His rhetoric was ample, but notrich; his illustrations apposite, but seldom to the point of wit; hisdelivery weighty and imposing. His force of will, whether in respect of peremptoriness or persistency, was prodigious. His courage to brave, and his fortitude to endure, wereabsolute. His loyalty to every cause in which he enlisted--his fidelityin every warfare in which he took up arms--were proof against peril anddisaster. His estimate of human affairs, and of his own relation to them, wassober and sedate. All their grandeur and splendor, to his apprehension, connected themselves with the immortal life, and with God, as theirguide, overseer, and ruler; and the sum of the practical wisdom of allworthy personal purposes seemed to him to be, to discern the path ofduty, and to pursue it. His views of the commonwealth were essentially Puritan. Equality ofright, community of interest, reciprocity of duty, were the adequate, and the only adequate, principles with him to maintain the strength andvirtue of society, and preserve the power and permanence of the State. With these principles unimpaired and unimpeded he feared nothing for hiscountrymen or their government, and he made constant warfare upon everyassault or menace that endangered them. It was with these endowments and with this preparation of spirit, thatMr. Chase confronted the realities of life, and assumed to play a partwhich, whether humble or high in the scale and plane of circumstance, was sure to be elevated and worthy in itself; for the loftiness of hisspirit for the conflict of life was "Such as raised To height of noblest temper heroes old Arming to battle. " Such a character necessarily confers authority among men, and that Mr. Chase was ready, on all occasions arising, to assert his high principlesby comporting action was never left in doubt. Whether by interposinghis strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob of Cincinnatigentlemen, incensed at the freedom of his press in its defiance ofslavery; or by his bold and constant maintenance in the courts of thecause of fugitive slaves in the face of the resentments of the publicopinion of the day; or by his fearless desertion of all reigningpolitics to lead a feeble band of protestants through the wilderness ofanti-slavery wanderings, its pillar of cloud by day, its pillar of fireby night; or as Governor of Ohio facing the intimidations of the slaveStates, backed by Federal power and a storm of popular passion; or inconsolidating the triumphant politics on the urgent issue which was toflame out into rebellion and revolt; or in his serene predominance, during the trial of the President, over the rage of party hate whichbrought into peril the coördination of the great departments ofGovernment, and threatened its whole frame--in all these markedinstances of public duty, as in the simple routine of his ordinaryconduct, Mr. Chase asked but one question to determine his course ofaction, "Is it right?" If it were, he had strength, and will, andcourage to carry him through with it. In the ten years of professional life which followed his admission tothe bar, Mr. Chase established a repute for ability, integrity, elevation of purpose and capacity for labor, which would have surelybrought him the highest rewards of forensic prosperity and distinction, and in due course, of eminent judicial station. In this quieter part ofhis life, as in his public career, it is noticeable that his employmentswere never common-place, but savored of a public zest and interest. Hiscompilation of the Ohio Statutes was a _magnum opus_, indeed, for theleisure hours of a young lawyer, and possesses a permanent value, justifying the assurance Chancellor Kent gave him, that this surprisinglabor would find its "reward in the good he had done, in the talents hehad shown, and in the gratitude of his profession. " But this quiet was soon broken, never to be resumed, and though thegreat office of Chief-Justice was in store for him, it was to be reachedby the path of statesmanship and not of jurisprudence. If it had seemed ever to Mr. Chase and his youthful contemporaries, thatthey had come upon times when, as Sir Thomas Browne thought two hundredyears ago, "it is too late to be ambitious, " and "the great mutations ofthe world are acted, " the illusion was soon dispelled. It has been sadlysaid of Greece in the age of Plutarch, that "all her grand but turbulentactivities, all her noble agitations spent, she was only haunted by thespectres of her ancient renown. " No doubt, forty years ago, in thiscountry, there was a prevalent feeling that the age of the earlysettlements and, again, of our War of Independence, had closed theheroic chapters of our history, and left nothing for the public life ofour later times, but peaceful and progressive development, and the calmvirtues of civil prudence, to work out of our system all incongruitiesand discords. But what these political speculations assigned as thepassionless work of successive generations, was to be done in our time, and, as it were, in one "unruly right. " Mr. Chase had supported General Harrison for the presidency in 1840, notupon any very thorough identification with Whig politics, but partlyfrom a natural tendency toward the personal fortunes of a candidate fromthe West, and from his own State, in the absence of any strongattraction of principle to draw him to the candidate or the politics ofthe Democratic party. But, upon the death of Harrison and, the elevationof Tyler to the presidency, Mr. Chase, promptly discerning the signs ofthe times, took the initiative toward making the national attitude andtendency on the subject of slavery the touchstone of politics. Politicand prudent by nature, and with no personal disappointments orgrievances to bias his course, he doubtless would have preferred to saveand use the accumulated and organized force of one or the other of thepolitical parties which divided the country, and press its power intothe service of the principles and the political action which he had, undoubtingly, decided the honor and interests of the country demanded. He was among the first of the competent and practical political thinkersof the day, to penetrate the superficial crust which covered theslumbering fires of our politics, and to plan for the guidance of theirirrepressible heats so as to save the constituted liberties of thenation, if not from convulsion, at least from conflagration. He foundthe range of political thought and action, which either party permittedto itself or to its rival, compressed by two unyielding postulates. Thefirst of these insisted, that the safety of the republic would tolerateno division of parties, in Federal politics, which did not run throughthe slave States as well as the free. The second was that no party couldmaintain a footing in the slave States, that did not concede thenationality of the institution of slavery and its right, in equalitywith all the institutions of freedom, to grow with the growth andstrengthen with the strength of the American Union. Nothing can be moreinteresting to a student of politics than the masterly efforts ofpatriotism and statesmanship, in which all the great men of the countryparticipated, for many years, to confine the perturbations of our publiclife to a controversy with this latter and lesser postulate. Seward withthe Whig party, Chase with the Democratic party, and a host of others inboth, tried hard to conciliate the irreconcilable, and to stultifyastuteness, to the acceptance of the proposition that slavery, itsgrowth girdled, would not be already struck with death. Quite early, however, Mr. Chase grappled with the primary postulate, and throughgreat labors, wise counsels, long-suffering patience, and by thesuccessive stages of the Liberty party, Independent Democracy, andFree-Soil party, led up the way to the Republican party, which, made upby the Whig party dropping its slave State constituency, and theDemocratic party losing its Free-Soil constituents, rent this primarypostulate of our politics in twain, and took possession of theGovernment by the election of its candidate, Mr. Lincoln. This movement in politics was one of prodigious difficulty andimmeasurable responsibility. It was so felt to be by the prime actors init, though with greatly varying largeness of survey and depth ofinsight. In the system of American politics it created as vast adisturbance as would a mutation of the earth's axis, or the displacementof the solar gravitation, in our natural world. This great transactionfilled the twenty years of Mr. Chase's mature manhood, say, from the ageof thirty to that of fifty years. He must be awarded the full credit ofhaving understood, resolved upon, planned, organized, and executed, thispolitical movement, and whether himself leading or coöperating orfollowing in the array and march of events, his plan, his part, hisservice, were all for the cause, its prosperity, and its success. Toone who considers this career, not as completed and triumphant, not withthe glories of power, and dignities, and fame which attended it, notwith the blessings of a liberated race, a consolidated Union, anennobled nationality which receive the plaudits of his countrymen, butas its hazards and renunciations, its toils and its perils, showed atthe outset, in contrast with the ease and splendor of his personalfortunes which adhesion to the political power of slavery seemed toinsure to him, and then contemplates the promptness of his choice andthe steadfastness of his perseverance, the impulse and the action seemto find a parallel in the life of the great Hebrew statesman, who, "_byfaith_, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son ofPharaoh's daughter, " and "_by faith_, forsook Egypt, not fearing thewrath of the king. " The first half of this period of twenty years witnessed only thepreliminaries, equally brave and sagacious, of agitation, promulgationof purposes and opinions, consultations, conventions, and politicalorganizations, more and more comprehensive and effective. All this timeMr. Chase was simply a citizen, and apparently could expect no politicalstation or authority till it should come from the prosperous fortunes ofthe party he was striving to create. Suddenly, by a surprisingconjunction of circumstances he was lifted, at one bound, to the highestand widest sphere of influence, upon the opinion of the country, whichour political establishment presents--I mean the Senate of the UnitedStates. The elective body, the Legislature of Ohio, was filled in almostequal numbers with Whigs and Democrats, but a handful of Liberty partymen held the control to prevent or determine a majority. They electedMr. Chase. The concurrence is similar, in its main features, to theelection of Mr. Sumner to the Senate, two years afterward, inMassachusetts. Much criticism of such results is always and necessarilyexcited. The true interpretation of such transactions is simply atransition state from old to new politics, wherein party names andpresent interests are unchanged, but opinions and projects and prospectsare taking a new shape, and the old mint, all at once, astonisheseverybody by striking a new image and superscription, soon to be stampedupon the whole coinage. The part of Mr. Chase in this election, as ofMr. Sumner in his own, was elevated and without guile. His term in theSenate brought him to the year 1856, and was followed by two successiveelections and four years' service as Governor of Ohio, and a reëlectionto the Senate. In these high stations he added public authority to hisopinions and purposes, and gained for them wider and wider influence, while he discharged all general senatorial duties, and officialfunctions as Governor, with benefit to the legislation of the nation andto the administration of the State. As the presidential election approached and the Republican party tookthe field with an assurance of assuming the administration of theFederal Government, and of meeting the weighty responsibility of the newpolitical basis, the question of candidates absorbed the attention ofthe party, and attracted the interest of the whole country. When a newdynasty is to be enthroned, the _personality_ of the ruler is an elementof the first importance. In the general judgment of the country, andequally to the apprehension of the mass of his own party and of itsrival, Mr. Seward stood as the natural candidate, and upon manifoldconsiderations. His unquestioned abilities, his undoubted fidelity, hisvast services and wide following in the party, presented anunprecedented combination of political strength to obtain the nominationand carry the election, and of adequate faculties and authority with thepeople for the prosperous administration of the presidential office. Second only to Mr. Seward, in this general judgment of his countrymen, stood Mr. Chase, with just enough of preference for him, in somequarters, over Mr. Seward, upon limited and special considerations, toencourage that darling expedient of our politics, a resort to a _third_candidate. This recourse was had, and Mr. Lincoln was nominated andelected. The disclosure of Mr. Lincoln to the eyes of his countrymen as apossible, probable, actual candidate for the presidency came upon themwith the suddenness and surprise of a revelation. His advent to power asthe ruler of a great people, in the supreme juncture of their affairs, to be the head of the state among its tried and trusted statesmen, tosubordinate and coördinate the pride and ambition of leaders, thepassions and interests of the masses, and to guide the destinies of anation whose institutions were all framed for obedience to law andperpetual domestic peace, through rebellion, revolt, and civil war; andto the subversion of the very order of society of a vast territory and avast population, finds no parallel in history; and was a puzzle to allthe astrologers and soothsayers. It has been said of George III. --whosenarrow intellect and obstinate temper so greatly helped on the rebellionof our ancestors to our independence--it has been said of George III. , that "it was his misfortune that, intended by nature to be a farmer, accident placed him on a throne. " It was the happy fortune of theAmerican people, that to the manifest advantages of freedom fromjealousies of any rivals; and from commitment, by any record, to schemesor theories or sects or cabals, pursued by no hatreds, beguiled by noattachments, Mr. Lincoln added a vigorous, penetrating, and capaciousintellect, and a noble, generous nature which filled his conduct of theGovernment, in small things and great, from beginning to end, "withmalice to none and charity to all. " These qualities were indispensableto the safety of the Government and to the prosperous issue of our civilwar. In the great crisis of a nation struggling with rebellion, thepresence or absence of these personal traits in a ruler may make theturning-point in the balance of its fate. Had Lincoln, in dealing withthe administration of government during the late rebellion, insisted asGeorge III. Did, in his treatment of the American Revolution, upon "theright of employing as responsible advisers those only whom he personallyliked, and who were ready to consult and execute his personal wishes, "had he excluded from his counsels great statesmen like Seward and Chase, as King George did Fox and Burke, who can measure the dishonor, disorder, and disaster into which our affairs might have fallen? Suchnarrow intelligence and perversity are as little consistent with thetrue working of administration under our Constitution as they were underthe British Constitution, and as little consonant with the sound senseas they are with the generous spirit of our people. By the arrangement of his Cabinet, and his principal appointments forcritical services, Mr. Lincoln showed at once that nature had fitted himfor a ruler, and accident only had hid his earlier life in obscurity. Icannot hesitate to think that the presence of Mr. Seward and Mr. Chasein the great offices of State and Treasury, and their faithfulconcurrence in the public service and the public repute of thePresident's conduct of the Government, gave to the people all thebenefits which might have justly been expected from the election ofeither to be himself the head of the Government and much else besides. Iknow of no warrant in the qualities of human nature, to have hoped thateither of these great political leaders would have made as good aminister under the administration of the other, as President, as both ofthem did under the administration of Mr. Lincoln. I see nothing in Mr. Lincoln's great qualities and great authority with this people, whichcould have commensurately served our need in any place, in the conductof affairs, except at their head. The general importance, under a form of government where the confidenceof the people is the breath of the life of executive authority, offilling the great offices of state with men who, besides possessing therequisite special faculties for their several departments and largegeneral powers of mind for politics and policies, have also great reputewith the party, and great credit with the country, was well understoodby the President. He knew that the times needed, in the high places ofgovernment, men "who, " in Bolingbroke's phrase, "had built about themthe opinion of mankind which, fame after death, is superior strength andpower in life. " Of the great abilities which Mr. Chase, in his administration of theTreasury, exhibited through the three arduous years of that publicservice, no question has ever been made. The exactions of the place knewno limits. A people, wholly unaccustomed to the pressure of taxation, and with an absolute horror of a national debt, was to be rapidlysubjected to the first without stint, and to be buried under a mountainof the last. Taxes which should support military operations on thelargest scale, and yet not break the back of industry which alone couldpay them; loans, in every form that financial skill could devise, and tothe farthest verge of the public credit; and, finally, the extremeresort of governments under the last stress and necessity, of thesubversion of the legal tender, by the substitution of what has beenaptly and accurately called the "coined credit" of the Government forits coined money--all these exigencies and all these expedients made upthe daily problems of the Secretary's life. We may have some conceptionof the magnitude of these financial operations, by considering one ofthe subordinate contrivances required to give to the currency of thecountry the enormous volume and the ready circulation without which thetides of revenue and expenditure could not have maintained their flow. Irefer to the transfer of the paper money of the country from the Stateto the national banks. This transaction, financially and politically, transcends in magnitude and difficulty, of itself alone, any singlemeasure of administrative government found in our history, yet theconception, the plan, and the execution, under the conduct of Mr. Chase, took less time and raised less disturbance than it is the custom of ourpolitics to accord to a change in our tariff or a modification of acommercial treaty. Another special instance of difficult and complicatedadministration was that of the renewal of the intercourse of trade, tofollow closely the success of our arms, and subdue the interests of therecovered region to the requirements of the Government. But I cannotinsist on details, where all was vast and surprising and prosperous. Ihazard nothing in saying that the management of the finances of thecivil war was the marvel of Europe and the admiration of our own people. For a great part of the wisdom, the courage, and the overwhelming forceof will which carried us through the stress of this stormy sea, thecountry stands under deep obligations to Mr. Chase as its pilot throughits fiscal perils and perplexities. Whether the genius of Hamilton, dealing with great difficulties and with small resources, transcendedthat of Chase, meeting the largest exigencies with great resources, isan unprofitable speculation. They stand together, in the judgment oftheir countrymen, the great financiers of our history. A somewhat persistent discrepancy of feeling and opinion between thePresident and the Secretary, in regard to an important office in thepublic service, induced Mr. Chase to resign his portfolio, and Mr. Lincoln to acquiesce in his desire. No doubt, it is not wholly fortunatein our Government that the distribution of patronage, a mixed questionof party organization and public service, should so often harass andembarrass administration, even in difficult and dangerous times. Mr. Lincoln's ludicrous simile is an incomparable description of the systemas he found it. He said, at the outset of his administration, that "hewas like a man letting rooms at one end of his house, while the otherend was on fire. " Some criticism of the Secretary's resignation and ofthe occasion of it, at the time, sought to impute to them consequencesof personal acerbity between these eminent men, and the mischiefs ofcompeting ambitions and discordant counsels for the public interests. But the appointment of Mr. Chase to the chief-justiceship of the UnitedStates silenced all this evil speech and evil surmise. There is no doubt that Mr. Chase greatly desired this office, itsdignity and durability both considered, the greatest gratification, topersonal desires, and the worthiest in public service, and in publicesteem, that our political establishment affords. Fortunate, indeed, ishe who, in the estimate of the profession of the law, and in the generaljudgment of his countrymen, combines the great natural powers, thedisciplined faculties, the large learning, the larger wisdom, the firmtemper, the amiable serenity, the stainless purity, the sagaciousstatesmanship, the penetrating insight, which make up the qualities thatshould preside at this high altar of justice, and dispense to this greatpeople the final decrees of a government "not of men, but of laws. " Towhatever President it comes, as a function of his supreme authority, toassign this great duty to the worthiest, there is given an opportunityof immeasurable honor for his own name, and of vast benefits to hiscountrymen, outlasting his own brief authority, and perpetuating itsremembrance in the permanent records of justice, "the main interest ofall human society, " so long as it holds sway among men. John Adams, fromthe Declaration of Independence down, and with the singular felicity ofhis line of personal descendants, has many titles to renown, but by noact of his life has he done more to maintain the constituted libertieswhich he joined in declaring, or to confirm his own fame, than by givingto the United States the great Chief-Justice Marshall, to be to us, forever, through every storm that shall beset our ship of state-- "Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw, And saving them that eye it. " In this disposition, Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Chase to the vacantseat, and the general voice recognized the great fitness of theselection. I may be permitted to borrow from the well-considered and sober words ofan eminent judge, the senior Associate on the bench of the SupremeCourt--words that will carry weight with the country which mine couldnot--a judicial estimate of this selection. Mr. Justice Clifford says:"Appointed, as it were, by common consent, he seated himself easily andnaturally in the chair of justice, and gracefully answered every demandupon the station, whether it had respect to the dignity of the office, or to the elevation of the individual character of the incumbent, or tohis firmness, purity, or vigor of mind. From the first moment he drewthe judicial robes around him he viewed all questions submitted to himas a judge in the calm atmosphere of the bench, and with the deliberateconsideration of one who feels that he is determining issues for theremote and unknown future of a great people. " _Magistratus ostendit virum_--the magistracy shows out the man. A greatoffice, by its great requirements and great opportunities, calls out anddisplays the great powers and rare qualities which, presumably, haveraised the man to the place. Let us consider this last public serviceand last great station, as they exhibit Mr. Chase to a candid estimate. And, first, I notice the conspicuous fitness for judicial service of themental and moral constitution of the man. All through the heady contestsof the vehement politics of his times, his share in them had embodieddecision, moderation, serenity, and inflexible submission to reason asthe master and ruler of all controversies. Force, fraud, cunning, andall lubric arts and artifices, even the beguilements of rhetoric, foundno favor with him, as modes of warfare or means of victory. So far, then, from needing to lay down any weapons, or disuse any methods inwhich he was practised, or learn or assume new habits of mind or strangemodes of reasoning, Mr. Chase, in the working of his intellect and theframe of his spirit, was always judicial. It was not less fortunate for the prompt authority of his new station, so dependent upon the opinion of the country, that his credit for greatabilities and capacity for large responsibilities was alreadyestablished. Great repute, as well as essential character, is justlydemanded for all elevated public stations, and especially for judicialoffice, whose prosperous service, in capital junctures, turns mainly onmoral power with the community at large. Both these preparations easily furnished the Chief-Justice with therequisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime importance, uponwhich his adequacy must finally be tested; I mean, his relation to thecourt as its presiding head, his relation to the profession as mastersof the reason and debate over which the court is the arbiter, and hisrelation to the people and the State in the exercise of the criticalconstitutional duties of the court, as a coördinate department of theGovernment. In a numerous court, that the Chief-Justice should have a prevalent andgracious authority, as first among equals, to adjust, arrange, andfacilitate the coöperative working of its members, will not be doubted. For more than sixty years, at least, this court had felt thisauthority--_potens et lenis dominatio_--in the presence of the twocelebrated Chief-Justices who filled out this long service. Their greatexperience and great age had supported, and general conformity ofpolitical feeling, if not opinion, on the bench, had assisted, thisrelation of the Chief-Justice to the court. When Mr. Chase was called to this station, he found the bench filledwith men of mark and credit, and his accession made an exactly equaldivision of the court between the creations of the old and of the newpolitics. In these circumstances the proper maintenance of thetraditional relation of the Chief-Justice to the court was of muchimportance to its unbroken authority with the public. That it was somaintained was apparent to observation, and Mr. Justice Clifford, speaking for the court, has shown it in a most amiable light: "Throughout his judicial career he always maintained that dignity ofcarriage and that calm, noble, and unostentatious presence thatuniformly characterized his manners and deportment in the social circle;and, in his intercourse with his brethren, his suggestions were alwayscouched in friendly terms, and were never marred by severity orharshness. " As for the judgment of the bar of the country, while it gave its fullassent to the appointment of Mr. Chase, as an elevated and wiseselection by the President, upon the general and public grounds whichshould always control, there was some hesitancy, on the part of thelawyers, as to the completeness of Mr. Chase's professional training, and the special aptitude of his intellect to thread the tangled mazes ofaffairs which form the body of private litigations. The doubt wasneither unkind nor unnatural, and it was readily and gladly resolvedunder the patient and laborious application, and the accurate anddiscriminating investigation, with which the Chief-Justice handled thediversified subjects, and the manifold complexities, which were broughtinto judgment before him. In fact, the original dubitation hadoverlooked the earlier distinction of Mr. Chase at the bar in some mostimportant forensic efforts, and had erred in comparing, for theirestimate, Mr. Chase entering upon judicial employments, with hiscelebrated predecessors, as they showed themselves at the close, not atthe outset, of their long judicial service. I feel no fear of dissentfrom the profession in saying that those who practised in the Circuit orin the Supreme Court while he presided, as well as the larger andwidely-diffused body of lawyers who give competent and responsible studyto the reports, recognize the force of his reason, the clearness of hisperceptions, the candor of his opinions, and the lucid rhetoric of hisjudgments, as assuring his rank with the eminent judges of our own andthe mother-country. But, in the most imposing part of the jurisdiction and jurisprudence ofthe court; in its dominion over all that belongs to the law of nations, whether occupied with the weighty questions of peace and war, and themultitudinous disturbances of public and private law which follow thechange from one to the other; or with the complications of foreignintercourse and commerce with all the world, which the genius of ourpeople is constantly expanding; in its control, also, of the lesserpublic law of our political system, by which we are a nation ofrepublics, where the bounds of State and Federal authority need constantexploration, and require accurate and circumspect adjustment; in itsfinal arbitrament on all conflicts and encroachments by which the greatcoördinate departments of the Government are to be confined to theirappropriate spheres; in that delicate and superb supremacy of judicialreason whereby the Constitution confides to the deliberations of thiscourt the determination, even, of the legality of legislation, andtrusts it, nevertheless, to abstain itself from law-making--in all thesetranscendent functions of the tribunal the preparation and the adequacyof the Chief-Justice were unquestioned. Accordingly, we find in the few years of his service, before his declinein health, in the crowd of causes bred by the civil war, which pressedthe court with novel embarrassments, and loaded it with unprecedentedlabors, that the Chief-Justice gave conspicuous evidence, in repeatedinstances, of that union of the faculties of a lawyer and a statesman, which alone can satisfy the exactions of this highest jurisdiction, unequaled and unexampled in any judicature in the world. To name theseconspicuous causes merely, without unfolding them, would carry noimpression; and time fails for any demonstrative criticism upon them. There are two passages in the judicial service of Mr. Chase which, attracting great attention and exciting some difference of opinion atthe time of the transactions, invite a brief consideration at yourhands. The first political impeachment in our constitutional history, involving, as it did, the accusation of the President of the UnitedStates, required the Chief-Justice to preside at the trial before theSenate, creating thus the tribunal to which the Constitution hadassigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the injunction that the Senate, when sitting for the trial of impeachments, should be "on oath, "the Constitution gave no instruction to fix or ascertain thecharacter of the procedure, the nature of the duty assigned to thespecially-organized court, or the distribution of authority between theChief-Justice and the Senate. The situation lacked no feature ofgravity--no circumstance of solicitude--and the attention of the wholecountry, and of foreign nations, watched the transaction at every stageof its progress. No circumstances could present a greater disparity ofpolitical or popular forces between accuser and accused, and none couldbe imagined of more thorough commitment of the body of the court--theSenate--both in the interests of its members, in their politicalfeeling, and their pre-judgments; all tending to make the condemnationof the President, upon all superficial calculations, inevitable. Theeffort of the Constitution to guard against mere partisan judgment, byrequiring a two-third vote to convict, was paralyzed by the complexionof the Senate, showing more than four-fifths of that body of the partywhich had instituted the impeachment and was demanding conviction. Tothis party, as well, the Chief-Justice belonged, as a founder, a leader, a recipient of its honors, and a lover of its prosperity and its fame. The President, raised to the office from that of Vice-President--towhich alone he had been elected--by the deplored event of Mr. Lincoln'sassassination, was absolutely without a party, in the Senate or in thecountry; for the party whose suffrages he had received for thevice-presidency was the hostile force in his impeachment. And, to bringthe matter to the worst, the succession to all the executive power andpatronage of the Government, in case of conviction, was to fall into theadministration of the President of the Senate--the creature, thus, ofthe very court invested with the duty of trial and the power ofconviction. Against all these immense influences, confirmed and inflamed by a stormof party violence, beating against the Senate-house without abatementthrough the trial, the President was acquitted. To what wise orfortunate protection of the stability of government does the people ofthis country owe its escape from this great peril? Solely, I cannothesitate to think, to the potency--with a justice-loving, law-respectingpeople--of the few decisive words of the Constitution which, to thecommon apprehension, had impressed upon the transaction the solemncharacter of trial and conviction, under the sanction of the oath tobind the conscience, and not of the mere exercise of power, of which itswill should be its reason. In short, the Constitution had made theprocedure _judicial_, and not _political_. It was this sacredinterposition that stayed this plague of political resentments which, with their less sober and intelligent populations, have thwarted so manystruggles for free government and equal institutions. Over this scene, through all its long agitations, the Chief-Justicepresided, with firmness and prudence, with circumspect comprehension, and sagacious forecast of the vast consequences which hung, not upon theresult of the trial as affecting any personal fortunes of thePresident, but upon the maintenance of its character as a trial--uponthe prevalence of law, and the supremacy of justice, in its methods ofprocedure, in the grounds and reasons of its conclusion. That hisauthority was greatly influential in fixing the true constitutionalrelations of the Chief-Justice to the Senate, and establishing aprecedent of procedure not easily to be subverted; that it was felt, throughout the trial, with persuasive force, in the maintenance of thejudicial nature of the transaction; and that it never went a step beyondthe office which belonged to him--of presiding over the Senate trying animpeachment--is not to be doubted. The President was acquitted. The disappointment of the politicalcalculations which had been made upon, what was felt by the partisans ofimpeachment to be, an assured result, was unbounded; and resentments, rash and unreasoning, were visited upon the Chief-Justice, who hadinfluenced the Senate to be judicial, and had not himself beenpolitical. No doubt, this impeachment trial permanently affected thedisposition of the leading managers of the Republican party toward theChief-Justice, and his attitude thereafter toward that party, in hischaracter of a citizen. But the people of the country never assumed anyshare of the resentment of party feeling. The charge against him, if ithad any shape or substance, came only to this: that the Chief-Justicebrought into the Senate, under his judicial robes, no concealed weaponsof party warfare, and that he had not plucked from the Bible, on whichhe took and administered the judicial oath, the commandment for itsobservance. Not long after Mr. Chase's accession to the bench there came before thecourt a question, in substance and in form, as grave and difficult asany that its transcendent jurisdiction over the validity of thelegislation of Congress, has ever presented, or, in any forecast we canmake of the future, will ever present for its judgment; I mean theconstitutionality of that feature and quality of the issues of UnitedStates notes during the war, which made them a legal tender for thesatisfaction of private debts. This measure was one of the greatadministrative expedients for marshaling the wealth of the country, asrapidly, as equally, and as healthfully, to the energies of productionand industry, as might be, and so as seasonably to meet theimmeasurable demands of the public service, in the stress of the war. That it was debated and adopted, with full cognizance of its criticalcharacter, and with extreme solicitude that all its bearings should bethoroughly explored, and upon the same peremptory considerations, uponwhich the master of a ship cuts away a mast or jettisons cargo, or thesurgeon amputates a limb, was a matter of history. Mr. Chase, asSecretary of the Treasury, with a reluctance and repugnance whichenhanced the weight of his counsels, approved the measure, as one ofnecessity for the fiscal operations of the Government, which knew noother seasonable or adequate recourse. Upon this imposing andauthoritative advice of the financial minister, the legal-tender traitof the paper issues of the Government was adopted by Congress, andwithout his sanction, presumptively, it would have been denied. And now, when, after repeated argument at the bar, and longdeliberations of the court, the decision was announced, the determiningopinion of the Chief-Justice, in an equal division of the six associatejustices, pronounced the legal-tender acts unconstitutional, as notwithin the discretion of the political departments of the Government, Congress, and the Executive, to determine this very question of thenecessity of the juncture, as justifying their enactment. The singularity of the situation struck everybody, and greatly dividedpublic sentiment between applause and reproaches of the Chief-Justice, as the principal figure both in the administrative measure and in itsjudicial condemnation. But soon, a new phase of the unsettled agitationon the merits of the constitutional question, drew public attention, andcreated even greater excitement of feeling and diversity of sentiment. The court, which had been reduced by Congress under particular andtemporary motives, hostile to the appointing power of President Johnson, had been again opened by Congress to its permanent number, and itsvacancies had been filled. A new case, involving the vexed question, washeard by the court, and the validity of the disputed laws was sustainedby its judgment. The signal spectacle of the court, which had judgedover Congress and the Secretary, now judging over itself, gave rise tomuch satire on one side and the other, and to some coarseness ofcontumely as to the motives and the means of these eventful mutationsin matters, where stability and uniformity are, confessedly, of thehighest value to the public interests, and to the dignity of government. Confessing to a firm approval of the final disposition of theconstitutional question by the court, I concede it to be a subject ofthorough regret that the just result was not reached by less uncertainsteps. But, with this my adverse attitude to the Chief-Justice'sjudicial position on the question, I find no difficulty in discardingall suggestions which would mix up political calculations with hisjudicial action. The error of the Chief-Justice, if, under the lastjudgment of the court, we may venture so to consider it, was infollowing his strong sense of the supreme importance of restoring theintegrity of the currency, and his impatience and despair at thefeebleness of the political departments of the Government in thatdirection, to the point of concluding that the final wisdom of thisgreat question--_inter apices juris_, as well as of the highest reasonsof state--was to deny to the brief exigency of war, what was sodangerous to the permanent necessities of peace. But a larger reason anda wider prudence, as it would seem, favor the prevailing judgment, whichrefused to cripple the permanent faculties of government for theunforeseen duties of the future, and drew back the court from theperilous edge of _law-making_, which, overpassed, must react to cripple, in turn, the essential judicial power. The past, thus, was notdiscredited, nor the future disabled. I have now carried your attention to the round of public service whichfilled the life of Mr. Chase with activity and usefulness, and yet thesurvey and the lesson are incomplete without some reference to a stationhe never attained, to an office he never administered; I mean, to besure, the presidency. It is of the nature of this great place of powerand trust, and the necessity of the method by which alone it can bereached, to present to the ambition and public spirit of politicalleaders, and to the honest hopes and enthusiasm of the great body of thepeople, an equally frequent disappointment. This is not the place toinsist upon the reasons of this unquestionable mischief, nor to attemptto point out the escape from them, if indeed the problem be not, initself, too hard for solution. To Mr. Chase, as to all the greatleaders of opinion in the present and perhaps the last generation of ourpublic men, this disappointment came, and in his case, as in theirs, brought with it the defeat of the hopes and desires of a large followingof his countrymen, who sought, through his accession to the presidency, the elevation of the Government, and the welfare of the people. That the range and dignity of Mr. Chase's public employments and thelarge capacity, absolute probity, and unbounded energy which he hadshown in them, justified his aspiration to the presidency, and thepublic calculations of great benefit from his accession to it, may notbe doubted. In this state of things it is obvious, that he wouldnecessarily be greatly in the minds of men, as a candidate for thecandidacy, and this, too, whether they favored or opposed it, withoutany implication of undue activity of desire, much less of effort, on hispart, to obtain the nomination. But, it was not in the fortunes of Mr. Chase's life to take the flood of any tide, in the restless sea of ourpolitics, which led on to the presidency. In 1860 there was no principleand no policy of the Republican party which could tolerate thepostponement of Mr. Seward to Mr. Chase, if a political leader was to beput in nomination. In 1864 the paramount considerations of absolutesupremacy, which dictated the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln, would endure nocompetition of candidates in the Republican party. In 1868, when eachparty seemed, in an unusual degree, free to seek and find its candidateswhere it would, Mr. Chase was Chief-Justice, and no issue of the publicsafety existed, which alone, in the settled convictions of this people, would favor a political canvass by the head of the judiciary. In a just view of the office of President, as framed in theConstitution, which he only, in the whole establishment of theGovernment, is sworn "to preserve, protect, and defend, " and of therightful demands of this people from its supreme magistracy, I am suremost people will agree that Mr. Chase possessed great qualities for thedischarge of its high duties, and for the maintenance of good governmentin difficult times. These qualifications I have already unfolded fromhis life. If, indeed, the great hold over the Government, which theConstitution secures to the people by the election of the President, and his direct and constant responsibility to popular opinion, and thefull powers, thus safely confided to him, in the name and as the trustof the people at large--if this hold is to be exercised and preserved inits appropriate vigor, it can only be by the election to the presidencyof true leaders of the political opinion of the country. In this wayalone can power and responsibility be kept in union; and any nationwhich, in the working of its government, sees them divorced--sees powerwithout responsibility, and responsibility without power--must expectdishonor and disaster in its affairs. I have, thus, with such success as may be, undertaken to separate thethread of this individual character and action from that woven tapestryof human life, whose conciliated colors and collective force make up oneof the noblest chapters of history. I have attempted to present inprominent points, passing _per fastigia rerum_, the worth, the work, theduty, and the honor which fill out "the sustained dignity of thisstately life. " From his boyhood on the banks of this fair river--famousas having given birth and nurture to three Chief-Justices of the UnitedStates, Ellsworth, Chase, and Waite; through his first lessons in thehumanities in beautiful Windsor, his fuller instruction in the lap ofthis gracious mother, his loved and venerated Dartmouth; through hislessons in law and in eloquence at the feet of his great master, Wirt, his study of statesmen and government at the capital; through, hisfaithful service to the law, that jealous mistress, and his generousadvocacy of the rights, and resentment of the wrongs, of the unfriendedand the undefended; through his season of stormy politics with its"estuations of joys and fears;" through the crush and crowd of laborsand solicitudes which beset him as minister of finance in the tensionsand perils of war; through all this steep ascent to the serene height ofsupreme jurisprudence, this life, but a span in years, was enough forthe permanent service of his country, and for the assurance of his fame. "_Etenim, Quirites, exiguum nobis vitæ curriculum natura circumscripsit, immensum gloriæ. _" If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resemblance orcontrast, with the great names in our public life, of our own times, andin our previous history, I should be inclined to class him, in thesolidity of his faculties, the firmness of his will, and in themoderation of his temper, and in the quality of his public services, with that remarkable school of statesmen, who, through the RevolutionaryWar, wrought out the independence of their country, which they haddeclared, and framed the Constitution, by which the new liberties wereconsolidated and their perpetuity insured. Should I point moredistinctly at individual characters, whose traits he most recalls, Ellsworth as a lawyer and judge, and Madison as a statesman, would seemnot only the most like, but very like, Mr. Chase. In the groups of hiscotemporaries in public affairs, Mr. Chase is always named with the mosteminent. In every triumvirate of conspicuous activity he would benaturally associated. Thus, in the preliminary agitations which preparedthe triumphant politics, it is Chase and Sumner and Hale; in thecompetition for the presidency when the party expected to carry it, itis Seward and Lincoln and Chase; in administration, it is Stanton andSeward and Chase; in the Senate, it is Chase and Seward and Sumner. Allthese are newly dead, and we accord them a common homage of admirationand of gratitude, not yet to be adjusted or weighed out to each. Just a quarter of a century before Mr. Chase left these halls oflearning, the college sent out another scholar of her discipline, withthe same general traits of birth, and condition, and attendantinfluences, which we have noted as the basis of the power and influenceof this later son of Dartmouth. He played a famous part in his time aslawyer, senator, and minister of state, in all the greatest affairs, andin all the highest spheres of public action; and to his eloquence hiscountrymen paid the singular homage, with which the Greeks crowned thatof Pericles, who alone was called Olympian for his grandeur and hispower. He died with the turning tide from the old statesmanship to thenew, then opening, now closed, in which Mr. Chase and his cotemporarieshave done their work and made their fame. Twenty-one years ago thisvenerable college, careful of the memory of one who had so greatlyserved as well as honored her, heard from the lips of Choate the praiseof Webster. What lover of the college, what admirer of genius andeloquence, can forget the pathetic and splendid tribute which theconsummate orator paid to the mighty fame of the great statesman? Whatmattered it to him, or to the college, that, for the moment, this famewas checked and clouded, in the divided judgments of his countrymen, bythe rising storms of the approaching struggle? But, instructed by theexperience of the vanquished rebellion, none are now so dull as not tosee that the consolidation of the Union, the demonstration of the truedoctrine of the Constitution, the solicitous observance of everyobligation of the compact, were the great preparations for the finalissue of American politics between freedom and slavery. To these preparations the life-work of Webster and his associates wasdevoted; their completeness and adequacy have been demonstrated; theforce and magnitude of the explosion have justified all theirsolicitudes lest it should burst the cohesions of our unity. The generalsense of our countrymen now understands that the statesmen who did themost to secure the common government for slavery and freedom under theframe of the Constitution, and who in the next generations did the mostto strengthen the bonds of the Union, and to avert the last test tillthat strength was assured; and, in our own latest times, did the most tomake the contest at last become seasonable and safe, thorough andunyielding and unconditional, have all wrought out the great problem ofour statesmanship, which was to assure to us "Liberty and Union, now andforever, one and inseparable. " They all deserve, as they shall allreceive, each for his share, the gratitude of their countrymen, and theapplause of the world. To the advancing generations of youth that Dartmouth shall continue totrain for the service of the republic, and the good of mankind, thelesson of the life we commemorate, to-day, is neither obscure noruncertain. The toils and honors of the past generations have notexhausted the occasions nor the duties of our public life, and thepreparation for them, whatever else it may include, can never omit theessential qualities which have always marked every prosperous andelevated career. These are energy, labor, truth, courage, and faith. These make up that ultimate WISDOM to which the moral constitution ofthe world assures a triumph. --"Wisdom is the principal thing; she shallbring thee to honor; she shall give to thy head an ornament of grace; acrown of glory shall she deliver to thee. "