Diary of Gideon Welles: Wednesday, April 19, 1865

The funeral on Wednesday, the 19th, was imposing, sad, and sorrowful. All felt the solemnity, and sorrowed as if they had lost one of their own household. By voluntary action business was everywhere suspended, and the people crowded the streets.

The Cabinet met by arrangement in the room occupied by the President at the Treasury. We left a few minutes before meridian so as to be in the East Room at precisely twelve o'clock, being the last to enter. Others will give the details.

I rode with Stanton in the procession to the Capitol. The attendance was immense. The front of the procession reached the Capitol, it was said, before we started, and there were as many, or more, who followed us. A brief prayer was made by Mr. Gurley in the rotunda, where we left the remains of the good and great man we loved so well. Returning, I left Stanton, who was nervous and full of orders, and took in my carriage President Johnson and Preston King, their carriage having been crowded out of place. Coming down Pennsylvania Avenue after this long detention, we met the marching procession in broad platoons all the way to the Kirkwood House on Twelfth Street.

There were no truer mourners, when all were sad, than the poor colored people who crowded the streets, joined the procession, and exhibited their woe, bewailing the loss of him whom they regarded as a benefactor and father. Women as well as men, with their little children, thronged the streets, sorrow, trouble, and distress depicted on their countenances and in their bearing. The vacant holiday expression had given way to real grief. Seward, I am told, sat up in bed and viewed the procession and hearse of the President, and I know his emotion. Stanton, who rode with me, was uneasy and left the carriage four or five times.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 292-3

Diary of Gideon Welles: Friday, April 21, 1865

On the morning of Friday, the 21st, I went by appointment or agreement to the Capitol at 6 A.M. Stanton had agreed to call for me before six and take me in his carriage, the object being to have but few present when the remains were taken from the rotunda, where they had lain in state through Thursday, and were visited and seen by many thousands. As I knew Stanton to be uncertain and in some respects unreliable, I ordered my own carriage to be ready at an early hour. I wished also to take my sons with me to the obsequies, the last opportunity they or I would have to see the remains and to manifest our respect and regard for the man who had been the steady and abiding friend of their father. Stanton, as I expected, was late, and then informed me he had not, as he agreed he would, informed Governor Dennison of our purpose. He said he had to go for another friend, and wished me to take up Governor D. Not until I had got to Dennison's house was I aware of Stanton's neglect. It was then about six. Governor D., who had not yet risen, sent me word he would be ready in three minutes. I think he was not five. Stanton, I perceived, did not tell me the truth about another visitor. He moved in great haste himself, being escorted by the cavalry corps which had usually attended the President.

We hurried on, reached the Capitol, and entered the rotunda just as Mr. Gurley was commencing an earnest and impressive prayer. When it was concluded, the remains were removed and taken to the depot, where, in waiting, were a car and train prepared for the commencement of the long and circuitous journey of the illustrious dead to his last earthly resting-place in Springfield, in the great prairies of the West. We were, as we had intended, an hour in advance of the time, and thus avoided the crowd, which before the train departed thronged the roads and depot.

The meeting of the Cabinet was not protracted. Stanton did not bring forward his reconstruction or reëstablishing scheme. He seemed desirous of evading or avoiding the subject. I alluded to but did not care to press it, if no one seconded me. We discussed the measure of amnesty, and the Attorney-General expressed his views as to the construction which he would put upon the proclamation and declarations of the late President. Stanton and he, I perceived, were acting in concert, and one if not two others had been spoken to in advance.

Stanton called at my house about 6 P.M. and invited me to a hasty Cabinet convention at 8 P.M. on important matters requiring immediate action. When we had assembled, General Grant and Preston King were also present. Stanton briefly mentioned that General Grant had important communications from General Sherman, and requested that he would read them, which he did. It stated he had made a peace, if satisfactory, with the Rebels, etc., etc. This and everything relating to it will be spread before the world. Among the Cabinet and all present there was but one mind on this subject. The plan was rejected, and Sherman's arrangement disapproved. Stanton and Speed were emphatic in their condemnation, though the latter expressed personal friendship for Sherman. General Grant, I was pleased to see, while disapproving what Sherman had done, and decidedly opposed to it, was tender to sensitiveness of his brother officer and abstained from censure. Stanton came charged with specified objections, four in number, counting them off on his fingers. Some of his argument was apt and well, some of it not in good taste nor precisely pertinent.

It was decided that General Grant should immediately inform General Sherman that his course was disapproved, and that generals in the field must not take upon themselves to decide on political and civil questions, which belonged to the executive and civil service. The military commanders would press on and capture and crush out the Rebels.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 293-5

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley, December 8, 1838

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 8, 1838.]

We must give the whole of this euphonic line, so harmonious to the colored ear. This silver-spoken expatriationist has appeared again, we understand, in our New England horizon, with his northern aspect on, having doffed his slaveholder phases, as he crossed his equinoctial—the Mason and Dixon line. He ranges from tropic to tropic along his crooked ecliptic—from New Orleans on the south, to — the old town hall in Concord (his northmost declination) on the north—shifting his disk, like the changing moon.

Hail to thee, in the “clear cold sky” of the North, thou star of evil promise to liberty! Welcome, caterer of slavery, to the regions of paid labor! Thou reverend advocate of a double origin of the human family, and denier that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men,” &c. Thou promoter of human banishment, and sunderer of the strong ties of native country, hail to thy dubious aspect—thy Janus facies! Come, stir, with thy magician's rod, among the hushed and abashed mobocracy of your native New England. Kindle afresh the slumbering fires of prejudice. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of persecution! Mount the consecrated pulpit, under the ushering of the shepherds of the flock, who care for the sheep, and “pour” thence “your leprous distilment into” the common ear, till “public sentiment” shall “posset and curd” under your infusion, and the blotch and tetter of colonization shall “bark out over all” the surface of the body politic.

Thou angler for consent to exile! thou fisher for funds in the pockets of prejudice! thou recruiting sergeant for the ranks of banishment! Thou art earning the deep and indelible displeasure of thy colored brother. He must forgive thee unpardonable enmity, and “seventy times seven,” and God help him to charity unbounded—for he needs it in this emergency.

Elliot[T] Cresson, too, a satellite of the Secretary, is up here, on a winter campaign. Why does not Elliot cast the shadow of his broad brim on the snows of Canada, this winter, in the service of the Patriots, and help them become a free republic, and so break up that nest of self-emancipated niggers? For if this province of Canada were only a free, democratic state, it would not afford a refuge to those insolent fugitives, but they would have to be “given up on claim of those to whom” their souls and bodies, their time and eternity, “might be due.” Bethink thee, Friend! Elliot, thou mightest strike a capital stroke for thy master (who can enlarge his brim till it is as broad as William Penn's, to suit his turn) in the extinction of this tyrant monarchy, this refuge of runaway democrats. Thou mightest solicit the fugitives, with good prospect of colonizing them. If thou shouldest succeed in abolishing monarchy in said province, and open a way for the restoration of the lost property to be found there, thou mightest then solicit it for consent to great advantage. Thou mightest offer the candidates, either a sudden, and, as it were, a reluctant return to the patriarchs from whom they strayed, (with fetter on heel and hand-cuff on wrist,) or the glorious alternative of voluntary emigration, “with their own consent,” to the steepled paradise of Liberia. And would they not be free to go or stay? Yea, verily. Thee would say to them, "Friend, I do thee no injustice. Go to Liberia; but go freely. I abate not a tithe of thy free, thy voluntary, thy spontaneous choice. Go if thee choose. If not, stay and return south with me, whence, in an evil hour, thou came out.” Peradventure some of them would "consent," For They Have Been South. Yes, reader, they have been south.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 54-6 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of December 8, 1838.

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Color-phobia, November 10, 1838

COLOR-PHOBIA.

Our people have got it. They have got it in the blue, collapse stage. Many of them have got it so bad, they can't get well. They will die of it. It will be a mercy, if the nation does not. What a dignified, philosophic malady! Dread of complexion. They don't know they have got it — or think, rather, they took it the natural way. But they were inoculated. It was injected into their veins and incided into their systems, by old Doctor Slavery, the great doctor that the famous Dr. Wayland studied with. There is a kind of varioloid type, called colonization. They generally go together, or all that have one are more apt to catch the other. Inoculate for one, (no matter which,) and they will have both, before they get over it. The remedy and the preventive, if taken early, is a kine-pock sort of matter, by the name of anti-slavery. It is a safe preventive and a certain cure. None that have it, genuine, ever catch slavery or colonization or the color-phobia. You can't inoculate either into them. It somehow changes and redeems the constitution, so that it is unsusceptible of them. An abolitionist can sleep safely all night in a close room, where there has been a colonization meeting the day before. He might sleep with It. R. Gurley and old Dr. Proudfit, three in a bed, and not catch it. The remedy was discovered by Dr. William Lloyd Jenner-Garrison.

This color-phobia is making terrible havoc among our communities. Anti-slavery drives it out, and after a while cures it. But it is a base, low, vulgar ailment. It is meaner, in fact, than the itch. It is worse to get rid of than the “seven years' itch.” It is fouler than Old Testament leprosy. It seems to set the dragon into a man, and make him treat poor, dark-skinned folks like a tiger. It goes hardest with dark-complect white people. They have it longer and harder than light-skinned people. It makes them sing out “Nigger—nigger,” sometimes in their sleep. Sometimes they make a noise like this, “Darkey—darkey— darkey.” Sometimes, “Wully—wully—wully.” They will turn up their noses, when they see colored people, especially if they are of a pretty rank, savory habit of person, themselves. They are generally apt to turn up their noses, as though there was some “bad smell” in the neighborhood, when they have it bad, and are naturally pretty odoriferous. It is a tasty disorder — a beautiful ailment; very genteel, and apt to go in “first families.” We should like to have Hogarth take a sketch of a community that had it — of ours, for instance, when the St. Vitus’ fit was on. We have read somewhere of a painter, who made so droll a picture, that he died a-laughing at the sight of it. Hogarth might not laugh at this picture. It would be a sight to cry at, rather than laugh, especially if he could see the poor objects of our frenzy, when the fit is on — which indeed is all the time, for it is an unintermittent. Our attitude would be most ridiculous and ludicrous, if it were not too mortifying and humiliating and cruel. Our Hogarth would be apt to die of something else than laughter, at sight of his sketch.

The courtly malady is the secret of all our anti-abolition, and all our mobocracy. It shuts up all the consecrated meetinghouses — and all the temples of justice, the court-houses, against the friends of negro liberty. It is all alive with fidgets about desecrating the Sabbath with anti-slavery lectures. It thinks anti-slavery pew-owners can't go into them, or use their pulpit, when it is empty, without leave of the minister whom they employ to preach in it. It will forcibly shut people out of their own houses and off their own land, — not with the respectful violence of enemies and trespassers, but the contemptuous unceremoniousness of the plantation overseer — mingled moreover with the slavish irascibility of the poor negro, when he holds down his fellow-slave for a flogging. It sneers at human rights through the free press. It handed John B. Mahin over to the alligators of Kentucky. It shot Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton. It dragged away the free school, at Canaan. It set Pennsylvania Hall a-fire.

It broke Miss Crandall's school windows, and threw filth into her well. It stormed the female prayer meeting in Boston, with a “property and standing” forlorn hope. It passed the popish resolution at Littleton, in Grafton county. It shut up the meeting-house at Meredith Bridge, against minister and all, — and the homely court-house there, and howled like bedlam around the little, remote district school-house, and broke the windows at night. It excludes consideration and prayer in regard to the forlorn and christian-made heathenism of the American colored man, from county conferences and clerical associations. It broods over the mousings of the New York Observer, and gives keenness to the edge and point of its New Hampshire name-sake. It votes anti-slavery lectures out of the New Hampshire state house, and gives it public hearing on petitions, in a seven by nine committee room. It answers the most insulting mandate of southern governors, calling for violations of the state constitution and bill of rights, by legislative report and resolves that the paramount rights of slavery are safe enough in New Hampshire, without these violations. It sneers and scowls at woman's speaking in company, unless to simper, when she is flattered by a fool of the masculine or neuter gender. It won't sign an anti-slavery petition, for fear it will put back emancipation half a century. It votes in favor of communing with slaveholders, and throwing the pulpit wide open to men-stealers, to keep peace in the churches, and prevent disunion. It will stifle and strangle sympathy for the slave and " remembrance of those in bonds," to prevent disturbance of religious revivals. It will sell the American slave to buy Bibles, or hire negro-hating and negro-buying missionaries for foreign heathen of all quarters but christian-wasted Africa. It prefers American lecturers on slavery, to having that foreign emissary, George Thompson, come over here, to interfere with American rights and prejudices. It abhors "church action" and "meddling with politics." In short, it abhors slavery in the abstract — wishes it might be done away, but denies the right of any body or any thing to devise its overthrow, but slavery itself and slaveholders. It prays for the poor slave, that he might be elevated, while it stands both feet on his breast to keep him down. It prays God might open a way in his own time for the deliverance of the slave, while it stands, with arms akimbo, right across the way he has already opened. Time would fail us to tell of its extent and depth in this free country, or the deeds it has done. Anti-slavery must cure it, or it must die out like the incurable drunkards.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 44-7 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of November 10, 1838.

Daniel Webster to Justice Joseph Story, August 6, 1822

Washington, August 6, 1822.

My Dear Sir,—This gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Gurley, comes recommended by our friends at the South, on the subject of the Colonization Society. He has with him some very interesting publications of the African Institution in London, as well as the reports of the society here, and appears to be a very agreeable and intelligent man.

I feel inclined to do whatever duty requires on this subject. You know that my opinion has not been the most favorable, and yet I would wish to pay proper deference to such excellent men as Judge Washington and Mr. Kay.

Mr. Gurley will probably be in this neighborhood till Commencement, and if you think it proper that some bread should be cast on the waters in this case, I am willing to follow the example.

While I cannot, conscientiously, very confidently recommend the cause of this society as being a great attainable good, I am still willing to confide in those good men, who have more confidence, so far as to contribute my own little mite to the object in view.

At any rate, my dear Sir, you have discharged your duty before God and man, on the subject of African slavery; and yon must not be surprised if more should be expected from him who has done so much and so admirably.

With perpetual regard, dear Sir,

Yours,

Daniel Webster.

SOURCE: Fletcher Webster, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, Volume 1, p. 320-1

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Colonization Love and “Logic,” September 8, 1838

Abolition Logic

“Not hate of one's neighbor.” We prove it to be hate, because it wants to send off. Hatred repels, and would expel. Love attracts, draws, wishes to detain. Colonization proposes to rid the land of colored people. It therefore, cannot love them. Its love is mere pretence. — Herald of Freedom.

This argument, poor as it is, with hardly speciousness enough to deceive a sensible boy of six years old, is the same that was used by George Thompson, in our debate with him in Boston. But how will this argument work? A New Hampshire father sends off his son to make his fortune on the rich lands of the West. Therefore he hates him. A Boston merchant sends off his son to Europe or the East Indies, that he may extend his schemes of enterprise, and acquire wealth. Therefore he hales him. We send off missionaries to barbarous nations, that they may extend the blessings of Christianity, and receive in a future world the rewards of those that turn many to righteousness. Therefore we hate these missionaries. The consent of those who depart seems to make no difference in the view of this sage editor. “We prove it to be hate because it wants to send off.”

It is a little ludicrous that the editor of the Herald should actually kill his own argument, even before he reaches the bottom of his column. “It won't hurt a slave to send him to Africa. It won't, to send him any where out of the infernal regions. We had rather he might get to Canada, — but if he can't go there — or to the West Indies — or to England — or France — or Spain, or Turkey, or Algiers — or any other comparatively free country under heaven — why, rather than remain in America, among our Colonizationists, let him go to Liberia — or to the bottom of the sea — or to the sharks. No monster of the deep would devour him with the cruel tooth of our republicanism.”

He also proposes, in another article, to colonize slaves in Canada. Seriously, we think there are strong indications of insanity in the Herald.

The above is from the Rev. R. R. Gurley, Secretary and chief engineer of the American Colonization Society — that grand "American system” of machinery for clearing this country of free colored people, by a sort of suction-pump force, called “consent.” They say, however, the “Niggers” come hard; and though the pump draws upon them, like doctor's instruments upon a tooth, yet they stick to the soil like a lamprey eel to the rocks; and though the Secretary “hangs on like a dog to a root,” they “hang back, like a dog going to the gallows.” Resist sternly, colored friends! “Abide in the ship.” The land shall soon be indeed your country and your home. Lay your bones in it. Your tyrants and persecutors will go and evangelize Africa, themselves, when they really wish her evangelized.

The wily Secretary has ventured upon a little article of ours, with true Tracy philology and word-hunting. “Send off.” The magnificent “statesman” here finds a field for the scope of his continental philanthropy. The argument, he says, is the same that was used by George Thompson. All the better for that. George Thompson is an authority. He is a mm of instinctive and intuitive judgment on this question. But it is a poor argument, says the Secretary, “with hardly speciousness enough to deceive a sensible school boy of six years old.” Any argument is always poor in the eyes of the Secretary, that is clear “of speciousness and false show, and that can't deceive sensible school boys. We don't intend to use specious arguments,— “showy, plausible, superficially not solidly right,” as Walker defines them! The Secretary had better not use any more of them. “Fair play is a jewel.”

“How will this argument work?” Try it and see, Secretary.

You don't try it. You put different cases. You speak of farmers sending away sons for their benefit and fortunes. We speak of sending off — a sending off to get rid of. Farmers don't send off their sons, unless they get angry, and forget their nature, and disinherit them. Then they send them off. This sending to the West is not true in fact. The sons want to go from New Hampshire rocks to the prairied West. They have heard stories about it almost as extravagant and false as the Secretary tells about the death-haunted capes of Liberia, where bones lie bleaching as they do in the valley of the fabled Upas. The father wants them to stay with him, if he has got land for them, and if he han't, he would go with them. That is the way the father sends off his sons. Does the Secretary send off the dear colored people so?  Would he accompany them? Let him go and edit at Cape Palmas, and sing his ditty of the “African steeples” about among king Joe Harris' people. They would admire his tall presence and his fine head, as the Cossacks did Murat on his black charger. No. The Secretary loves —  “society,” that has got more “frame-work” in it. The dragon take Liberia, for all his going there! It is a grand country for “free niggers;” but the Secretary belongs to another race.

“The Boston merchant sends off his son,” &c. Whoever heard of such a sending off? Would the weeping father, as the vessel, with his dear boy on board, was clearing the harbor and standing out into the wide sea, tell the disconsolate mother and the brothers and sisters — all in tears — “I've sent off Charles?” Sent him off! for shame, Secretary! If you had instanced a Boston merchant, who had a poor, miserable, profligate, drunken, prodigal son, that had exhausted his paternal nature, and forged his name to checks — whom he did not wish to see hanged at home, for the disgrace it would bring on the family, and he had shipped him aboard a man-of-war for the Mediterranean — or a whaler for a three years' chance among the storms of the cape, and the grampuses of the arctic circle, peradventure to come back, and peradverture not, then you might talk of a father's sending his son off. But that comes too near colonizing, for the Secretary's purpose, — only he wants to ship the innocent — the blameless — the unoffending — guilty of nothing but want of the roseate hue of the beauteous, Absalom-looking Secretary.

“We send off missionaries,” &c. Only to Liberia, Secretary. We send out to every other quarter. Note this peculiarity, reader, in our American efforts to evangelize the world. We send out white, educated, college-learned, beneficiary, Andover-finished theologians to those people we have never enslaved; and to our old human hunting-ground we send off  “abated nuisances,” called “free niggers,” — sent off “with their own consent.”  (“He ’ticed him out of the field,” says the witness; “’ticed him clear out.” How did he ’tice him? said the court. “O, he 'ticed him with a pitchfork.’”) We had the curiosity to look, in this very number of the Secretary's “Statesman,” to see what he called the sending of missionaries. He has a deal to say about love to the heathen. We lit upon “Missions to Liberia,” the first thing almost. It is not the Secretary's own, but his faithful Achates, R. McDowell's. He gives us the very technical phrase for missionary sending; but there is no off to it. “The first mission, established in Liberia,” says McD., “was the Swiss mission, &c., sent out by Rev. Dr. Bleinhardt,” &c.

Don't talk of sending off sons and missionaries, any more, Mr. Secretary. It is too “specious.”

The Secretary says, we “ludicrously kill our argument before we get down our column.” What is our argument? That sending off our free colored people, to rid the country of them, is proof of hatred towards them. How do we kill it? Why, by saying it won't hurt a slave to send him away. Commend us to such killing. “What is sauce for the goose, may be for the” Secretary; but it don't follow, that what is bad for the freeman, would be bad for the slave. Would it be good for the freeman of America to be sent to Algiers? We say it would not hurt the slave to be sent there. He would rejoice to get there, and we should rejoice to have him, if we can't free him here,—even to Liberia—rather than stay within influence of such teachers of humanity as McDufie and Gurley.

The Secretary's mention of our proposal to colonize the slaves in Canada, as a serious proposal, is so roguishly “specious,” that we can't answer it. — The charge of “insanity,” abolitionists are used to. The Secretary will be glad to be so, by and by, when we get slavery down in this country. The cry from the West Indies makes him look wild. He will exclaim, by another year or two, when Congress, with old John Quincy Adams at their head, and Alvan Stewart and Wendell Phillips and Vermont Knapp to back him up, declare slavery down in the capital and the' district — he will then cry out, as Atlialiah did, when she “heard the noise of the guard, the clapping of hands, and the God save king Joash.” He will be stark crazy then, — if he does not repent — which we hope he may.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 21-5 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of September 8, 1838.

Last Will and Testament of James Madison*, April 15, 1835

I, James Madison, of Orange County, do make this my last will and testament, hereby revoking all wills by me heretofore made.

I devise to my dear wife during her life the tract of land whereon I live, as now held by me, except as herein otherwise devised, and if she shall pay the sum of nine thousand dollars within three years after my death, to be distributed as herein after directed, then I devise the same land to her in fee simple. If my wife shall not pay the said sum of money within the period before mentioned, then and in that case it is my will and I hereby direct that at her death the said land shall be sold for cash or on a credit, as may be deemed most for the interest of those entitled to the proceeds thereof. If my wife shall pay the said sum of money within the time before specified as aforesaid, so as to become entitled to the fee simple in the said land, then I bequeath the said sum of money to be equally divided among all my nephews and nieces, which shall at that time be living, and in case of any of them being dead, leaving issue at that time living, then such issue shall take the place of it's or their deceased parent. It is my further will that in case my wife shall not pay the said sum of money within the time before named and it shall therefore be necessary to sell the said land at her death as before directed, then after deducting the twentieth part of the purchase money of the said land, which deducted part I hereby empower my wife to dispose of by her Will, I bequeath the residue of the purchase money and in case of her dying without having disposed of such deducted part by her Will, I bequeath the whole of the purchase money of the said land to my nephews and nieces or the issues of such of them as may be dead in the manner before directed in regard to the money to be paid by her in case she shall pay the same. I devise my grist mill, with the land attached thereto, to my wife during her life, and I hereby direct the same to be sold at her death and the purchase money to be divided as before directed in regard to the proceeds of the tract whereon I live. I devise to my niece, Nelly C. Willis and her heirs the lot of land lying in Orange County purchased of Boswell Thornton on which is a limestone quarry and also my interest in a tract of land lying in Louisa County, reputed to contain two hundred acres and not far from the said Limestone quarry. I devise my house and lot or lots in the city of Washington to my beloved wife and her heirs.

I give and bequeath my ownership in the negroes and people of colour held by me to my dear wife, but it is my desire that none of them should be sold without his or her consent or in case of their misbehaviour; except that infant children may be sold with their parent who consents for them to be sold with him or her, and who consents to be sold.

I give all my personal estate of every description, ornamental as well as useful, except as herein after otherwise given, to my dear wife; and I also give to her all my manuscript papers, having entire confidence in her discreet and proper use of them, but subject to the qualification in the succeeding clause.

Considering the peculiarity and magnitude of the occasion which produced the convention at Philadelphia in 1787, the Characters who composed it, the Constitution which resulted from their deliberation, it's effects during a trial of so many years on the prosperity of the people living under it, and the interest it has inspired among the friends of free Government, it is not an unreasonable inference that a careful and extended report of the proceedings and discussions of that body, which were with closed doors, by a member who was constant in his attendance, will be particularly gratifying to the people of the United States, and to all who take an interest in the progress of political science and the cause of true liberty. It is my desire that the report as made by me should be published under her authority and direction, as the publication may yield a considerable amount beyond the necessary expenses thereof; I give the net proceeds thereof to my wife charged with the following legacies to be paid out of that fund only — first I give to Ralph Randolph Gurley, Secretary of the American Colonization society and to his executors and administrators, the sum of two thousand dollars, in trust nevertheless, that he shall appropriate the same to the use and purposes of the said society, whether the same be incorporated by law or not. I give fifteen hundred dollars to the University of Virginia, one thousand dollars to the College at Nassau Hall at Princeton, New Jersey, and one thousand dollars to the College at Uniontown, Pennsylvania and it is my will that if the said fund should not be sufficient to pay the whole of the three last legacies, that they abate in proportion.

I further direct that there be paid out of the same fund to the guardian of the three sons of my deceased nephew, Robert L. Madison, the sum of three thousand dollars, to be applied to their education in such proportions as their guardian may think right — I also give, out of the same fund to my nephew Ambrose Madison two thousand dollars to be applied by him to the education of his sons in such proportions as he may think right, and I also give out of the same fund the sum of five hundred dollars to each of the daughters of my deceased niece, Nelly Baldwin and if the said fund shall not be sufficient to pay the whole of the legacies for the education of my great nephews as aforesaid and the said legacies to my great nieces, then they are to abate in proportion.

I give to the University of Virginia all that portion of my Library of which it has not copies of the same editions, and which may be thought by the Board of Visitors not unworthy of a place in it's Library, reserving to my wife the right first to select such particular books & pamphlets as she shall choose, not exceeding three hundred volumes.

In consideration of the particular and valuable aids received from my brother in law, John C. Payne and the affection which I bear him, I devise to him and his heirs two hundred and forty acres of land on which he lives, including the improvements, on some of which he has bestowed considerable expense to be laid off adjoining the lands of Reuben and James Newman in a convenient form for a farm so as to include woodland and by the said Mr Newmans. I bequeath to my step son, John Payne Todd the case of Medals presented me by my friend George W. Erving and the walking staff made from a timber of the frigate Constitution and presented me by Commodore Elliot, her present Commander.

I desire the gold mounted walking staff bequeathed to me by my late friend Thomas Jefferson be delivered to Thomas J. Randolph as well in testimony of the esteem I have for him as of the knowledge I have of the place he held in the affection of his grand-father. To remove every doubt of what is meant by the terms tract of land whereon I live, I here declare it to comprehend all land owned by me and not herein otherwise devised away.

I hereby appoint my dear wife to be sole executrix of this my Will and desire that she may not be required to give security for the execution thereof and that my estate be not appraised.

IN testimony hereof — I have this fifteenth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and thirty five — signed, sealed, published and declared this to be my last Will & Testament.

We have signed in presence of the

James Madison. (Seal)

Testator

and of each other,

Robert Taylor.

Reuben Newman Sr.

Reuben Newman Jr.

Sims Brockman.

_______________

* Orange C. H. Records.

_______________

• Codicil to Last Will and Testament of James Madison, April 19, 1835

SOURCE: Gaillard Hunt, Editor, The Writings of James Madison: Volume IX, 1819-1836, p. 548-51

Codicil to Last Will and Testament of James Madison, April 19, 1835

I, James Madison do annex this Codicil to my last will — as above & to be taken as part thereof. It is my will that the nine thousand dollars to be paid by my wife and distributed among my nephews & Nieces, may be paid into the Bank of Virginia, or into the Circuit Superior Court of Chancery for Orange, within three years after my death.

I direct that the proceeds from the sale of my Grist Mill & the land annexed sold at the death of my wife shall be paid to Ralph Randolph Gurly, secretary of the American Colonization society and to his executors & administrators, in trust and for the purposes of the said society, whether the same be incorporated by law or not.

This Codicil is written wholly by and signed by my own hand this nineteenth day of April 1835.

James Madison.

SOURCE: Gaillard Hunt, Editor, The Writings of James Madison: Volume IX, 1819-1836, p. 551-2

Ralph Randolph Gurley to Leonard Bacon, March 13, 1826

Office Of The Colonization Society,

Washington, March 13, 1826.

My Dear Sir: Mr. Everett's speech in the House of Representatives last Thursday was an exhibition of talent and eloquence which I have never known equaled in that place. It has crowned him with the glory of the highest genius. But will you believe that he gave us his creed, uncalled for, unnecessary to his argument, on the subject of slavery, and such a one as would have branded the advocate of the allied despotisms of Europe? If he dares to publish these sentiments, which go to sustain a most iniquitous system, our friends at the North must not be silent. There is a great battle to be fought, not in Turkey only, or in the old, kingly establishments of the East, but in our republic, in the cause of justice and for the defense of what are in the city of Washington much ridiculed, imprescriptible rights. Have you read John Randolph's great speech? and if so, did you ever find such a medley of wit, absurdity, genius and wickedness bound up together, before? * * * But I have more apprehension of the consequences of Everett's influence. You and all the faithful at the North will, I hope, be prepared to counteract it.

SOURCE: Publications of the Connecticut Society of the Order of the Founders and Patriots of America, No. 7, Leonard Woolsey Bacon, Anti-slavery Before Garrison, p. 27-8

Gerrit Smith to Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley, November 24, 1835

Peterboro, November 24,1835.

Rev. R. R. Gurley, Secretary of American Colonization Society.

My Dear Friend, — Great as the pleasure would be to me of meeting, at the approaching Anniversary of the American Colonization Society, with my beloved fellow laborers in the cause of African Colonization, I must not, for this alone, make a journey to Washington. Could I connect with the anticipation of this pleasure the prospect of gaining over the Society to the views which I have so long, but in vain, pressed upon its adoption, the journey would then be made most cheerfully; but the present circumstances and complexion of the Society afford anything but such a prospect.

You well know, my dear sir, how faithfully I labored, at the Anniversary of the Society in January, 1834, and for a year before; and how much I have written to that end since, to bring back the Society to its constitutional and neutral ground, respecting the subject of slavery. The ineffectualness of these efforts is manifest in the fact, that the Society is now, and has been for some time, far more interested in the question of slavery than in the work of colonization — in the demolition of the Anti-slavery Society, than in the building up of its colony. I need not go beyond the matter and spirit of the last few numbers of its periodical for the justification of this remark. Were a stranger to form his opinion by these numbers, it would be, that the Society issuing them was quite as much an anti-abolition, as colonization society: and this would be his opinion of a society, which has not legitimately anything to do with slavery, either as its opponent or advocate — of a society of which I said in my speech before it, in January 1834, and justly, I believe, that “such is, or rather such should be its neutrality, on the subject of slavery, that its members may be free, on the one hand, to be slaveholders; and on the other to join the Anti-slavery Society.” It has come to this, however, that a member of the Colonization Society cannot advocate the deliverance of his enslaved fellow-men, without subjecting himself to such charges of inconsistency, as the public prints abundantly cast on me, for being at the same time a member of that Society and an abolitionist.

It was not until some six or eight months since, that I began to despair of seeing the Colonization Society cease, within any short period, if ever, from its interference with the subject of slavery. No more than a year ago, and I was still confident that the Society would retrace its errors, and be again simply a Colonization Society: and then how soon a harmonious, successful and glorious Society!

I still owe a considerable sum on my subscriptions to the funds of the Colonization Society. It is true that the conditions on which these subscriptions were made, have not been fulfilled, and that it is now too late to fulfill them. It is further true, that most of the sum I still owe has some years to run before it is due. But I sympathize with the Society in its embarrassments, and herewith enclose you my check for the whole balance — viz., three thousand dollars. It is my wish, though I would not insist on its taking this direction against the judgment of your much esteemed board — that the whole sum be applied towards the cancelment of the debts of the Society.

At some future period, and under happier auspices, the American Colonization Society may possibly cease to meddle with slavery; and to claim that it is the remedy, and the only remedy for that evil. It may then confine its operations to their constitutional sphere, and employ all its means in the benevolent and delightful work of aiding the free people of color in our country to escape from the unrelenting prejudice and persecution under which they suffer, and to obtain in a foreign land the honorable and happy home which is cruelly and wickedly denied to them in their own. I may then have it in my heart and in my power to contribute again to your treasury. In the mean time, I cannot conscientiously do so, — nor, indeed, do anything else from which my approbation of the Society could be justly inferred.

It is proper for me to say, that I am brought to this determination earlier than I expected to be, by the recent increase of my interest in the American Anti-Slavery Society. From its organization to the present time, I have looked to that society as, under God, the best hope of the slave and of my country. Since the late alarming attacks, in the persons of its members, on the right of discussion, (and astonishing as it is, some of the suggestions for invading this right are impliedly countenanced in the African Repository) I have looked to it, as being also the rallying point of the friends of this right. To that society yours is hostile, I will not say without cause — without even as much as the certainly very great cause which it has for being the enemy of yours. However that may be, it is enough for my present purpose and to justify me in standing aloof from your society, to know that the Anti-Slavery Society has now become identified with this threatened right; and that if it fall, as your society is diligently striving that it shall, this great and sacred right of man will fall and perish with it.

With great regard, your friend,

Gerrit Smith.

SOURCE: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 166-8