strong convictions and his native force of character as well as his intellectual powers became manifest during the debates of this Club.

Having saved several hundred dollars, he, in the spring of 1836, visited Washington City. How he was impressed with what he saw there he related himself in a speech he delivered in Philadelphia, in 1863, as found in the Boston Advertiser of recent date, and is contained in the following paragraph:

"I saw slavery beneath the shadow of the flag that waved over the Capitol. I saw the slave-pen, and men, women and children herded for the markets of the far South, and at the table at which sat Senator Morris, of Ohio, then the only avowed champion of freedom in the Senate of the United States, I expressed my abhorrence of slavery and the slave traffic in the Capital of the Democratic and Christian Republic. I was promptly told that Senator Morris might be protected in speaking | against slavery in the Senate, but that I would not be protected in uttering such sentiments. I left the Capital of my country with the unalterable resolution to give all that I had, and all that I hoped to have, of power to the cause of emancipation in America; and I have tried to make that resolution a living faith from that day to this. My political associations from that hour to the present have always been guided by my opposition to slavery in every form, and they always will be so guided. In twenty years of political life I may have committed errors of judgment, but I have ever striven to write my name' in the words of William Legget, 'in ineffaceable letters on the abolition record.' Standing here to-night in the presence of veteran anti-slavery men, I can say, in all the sincerity of conviction, that I would rather have it written upon the humble stone that shall mark the spot where I shall repose when life's labors are done, He did what he could to break the fetters of the slave,' than to have it recorded that he filled the highest stations of honor in the gift of his countrymen."

"Upon his return to the North, he began a course of study in the academy in Strafford, New Hampshire, and at the close of the term he took the affirmative of an exhibition debate upon the question, Ought Slavery to be Abolished in the District of Columbia?' A quarter of a century after it was his privilege to introduce into the United States Senate the bill to accomplish that

result, which became a law. He pursued his studies further at Wolfeborough, New Hampshire, teaching a district school in the winter, and the next spring he began studying at the academy in Concord. While pursuing his studies here he was, on account of his declared anti-slavery principles, chosen a delegate to an anti-slavery State Convention, where he made a speech. While he was thus pursuing the desire of his life in acquiring an education, a citizen of his native town, to whom he had loaned his hard-earned money, failed, and he was again penniless. A friend in Wolfeborough, however, offered to board him on credit while he continued his studies. He accepted the offer, but only for one term-his last at school. Then he returned to Natick as destitute of money as when he first entered the town. He was made teacher of the Centre District School and at once resumed his connection with the Debating Club.

"On finishing his school he paid his debts and had twelve dollars with which to begin the world again. On that capital he began manufacturing shoes for the Southern market. In this business he continued steadily, except when engaged in public duties, for ten years, taking an active interest in all local affairs that tended to the improvement of the town and its population. As a business man, he is remembered as upright, fair and manly, winning the respect of his workmen and of all who transacted business with him; but he did not accumulate wealth. His mind did not adapt itself to the grooves of trade, but was continually occupied with the more congenial affairs of politics and public questions. While engaged in business in Natick he married Miss Harriet Melvina Howe of that town, a lady of good education and superior character. Three or four years later he built the modest house which was ever afterwards his home."

In 1840 he took an active part in promoting the election of General Harrison, making sixty speeches or more in his behalf. During the ensuing five years he was elected a Representative from Natick to the Legislature three times, and twice a State Senator from Middlesex county. In 1845 Henry Wilson was selected in conjunction with the poet Whittier to carry to Washington City the great anti-slavery petition from Massachusetts against the annexation of Texas.

In 1846 he was again a member of the Leg

islature, and as such he introduced, says the "American Cyclopedia," a resolution declaring the unalterable hostility of Massachusetts to the further extension and longer continuance of slavery in America, and her fixed determination to use all constitutional and legal means for its extinction. He supported this resolution in a speech which was pronounced by the leading anti-slavery journals to be the fullest and most comprehensive on the slavery question that had yet been made in any legislative body in the country. The resolution was adopted by a large majority.

In 1848 he was a delegate to the Whig National Convention, and on the refusal of that body to adopt an anti-slavery platform, he withdrew from it, and from that party, and forthwith identified himself prominently with movements looking to the organization of the "Free Soil" party. He purchased at this time the Boston Republican, a daily newspaper, which he edited for two years.

In 1849 he was chosen chairman of the Free Soil State Committee of Massachusetts, a post which he occupied with great efficiency and acceptability for four years.

In 1850 and again in 1851 he was chosen State Senator, and during both sessions of the Senate he served as its presiding officer. During his entire career as a member of both branches of the State Legislature, Henry Wilson was a conspicuous champion of Freedom, and the able, out-spoken, unyielding opponent of slavery, and especially hostile was he to its further extension. His speeches had the true ring of Liberty in them. Henry Wilson was a delegate to the National Convention of the Free Soil party in 1852, which convened in Pittsburg, and he was chosen its President. As indicating the spirit of the convention it is necessary only to say that one of its resolutions denounced slavery as "a sin against God, and a crime against man, which no law or usage can make right," and on whose banner, in the ringing words of one of its resolutions, was inscribed the lofty motto, "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men."

He was elected to the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 1853, and took a prominent part in the discussion of that assembly.

In 1855 Henry Wilson was chosen a member of the United States Senate, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Edward Everett. He soon took an active part in the debates of that

body, his first speech being a very able one in favor of the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and of the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. His course in the Senate, during the contest with slavery, in the settlement and occupancy of Kansas, was marked by the same uncompromis ing devotion to Freedom that had characterized his previous career, and the same interest in the cause of free labor, whose essential dignity he had always nobly vindicated.

The assault on his colleague Senator Sumner, by Brooks, Henry Wilson pronounced "brutal, murderous and cowardly." This brought a challenge from his colleague's assailant, which was however declined, considering the code as he did, a relic of barbarous civilization, but at the same time asserting in the broadest sense the right and duty of self-defence. Henceforth he was not assailed. This and other incidents growing out of the discussions of the exciting questions of the times made Senator Wilson a conspicuous man among the law-makers at the National Capitol, and his sound judgment, good sense, courage, fidelity, and his political sagacity, and his parliamentary experience naturally pointed public attention to him as a leader of the Republican party, which was rapidly rising in importance and strength.

Senator Wilson was a member of the military committee of the Senate for four years, and when the Republican party came into power, in 1861. he was made its chairman. When war came his position was one of great labor and responsibility, as all the measures for carrying on the war originated, or were matured by his committee. What he was instrumental in accomplishing for his country, during the perilous years of our great civil war is matter of history, and need not be detailed here at length. Suffice it to say that he was instrumental in raising several thousand men for service, and was commissioned Colonel of one of the regiments thus raised. He did not remain long in command of it, however, as his services were deemed of more importance to the country in the Senate than in the army. His only other active service in connection with the army was what he rendered as a volunteer aide de-camp for a time on the staff of General McClellan.

Henry Wilson remained a member of the Senate until the 3d of March, 1873, when he took his place as President of the Senate, having been elected the preceding November to the office of

Vice-President, which, in a sense, continued him a member of the United States Senate, thus giving him a service of twenty years in that dignified body. Of the circumstances connected with his nomination as a candidate for Vice-President, and of his triumphant election by a majority unparalleled in the history of the country, I need not further remark. And it is not necessary that I should amplify upon his public services during the closing years of his useful life, but it is meet that I should assert his fidelity to the last to the convictions of his earlier life.

Henry Wilson was a generous, large-hearted, kindly-disposed, amiable, noble man, accessible by the most humble, open, frank, unsuspecting, disposed to look favorably upon the conduct of his fellow-men. In "plainness of speech and in the lack of affectation, in dress and manner, he greatly resembled Abraham Lincoln." He was temperate in his habits, says a late writer, and "his life was an illustration of Christian virtues and graces, and in small things as well as in large movements he was always to be counted on the side of rightdoing. In this respect he gives posterity an examplar of the things which were honest and of good report in his day." Henry Wilson was an indefatigable worker, indeed he overtasked himself and broke down prematurely, by reason thereof. It is owing to his unwearied industry that he has commanded so much of the public attention during the last thirty years. And but for that he would probably not have attained to the second highest position in our country. For a number of years past he was engaged in writing the history of the anti-slavery contest in the United States, and it was while laboring upon that extensive work, the last volume of which is yet to appear, that his strength gave way. Doubtless his excessive labors shortened his life. Besides the above named work he was the author of numerous speeches, orations, memorials, addresses and newspaper and magazine articles. And in all his voluminous writings he showed himself to be in unselfish sympathy with the lowly; that he had more than a fraternal regard for the "toiling millions," and that he was willing to labor for the improvement and elevation of all classes and conditions of mankind, without distinction of race, creed or color.

The life-history of Henry Wilson furnishes a valuable and instructive lesson to the young men of our country. Will not very many of them

benefit thereby? There is not one of all our American Statesmen whom we could, with a greater degree of pride and pleasure, present as an example to the young men of this generation than Henry Wilson. The moral rectitude and purity of purpose which characterized his life, his great public services, his useful career, his fidelity to God and man, and his every-day practical recognition of the claims of Purity, of Virtue, of Morality, of Religion upon him, render it eminently appropriate that his name should be a "household word" in every habitation in the land.

"Well done, good and faithful servant.”
"A man among men! Look down
At his form, but look up for his crown;
It is set far above-mid the stars!
On the earth in his purpose he proved
As fixed as the planets; and, so grooved
In the Right, where that led him he moved
Like Mars.

Who loved him? The many-the few—
All, his life and his virtues who knew;
But chiefly the lowly-THE SLAVE.
He struck for man's freedom of limb-
For man's freedom of soul; and the dim
Light of Liberty brightened through him,
The brave!

Who mourns him? The shadows that fall
Round his coffin are shadows from all

Who knew of his life, and its worth.
They come with man's sighs-woman's tears-
With a day that in darkness appears-
With a grief that shall linger for years,
On earth."

REMARKS.-The above tribute to the universally lamented Henry Wilson came to hand within a week after his decease; but we found it impossible to make space for it at the time. Indeed, it is so peculiarly admirable in its spirit and diction, and so well adapted to the high purpose of a permanent record, that the time of its insertion did not so much matter. Mr. Smucker's tribute to Andrew Johnson, in the October Monthly, comprises one of the best sketches of that remarkable man that we have seen, and this to Henry Wilson is even better, and will doubtless be read with interest by Americans of every political creed.

We have two of Mr. Smucker's very interesting and popular papers on "The Military Expeditions to the Northwest," which shall appear very soon, and we believe there are some two or three of the same series yet to come. By the time this series is completed, we hope Mr. Smucker will have thought of another equally attractive subject for a similar series.

In the many views taken within the past fifty years of the River Front of "Ye City of Penn,' the two ship-houses at the Navy Yard have been prominent and conspicuous landmarks, looming up. like huge watch-towers at the city's southern boundary, and relieving the monotony of the otherwise level stretch of housetops that lie unsteepled beyond. In that locality, they are now a thing of the past-the larger of the two having been reerected at League Island in almost its original proportions, while the smaller, "the Frigate House," as it was termed, has been despoiled of its fair dimensions, and is now doing menial duty as a temporary receptacle of "odds and ends." Shades of the launched and departed "walls of oak," can such things be?

The illustrations represent the ship-houses as they appeared a day or two after vandal hands, with claw and hammer, had ruthlessly commenced

the work of demolition-yea, even while the artist was photographing the picture, the clapboards and scantling were tumbling about his ears.

Mr. Philip Justice, a famous builder in his day, having obtained the contract from Government to erect the ship-houses, commenced the smaller house in the year 1821, and completed it during 1822. He then commenced the larger building, on the north, and finished it some time during the following year, receiving for the two houses $23,000.1 The launching way" of the Frigate house was not built until the year 1837, and cost $24,879.34; the "slip" of the large ship-house was completed during the year 1852, at a cost of $27,377.66; making the entire cost of the two

66

1 Commodore Barron, in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, dated "Philadelphia, Decb: 2nd 1824," says: "The large shiphouse in this yard is very complete and I humbly think ought to serve as a model."

city.

The wharves Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 were built at a cost of $51,224.52. The Quay wall was finished in August, 1845, and cost $4,202.29. Piers to wharves Nos. 2 and 3 were built in 1848-49, costing $17,500; and the wall around the Dock was finished in July, 1851, at a cost of $3.818.75.

The engraving on page 256 is a capital illustration of the western front of the "Ship" and "Frigate House." The view also takes in the upper portion of a temporary shed that was placed over the Shackamaxon (name afterwards changed to Nebraska), intended to be one of the largest class VOL. VI.-17

judicious to finish her, and she was finally broken up on the same stocks where so much labor and material had been fruitlessly expended upon her. The second story of the building, that, in the picture, obstructs the view of the Nebraska, was used as a "Block" shop; on a portion of the groundfloor numerous grindstones were by steam-power kept constantly revolving, for the purpose of sharpening the mechanics' tools. In another portion was an apparatus for steaming timber. There was a frame structure to the right of this, occupied as a machine shop; the main brick building in the foreground being the joiner shop, with small brick boiler-house attached. Of the buildings enumerated, the machine-shop belonged to the department of Steam Engineering, and the others to the department of Construction and Repair.

While speaking of this matter of "cost," it may