The Society has recently lost two of its most highly respected officers. Mr. Julian Mason, an annual governing member since 1911 and a member of the Board of Trustees since 1916, has removed to New York, thus reversing the counsel of Horace Greeley, his distinguished predecessor as editor of the New York Tribune. Mr. Mason has been one of the most active trustees, a regular attendant at board meetings, and in every way a hard worker in the Society's interests. Mr. Mason's interest in the Chicago Historical Society may be said to have been inherited, for his father, Edward Guy Mason, was its president from 1887 to 1898, and was also acting treasurer from 1893 to 1898.

Mr. Frank Hamlin, one of the best known lawyers of Chicago, died May 3, 1922. He was elected an annual governing member of the Society in 1913, and after 1917 served on the Board of Trustees. He was born at Bangor, Maine, September 26, 1862, the youngest son of Hannibal Hamlin, then vice-president of the United States. After his graduation from

Harvard College in 1884 he attended Boston University Law School, and in 1888 removed to Chicago. He was assistant corporation counsel of the city of Chicago 1895-1897, counsel for the Lincoln Park Board in 1901, and attorney for the Civil Service Commission and the Board of Education in 1907. More recently he had been master in chancery in the Superior Court of Cook County. Mr. Hamlin took a keen interest in the work of the Society, especially in anything relating to Lincoln, and often expressed regret that he could give no more time to its activities.

ONE OF THE RAREST OF ALL BOOKS ON AMERICA

One of the foundation stones of any collection of Americana is the little book by Martin Waldseemuller in which he suggests the name America as appropriate to the New World. Two editions of this book were published, one on VII Calends May, which is April 25 in the Julian calendar, and the second on IIII Calends September, which is August 29. Of both issues there are now only about twenty copies known, more than half of which are in public or state libraries and will never again be for sale. Copies naturally are rarely offered for public sale the last one recorded was sold at auction in New York in 1920 for $2500.00. But it is not the money value in which we are interested so much as the intrinsic and sentimental. The Chicago Historical Society was fortunate in getting the copy which had belonged to Mr. Gunther. It is a fine copy, clean and complete, handsomely bound by Francis Bedford, the best English binder of his day. In short, it is a book of which the Society may well be proud, a book which many librarians and collectors will covet. Some account of this book, and of the circumstances under which it was published, appears on another page of this Bulletin.

most

SPECIAL WARM WEATHER
ATTRACTION

Hear ye! Hear ye! Did your heart ever jump when you heard the barker cry the praises of Tom Tripod, the three-legged man, or of Mlle. Falloffski, the greatest horsewoman of the age, or of the Great Unknown, the bearded lady? If it did, you will want to renew the days of your youth at the exhibition of early posters and handbills of circuses, museums and menageries which the Society will hold during the month of July (if there is sufficient interest, it will be continued through August). There will also be shown a number of autograph letters of P. T. Barnum and other famous showmen. Much of the material will be selected from the Gunther collection, but some of the most interesting items are being loaned to the Society for this exhibition only by Mr. Walter C. Scholl. The children, too, will enjoy our show almost as much as the one in the big tent on the lake shore (it is due only two weeks after the opening of our show).

Busy men and women of today are often perplexed by the energy and time spent by their forefathers in writing letters and in keeping diaries. How they found the time it is difficult for us to understand. Take President Polk for example. Polk's term of office was no idle period for the Chief Executive. The days that saw the Mexican War, the settlement of the Oregon boundary, the admission of Texas, the acquisition of California and the great Southwest, the beginnings of the acute discussion over slavery in the new territory, the Wilmot Proviso-no one can say that those were not busy days for the President. Professor Andrew C. McLaughlin says in his introduction, "those days were filled with facts and opinions of supreme importance in our national history-and they can now be studied through the eyes of the stern, rigid, precise, purposeful man in the White House, who, limited as he was in his outlook upon the world, saw clearly along the line he intended to

As

follow and took a hard, firm grasp of things that were near at hand."

was

"From this diary we can get an intimate view of the Executive Office as it was sixty-five years ago. In these pages we can see how(at least) one President did his work, how he was interviewed, how he dealt with congressman and office-holder, and how he treated-most amazing problem of all-the ever busy officehunter. The Presidential office still governed by the precedents of Jeffersonian simplicity and democratic unreserve; sightseers and public ministers, office-seekers and congressmen, even beggars for alms found their way to the executive presence. And though Polk fretted at the interruptions and at the thoughtless importunity of callers, it does not seem to have occurred to him that he could imitate remotely the exclusive seclusion of a European potentate. That America should be simple and free, that it must avoid the ostentation and reserve of Europe, were ideas-so typical of thought and practice in the first half of the nineteenth century-which firmly held him."

Three days before the end of his term there appears a brief and characteristic entry in the diary:

"Many persons called today and I transacted business with the members of my Cabinet and other public officers. Several persons annoyed me about offices, but I gave them very summary and short answers."

The night before he went out of office he

wrote:

"I was in my office at an earlier hour than usual this morning, and was constantly and incessantly occupied throughout the day ** The Cabinet dispersed and I disposed of all the business on my table down to the minutest detail and at the close of the day left a clean table for my successor.

Yet his entry in the diary for this eventful day covers ten and a half printed pages.

Polk asserted that he was the hardest worked man in the country. As Mr. Quaife says in his biographical sketch, a perusal of the diary leads one to agree with him. Throughout his term he toiled incessantly. In the first seventeen months his single absence from Washington consisted of a one day trip to Mount Vernon. Prior to the ten-day vacation from his duties at Washington in the summer of 1848 he records that in a period of thirteen months he had not been three miles distant from the Capitol. Certainly if any man ever deserved success by working for it, Polk was that man.

A LETTER FROM

SAM HOUSTON

Even the most hardened autograph collector gets many thrills out of his pursuit. Some of these only the collector can appreciate, but even the lay reader can understand the thrill which comes of handling historic documents, or letters

What does this letter mean? On its face, nothing startling, merely a friendly letter of introduction. But if we look at it with some knowledge of the circumstances under which it was written, we have a chance to re-live one of the most exciting periods in American history.

When this letter was written, Houston was president of the republic of Texas. His was an extraordinary career even in a day when many careers were made and marred over night. Born in 1793, he tried living with the Cherokee Indians and school teaching before he first gained public notice as a soldier in Jackson's victory over the Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Then he studied law, served two terms in the House of Representaties, and in 1827, being just thirty-four, was elected governor of Tennessee. While Houston was governor, Jackson was elected president, and it was often said that Houston was destined to follow in his friend's footsteps. Then came Houston's marriage, followed almost at once by his separation from his wife, his resignation of the governorship, and his decision once more to exile himself from civilization. Back to his friends the Cherokees he went, and was formally adopted a member of their nation. This dramatic climax, or anti-climax, Houston never attempted to explain. He offered no defense of himself, made no criticism of his wife, and merely said to his friends that "if my character can not stand the shock, let me lose it."

In the closing days of 1832, Houston went to Texas, ostensibly on a visit, but more probably (as evidence tends to show) with a vague plan in his head of wresting Texas from Mexico and of erecting a republic of which he himself should become president. Whatever his first purpose, the result desired was actually achieved.

When this letter to Jackson was written Houston had already served one term as president, from 1836 to 1838. During these years he was the government; as one of his biographers says, he carried the nation on his shoulders. Through financial complications of a hopeless sort, through desultory invasions from Mexico and raids by hostile Indians, through a chronic mutiny in his unpaid army, even through the scorn of the world, Houston guided the new republic into something at least resembling solvency and prosperity. Under his successor, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Texas was all but ruined because Lamar spent a few odd millions he did not have in order that the government might be as imposing as his name. Then in 1841 Houston took the reins for a second term.

On March 1st, 1837, he secured the recognition of Texan independence by the United States Senate; the approval of the Senate's vote was Andrew Jackson's last official act as President. Jackson, Houston, and the great majority of Texans desired the annexation of Texas to the United States, but there was strong opposition, and the question was a burning one by the end of 1843. Twice the Texans were declined with thanks, and this little note belonging to the Society was written at the moment when Texas was making a third attempt to secure admission to the Union. Houston tells the story in another letter to Jackson, written in this same month of February, 1844.

"Now, my venerated friend, you will perceive that Texas is presented to the United States, as a bride adorned for her espousal. But if, now so confident of the union, she should be rejected, her mortification would be indescribable. She has been sought by the United States, and this is the third time she has consented. Were she now to be spurned, it would forever terminate expectation on her part, and it would then not only be left for the United States to expect that she would seek some other friend, but all Christendom would justify her in a course dictated by necessity and sanctioned by wisdom * * That you may live to see your hopes *** crowned with complete success, I sincerely desire. ***”

At the very moment that Houston was writing this letter, he was sending Miller, his confidential secretary, to Washington City, via Jackson's home at the Hermitage, to work for annexation. So the short letter in the possession of the Society is really a letter of credentials to the "big boss", who was to receive the latest news from Texas and give such aid and advice as he could. It would be a fitting climax to our story if we could say that Miller accomplished the desired result. He did not. England and France protested vigorously against annexation, and after fierce debate the Senate in June, 1844, voted against the admission of Texas to the Union. When another year had gone, Jackson was dead, and Polk was president, but Texas was not yet a part of the United States. But of all this, if you are interested, you can read further in Polk's Diary.

ON THE UNITED STATES

SENATE

Random reflections induced by reading a letter from President Grant to Elihu B. Washburne, United States minister to France.

The dictionary says that a fly wheel is a "wheel with a heavy rim placed on the revolving shaft of any machinery put in motion by an irregular or intermitting force, or meeting with an irregular or intermittent resistance, for the purpose of rendering the motion equable and regular by means of its momentum.'

Now it appears that the Senate of the United States was designed by the framers of the Constitution as a sort of fly wheel for the governmental machinery. Who could ask a better definition of the Senate's function? That body gets its momentum in at least three ways. First, perhaps, from the fact that its members represent entire states, and are presumed to have a broader view-point, a deeper understanding of national problems, than the members of the lower House, who represent only districts. Second, the Senator's longer term gives him a certain independence of action which his two-year old neighbor at the other end of the Capitol lacks. No sooner is a Representative firmly seated in the House than he has to begin thinking about re-election, whereas a Senator has three times as long to make an impression on his public. Third, and obviously most important, is the collective power of the Senators, as given to them by the Constitution. Many of the founders of the United States were afraid that the President would make himself in fact if not in name an absolute monarch. The advocates of a weak central authority were able to impose checks on the President, whose great powers were at several points subjected to the control of Congress, and more particularly of the Senate.

These three factors, then, are constantly operating in the government machinery to render its motion "equable and regular". To be sure, the character of the motion depends entirely on the view-point. Under certain circumstances a fly wheel will seem to stop the machinery, and will waver back and forth as if it had nothing else to do. Fly wheels serve a purpose thrust on them by outside forces; they are notoriously lacking in intelligence. Critics of the Senate are fond of an old, old story which native Washingtonians seem never to tire of telling. The story goes that a constituent in the galleries was pained by the proceedings on the floor; several Senators had spoken, but said nothing, when he observed one of the most distinguished Senators making a notation on his shirt cuff. In awe the constituent turned to his neighbor and said: "Great Heaven. Some of them can write."

Taking its history as a whole, the Senate has revealed a noteworthy firmness, a persistency of purpose, or if you view it from unfriendly eyes, an unfailing stubborness. Naturally enough, the more persistent in purpose, the

more stubborn, the nation's chief executive has been, the more likely he has been to find an equally obstinate Senate opposing him. Some of the earliest Presidents had their troubles with the Senate, and some recent Presidents have doubtless wished that the members of the Senate would resign in a body and go home.

Readers of the BULLETIN who read the partial account of Grant's military career in the last number will understand that he possessed a persistency of purpose which now and then brooked no opposition. Easily influenced though he often was by his friends, the man who wrote "no terms but unconditional surrender" and proposed to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer", was stubborn. The following letter from Grant to Elihu Washburne, an old Galena friend whom he had appointed minister to France, gives a sidelight on his troubles with the Senate. It is now in the Society's collection.

Executive Mansion Washington, D. C., May 17, 1871.

Dear Washburne:

Your favor of the 20th of April, with enclosure, as all your other very welcome letters, was duly received. I have not written to you whilst shut up in Paris, because I did not know that anything but purely official dispatches were proper, or would be so considered by the Prussians, to send through the lines. I thought none the less frequently of you, however, and the relief from care and anxiety which you sought in a foreign mission. Your time will come, I trust, for relief. Already you have the reward of your services in the gratitude and pride the American people feel for the glorious cause you pursued in standing at your post, which all others, like situated, had deserted.

My trials here have been considerable, but I believe so far every tempest that has been around has recoiled on those who got it up. First, San Domingo; but you have read all that has been said about that matter in Congress, and out of Congress, and what I have had to say, and probably know the present status of the question. I will only add that a great many professedly staunch Republicans acted very much as if they wanted to outdo the democracy in breaking up the Republican party. Every thing looks more favorably now though, for the party, than it did in '63, when the war was raging.

Sumner and Schurz have acted worse than any other two men, and not far behind them is Ferry of Conn., and Tipton of Neb. Senator is paving the way to be just as bad as he knows how to be, but out of full fellowship with the Republican party he will amount to but little. He is affected with that "maggot" Mr. Lincoln used to speak of.

Before this reaches you the Senate will have acted upon the Alabama treaty. It looks now as if there would be but very little