The Anti-Masonic Party.

397

CHAPTER XXIV.

ANTI-MASONRY AND NULLIFICATION.

THURLOW WEED and the ALBANY EVENING JOURNAL-THE ANTI-MASONIC PARTY.-WHO WROTE THE JUNIUS LETTERS?—THE ROORBACK HOAX. -THE NASHVILLE UNION. -THE CHARLESTON (S. C.) MERCURY.-THE CHIEF ORGAN OF THE NULLIFIERS AND SECESSIONISTS. -MORE DUELS. NICE POINTS OF HONOR. -THE CODE. -THE "INDEPENDENCE" OF THE PRESS.

NEARLY all the leading journals of this period, being party papers, were established in the midst of great political excitements, or for the purpose of creating a political division, or to represent a new faction. The Albany Evening Journal came into existence in this way as the organ of the Anti-Masons in the Empire State. Another paper, named the Albany Fournal, as an organ of this party, was issued in 1825 by a son of Hezekiah Niles, of Niles's Register, but it passed out of existence before the Evening Journal made its appearance. Solomon Southwick, a name known to our readers for his brilliant and disastrous journalistic career, published the National Monitor in 1828 and '9, in the interest of the Anti-Masons, and became their candidate for governor in 1828. But it was not till 1830 that the Anti-Masonic party became formidable as a national as well as a state organization, and it was in that year that the Evening Journal was established, absorbing the Monitor in its publication. Thurlow Weed and Henry Dana Ward were the publishers of the new paper.

Thurlow Weed was editor of the Norwich (N.Y.) Journal in 1817. Shortly after he issued an opposition paper, named the Republican Agriculturist, in the interest of De Witt Clinton. In 1825 he became a member of the Legislature, where he met William H. Seward, and attached himself, in those days of political excitement, to the Anti-Masonic party. In 1830 he appeared in Albany as editor of the Evening Journal, the leading organ of that party.

It has been stated that he was a drummer-boy in 1812. No doubt, if he had occupied that position, he would have performed his part at réveille; and when ridiculed for this by his opponents, he could have answered, as the rich merchant, William Gray, retorted, when told that he had been nothing but a drummer-boy, "What! a drummer-boy! and did you ever hear me drum ?" asked Mr. Gray. "Yes,

I have," confidently answered his would-be tormentor. "Well, well, didn't I drum well?" retorted the independent merchant. But Weed had not been a drummer-boy in the War of 1812, but he had been a cabin-boy on board of a splendid North River sloop, where he undoubtedly acquired the rudiments of Salt River navigation, so necessary, sometimes, in political life.

Of the two hundred and eleven papers published in New York in 1830, when the Evening Journal was established, thirty-two were Anti-Masonic organs. The Journal made the thirty-third. This party obtained its popular existence in 1827 with the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan in the previous year, after he had threatened to publish a pamphlet disclosing the secrets of masonry. It grew in popular favor with the increase of popular excitement caused by that curious event. It was, like the Know Nothing party, a political sensation, to bring all the elements in opposition to the Democracy into one party, and could only exist for a time and for a special purpose. It became an organized state party in 1830, and nominated Francis Granger, who had previously been on the Adams ticket, for governor, and gave him 120,361 votes against 128,842, which the Democrats polled for E. T. Throop. Such men as William H. Seward, John C. Spencer, Albert H. Tracy, and Millard Fillmore were Anti-Masonic members of the Legislature at this period of our political history. William Wirt, the distinguished lawyer of Virginia, was the national representative of the party, and obtained the electoral vote of Vermont in 1832. John C. Spencer, with his original and brilliant mind, wrote for the Journal, and aided in its becoming a leading and influential paper. This was the real beginning of the political career of Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward, electing the latter Governor of New York in 1838, and culminating with the administration of Andrew Johnson and a trip around the world.

After Weed assumed the editorial management of the Evening Journal he never held office, but devoted all his energies to the labor of putting others in and out of office-a sort of Warwick. His intimacy with William H. Seward commenced in the Legislature in 1830, when both were members, one in the Senate and the other in the House. Then came into existence the well-known firm of Seward and Weed. After the latter had secured the services of Horace Greeley, in 1839-40, to edit the Log Cabin, in the famous and hilarious campaign for William Henry Harrison, the name of the firm was changed to Seward, Weed, & Co., which was dissolved by mutual consent in 1856 by the retirement of the junior partner. No two men ever worked so well and harmoniously together, one before and the other behind the scenes, from 1830, when one was state senator and the other an editor, as Seward and Weed.

Thurlow Weed and the Albany Journal.

399

It is a singular fact that Mr.Weed has never held any other office since 1830 than that of state printer. He has had plenty of offices and opportunities within his grasp. It is fair to suppose that he might have been governor, senator, and vice-president. These nominations were offered to him and refused. When talked of for the United States Senate, he said:

Looking back through the long vista of time that has elapsed-nearly forty years since a responsible and delicate political duty devolved upon us, it is much less a matter of surprise that we are surrounded, in our own party, with enemies, than that, amidst the disappointments and jealousies incident to the experience of all parties, we retain so much of its regard. When it is supposed that an individual exercises influence in the councils and conventions of his partywhere, of necessity, the aspirations of hundreds are disappointed-nothing but an abiding faith among the people, in that individual's judgment and unselfishness, can sustain him. All men err, but if a politician, whom the people trusts, endeav ors to do right, they find it out and stand by him.

The Evening Journal, in the warmly-contested presidential campaign of 1844, published what purported to be an extract of a tour through the South in 1836 by a traveler named Roorback. It pretended to describe scenes in the Southwest. Among other things, it stated that a party of slaves had been torn from the places where they were born and sold at auction. "Forty-three of these unfortunate beings had been purchased, I was informed," said the account, "of the Hon. J. K. Polk, the present Speaker of the House of Representatives, the marks of the branding-iron, with the initials of his name, on their shoulders distinguishing them from the rest."

It appeared that an extract from Featherstonhaugh's Tour in 1834 was made, and the above extract incorporated with his description of what he saw, and the whole accredited to another traveler, who was called Roorback. The story went the rounds of the Whig Press, in order to defeat the chances of Polk's election to the presidency. The extract was alleged to have been made from "Roorback's Tour through the Western and Southern States in 1835." The statement produced a great sensation, but the affair was soon exposed by the Albany Argus, and the Journal made an effort to relieve itself of any responsibility in the hoax in the following manner :

The Albany Argus of this morning charges the Evening Journal with fabricating from the whole cloth the extract published in this paper on Monday last from "Roorback's Tour through the Southern and Western States in 1836." This charge is utterly and unqualifiedly false. The extract in question was taken, precisely as it appeared in the Journal, from an exchange paper, and was published by us without a doubt of its genuineness.

The hoax had its origin, it was stated, in this way: Some one made the interpolation in the extract, and sent it to the editor of the Ithaca Chronicle, a Whig paper, to see if the manager of that paper, "moral and religious as he was allowed to be, would not, equal

ly with others, publish any falsehood, however gross, if he could thereby effect a political object!" Wholly ignorant of the fraud, the editor published the extract. It was then transferred to the Albany Patriot. Thence it made its appearance in the Evening Journal, and became a feature of the campaign, With Thurlow Weed's indorsement, it had wide-spread circulation before the truth of the story could be told.

The New York Herald made Weed the subject of many newspaper squibs; that he kept the slate of Governor Seward, containing the names of all the office-seekers of the Whig Party, and dubbed him State Barber. These squibs made a Warwick of him, and influential with that class of politicians, and gave the Evening Fournal, outside of Albany, a name and a fame it would not have otherwise obtained. Although closely allied with Mr. Seward in his crusade against slavery, Mr. Weed was not fanatical on the "irrepressible conflict" of the two races. When Helper's famous work was published, his name appeared as aiding in its publication. This is what he said on the subject:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 1859.

DEAR SIR,-Our brief conversation this morning confirmed an impression long resting on my mind that the sentiments and opinions of Republican editors are greatly misunderstood. This misapprehension results, I suppose, from the circumstance that we are only known to the Southern people through journals politically interested in misrepresenting us. The opinions we express upon existing questions go to the South garbled and perverted.

During the forty years of my editorial life, though ever opposed in sentiment and sympathy to slavery, I have never cherished a feeling or uttered a sentiment intended to affect injuriously the property, the rights, or the safety of the citizens of the slaveholding States.

In the lifetime of the Whig Party my affinities and associations were stronger with Southern than with Northern statesmen. Clay, Mangum, Williams (N. Č.), Preston, Clayton, Crittenden, etc., of the early, with Bell, Botts, Stanly, Rayner, Morehead, etc., of the later schools, were the men whom I "delighted to honor." But during all that period I was just as persistently stigmatized as an Abolitionist by the Democratic Press as are Republicans at the present day.

I read Mr. Helper's book hastily soon after its appearance. As the work of a Southern man, addressed to Southern people, I thought it calculated to assist in forming public sentiment upon the relative value and effect of free and slave labor. Not finding for several months refutation or denials of its general accuracy, when called upon for aid to publish a large edition of a "Compend," I contributed $100. Had I known, as is now asserted, that this "Compend" would counsel a severance of the business, social, and religious relations existing between slaveholding and non-slaveholding citizens, or that the book itself, as is also asserted, invites or countenances servile insurrection, I certainly should have withheld both my approval and my money, for my opposition to slavery rejects all such teachings.

Evidence too clear and conclusive to admit of doubt or denial satisfies me that the slavery agitation, which we all deplore, owes its existence to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, followed by a determination to extend slavery into Kansas. But I would not return aggression for aggression, nor attempt to right a wrong by doing wrong. With slavery, as it exists in the States, we have no right to interfere. Northern men who invade a Southern State either to run off slaves or excite insurrection, deserve the punishment they receive. depends upon maintaining the "supremacy of the laws." we must obey the Constitution. Very truly yours,

Our common safety To preserve the Union THURLOW Weed.

Authorship of Junius.

401

With others, Weed has taken a deep and abiding interest in the authorship of Junius's Letters. Since their publication in the Public Advertiser of London, they have been considered of so much importance to journalism and the freedom of the Press every where, that any new light shed on their authorship is read with pleasure. We therefore append Weed's testimony in clearing up this wonderful mystery:

JUNIUS-THE FRANCIS PAPERS.

In the spring of 1862 an intimate friend of Mr. John Taylor, the author of Junius Identified, informed me to the effect that that gentleman was preparing for the press some papers of Sir Philip Francis, which would be conclusive as to the authorship of the celebrated letters; and a letter dated from London, May 12, in the same year, from Mr. Thurlow Weed to the Albany (U. S.) Evening Journal, stated that "before the present year expires all doubt or question as to the authorship of the 'Junius Letters' will be removed." Since then both Mr. Taylor and his friend have died, and, although the subject is still of much interest, I have neither seen nor heard any thing further relative to either Mr. Taylor's Francis Papers or the evidence (which, perhaps, may be the same) to which Mr. Weed alluded. Perhaps the editor or some reader of "N. & Q." will be kind enough to say in what position the matter now stands. ERIC. VILLE MARIE, Canada.

[The late Mr. Joseph Parkes, who had purchased The Francis Papers, and also the original "Letters of Junius addressed to Woodfall," had been for some years preparing for publication a Life of Sir Philip Francis, and in which, in his opinion, would be found conclusive evidence of the identity of "Francis and Junius." The work was, however, far from complete at the time of Mr. Parkes's death; and although we believe the whole of the papers have since been submitted to the examination of one eminently qualified to do justice to them, we are not aware that there is any prospect of their being published just at present.]

The American consul at Frankfort, in Germany, inclosed the foregoing items to me. The note of the editor of the "N. & Q.,” appended to the communication of "Eric," furnishes the information sought for by that inquiry.

In 1862, the late Mr. Joseph Parkes, a gentleman of large and various information, informed me that he had been for several years devoting his intervals of exemption from official duties (as Tax Commissioner) to a Life of Sir Philip Francis, and that his researches would result in disproving the confident assertion of "Junius," in one of his private letters to Woodfall, "that he was the sole depositary of his own secret," and that it would die with him."

The subject was one which had interested me much at a period when "Junius" was read more generally and with greater interest than exists now. The question as to who "Junius" was engaged the attention of authors and editors. I had, forty years ago, entered with much zeal into that controversy. Finding me thus sympathetic and familiar with the subject, Mr. Parkes invited me to his apartments at Staple Inn, Holburn, and submitted his manuscripts to my perusal. There I passed many charmed hours. The materials for his work were not only ample, but conclusive. They established beyond a doubt, or a cavil, or a peradventure, that Sir Philip Francis was the author of the Letters of Junius.

Twice during these readings, in company with Mr. Parkes, I visited the then venerable and since departed John Taylor, author of Junius Identified, first published nearly fifty years ago. Mr. Taylor had intended to avail himself of subsequent and cumulative evidence, but, on account of his advanced age, had cheerfully committed the whole question to Mr. Parkes. These breakfast conversations with Mr. Taylor were exceedingly interesting. His bachelor life, like that of Charles Lamb, was solaced by an aged maiden sister. He had formerly known most of the literary celebrities of the last years of the past and the first years of the present century, and gave us pleasant recollections of their personal characters and habits.

Only a few weeks before the sudden death of Mr. Parkes he informed me that he expected to get his life of Sir Philip Francis to press the then ensuing autumn, and, in pursuance of a previous understanding, I was to arrange for its republicaСс