William Peterfield Trent

“ The very beginning of Washington's second administration saw the United States drawn into the vortex of European politics. The French Revolution was culminating in a Reign of Terror. Great Britain and France were at war, and gratitude seemed to demand that the Western Republic should sustain her sister State and former ally in the existing struggle. ”

“ We track the footsteps of the naïve hero of Hyperion with less confiding delight than our grandfathers and grandmothers probably experienced, but then we are less sentimental and more widely travelled than they were, facts which of course do not warrant us in arrogating to ourselves a taste necessarily superior to theirs. Hyperion doubtless meant more to the author and his countrymen than a scholarly monograph would have meant, for what America needed just then, apparently, was some one who, like Longfellow, could carry on the work begun by Irving of interpreting the Old World to the New. ”

“ By some his genius is regarded as musical rather than poetic, and his style is considered hectic; by others he is held to be one of the most original and most talented of modern American poets. He is considered the leading writer of the New South, the greatest Southern poet since Poe, and a man of heroic and exquisite character. ”

“ The early biographers of Washington erred in representing him as an ideal being of almost superhuman excellence. The criticism of later times deems it but honest to portray the man as he was. There are writers who, forgetting that balance of genius is rarer and more commendable often than brilliance, are inclined to rate him below Hamilton or Jefferson in political wisdom ”

“ Reading his letters and his diaries, putting together the biographical details furnished by others, and constructing as best one can the man’s life and spirit from his writings, one is forced to the conclusion that except for a single great tragedy—the accidental burning to death of his wife in 1861—Longfellow’s is one of the most serenely fortunate careers ever led by a man of letters. ”

“ During the five years following the close of Washington's military career, he found sufficient occupation in attending to the affairs of his homestead and property, and in fostering the progress of his native State. Mount Vernon was now constantly the scene of a profuse hospitality over which Washington presided with the courtly dignity natural to him. ”

“ In April, 1815, Jackson was appointed commander-in-chief of the Southern Division, and Congress voted thanks for his services. His next active work was in the war against the Seminoles in Florida, in the course of which occurred another of his acts which created no little excitement. He arrested and put to death, on the charge of inciting the Indians, two British subjects, an English adventurer, Ambrister, who was not proved guilty, and a Scotch trader, Arbuthnot, who seems to have been innocent. ”

“ It is generally and justly regarded as a failure, since Longfellow exhibited neither in it nor in later poems cast in similar form—The New England Tragedies (1868) , Judas Maccabaeus (1872) , and Michael Angelo (1883) ,—the slightest trace of dramatic genius. A poet of literary derivation, so to phrase it, inspired by his own wide reading, and a useful transmitter of culture he could not help being from first to last, and his growing reputation naturally prompted him to undertake elaborate works in a form of art practised by preceding poets in every age. ”

“ It is not certain what means of support he had, but after working a while at the saddler's trade, in 1784 he began to study law at Salisbury, N. C. He was a rollicking fellow, fond of horse-racing and cock-fighting, and no student, having taken up law, about which he never learned much, because it was the accepted thing for a young man to do who had some ambition. ”

“ As a growing lad, he was not remarkable as a scholar; was rather reserved and sedate in his demeanor; and was of a more serious turn of mind than is usual among boys. In 1740-42 his half-brother, Lawrence Washington, served, as a captain of Virginia troops, under Admiral Vernon in the expedition against Cartagena, and later named his residence on the Potomac Mount Vernon, in honor of his commander. This connection led to the offer of a midshipman's commission to George, which, but for the opposition of his mother, he would have accepted. ”

“ LANIER, SIDNEY (1842–1881) , American poet, was born at Macon, Georgia, on the 3rd of February 1842. He was of Huguenot descent on his father’s side, and of Scottish and Virginian on his mother’s. From childhood he was passionately fond of music. His subsequent mastery of the flute helped to support him and greatly increased his reputation. At the age of fourteen he entered Oglethorpe College, where, after graduating with distinction, he held a tutorship. He enlisted in the Confederate army in April 1861, serving first in Virginia, and finding opportunities to continue his studies. ”

“ The course pursued by Congress in making its appointments had occasioned much discontent among the general officers; the organization was defective; a commissary and adjutant-general were more needed than a brave warrior or a skillful tactician. In Washington, fortunately for the country, were combined all three. He proceeded at once to complete an effective organization of his army, by forming it into six brigades of six regiments each, keeping together the troops from each colony, as far as practicable, and placing them under a commander from their colony. ”

“ Other writers might have improved the local colour of the poem, still others might have laboured more heroically to keep the hexameters from making forays across the borders of prose, but it may be doubted whether any contemporary could have written, on the whole, a better Evangeline, at least one more suited to the taste of the period. Few of his contemporaries, however, have left behind a more negligible prose romance than the story of an impossible New England village which Longfellow published in 1849 under the title Kavanagh ”

“ The Tennessee Legislature called for volunteers, and resolved to exterminate the troublesome tribe. In spite of the wound which Jesse Benton had given him, Jackson was soon in the field, and with Colonel Coffee, his former partner, defeated the Indians severely at Talladega and at Tohopeka or Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River. Jackson distinguished himself in these military operations by his boundless energy. ”

“ But Congress took up the question of properly recruiting and providing the army; a treaty with France was ratified, May 4, 1777, with great rejoicing on the part of the Americans; and the British, although only 20 miles distant from the American camp, permitted the winter and spring to pass without any offensive movement. All these circumstances combined enabled Washington to open the campaign of 1778 in somewhat better condition, and with an army in good spirits and rendered more efficient through the energetic drilling of Steuben. ”

“ Some notable sonnets had been published with the translation of Dante, and to these Longfellow’s later achievements in the same form are worthy pendants. High praise has been given to them by many critically minded readers of a later generation, who have wished, in default of admiration for Longfellow’s earlier work, to combine patriotism with acumen in their praise of a poet whose reputation seemed to require rather delicate handling. ”

“ In 1823 the Legislature of Tennessee elected him to the United States Senate, and at the same time nominated him for President. At the election the next year there were four candidates who received electoral votes as follows: John Quincy Adams, 84; William H. Crawford, 41; Henry Clay, 37; and Jackson, 99. No one having a majority, the House of Representatives elected Adams, and Jackson retired to private life. But four years afterwards he was supported by all the opponents of the Administration, and elected by an immense majority—the vote being Jackson, 178; Adams, 83. ”

“ Having been elected to the House of Burgesses of Virginia shortly before his marriage, he now began to appear prominently in public affairs, attending regularly every meeting of the Assembly, and, though seldom speaking, taking care to be thoroughly informed upon every prominent public question. He moved much in society; was also an enthusiastic hunter; practiced a generous hospitality at Mount Vernon; associated constantly with the leading men of the colony ”

“ The prior volume with such pieces as The Village Blacksmith, God's Acre, Maidenhood, and the egregiously anabatic Excelsior, strengthened his hold upon the popular heart, and in the successful ballads proper, such as The Wreck of the Hesperus and The Skeleton in Armor, it gave him, in addition, some incentive to address his readers in narrative verse, the form of poetry in which, during his middle period, he made himself easily the chief American master. ”

“ The contest was one of the most personal and bitter in American political history, because Jackson, taking as a personal matter the party slander which accused Adams of buying Clay's support in the preceding election by the promise of the portfolio of State, threw his whole force into the struggle. Jackson was reëlected in 1832, his principal opponent being Henry Clay. In his second term Van Buren was Vice-President.
Jackson's eight years' administration of the Government meant the rise of the people to power. ”

“ He personally directed the organization of the different departments of the Government under the new system, and in accordance with the Constitution, and no act of his was more significant than his appointment as heads of departments of such distinguished and able men as Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox, and Edmund Randolph. Meanwhile, before the work of Congress began, Washington found time to make a tour through the Eastern States, better to acquaint himself with the views of the men who were presently to lay the foundations of the commercial and industrial greatness of the United States. ”

“ The younger man was not only better endowed with the faculty of specific poetic utterance, but he was naturally more fully qualified than his predecessor to gratify the taste of a generation that was beginning to be affected by the work of the newer English romantic poets. ”

“ He maintained his keen interest in public affairs, greatly regretting the general chaos and such disgraceful outbreaks as Shays's Rebellion, and helped by his correspondence to bring the leading men of the country to a determination to form a more perfect Union. He was president of the Philadelphia convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United States. Washington was unanimously chosen the first President of the United States, and on April 30, 1789, took the oath of office in New York, where Congress was then sitting. ”

“ But while the family had a competency and were large landed proprietors, the facilities for education in the colonies — particularly in the South — were at this time so meagre that the younger children were forced to depend on the poor common schools of the neighborhood, where they acquired only the rudimentary branches. ”

“ Youthful Environment; Education. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was born in Portland, Maine, 27 February, 1807. In view of what America as a whole then was and of what he was destined to accomplish for the literature of the country, it is difficult to see how he could have been more fortunately circumstanced with respect to stock and environment. ”

“ Hyperion; Early Poems. His second period of training in Europe, although shorter, rendered Longfellow a greater service than his first. As he was more mature, his genius was better prepared to receive a definitive bent, and his experiences determined that that bent should take an emotional rather than an emphatically intellectual direction. After a short visit to England he spent some months in Sweden and Denmark studying their literatures with results obvious to the reader of his later poetry. Then he went to Holland, where his wife fell ill and died in the autumn. ”

“ For further details concerning his two administrations as President, see the article United States.
At Mount Vernon he devoted himself to agriculture. In 1798 the prospect of a war with France led to his appointment as commander-in-chief of the National Army. On December 12, 1799, he was exposed in the saddle, for several hours, to cold and snow, and attacked with acute laryngitis, for which he was repeatedly and largely bled. He sank rapidly, and died on December 14th. His last words were characteristic. He said: “I die hard ”