some inconceivable reason, has been the object of the bitterest and most malignant persecution that ever disgraced any age or country. According to the statements which have appeared, there have been combinations of other banks and brokers, got up for no other purpose than to destroy the United States Bank, as soon as it should comply with the laws of the state, which gave it existence, by fulfilling its promises, and that it has paid out millions after millions of specie to satisfy the wanton demands of these diabolical shavers and cut-throats. How much sympathy such representations may secure for a rotten and swindling institution in the immediate vicinity of its location, we pretend not to say; but we shall not be thought guilty of unpardonable presumption, if we state, as our belief, that, at this distance, these said objurgatory lamentations will produce but little effect. Admitting it to be true, which we do not believe, that the Bank has become the victim of "unholy combinations," it is no more than a just retribution for its unnumbered acts of arrogance, oppression and rascality, which, in the days of its power, it practised on all other banks, and especially on those of Massachusetts. February 18, 1841. Some eight or ten years ago, we thought the United States Bank a most valuable institution. Our efforts as an editor, - feeble though they were, - were faithfully and honestly directed to procure for it a re-charter. When, a few years later, its charter was denied, we thought the Bank was in duty bound to wind up its concerns. We said so, and for that declaration lost caste in the whig party, although almost every whig member of Congress said the same. In the conduct of Mr. Biddle, we thought we perceived only a disposition to avenge himself for the loss of the charter by creating trouble, embarrassment, distress and ruin among the people. For this course of magnanimous conduct, we pronounced censure, and for that honest and frank expression of opinion, we were excommunicated, tied to the stake, and threatened with martyrdom by those who claimed to be the organs of the whig party. The Globe quoted our opinions, and then, our good whig managers decreed that we should be called locofoco, the highest punishment ever inflicted on incorrigible offenders. So we struggled on for a few years more, fighting for Clay, Webster, and Harrison, — defending Webster especially, when he was assailed in the Globe, and sneered at in the Atlas as one of the "Whig Aristocracy;" and to cap the climax of our locofoco audacity, absolutely advocated his claim to a place in the cabinet, although the organ of the Whig Democracy (!) had declared that such a thing must not be. But all this avails nothing. Mr. Biddle has turned out to be no better than we predicted five years ago, and his Bank, which was expected by his advocates and worshipers, - his HIRED AND PAID CHAMPIONS, to redeem the nation from all embarrassments, has failed, and is now as powerless, and as useless for any good purpose as the famous mint which issued Bungtown Coppers during the days of the Revolution. But ah! where are now his idolators? Where those omnipotent controllers of the press and of public opinion, that shouted Locofoco, Locofoco! when one unlucky wight dared to throw out a doubt that Mr. Biddle was the sublime incarnation of all the Patriotism, all the Virtue, and all the Intelligence, which Heaven had vouchsafed, in mercy to the human race, to embody in an individual? Ah, where! The flattering Press is silent; even the favored recipient of fifty-two thousand dollars, (the price of apostasy from Jacksonism,) has hardly an encouraging smile wherewith to greet the man who "goes for his country, best loved when worst governed." Poor Mr. Biddle! not a comforter left, to give him a potsherd to scrape himself withal! Alas! how is the mighty fallen! May 14, 1841. Deserted at his utmost need, The year 1836 was a period of unparalleled embarrassment to all men of business, and many are in possession of melancholy memorials of the complicated perplexities with which they had then to struggle. The income of a newspaper, though nominally large and apparently equal to all reasonable expenditure, as it appears on the leger, and in the imagination of the proprietor, is yet but a feeble and delusive reliance in times when business is in a state of dullness and depression. The amount of debts from the subscribers to a daily paper, may be large, but it is made up of small sums, and scattered over an immense territory. From 1830 to 1848, I doubt whether there was a day when the aggregate of debts due to the Courier, for subscriptions and advertisements, was less than ten thousand dollars, (sometimes it far exceeded that amount,) in sums ranging from fifty cents to fifty dollars. The customers of a newspaper think but little of this. It seldom occurs to them that the printer is borrowing money, (perhaps at an extravagant interest,) to enable him to carry on the publication, while they are neglecting his demands and paying nothing for the indulgence. Such was my unfortunate position. To obtain relief from distressing embarrassment, I sold one third of the Courier. But the relief thus obtained was temporary. In the spring of 1837, it became impossible to meet all the debts which had been incurred, and my whole interest in the paper, with all my other personal estate, was placed in the hands of a trustee, to be appropriated to the benefit of creditors. These creditors, with but two or three trifling exceptions, *The purchaser was Mr. Eben B. Foster, who is still the publisher and one of the proprietors of the paper. were personal friends,* who had endorsed my notes in The sale of another portion, the banks. one sixth, - of the Courier, left me in possession of one half, and a mortgage on this half, with a mortgage on the estate where I lived, supplied the means of settlement; and thus, after years of negotiation and perplexity, a sacrifice of feeling, and an entire subjection of pride to necessity, the business was closed, without a lawsuit. By the conditions of the mortgage, I continued to be the editor of the Courier, with a salary, barely sufficient for the decent support of a family. THE MOB AT ALTON. In the beginning of November, 1837, an incident took place at Alton, in the state of Illinois, which, for fiendish atrocity, has had no parallel in the history of mobs that have occurred in our country. The Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, for the purpose of publishing an anti-slavery paper in that town, had procured a press and placed it in the warehouse of a merchant. A company of about two hundred men assembled, attacked the building, which was defended by the friends of Mr. Lovejoy, and in the progress of the * The friends here referred to, I presume, have no desire to see their names placed before the public in this memoir. Nevertheless, my own feelings claim the indulgence of recording the names of William Sturgis, Stephen Fairbanks, James K. Mills, Joseph Mackay, William Beals, William Tuckerman, Edward H. Robbins, James Read, Isaac M'Lellan, Benjamin Poor, Henry G. Rice, and the firms of Lawrence & Stone, and Whitwell, Bond & Seaver, as those who voluntarily made important sacrifices in my favor, and whose alacrity in performing a kind and benevolent deed, is not forgotten. The settlement was effected by the good offices of my friends, George S. Hillard, Esq. E. B. Foster, and S. E. Robbins, friends indeed, because they were friends in necessity. affray, Mr. Lovejoy was shot down, and died in a few minutes. One other person was killed and several were severely wounded. The warehouse, with its contents, was burned to the ground. These unwarrantable proceedings were a subject of universal comment in the newspapers, and caused in many places agitation of a serious nature. In Boston, the Anti-Slavery Society passed a series of resolutions, expressing in suitable terms, the indignation and horror, which the event naturally excited. A few of the newspapers treated the matter with indifference, and a few others with a degree of levity quite unbecoming the character of moral or patriotic editors. The following were my first reflections on the event: 666 Died Abner as a fool dieth.' This exclamation was not more appropriate in its original application, that it is in reference to the premature death of Mr. Lovejoy. We do not offer this remark as an apology for the flagrant violation of law and the audacious outrage upon the rights of property and the sacredness of human life, which eventuated in the death of two men and the serious if not fatal injury of several others. But neither do we feel any reverence for that ambition for martyrdom which prompts men to rush upon certain destruction. . . . . While we condemn the mob and deplore its consequences, we cannot but feel that there was no call, either from religion or humanity, for the exercise of that reckless resolution,-virtuous fortitude, perhaps, some may call it, which was the immediate provocation. It is no fault of man that he cannot stay the waves of the ocean, or control the more ... |