HOSEA BALLOU. academy he studied intensely "night and day, slept little and ate little." Then he commenced school teaching for a livelihood, studying assiduously all the while, and preaching his new and startling doctrine, occasionally. At the age of twenty-four years he abandoned school teaching, and dedicated his life to the promulgation of his peculiar religious views, travelling from place to place, and subsisting upon the free bounties of increasing friends. His itinerant labors ceased in 1794, when he became pastor of a congregation, first in Dana, Massachusetts, and then in Barnard, Vermont. His warfare upon prevailing religious Mr. Ballou was opinions produced many bitter opponents, yet meekly and firmly he labored on, spreading the circle of his influence with tongue and pen. undoubtedly the first who, in this country, inculcated Unitarianism; and every where his doctrine was new, and "a strange thing in Israel." In 1804, Mr. Ballou published Notes on the Parables, and soon afterward his Treatise on the Atonement, appeared. These were met by heartiest condemnation on the part of his opponents, while they were very highly esteemed by his religious adherents. In 1807, he was called to the pastoral charge of a congregation at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he continued to preach to crowded houses on the Sabbath, and teach a school during the week, until the war between the United States and Great Britain was kindled, in 1812. He was in the midst of those who violently opposed the war; and because he patriotically espoused the While cause of his country, he made many bitter enemies, and impaired his usefulness. He accordingly left Portsmouth, in 1815, and accepted a call to Salem. there he engaged in the celebrated controversy with Rev. Abner Kneeland, whose faith in Christianity had failed him. It ended happily in the avowed conviction of Mr. Kneeland of the truths of revealed religion. Mr. Ballou remained in Salem about two years, when he was invited to make Boston his field of labor. Near the close of 1817, he was installed pastor of the Second Universalist Church, in Boston, and that connection was only severed by his death. There his ministrations were attended by immense congregations, and he laid the foundations of Unitarianism and Universalism strong and deep in the New England metropolis. In 1819, Mr. Ballou established the Universalist Magazine, which soon acquired high reputation for its literary merits and denominational value. The following year he compiled a collection of Hymns for the use of the sect; and soon afterward he made a professional visit to New York and Philadelphia, where great numbers of people listened to his eloquent and logical discourses. In Philadelphia, he preached in the Washington Garden Saloon, no meeting-house being large enough to hold the immense crowds that gathered to hear him. In 1831, he was associated with a nephew in publishing the Universalist Expositor, a quarterly periodical; and at about the same time volumes of his Sermons and Lectures were published. In 1834, he wrote and put forth An Examination of. the Doctrine of Future Retribution; and in the meanwhile his pen was ever busy in contributions to denominational publications. Old age now whitened his locks, yet his "eye was not dim nor his natural forces abated," and at the age of seventy-two years [1843] he made a long journey to Akron, Ohio, to attend a national convention of Universalists. Thousands flocked thither to see and hear the far-famed Father Ballou, and were gratified. He was permitted to return to his beloved home and flock in safety, and continued his pastoral labors almost nine years longer. Finally, on the 7th of June, 1852, that eminently great and good man died, at the age of a little more than eighty years. He had been a distinguished preacher for the long period of sixty years. He was a vigorous yet generous polemic, a pleasing and voluminous writer, and an eloquent speaker. His thoughts, occasionally expressed in verse, exhibit many beautiful specimens of genuine poetry. NE STEPHEN HOPKINS TEXT to Doctor Franklin, Stephen Hopkins, of Rhode Island, was the oldest member of the Continental Congress, who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was born in that portion of the town of Providence now called Scituate, on the 7th of March, 1707. The opportunities at that time and place for acquiring an education were few and weak, and Hopkins became a selftaught man in the truest sense of the term. He was a farmer until the age of twenty-five years, when he commenced mercantile business in Providence. The following year he was chosen to represent Scituate in the Rhode Island legislature, and was annually reëlected until 1738. He resumed his seat there in 1741, and was made Speaker of the House. From that time until 1751, he was almost every year a member and the Speaker of the lower House. In the latter year he was chosen chief justice of the colony. Mr. Hopkins was a delegate from Rhode Island in the first colonial convention, held at Albany, in 1754,' and two years afterward he was elected governor of Rhode Island. That position he held, with but a single interruption, until 1767; and he was very efficient in promoting the enlistment of volunteers in his province, for the expeditions against the French and Indians. He even took a captain's commission, and placed himself at the head of a volunteer corps, in 1757, but a change in events rendered their services unnecessary, and they were disbanded. When the quarrel with the mother country commenced, Governor Hopkins took a decided stand in favor of the colonists; and officially and unofficially he labored incessantly to promote a free and independent spirit among his countrymen. A proof of his love of justice, as well as a love of liberty, is found in the fact that he endeavored to procure legislative enactments in favor of the emancipation of slaves in Rhode Island, and he actually gave freedom to all owned by himself. When, in 1774, a general Congress was proposed, Governor Hopkins warmly advocated the measure, and was chosen one of the delegates for Rhode Island. At the same time he held the important offices of chief justice of the province and representative in its Assembly. In 1775, he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety, in Rhode Island, and was again elected to Congress. There he advocated political independence; and in the Summer of 1776, he affixed his remarkable signature2 to the noble manifesto which declared it. Mr. Hopkins was elected to Congress, for the last time, in 1778, and was one of the committee who perfected the Articles of Confederation for the government of the United States, then fighting under one banner, for independence. He was then more than seventy years of age, yet he was actively engaged in the duties of almost every important committee while he held his seat in Congress. He retired in 1780, and then withdrew from public life to enjoy repose and indulge in his favorite study of the exact sciences. He was a distinguished mathematician, and rendered efficient service to scientific men in observing the transit of Venus, in 1769.3 But his season of earthly repose and happiness was short. The Patriot and Sage went down into the grave on the 19th of July, 1785, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Through life he had been a constant attendant of the religious meetings of Friends, or Quakers, and was ever distinguished among men as a sincere Christian. 1. See sketch of Dr. Franklin. 2. It is remarkable because of its evidence that his hand trembled excessively. That tremulousness is not attributable, as might be suspected of a less bold man, to fear inspired by the occasion, but by a malady known as shaking palsy, with which he had been troubled many years. I have a document before me, signed by him in 1761. His signature at that time betrays the same unsteadiness of hand, though not in the same degree as in 1776. 3. See sketches of Winthrop and Rittenhouse. ALBERT GALLATIN. 321 DURIN ALBERT GALLATIN. URING the most important period in the progress of our Republic after its permanent organization, in 1789, Albert Gallatin, a native of Geneva, Switzerland, was an active, useful, and highly patriotic citizen and public officer. He was born on the 29th of January, 1761. His family connections were of the highest respectability. Among these was the celebrated M. Necker and his equally-distinguished daughter, Madame de Staël. His father, who died when Albert was four years of age, was then a councillor of state. At a proper age Albert was placed in the University of Geneva, where he was graduated in 1779. He had early felt and manifested a zeal for republican institutions, and declining the commission of a lieutenant-colonel in the service of one of the German sovereigns, he came to America, in 1780, when only nineteen years of age. In November of that year he entered the public service of his adopted country, by taking command of a small fort at Machias, Maine, which was garrisoned by volunteers and Indians. At the close of the war he taught the French language in Harvard University, for awhile. Having received his patrimony from Europe, in 1784, he purchased lands in Virginia. He afterward established himself on the banks of the Monongahela, in Pennsylvania, where his talents were soon brought into requisition. He was a member of the convention to revise the constitution of Pennsylvania, in 1789, and for two succeeding years he was representative of the State legislature. In that body those financial abilities, which afterward rendered him eminent in the administration of the national treasury, were manifested. In 1793, he was elected to a seat in the Senate of the United States, but, by a strictly party vote, he was excluded from it on the ground of ineligibility, because nine years had not elapsed since his naturalization in Virginia. He was immediately elected a member of the House of Representatives, where he was confessedly the Republican leader, and was regarded as one of the most logical debaters and soundest statesmen in that body. In 1801, President Jefferson appointed Mr. Gallatin Secretary of the Treasury. He exercised the functions of that office with rare ability, during the whole of Jefferson's administration, and a part of Madison's, until 1813, when he went to St. Petersburg, as one of the envoys extraordinary of the United States, to nego tiate with Great Britain under the mediation of Russia. He was appointed one of the commissioners who negotiated a treaty of peace with Great Britain, at Ghent, in 1814; and early the following year he assisted in forming a commercial treaty with the same power. From 1816 until 1823, Mr. Gallatin was resident minister of the United States at the French court, and in the meanwhile had been employed on extraordinary missions to the Netherlands and to Great Britain. In these diplomatic services he was ever skilful, and always vigilant in guarding the true interests of his country. Other official stations had been proffered him, while he was abroad. President Madison invited him to become his Secretary of State, or Prime Minister; and President Monroe offered him a place in his cabinet, as Secretary of the Navy. He also declined the nomination of Vice-President of the United States which the Democratic party offered him, in 1824. Mr. Gallatin returned home, in 1828, and became a resident of New York city, where he took an active interest in all matters pertaining to the public good. In 1831, he wrote the memorial to Congress of the Free-Trade Convention, and from that time until 1839, he gave a noble example of the true method of banking, while he was President of the National Bank. He was one of the founders, 1. See clause 3, section 3, article I. of the Constitution of the United States. and first president of the council of the New York University. At the time of his death he was President of the New York Historical Society, and also of the American Ethnological Society, of which he was chief founder. A few days before his death he was elected one of the first members of the Smithsonian Institute. His departure occurred at his residence at Astoria, Long Island, on the 12th of August, 1849, at the age of more than eighty-eight years. FOR 'OR almost fourscore years the grave of one of America's best heroes was allowed to remain unhonored by a memorial-stone, until tradition had almost forgotten the hallowed spot. That hero was David Wooster, who lost his life in the defence of the soil of his native State against that ruthless invader, General Tryon. He was born at Stratford, Connecticut, on the 2d of March, 1710, and was graduated at Yale College, in 1738. When war between England and Spain broke out the following year, he entered the provincial army as a lieutenant, and was soon afterward promoted to the captaincy of a vessel built and armed by the colony as a guarda costa, or coast-guard. In 1740, he married Miss Clapp, daughter of the President of Yale College; and, in 1745, we observe his first movements in military life as a captain in Colonel Burr's regiment in the expedition against Louisburg. From Cape Breton he went to Europe in command of a cartel-ship. But he was not permitted to land in France, and he sailed for England, where he was received with great honor. He was presented to the king, became a favorite at court, and was made a captain in the regular service, under Sir William Pepperell. When the French and Indian war in America broke out, he was commissioned a provincial colonel by the governor of Connecticut, and was finally promoted to brigadier-general. He was in service to the end of that war; and when, in 1775, the revolutionary fires kindled into a flame, he was found ready to battle manfully for his country in its struggle for freedom. He was with Arnold and Allen at the capture of Ticonderoga; and when the Continental army was organized, a few weeks later, he received the appointment of brigadier-general, third in rank. He was in command in Canada, in the Spring of 1776; and soon after his return to Connecticut, he was appointed first major-general of the militia of that State. In that capacity he was actively engaged when Tryon invaded the State, in the Spring of 1777, and penetrated to and burned Danbury. Near Ridgefield he led a body of militia in pursuit of the invader, and there, in a warm engagement, on Sunday, the 27th of April, he was fatally wounded by a musket-ball. He was conveyed to Danbury on a litter, where he lived long enough for his wife and children to arrive from New Haven, and soothe his dying hours. He expired on the 2d of May, 1777, at the age of sixty-seven years, and was interred in the village burying-ground. Congress ordered a monument to be erected to his memory, but that act of justice has never been accomplished by the Federal government. The legislature of Connecticut finally resolved to erect a memorial; and in April, 1854, the cornerstone of a monument was laid, with imposing ceremonies.2 On opening the grave, the remains of the hero's epaulettes and plume, and the fatal bullet, were found among his bones. 1. A vessel commissioned in time of war to carry proposals between belligerent powers. It claims the same respect as a flag sent from one army to another. 2. On that occasion the Honorable Henry C. Deming pronounced an eloquent oration, which was subsequently published in pamphlet form. Macdonough. THOMAS MACDONOUGH. N the very day when Washington resigned his military commission into the naval hero was born in Newcastle county, Delaware. It was on the 23d of December, 1783, and that germ of a hero was Thomas Macdonough. At the age of fifteen years he obtained a midshipman's warrant, and in the war with Tripoli he was distinguished for bravery. He was one of the daring men selected by Decatur to assist him in burning the Philadelphia frigate,' and he partook of the honors of that brilliant exploit. When war with Great Britain was proclaimed in 1812, Macdonough held a lieutenant's commission, having received it in February, 1807. He was ordered to service on Lake Champlain, and in July, 1813, he was promoted to master-commandant. There was very little for him to do, in that quarter, for some time, and he became restive in comparative idleness. But opportunity for action came at last, and he gladly accepted and nobly improved it. The war in Europe having been suspended, early in 1814, by the abdication of Napoleon and the capture of Paris by the allied armies, the British forces in America were largely augmented. Quite a strong army, under Sir 1. See sketch of Decatur. |