ity, the son of the Highest, and the victor over death and hell-that his scepter is a right scepter, and that his dominion, bringing in the new earth and heaven, is an everlasting dominion.

ART. V.-" A STATESMAN" OF THE PERIOD.

FERNANDO WOOD inherited from his family a resolute, vigorous nature. His ancestors were of the Quaker stock and of vigorous constitution. Henry Wood, his great-great-greatgrandfather, exiled from old England and from New England, found at length a friendly shelter far from civilization in the wilds of Delaware, where he purchased an immense landed estate of the Indians, a portion of which covered the present site of Camden, N. J., and there resided twenty-seven years before the arrival of William Penn. He was the first white man to mount the deck of the owner of Pennsylvania, and when he ascertained that the celebrated guest and lord was of his own faith he wept for joy. Fernando's paternal grandfather, a man of immense proportions and a staunch Quaker, residing at Peashore, Del., on the family estate that had come down through several generations, was so stirred with the martial blasts of the Revolution that, despite the remonstrances of his co-religionists, he raised a company of troops (all six feet high) and fought unto blood at the battle of Germantown, October 4, 1777. His maternal grandfather, another Quaker, was also wounded in the same engagement, and both were put to shame by being "turned out of meeting" by their respective

societies.

Benjamin Wood, father of our subject, early established himself in Philadelphia as a merchant. During the war of 1812-1815 he did a prosperous business, but at the suspension of hostilities his large stock so suddenly depreciated that bankruptcy followed. Broken in health, as well as bankrupt in business, he started southward, visiting Kentucky, New Orleans, and Havana, returning to New York, where, in 1820, he established himself as a cigar manufacturer. The extreme winter of 1832 so exhausted his frail nature that he fled southward for a more genial climate, and died at Charleston, S. C.,

the following November. He was an elder in the Market-street Presbyterian Church, New York, and much esteemed. None of the family returned to the Friends after their expulsion during the Revolution.

The subject of this sketch was born in Philadelphia, Pa., June 14, 1812, the same month in which President Madison declared war against Great Britain. His mother had been reading a famous novel in which one Fernando had played a brilliant rôle, and the name was therefore promptly transferred to her infant boy. He learned to read with little assistance, and at eight years of age was sent to a class taught by Mr. James Shea, afterward Professor in the Grammar School of Columbia College. At the age of thirteen, while his father was South in quest of health, he arranged with his mother to go into the world and begin business. Searching the advertising columns of a newspaper, he ascertained that a gentleman keeping an exchange office wanted a boy. He applied, and was installed at two dollars per week. Some months later we find him in the employment of another gentleman, also an exchange broker, at a salary of five dollars per week. Not long after this he was sent to transact some business at Harrisburgh, where he remained for a considerable period. One evening, at the hotel where several members of the Legislature were drinking, an altercation arose between young Wood and a senator, the latter drawing from his pocket a bowie-knife; whereupon Wood, being a strong lad, seized a chair, and at an opportune moment felled his distinguished antagonist to the floor. This was his first triumph among statesmen, but he was quickly arrested and spent the night in a cell, which was also his first lesson in prison discipline.

Soon after this he started for the home of his parents in New York, and began, with his father, cigar-making, at which he soon became an expert. Like too many fast boys, he had early learned to smoke. On the steamer, going from Philadelphia to New York, he smoked incessantly, and was accosted by a thoughtful Quaker thus: "Friend, thee smokes a good deal." Wood frankly acknowledged that he did. “Well, now, don't thee smoke any more," argued Father Broadbrim. Casting his half-consumed cigar into the deep, he exclaimed resolutely, "I wont!" a promise he has ever since kept, afford.

ing an example of his immense will-power which has never deserted him.

About 1830, and at the age of eighteen, he contracted an unfortunate matrimonial alliance with a young woman of Philadelphia. This marriage was fruitless, and, it seems, unsatisfactory to either party. The family relation was, however, sustained until 1839, when the husband obtained a divorce. on New Testament principles, and the unfortunate woman died two years later.

Early in 1832 he opened a small cigar store at 322 Pearlstreet, on Franklin Square, near the present site of Harper's immense publishing house. This was while the cholera raged, and over thirty-five hundred died in the city of that plague. Wood's store was in the midst of the neighborhood most ravaged, but was kept open after most of the others were closed. About this period, though not a voter, his political activity began. He was a zealous adınirer of General Jackson, who was that year re-elected to the presidency. He took the "stump" at small Democratic meetings. He also wrote articles for the press, among others a "Review of Governor Haynes' [of South Carolina] Message in favor of Nullification," which attracted considerable attention, and which led to his acquaintance with William Leggett, of the "Evening Post," who became his friend and supporter.

But too much attention to politics ruined his business, and the closing out of his little shop landed him on his feet as a journeyman cigar maker with a Mr. Henry, in Division-street, where he toiled two years. In 1834 he secured a clerkship in the ship-chandlery business with Mr. Francis Secor, at 103 Washington-street, where he remained two years and saved five hundred dollars. With this sum he purchased a similar business, of one Jackson, on the corner of Rector and Washington streets. His establishment resembled the corner grocery of the present day, with the addition of such wares as would be in demand among sailors and others engaged in the smaller shipping interests of the port. He now bent himself resolutely to his business and resolved to win. He was his own clerk, swept his floor, and slept on the premises. Having hung out his sign he was not the man to wait for customers, but in person canvassed the piers and crafts of the harbor soliciting patronage.

In two years his capital of five hundred had developed into ten thousand, and, in 1838, he leased the corner of Albany and Washington streets and greatly enlarged his business. He now purchased a schooner, which he ran successfully in the West India trade, and owned some smaller vessels, and greatly prospered.

Meanwhile he had carefully maintained his political relationship with the Democracy of the First Ward, and taken constant and active interest in party organization. This had greatly assisted his business. Tammany Hall had all the political potency then, relatively, that it has since attained, while a leading brotherly feature among the members at that time was to assist each other in business. The exciting canvass of 1840 found Mr. Wood chairman of the Young Men's Democratic Committee, and he was nominated on the general ticket for a seat in the Twenty-seventh Congress, with J. I. Roosevelt, John M'Keon, Chas. G. Travis, and others, from New York city. The whole country was in a blaze of political enthusiasm. A long and weary strife had been waged between the Whigs and the Democrats in reference to a United States Bank. Following the example of the great powers on the other side of the Atlantic, the Government had chartered such an institution, with a capital of thirty-five millions, which commenced operations in January, 1817, and whose charter expired March, 1836. Congress re-chartered it, but President Jackson vetoed the bill, and, to save it from liquidation, the State of Pennsylvania rechartered it, with the same amount of capital, in 1836. Its business was badly conducted, and in the pressure of 1837 it suspended, resuming, only to suspend again, in 1839, when it was wound up, paying fully its indebtedness, but leaving its thirty-five millions of stock utterly worthless. President Van Buren had favored the withdrawal of the bank, and had made the independent treasury system the prominent feature of his administration. However sound his views, commerce was greatly depressed, for which in the United States the Administration is ever held responsible. Mr. Van Buren was unanimously renominated by the Democrats. Massachusetts nominated. Mr. Webster. Mr. Clay, thinking the effort fruitless, and having been previously beaten, did not care to take the field. The Whigs, finally borrowing Democratic wisdom, which, in 1828,

had made political capital by running a military man, (General Jackson,) decided to nominate General Harrison, a man of estimable character, of some martial celebrity, and whose long retirement to private life had shielded him from public criticism, rendering him the more available. Democratic orators attempted to cast slurs upon him, charging that he lived in a "log-cabin, with nothing but hard cider to drink;" whereupon the Whigs promptly adopted these as the watchwords of the campaign, while his "Tippecanoe" battle with Tecumseh was sounded with poetic cadences. Solid capitalists advertised that, after election, they would pay six dollars per barrel for flour if Harrison was elected, and three if Van Buren. The country became intent on a change of administration and the rout of the Democrats was complete. Mr. Van Buren received sixty-three electoral votes, and General Harrison two hundred and thirty-four. Mr. Wood, however, stood in the densest columns of the unterrified, where a democratic nomination was equivalent to an election, and was among the few Democrats who took seats in the Twenty-seventh Congress. He was then a young man of twenty-eight years, and was soon after married for the second time, choosing for his bride a daughter of Judge Richardson, of Cayuga County, New York. Mr. Wood possessed at that time only a meager general education, had not studied law or statesmanship, and, consequently, was little fitted to cope with the intellectual giants who then thronged the national capital. President Harrison called an extra session of Congress, so that the young members were brought to the front several months sooner than they had expected. The Congress of 1841 was memorable from two considerations. First, from the importance of the questions considered; and secondly, from the number of distinguished men who took part in its proceedings. Daniel Webster was Secretary of State. In the Senate chamber sat Henry Clay, Rufus Choate, John C. Calhoun, Thomas H. Benton, Silas Wright, James Buchanan, Messrs. Woodbury, Walker, Rives, and others nearly as distinguished. In the House of Representatives were John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, Caleb Cushing, Henry A. Wise, J. P. Kennedy, D. H. Lewis, R. M. T. Hunter, and others of prominence.

The Whigs, being again in power, proposed to reconstruct FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXVII.—39