honors. He resolved to make the law his profession, but before he could engage in its practice, the storm of the Revolution burst upon the country, and he joined the Continental army, at Cambridge. Full of adventurous spirit, he volunteered to accompany Arnold through the wilderness, to Quebec. There he was made one of Montgomery's aids, and was with that officer when he fell. Soon after that he entered the military family of General Washington, from which he was expelled in consequence of some immoral conduct which disgusted the commander-in-chief. Burr was commissioned a lieutenant-colonel, in 1777, and continued in active service until 1779, when failing health compelled him to resign his office. He had already acquired an unenviable character for expertness in intrigue; and his hostility to Washington was always bitter and uncompromising. Burr commenced the practice of law, at Albany, in 1782, and soon afterward removed to the city of New York, where he became distinguished in his profession. He was appointed attorney-general of the State, in 1789; and from 1791 to 1797, he was a member of the United States Senate, and an influential republican leader, in that body. His winning manners gave him wonderful influence. The power of his fascinations over the other sex was almost unbounded and he used it for the basest purposes. As a politician he was artful and intriguing; and he managed so adroitly for himself, that he received for the office of President of the United States, in 1800, the same number of votes as Mr. Jefferson, the head and founder of the Republican party. Congress decided in favor of Jefferson, after thirty-six ballotings, and Burr was declared Vice-President, according to usage in the early days of the Republic.

Burr was the bitter enemy of all Federalists; and, in 1804, he managed to draw Alexander Hamilton into a duel, which became the terrible result of a political quarrel. Burr murdered Hamilton,' and ever afterward society put the mark of Cain upon him. Two years afterwards he was engaged in forming an expedition in the western country, professedly to invade Mexico. It was suspected that Burr intended to attempt a severance of the Western from the Eastern States, and make himself president of the former. He was arrested on a charge of high treason, tried at Richmond, in Virginia, in 1807, and acquitted. He passed the remainder of his life in comparative obscurity and almost total neglect. Profligate and unscrupulous until the last, that wretched man, whose libertinism had carried desolation into many households, went down into the grave,

"Unwept, unhonored, and unsung;"

a warning to all. He died on Staten Island, near New York, on the 14th of September, 1836, at the age of eighty years.

JAMES THACHER.

NE of the latest survivors of the medical staff of the Continental army, was

war, was published in 1827, and is regarded as standard authority in relation to matters of which it treats. James Thacher was born at Barnstable, Massachusetts, in 1754. He studied medicine in his native town, under Dr. Abner Hersey, and was prepared to enter upon the practice of his profession, “at the

1. The friends of both parties endeavored, in vain, to settle the dispute without recourse to arms, but Burr seemed resolved on taking the life of Hamilton. He exacted such concessions and humiliating terms of compromise, as he knew no man of honor would agree to. Hamilton fired his pistol in the air, while Burr, with fatal aim, sent a bullet with the errand of death. It was a foul murder.

JAMES MADISON, D.D.

255

precise time," he says, when he found his country "about to be involved in all the horrors of a civil war." In July, 1775, when only twenty-one years of age, he went to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, at Watertown, and solicited the appointment of assistant hospital surgeon, at Cambridge. With nine others he received the coveted appointment, and he continued in active duty in the hospital and camp until the capture of Cornwallis, at Yorktown. It was under his directions that the general inoculation of the American army for the smallpox was performed, at its encampment in the Hudson Highlands, opposite West Point, in the Spring of 1781. In his Journal, Dr. Thacher says, "All the soldiers, with the women and children, who have not had the small-pox, are now under inoculation.1 Of five hundred who have been inoculated here, four only have died."2 He then mentions the interesting medical fact, that an extract of butternut, made by boiling down the inner bark of that tree, was very successfully substituted for the usual doses of calomel and jalap employed to reduce the system. He found it to be more efficacious and less dangerous than the mineral drug. He adds, concerning remedies found on our soil, "The butternut is the only cathartic deserving of confidence which we have yet discovered." Dr. Thacher made his profession his life-vocation, after the war; and he enjoyed the honors and veneration due to a faithful patriot in that struggle, for more than sixty years after the eventful scenes at Yorktown. He wrote several medical works, and also a History of Plymouth. His Medical Biography is a work of much value. Through life he indulged an antiquarian taste; and during his long residence in the elder town of New England, he was a warm friend of the Pilgrim Society there. He died at Plymouth, on the 24th of May, 1844, at the age of ninety years.

THE

JAMES MADISON, D.D.

HE first Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia, was James Madison, a native of Rockingham county, in that State, and for many years president of William and Mary College. He was born near Port Republic, on the 27th of August, 1749. His early education was acquired at an academy in Maryland; and, in 1768, he entered William and Mary College, as a student. He was graduated in 1772, and in addition to other collegiate honors, he received the gold medal assigned by Lord Botetourt as a prize for the encouragement of classical literature. On leaving the college, young Madison commenced the study of law under the afterward celebrated Chancellor Wythe, and was admitted to the bar, but he felt called to the gospel ministry, and prepared himself for its duties. He visited England, and received priest's orders; and on his return, in 1773, he was chosen Professor of Mathematics in William and Mary College. When only twenty-eight years of age (1777), he was chosen president of that institution, and then again visited England to become better instructed in those acquirements which his station demanded. He returned in 1778, and then "commenced that long career of usefulness, which entitles him to be considered as one of the greatest benefactors of Virginia." In 1784, he resigned his Professorship of Mathematics, and became Professor of Natural and Moral Philosophy, and International Law. These and the presidency he retained until his death. Until 1776, the Church of England had been the established religion in Virginia. That year the Virginia Assembly repealed all laws requiring conformity

1. See note 2, page 61.

2. There was also a partial inoculation of the troops stationed at Morristown, in New Jersey.

256

ABRAHAM BALDWIN.

thereto. There had never been a resident Bishop in Virginia. At a convention held in Richmond, in 1785, presided over by Dr. Madison, the subject of a resident Bishop was considered; and the following year Rev. Dr. Griffith was requested to proceed to England, with White and Provost, and receive consecration. Circumstances prevented his going; and, in 1790, Dr. Madison was elected to fill the episcopate. He was consecrated at Lambeth, in September of that year. Bishop Madison made his first episcopal visitation in 1792. Although he labored with as much energy in the cause of his church, as a naturally feeble constitution and his college duties would allow, it continually declined, and became almost extinct. Many beautiful church edifices, built before the Revolution, are now melancholy monuments of the decay of episcopacy in Virginia. The Protestant Episcopal Church there was finally revived under the evangelical labors of Bishop Moore, and is now in a flourishing condition.

Bishop Madison continued to discharge the duties of his offices in William and Mary College after his occupation in the episcopal field was almost ended. He died on the 6th of March, 1812, at the age of about sixty-two years. Bishop Madison was an eminently literary man, and devout Christian professor. His remains are beneath a marble monument in the Chapel Hall of the Institution he so much loved and cherished.

ABRAHAM BALDWIN.

E have but slight records on the page of history of Abraham Baldwin, a useful of men. He was a native of Connecticut, but became an honored and much-beloved adopted citizen of the State of Georgia. He was born in 1754, and was graduated at Yale College at the age of about eighteen years. From 1775 until 1779, he was a tutor in that institution, and was one of the most eminent of the classical and mathematical scholars of that day. While teaching, he studied law, was admitted to practice, and then removed to Savannah. There he was admitted to the Georgia bar, and took an exalted position at once. Within three months after his arrival in Georgia, he was elected a member of the State legislature. Being an ardent friend of education, he originated a plan for a university, drew up a charter by which it should be endowed with forty thousand acres of land, and with the aid of John Milledge, procured the sanction of the legislature. The college, known as the University of Georgia, was located at Athens, and Josiah Meigs was appointed its first president.

Mr. Baldwin was elected to a seat in Congress, in 1786, and the following year he was chosen to represent Georgia, with Colonel William Few as his colleague, in the convention that framed the Federal Constitution. He was continued a member of Congress for ten years after the organization of the new government, when, in 1799, he and his friend Milledge were chosen United States Senators. He occupied that exalted position until his death, which occurred at Washington city, on the 4th of March, 1807, when he was about fiftythree years of age. His remains were placed by the side of those of his friend, General James Jackson, in the Congressional burying-ground. Mr. Baldwin was never married. His father died in 1787, and left six orphan children, halfbrothers and sisters of Abraham. With the tenderness of a father he studied their welfare, and used his ample fortune in educating them all. They enjoyed his protection and aid until all were established for themselves in life-pursuits. A truly good man was lost to earth, when Abraham Baldwin died.

THERE are men whose forecast reaches far in advance of their generation, and dreamers by the many, and venerated as philosophers and prophets by the few. Such was Dewitt Clinton, a son of James Clinton, a useful brigadier-general of the Revolution, who was born at Little Britain, in Orange county, New York, on the 2d of March, 1769. He graduated at Columbia College, in 1786, became a lawyer, then private Secretary to his uncle, George Clinton, the first Republican governor of New York, and then a State Senator, in 1799. Even at this early period of his public life, his efforts were directed to the elevation of his fellowmen. Throughout his long political career he was the earnest and steadfast friend of education, and the rights of man. His powerful mind was brought to bear with great vigor upon the subject of legislative aid in furtherance of popular education, and also the abolition of human slavery in the State of New York. In 1801, he was appointed to a seat in the Senate of the United States, and was annually elected mayor of the city of New York, from 1803 to 1815, except in 1807 and 1810. Some of the noblest institutions for the promotion of art, literature, science, and benevolence, in that city, were founded under his auspices.'

1. The chief of these were the New York Historical Society, the Academy of Arts, and the Orphan Asylum. See sketch of Isabella Graham.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of President of the United States, in 1812; and, in 1815, he withdrew from public life.

Mr. Clinton was one of the earliest and most efficient supporters of Jesse Hawley's magnificent scheme for uniting Lake Erie with the Hudson river by a canal, first promulgated by that gentleman, in 1807; and, in 1817, Mr. Clinton having been called from his retirement into public life again, was chiefly instrumental in procuring the passage of a law for constructing the great Erie Canal, at an estimated cost of five millions of dollars. He was elected governor of his State, and for three years, while holding that office, he brought all his official influence to bear in favor of two grand projects-the establishment of a literature fund, and the construction of the canal. A strong party was arrayed against him, and many denounced the scheme of making a canal three hundred and sixty-three miles in length, as that of an insane mind. He and his friends persevered; and, in 1825, that great work was completed. The event was celebrated throughout the State by orations, processions, bonfires, and illuminations, and soon the madman was extolled as a wise benefactor. He was again elected governor of his State, by an overwhelming majority. In 1826, he declined the honor of ambassador to England, offered him by President Adams, and was reelected governor. He now strongly urged a change in the State Constitution (since effected), so as to allow universal suffrage at elections. While in the midst of his popularity and usefulness, he died suddenly, at Albany, on the 11th of February, 1828, at the age of fifty-nine years. Mr. Clinton was a fine writer, a good speaker, and an industrious seeker after knowledge of every kind. Some of his essays and addresses are choice specimens of composition, embodying deep thought and clear logic. His enduring monument is the Erie Canal, whose bosom has borne sufficient food to appease the hunger of the whole earth, and poured millions of treasure into the coffers of the State.

THE

EDANUS BURKE.

THE honest heart, jolly wit, and varied accomplishments of Judge Burke, of South Carolina, are matters of historic record, and cannot be forgotten. He was a native of Galway, Ireland, where he was born about the year 1743. At the commencement of the American Revolution, he came to fight for liberty, for he was a democrat of truest stamp. His heart was filled with the sentiment, "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." He made his abode in Charleston, and was active in the early military events in that vicinity. He was a lawyer by profession, and considering his services more valuable in civil than in military affairs, the provincial legislature appointed him a judge of the Supreme Court of the newly-organized State, in 1778. When Charleston fell, and the South lay prostrate at the feet of British power, in 1780, Judge Burke took a commission in the army. He resumed the judicial office when the Republicans regained the State, early in 1782. He was opposed to the Federal Constitution, because he feared consolidated power, yet he served as the first United States Senator from South Carolina, under that instrument. His Federalist friends told him that he had been sent to see that the corruptions and abuses which he had predicted should not be practiced. He had already made his name conspicuous by his published essay against some of the aristocratic features of the Cincinnati Society; and while in Congress he was the favorite friend of Aaron Burr. He afterward became Chancellor of the State of North Carolina. Wit, humor, and conviviality, were his distinguishing social characteristics. The former were ever visible